Union Update: July at our doorstep

We are back with a short and fresh Community Update during a hot summer day, before we will return next week with the details to Game Update 3.2 and the winners of the propaganda video contest.

We had our German episode of our Community Corner AMA stream last Tuesday. As usual, many of you joined us to watch the stream and ask plenty of questions. We also shared some German entries to our propaganda contest and as we love to share any of your Anno 1800 creations. Is there a funny video or great fan art you stumbled across which you would like to share with us?
Quite recently, we were amused by Patteyayo Plays sarcastic tutorial for the fifths residential tier:

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And if you missed the German stream, you can just watch the show in the video library of our Twitch channel.

Most of our fans don’t speak German though and for that reason, we will follow up with another episode of our Community Corner AMA stream next Wednesday at 4.30pm CEST.

Here a few information from our German Community Corner:
– We will release the exact details about Game Update 3.2 next week but you won’t have to wait long before Game Update 4.
– Game Update 4 will come with, among other things, some quality of life improvements to the trade routes. All of these changes will be based on community feedback and cover usability and functionality improvements.
– We also work on a proper UI and feature implementation to manage the minimum stock of your wares and goods.
– We also heard your feedback regards items relying too much on item random pools, which makes it hard for players to work towards a certain goal or end up in a grind if you work towards a specific strategy. We listened to that feedback closely and as a result, Sunken Treasures will come with a feature that allows you to work towards certain new items without relying on random item pools.
– There are currently no plans to work on natural disasters or scenarios for Anno 1800. Traditionally, only a small percentage of our player base engage with this type of content, which further costs us a lot of development time to create. We decided that we want to concentrate on content, which expands the world of Anno 1800 for a large part of our communities, even though we are personally a fan of scenarios.
– We know that you are all eager to get news about the statistic building, coop mode or the not yet revealed third free content drop. When it comes to multiplayer, we want to iron out a few remaining desynch issues before we can fully focus on the coop mode. Rest assured you get some details about our free content update soon.
– And while we talk about multiplayer, we created our own dedicated forum topic to gather your feedback about Anno 1800’s MP mode here.

While this was more an overview than a summary about the information we provided during the German stream, don’t hesitate to bring all the questions you can think of to the English AMA next Wednesday.

And before we leave you guys to hopefully enjoy a sunny and exciting day (it’s almost weekend, right?), we have a small teaser about stuff we are currently working on:

 

 

Union Update: Fansite Kit and State of the Game

While we work on the upcoming game update 3.2 as well as the next content drop, which will enrich Anno 1800’s game world quite significantly, we have a few things in today’s Union Update to endure the waiting time until we lift the curtain on the content and when it lands.

Anarchist Propa….promotional video contest ends this Friday!
Our creative contest, in which you can submit your own promotional video for your empire, ends this Friday. Still two night shifts worth of time to let your empire shine! Remember: We have not only great gaming gear from Corsair for the top three winners, we will also give you a spot in the limelight, sharing your creative works on the Anno Union, social media and during live-streams.

 

Fansite Kit 1.0 has landed.
We released our first teaser of our Anno 1800 fansite kit a while ago and today, we want to share the first release version of our kit with the Anno Union. With the first release version, we added all of our detailed key-arts as wallpapers for various devices, including an anniversary wallpaper as well as a set of emoticons free to use on your platform of choice.

Get the Anno Union fansite kit 1.0 right here.

Is there something directly missing in our fansite kit which you would love to see in future or even something useful or just awesome the community created which we should add?

 

With the latest Game Update 3.1, we continue to work on various game improvements as well as upcoming gameplay content. Throughout the year, Anno 1800 will receive several further game updates and various DLC additions not only from our Season Pass content but also free content updates such as a coop mode, statistic building and more. We know that you are waiting for details when you will be able to start the hunt for lost treasures or to team up with your friends to create your mega-empire. With the Anno Union, we are committed to work with your feedback but that also means that our team spends time to analyze the tons of data you provide with your reports and your discussion on the forums and on other community platforms. The journey just started and a vast and feature rich game like Anno 1800 deserves the time and care to grow based on your feedback.

We also want to tackle reports about a few players still having issues with progressing through campaign quests or multiplayer desynchs. We will share the exact update notes about Game Update 3.2 and the release date pretty-soon. After 3.2, we will fully focus on the next larger content drop: game Update 4.

