Excited to watch it! 1404 was the source of my desktop backgrounds for years. The sci-fi ones didn’t result in screenshots that could replace them, I’m hoping this one does! I’ve been checking their blog pretty regularly and really can’t wait for this to come out, especially since it’s a year away.
Hope this doesn’t get caught up in Ubisoft’s current delaypocalypse
Has this looked like it will add any more depth to the game over 2205?
It sounds like they are moving back to the older style games, but it isn’t entirely clear what they will keep from 2205 and what they will improve from 1404. Hopefully they really take advantage of the setting.
I really hope that the stuff they’ve been covering the last several weeks turns out as well as it could. I could see the working conditions stuff going either way, based on how well things like tax sliders have worked out in most games that have them.
The fact that they are splitting up the different residential tiers and having each one house a different type of worker sounds great. I generally play Anno games as a slow-paced city builder(I rarely play with opponents) so aesthetics and theming mean a lot to me. Having little outlying farming villages and things sounds great for that.
Only naval battles at release, they aren’t sure if there will be land fighting (I am guessing nope).
City Attractiveness will matter!
Find your own playstyle
Influencing criteria creates a balancing act, in which every positive aspect has its own counterpart. You can imagine them as three axis: culture against inelegance, nature against pollution and festivity against instability. Here are a few example how this can encourage a certain playstyle:Culture versus Inelegance: Will you spend time to beautify your city with ornaments and cultural buildings or do you not care about that, leaving ruins or dirty buildings on your island. The fundamental question: are you a beauty builder at heart or someone who does not care about the aesthetic look of your city?
Natural Landscape versus Pollution: While humankind was always interfering with Mother Nature for its own needs, it was the industrial age where exploitation began at a previously unimaginable scale. Do you want to be the magnate, repressing nature for your steaming industrial machine, or an idealist who wants to preserve the slowly dwindling natural landscape as much as possible?
Festivity versus Instability: Are you a progressive thinker, who roots with his residents like a father who takes care of his children or the robber baron who dominates everyone for power and profit. It’s up to you how your residents will remember you.
So nice!
and… Items are back!
Eager to see how it all comes together in play, because it certainly all sounds very interesting on paper. Should look visually stunning if nothing else.
An interesting sounding game – I have never gotten into the series but was considering this one. But that “Find your own playstyle” blurb makes me cautious.
The impediment to beauty and maintaining nature and such… do not seem very well conceived, at least in those paragraphs. It comes across as being a matter of having good enough taste not to make these errors, when, in truth, there were very real forces to overcome. Maybe I am too stuck in the real life Industrial Revolution, but I am concerned that this may really bother me as I play the game.
Oh I am sure they will get it right, in Anno 2070 they had a Eco’s vs Tycoon’s dynamic where you had to control the levels of pollution your choices were making. As much as people say they feel 1404 is the best in the series, I feel 2070 in terms of game quality and new ideas, was just as good.
Yeah, the Eco versus Tycoon dynamic felt really well done from what I remember of my Anno 2070 playthroughs. So I am pretty optimistic that they’ll manage to strike the right notes and balance with Anno 1800 as well.
It’s multiplayer. It’s gorgeous. It has an industry/interesting time period… this could be good.
Nice, glad to see MP making a return. I enjoyed playing 1404 with a friend.
I love the anno games MP. I almost play them exclusively MP. MP with an AI makes for a good challenge and a lot of activity on the map.
I love the Anno games, I can’t imagine being able to organize multiple people to play for long enough to actually have a meaningful game. How do you do it?
I’ve had the same gaming group for almost 20+ years now. We’re small, we argue a lot, a number have kids, and it’s a lot of pausing. Turn based games help a lot but it’s mostly just patience. i would never ask a new comer to put up with that unless they were willing to.
Interesting factoid though, because my board gaming group was really small last time, we actually wound up played Overcooked on my PS4. I am slowly, secretly and evilly converting a few of them to electronic gamers. and they don’t even realize it!
That’s my situation as well, although not quite 20 years. Friends’ activity goes up and down depending on how life goes, but the group has kept on chugging. It probably helps that I’m the one without kids; with life being more sane for me it leaves me with more bandwidth to keep things organized.
We mostly got together around Everquest, and there are few that come and go. They showed up for our Old Republic MMO run, short run, and Guild Wars 2 briefly, but the core group that you can play things like CIV, CK3, EUIV is around 3-5 folks. The rest we’ll pause that game for if they want to do something and go back to it. It could have been Conan Exiles too but it sounds like they messed that game up. We’re not PvP.
When our UK friend gets involved, well that can be sporty because of the time zone but she mostly did the L4D stuff so not the month long games.
I’ve been fooling around with the older (pre-2205) Anno games on GOG. What would you say is the best one?
1404(Dawn of Discovery) is by far my favorite.