I think the rule of thumb answer is to play a custom game with the easiest or no NPCs. This won’t prevent you from screwing yourself over if you botch a supply chain, but otherwise will be more deterministic/predictable than the standard game. I think the most likely challenge at higher tiers is when an enemy NPC disrupts a trade route, which in turn causes a cascading failure of supply chains and population.
Yep thats correct, just play it solo with no AI opponents.
I think I just bounced off this game for the last time. I want to like it because I liked 1404 SO MUCH. But I think the problem is just that I played 1404 SO MUCH, that there’s just not that much new to discover here. Trying to get the supply chains built up to get to the next level of citizens just feels like a chore. Build more houses so I can build more factories so I can get more stuff to supply more houses.
I had a bit of fun going through the Land of Lions quest chains, they do throw in some quirks there (although some of them seem to end in hard fail states if you miss a timer or guess wrong?), and the exploration stories are a little bit of fun. But overall I think I just played myself out of this kind of game. Alas.
Excellent, good to know, thanks. My first attempt at Anno 1800 has me following one of the campaigns, so perhaps I should drop that and just play a custom game with no AI, as you suggest.
There’s an argument that playing with easy AI is actually easier than no AI, in that they’re overtly helpful and will not expand to new landmasses unless you give them permission.
I’ll second this. No AI was definitely my recommendation before Anno 1800, but it’s tough to keep the pirate factions under control all by yourself. The easy AI really stays out of the players way and there are enough islands on each map to go around between you and one other player.
The AI essentially becomes a buffer between you and the pirates? Anything to lower the pressure is good strategy in my books. Noted, and thanks.
You can also disable the pirates, if you want a totally chill game.
The AI will sink some of the pirate ships and help keep their numbers from getting unmanageable( the pirates can build up quite the fleet). Nothing worse than pirates ruining one of your critical trade routes and you not having enough ships the deal with them.
That’s an interesting tie-in.
Don’t forget to claim the cosmetic dlc. :P
Thanks for the reminder about the Vehicle Liveries Pack. Sometimes it’s just hard to keep track of all the games, services, and DLCs around when it’s not automatic.
The tourism dlc seems really in depth.
While this looks wonderful, the game balance was destroyed past the initial hump with the last DLC. This looks to make that even worse.
Can you elaborate please? Why do you feel game balance has been destroyed? Because of the new trading options?
Exactly. Previously, there was more than enough money once you got up and running. With the last DLC and the options to make more money, it got a bit ridiculous.
Docklands is all about the trading and $$$$$$$. :)
Glad they have it that you can always do a custom game with whatever dlc you want.
So, they added FSR to the game (AMD’s DLSS software-only solution). I know it gets crapped on in most reviews, because it pales in comparison to Nvidia’s hardware-assisted goodness.
But I have an ancient system (3570k/GTX1060). On a whim, I gave FSR a shot in the Anno 1800 benchmark tool (yes, FSR works on non-AMD cards, even back as far as my 1060). I can run Anno 1800 faster in 1440 resolution with Ultra FSR than I can native 1080p. And since it is 1440 on my 1080p monitor (using the Nvidia DSR feature), I have no[1] loss in quality. Seriously, this is pretty crazy.
The downside is that it doesn’t seem to translate into in-game performance, sadly. I assume that once I’m in game, I’m now getting smacked around by my CPU so framerates aren’t nearly what they are in the benchmark. Unfortunate, but what can you do. However, it does mean I could potentially upgrade the CPU and get some benefit until GPUs are available/sane. And those of you with better CPUs but sitting on older GPU hardware might see real benefit.
Just anecdotal data since I doubt this is a common testing scenario for folks, but it was neat to see.
[1] Okay, it isn’t enough loss in quality that it impedes the game. There is still some softening, even with this wacky scenario. FSR ‘worked’ at 1080p as well, but it wasn’t a significant (if any) FPS gain over 1440 on my system and the quality was less, as you’d expect. Again, hampered by my CPU I’m guessing.