I’m kind of in the same boat. I played for 3 or 4 days, and generally enjoyed what I was doing in the game. I wish the game did a better job of explaining everything (I had to look up settling another island for example), but I thought that might simply be because it was a trial. My wife played and enjoyed it too, but had the same complaint.
So I should probably buy it, but Uplay is running a thing to try their new service for free from 9/3-9/30, so I’ll probably hold off and just play it then. I figure if I’m still interested after that, I’ll think more about buying it. I tend to love the first few plays of city builders, but lose interest when things either start becoming repetitive or too deep.
I haven’t looked into it deeply, but I assume whatever Anno content they have will be included, so should be able to play the full version during that period.
The only thing I don’t like about Anno 1800 is how frantic the gameplay is. There’s almost never any downtime and it’s practically overwhelming the number of things you have to manage at once when you’re playing with pirates and competent opponents.
This is why I don’t play Anno games with opponents. I generally leave the pirates on to give some amount of external pushback, but there are more than enough things to manage as it is.
I play it as a city builder, not some sort of competitive thing.
Ah, good to know that’s an option. I kind of like the diplomacy portions so far, but no one was attacking me either. I imagine trying to manage that must make you put city expansion on hold temporarily. That does mean no trading either? That would be a shame to lose.
I had a few moments during the trial where I felt exactly that way. I’m new to the game, but there were times where I definitely felt like I had to leave stuff to run on its own in some areas so I could try to focus on others.
That said, I appreciate that so far it feels like a lot more…sloppy…than other city builders I’ve played in the past. I dug Pharaoh out of the boxes a few months ago, and it felt like I had to get everything in just the right place, or else there was no way I was going to move forward. Time felt way more precious too. Anno seems to try to get you to let go of the minutiae, and worry more about keep the ratio of raw production to factories to citizens in balance.
That said, I know you’ve got a lot more experience with it than I do, and I can imagine it gets a bit crazier when you get to artisans and up (I stopped the trial after basically being ready to upgrade to artisans).
In 1404 I remember feeling rushed in the beginning, in the race to get the best Oriental island (and secondary Occidental one). Here I think there are a couple of things that contribute to it above that. The main one IMO is that the new world is on a separate map so it feels like I’m missing something because it’s happening offscreen. Similarly the expeditions pop up and yank you out of your current context and make you think about something else while stuff is still happening elsewhere. However, I think it feels worse than it is because once you get past the initial island rush there’s not a whole lot of competition, at least from the demo AIs–and fundamentally it’s not a particularly competitive game.
That said I also played 2070 without competing AIs, so nothing wrong with that.
I did get sucked into a war when I allied with Willy and Beryl attacked him (at least I assume that’s what happened… I hope I didn’t sign up to join him in an attack). She had basically defeated him before so I thought maybe I’d scare her off with the alliance, but nope. It was exciting at parts but I pretty handily outgunned her–the main issue was getting ships to the right place in time. And finishing her off when she kept attacking him, when we were still allied and I had previously taken her islands, was a hassle. Also, the fact that taking islands costs influence was rather annoying.
The thing to bear in mind is that Anno’s designed to let you do that. As long as you’re in production surplus/equilibrium and you have decent service coverage, pretty much nothing is going to blindside you while you’re “distracted” and send you into a spiral like more dynamic city builders. The only thing that really can is your trade routes getting raided, which obviously isn’t an issue if you don’t have opponents. It’s perfectly fine to leave one island alone for long periods of time while you focus on another.
One thing I noticed was that now there’s a purpose (admittedly minor) for the decorative improvements: they (slightly) help tourism. Anyone try building any?
I was always somewhat puzzled that the 1404 decorations sometimes had significant upkeep costs–especially the mayoral palace ones. I guess once you reach the stage where money is meaningless you need something to do with it.
Yeah, it’d be nice if they could at least open up the trial again until they do get it working. I did see they’ve got Anno 2205 in the list, so I might give that a try as well, although the setting is far less interesting to me.
Well, I at least tried to get Anno 2205 installed. It doesn’t give me the option to add it to my library like every other game in Uplay+. I filed a ticket, but I’m wondering if they removed all the Anno products for launch instead of just 1800.
I managed to get Anno 2205 added to my library by going to the EU store. I can now see Anno 1800 Deluxe in the Uplay app, but when I try to add it to my library it throws an error.
