Anno 1800, city-building in the industrial revolution

I can attest to this! I don’t like competing with AIs over territory, but thought needing to defend my shipping lanes was good for providing some friction in the game. Turned out my naval production couldn’t keep up with the pirates’ at all.

Why fight the pirates when you can sell them alcohol at an outrageous markup?

These are all good points about the pirates. Doing the pirate quests is more fun, anyway, and IIRC the old world pirate will eventually let you get some semi-unique ship somehow. (Not that it ends up being useful, really.)

I guess if you turned off pirates and rivals (or just befriended them, which is essentially guaranteed for the easy AIs) you would still potentially have to fight in some of the mission types, but those certainly wouldn’t be “pressure” in that you don’t have to start the mission until you’re ready.

I’m contemplating buying this on Steam as it is on sale. I just could not get into the modern ones, but loved 1404, and this looks more like the latter than the former… I am confused though, by the different options in Steam. Should I get the base game? Gold edition? Complete edition? Do I need all the DLC and Season passes? Or can I just pick some good ones (and which ones would that be?). I hope someone here can shed some light on this, based on their experience with the game.

If you loved 1404, you’ll probably love 1800. It goes back to the 1404 formula. There’s a ton of content in the base game; IMHO just pick that up, and if you like it then go back for the DLC when you want more. Happy to talk more about the individual DLCs if you like. (Or if you want more detail on the base game.)

I own it all, so I’d suggest Complete edition year 4. Then pick up the cosmetic packs on sale later, for some extra city design diversity.

Hmm, two responses, two conflicting opinions :-). Interesting…

I think I will follow @ooomalley first and get the base game for about €20,-. I have been known to burn out on games quicker than I should lately, so spending three times that on the full version feels a bit over the top. I would still very much like to hear which particular DLC’s you guys/girls think are great, and which are not (really) worth it. Perhaps I’ll get some of them right away then, at a discount. Thanks for the advice!

Something to consider. If you buy the basegame on steam, you cant currently buy 4 year editions with the dlc since you would own the base game. Need to contact steam to give up your anno 1800 ownership first, or buy the dlc without any price reductions.

Even if you buy the complete edition I wouldn’t recommend playing with most DLC to start. Trying to manage all of the content in all of the things is a lot even when you know what you’re doing.

Season 1:

  • Botanica (minor): This adds botanic gardens, which are essentially identical to zoos and museums. If you like the gotta get em all aspect of those (which I do), then this is more of that.
  • Sunken Treasures (major): Adds a new map, Cape Trelawney. In addition to a medium-long quest chain, this gives you a big open island to play with. If you want to build a really big city, this is the one to get. The map is the same type as the Old World, so no new mechanics there. It does also add the diving bell, which is another way of getting treasures.
  • The Passage (major): Adds a new map, the arctic. This is a new type; somewhat smaller as it only has two population tiers, and the islands are quite small and cramped with the heating mechanic, but I think it’s a fun challenge. Also adds dirigibles.

Season 2:

  • Seat of Power (minor): Adds the Palace building, which is a fairly big resource sink that gives some unique bonuses as you improve it. I like it, but it’s definitely optional.
  • Bright Harvest (minor): Adds tractors and feed silos, which allow you to boost agricultural productivity by the Power of Industry. Really helps you squeeze every last bit of productivity out of those cramped islands.
  • Land of Lions (major): Adds a new map type, Enbesa (Africa / Ethiopia), and a huge (skippable) quest line. Enbesa brings back a bit of the irrigation mechanic from 1404, and lets you get scholars (back in the old world) to get items and unique buildings and such out of the university.

Season 3:

  • Docklands (minor): Adds a modular, expandable, fancy dock building. This lets you create trade routes with the Rest of the World (a ship shows up every so often and exchanges the goods you specify). You can get around shortages or even just ignore whole production chains if you build this up enough.
  • Tourist Season (minor): Adds, uh, tourist stuff? I can’t remember it all that well but tourists are a new pop type added to the old world and you satisfy them with hotels and restaurants and such that add area-based bonuses (i.e. buildings within a circular range of the restaurant get -consumption or +whatever, based on the recipe you choose).
  • The High Life (minor - medium): Adds skyscrapers. Another big resource drain, but if you play them right you can really boost your population and tax rate. Also, gives your city a skyline and makes it very pretty. And a medium quest line, IIRC.

You’ll notice season 3 doesn’t add a new map, and that’s fine, I think, it was quite full. If you want to really crank it then you’ll enable all the DLCs at once, and build a bunch of cafes and restaurants that use ingredients from the arctic and Enbesa and have them encompass your big skyscrapers and watch the numbers shoot for the moon.

Season 4: Have to get someone else to explain this, I haven’t played it yet! But now I really want to…

My recommendations is to see what you like in the base game. I do recommend the new maps as they really add variety. The minor ones are pretty skippable but IIRC they’re not too expensive and can really let you boost your cities. But burn out is a very big risk, especially with Tourist Season + High Life as there are just so many production chains. You definitely don’t need to play with all DLC enabled every time, and in fact I think it’s better to pick and choose based on what kind of run you want.

Thanks for the extensive info all! And welcome @Temon_Oak !

Oops, I’m sorry, I didn’t see your question until just now. No, I have not. I haven’t even tried the “low combat” settings you mention. Maybe I’ll give those a try before playing entirely without combat.

Please do post back and let us know how you found it!

To be clear, what I mean by low-combat are:

  • Only 1-star or “friendly” 2-star AIs. (I believe 1-star AIs won’t declare war on you; the “friendly” 2-star AIs are a bit more of a risk but if you maintain relations (do the occasional quest you can ~guarantee peace.)
  • Pirates on low (obviously) or omitted in one or both regions. It takes considerably more work (or plenty of money) to stay on good terms with the pirates.
  • No campaign; generally the quest lines are pretty clear about telegraphing when you’re going to have to fight, but IIRC in the main campaign there’s an extended period where there are hostile fleets tooling around.

With that in mind, you’ll be able to choose if and when to fight. Some quest types involve combat, and you can choose to turn them down or ignore them.

Big disclaimer: I have no idea about the new DLC! I haven’t tried it yet.

Did performance get drastically improved in a (semi) recent update? I just got the game patched up because I managed to find someone’s 3M population savegame and I wanted to see the pretty smoke from my system for mood. But to my absolute shock… it loaded and ran. I didn’t do much but scroll around and hop between islands (the biggest population on a single island was around 250k?) so maybe I just didn’t wait long enough?

Regardless, I know I really struggled with performance a long while back and it certainly wasn’t with a 3 million pop. This is amazing. And likely a trap.

In for a penny, in for a pound!..

Went in on the Complete Edition bundle on Steam since I’ve enjoyed every other Anno game. Finally time to get lost in a sea of production chains and so on again. And it dovetails well with Victoria 3, in at least the time period if nothing else.

Coming to consoles in March. I wonder how they will translate the control scheme to a controller.

Like so:

Nice! Radial menus to the rescue.

I still just can’t see how this can work efficiently. I can barely keep up with this game with a mouse and keyboard! LOL

The livestream might give you a better feel for how this works as she’s actively playing it with the controller: Anno 1800 Console - Reveal Livestream - YouTube

That said, no way I’m playing this on console, I have my PC! But that reveal trailer was how I just found out that Anno has now become one of those few game series with a musical theme that triggers some really happy feelings for me.