I really wanted to get this but just didn’t have it budgeted at all, and now I have other commitments for the month. I would have been on board with 15% off (and no tax) from GMG but I’m certain that offer is either already done or going away very soon, so my next opportunity will likely be months from now if it goes on sale and I still have the excitement to play more. I loved my time with the open beta, I’m not a massive city builder guy, but this is my favorite city builder (so far) that I’ve tried, and there have been many, indeed.
I pre-ordered it. Anno may be the only remaining game where I would pre-order it at full price.
(Well, perhaps The Settlers is in that camp as well.)
I have yet to be disappointed with Anno, and have more than made my money back in entertainment value per hour on every title. (Except for the recent terrible one, 2205 or whatever, which I did not buy, because I knew I would hate the lack of random maps and other decisions they made.)
I will buy it after Denuvo is removed.
I didn’t know. Thanks for the heads-up!
Heh, seems Anno 1800 is the number one global top seller on Steam today. :)
Also seems that reviews are dropping!
Yeah, it’s getting about what I would expect for a game like this - low 80’s (actually a bit lower than I’d have thought given how much fun the beta was, but I haven’t read any reviews yet to see what is holding it back from being higher). To be honest, given I haven’t ever gotten into this series before this game, I’m surprised it’s not a higher score for more universal appeal - I suspected low 8’s because games like this (not commercially huge, but with a big following of old-school, die hard fans) tend to score in the 8’s when they are good. But I had secretly hoped it would be more like high 8’s or even low 9’s…?
Edit for @Telefrog - the FIRST review I randomly chose to read starts with a bang.
Edit 2: I’m looking into what’s holding it back though, so far it seems like the biggest troubles are performance issues (on lower and mid range systems but even I noticed drops in frame rate when zooming over my city, and it wasn’t even a particularly large city and I have a 1080Ti), the setting up of trade routes is intuitive and obtuse (I agree, I couldn’t figure this out and was going to resort to a tutorial video on YouTube if it came to it), sounds like there are some design flaws with regards to feedback as well as issues with the diplomatic AI and how frequently it jaws at you, and the campaign isn’t very compelling (that’s to be expected - like Heroes of Might and Magic or Age of Wonders, you play these games for the endless sandbox mode with random opponents on a random map, not to play an on-the-rails story mode).
Almost (all?) of this stuff can be addressed by patches, thankfully, so maybe it’s for the best I’m holding off for a bit due to a lack of funds. It will probably be an even better experience with a patch or two under its belt.
My only experiences with the Anno series are 2070, 2201 and this, just fyi.
Anno games are interesting because they’re basically almost always in a “steady state”; improvements you build change your economy almost instantly (although you can accumulate surpluses of some goods), and as long as you change nothing, nothing in your city/economy will change. In city builders things like traffic build up or accumulate, or demand rises and falls somewhat. But in Anno once you have a city running you could in theory walk away for hours and come back to enjoy whatever accumulated cash reserves you’ve made in the interim. Anno 2201 has random “battle” events that force you to do something rather than just stare, but I think you can disable these on game setup if you want.
All Anno games have the basic dynamic that you “evolve” pops, and that pops are what drive your economy, and every higher tier of pop cost you significantly more to upgrade because you have to pay outright for the production of the goods the upgraded pops demand. Anno games aren’t about pop… agency, let’s say, pops don’t upgrade when you provide them a nice looking town. They don’t evolve dynamically but deliberately - in Sim CIty or SKylines zones will upgrade when they have all the things they need, but in Anno you both have to deliberately make the goods they need and then deliberately spend the resources to upgrade their tile.
And… basically that’s it. Every Anno game is pop upgrading with that Euro model building love, where much of the game’s appeal is just watching the little well detailed characters and objects go to and fro.
So I liked the beta, but Anno be Anno. The biggest difference between 1800 and 2201 seems to be not needing warehouses (collection points) in 2201 but warehouses being the bottleneck for you town in 1800. In 2201 all resources created automagically move to your resource pool. Personally I think the setting for 2201 is a bit more compelling for my tastes… but you have to like those larger farms in 1800.
Nooooooooo!
2+2+0+1=5
Not a real Anno game!
You are are right, of course! 2205.
BTW, if you have the ability to “visit Australia”, the game is unlocked. :)
Oh nice.
I won’t even VPN into the land of Spiders, thanks very much.
I’ve never really played an Anno game before, so I preordered this one. So I’m in!
To speak out in favor of warehouses (did 2205 really not have them?), what I like about them is they create a series of mini-hubs around your playspace, each of which can be optimized independently.
I didn’t have any issues setting one up, but I haven’t tried anything complicated. Click start island, click end island. Choose what to load. Click to unload it. I had a bit of a faff when one of my trading ships got destroyed and I couldn’t figure out how to assign a new one for about 20 seconds, but nothing major.
That’s good, I’m glad you didn’t have any trouble!
That’s new to this game. In previous Annos you could toggle housing upgrades to manual, but the default was automatic. Here it’s only manual (unless there’s a toggle to automatic I haven’t seen).