 

But until we share some dates for upcoming content, we want to ramp up conversations with all of you. And to get us all on the table, we invite you to share your most pressing questions in the comments below for the next two episodes of our community corner live-streams.

To give every one of you a chance to get your questions answered, we decided to not only rely on our live-stream chat but also gather questions for the stream here in the Union. This way, you might be able see the response to your personal question in the recorded broadcast if you cannot make it to watch the show live.

Save the date for our next Anno 1800 stream on twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte
Community Corner German: Tuesday June 25th 4.30pm CEST
Community Corner English: Wednesday July 3rd 4.30pm CEST

We are looking forward to the show and your questions in the comments below.

Union Update: Anarchist and City Promotion

Dr. Hugo Mercier just arrived in the world of Anno 1800, bringing with him not only a lot of new content for owners of the Digital Deluxe Edition, but also the free Game Update with its more than 200 improvements to the game.

Owners of the Anno 1800 Pioneers Edition or Digital Deluxe Edition can now include the Anarchist, who comes with new content such as 50 additional quests and items as well as new propaganda and a defection system, as a second party character when creating a new sandbox game.

And if you don’t want to miss out on Mercier, owners of the Standard Edition can also upgrade to the Digital Deluxe version to get access to the DLC as well as digital items such as the soundtrack and additional company emblems.

But there is more: Just in time for Game Update 3 and the Anarchist, you can save 20% on your Uplay purchase of Anno 1800’s Standard and Digital Deluxe Edition, thanks to the Ubisoft E3 Sale! If you have been on the fence, now is the perfect time to dive into the industrial revolution!

And in celebration of Mercier’s arrival, we also invite you all to participate in our new City Promotion Contest! Together with our friends of Corsair, we ask you to create a video to promote your metropolis.

Here are the rules:
– No time limitations but it must be at least 15 seconds long.
– It should include gameplay content
– Additionally, you can use video footage of yourself, text mockups or other graphics, audio effects or anything you can think of. Get crazy!
– It must be a retro style promotion of your city, such as a nice invitation for tourists to visit your city or a full-blown propaganda piece demonstrating that your empire is the one to rule them all!
– Deadline is June 21, and you can link your submissions in the City Promotion thread in the forum or via Twitter mentioning @Anno_EN and the hashtag #Anno1800Anarchy

So what’s at stake? For the best three entries of the contest, you can win top gaming gear from Corsair to stay ahead of the competition.
1st Place: K70 RGB MK.2 Keyboard Low Profile
2nd Place: GLAIVE RGB Gaming Mouse
3rd Place: MM800 Pro Mousepad

Good luck everyone!

Yesterday, we hosted another session of our Community Corner live-stream, a streaming format where we showcase content while also answering your questions. If you missed the show, you can watch the VOD here:

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PHA+PGlmcmFtZSBsb2FkaW5nPSJsYXp5IiBzcmM9Imh0dHBzOi8vcGxheWVyLnR3aXRjaC50di8/YXV0b3BsYXk9ZmFsc2UmIzAzODt2aWRlbz12NDM0NzkyNTE2IiBmcmFtZWJvcmRlcj0iMCIgYWxsb3dmdWxsc2NyZWVuPSJ0cnVlIiBzY3JvbGxpbmc9Im5vIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjM3OCIgd2lkdGg9IjYyMCI+PC9pZnJhbWU+
Watch Community Corner – Anarchist Preview and AMA from ubisoftbluebyte on www.twitch.tv

And to follow up on questions from the stream, here are the answers:

Question: Do the new sea mines cause friendly fire when blowing up, causing damage to your or allied ships?
Answer: Sea mines are not causing damage to your own or allied/neutral ships. In Anno 1800, where you have a variety of neutral or allied characters and the game world is heavily used for trade by all these factions, friendly fire could cause many issues affecting the player’s enjoyment. Harbor areas would be inaccessible and players would likely soon stop using the item, as the chances of entering an unintended state of war with the AI or damaging their own ship would be too high. However, even without friendly fire, the sea mines add a lot of strategical variety to the naval combat, allowing you to expand your harbor defense or to blockade areas of the map.

Question: If I wipe Dr. Hugo Mercier from the map, will I lose access to all his items and propaganda news articles?
Answer: If you wipe the Anarchist from your map, you will not have any access to his item pool anymore nor able to use his propaganda articles. When the music is over, turn off the lights.