Category: Anno 1800

DevBlog – How do Technical Tests work?

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

 

With the Technical Test (short: TT) for the “The High Life” DLC going on right now, we think it’s a good time to talk about Technical Tests for Anno in general: Why do we do them? How advanced is the version for these playtests? How are we working with the feedback we receive?

Read on to find out.

What exactly is a Technial Test?

What we call a “Technical Test” is a larger playtest in which people can play an early version of an upcoming update and/or DLC. They are bigger than focus tests or diary studies which only involve a small group of players. For Diary Studies, players are handpicked based on existing profiles (you can sign up here to become part of the list) and also have to fill out daily surveys with questions from the team. With these, we’re trying to get feedback on very specific points.

In comparison, during a Technical Test, players can discuss the new content amongst themselves and help each other thanks to a forum. Generally, everyone can sign up to these playtests (though we usually limit the number of participants) and the goal is to receive a broader feedback from the community.

Our Technical Test preparations

The preparations for a Technical Test involve several teams within Ubisoft. First, we internally plan and schedule a TT based on our production and release plans and then get in touch with these other teams.

Those include for example the Ubisoft teams which handle the sign-up process and website, the invite and confirmation e-mails and of course the forwarding of the final list of participants so they get access to the test version and the forums.

Talking about version: For us this means that we must prepare a stable version for the test, check it and document known issues. More on that below.

Finally, there’s communication that needs to be prepared, be it on the Anno Union or the dedicated forums.

All this means we’re going through a bunch of meetings before the TT can finally start.

How advanced is the version (as we call it: the build) for such a Technical Test?

Generally, we’re aiming to prepare a version that is mostly “feature complete”, i.e., the new content can already be played in its entirety, the systems are working and most of the art assets are also ready. For this, all teams have to work hard to produce such a stable version (it can have bugs and some technical issues, but no major problems) several weeks before the actual public release of the content.

While the new mechanics are basically in, there’re still plenty of other things missing or at least incomplete: The Technical Test version usually doesn’t include any localizations yet, meaning all new content is available in English only. Sound and music can also be partly missing, same as descriptions and tooltips for new buildings and mechanics. Art assets can still be partially unpolished, and the balance usually isn’t final either.

On the technical side, the version isn’t fully optimised yet, and there are plenty of bugs (known ones, which are still planned to be fixed, and new ones we haven’t found yet ourselves) including potential blockers that e.g., might prevent you from finishing a questline.

How do we use the feedback from such a playtest?

As explained at the beginning of the article, we’re using a forum to gather feedback and bug reports. Before the start of the Technical Test, we usually assemble a team consisting of members of QA, Game Design, Community and Support to keep an eye on the forum. QA and Support check and reproduce reported bugs (for which we usually ask for savegames, screenshots etc.) and transfer them into our internal system (we, like many others, are using JIRA for that) for further investigation.

Feedback regarding certain features, balance and more is gathered by Game Design and Community and subsequently discussed within the Design team.

Usually, members from other teams are also checking the forums from time to time, even if they’re not on “forum duty”, be it out of general curiosity or because they want to see if there’s feedback regarding a specific feature they were working on (e.g. Art wanting to know what our players think of the new Skyscrapers).

Following team-internal discussions (e.g. Game Design checking which impact a certain balance change would have) are discussions with other teams that are also needed to change something, e.g. UI or programming. Most requested improvements or features that we receive as feedback are topics, that require work from different teams.

Subsequently, our Production team has to estimate the efforts for changes and improvements the teams still want to do, keeping in mind the time remaining till the public release of the DLC. This can be tricky, since the playtest has to happen late enough that the majority of content is already ready, but early enough so that we still have time to react to feedback and bug reports until release.

Have you participated in any of Anno 1800’s previous playtests? Do you have any additional questions about our playtests? Let us know in the comments!

Union Update – Annoverse Voting & Community Spotlight

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Start of the Technical Test

The Technical Test for “The High Life” has started on Monday! Once more we invited a few hundred players to test the last DLC for Season 3 and provide us with feedback on its content and features.

If you received an invite for the test, please don’t forget to post your feedback and any issues you encounter on the dedicated forums for all testers. This is very important to us since only this way are we able to address topics that you think should still be balanced or otherwise changed.

 

You want to know more about a Technical Test works and how we’re using the feedback? Then stay tuned for next week when we give you some insights into this topic.

Annoverse Contest

The contest of the “Annoverse” Discord server has entered its final stage: The voting!

Over on this website you can vote for your favourite among all the concepts for potential settings for a future Anno title that various community members came up with.

The most current results can be checked via this link.

 

For us it’s been great to follow this contest and check out the different entries; we love both the ideas themselves as well as the fantastic presentation of some of the concepts. Very impressive!

Community Spotlight

This time around we have a couple of exciting shots from showing vineyards, Taborime, a nice setting for the Iron Tower, as well as a picture that inspires us to think about an organic way of building. In addition to that, all new Anno players are going to love a wonderful beginner’s tutorial!

NobleX35 ‘s fantastic vineyard impressed us on the Annoverse Discord. Who wouldn’t want to stroll through this lush place on a sunny summer day, sipping a glass of fine wine?

ItimNaEmperador shared their post-tourist season city view on Reddit among other fantastic screenshots, creating a wonderful scenery in the midst of a busy city while showing off the majestic Iron Tower!

TheUnbrokenCircle ‘s Taborime on Reddit not only shows a very clever way of using the canals for an irrigation system but gives the island a well-thought-through look. Color us impressed!

-Designated-Survivor (what a name) posted a bunch of screenshots on Reddit, including this one, which shows a more organic and realistic kind of building.

Takarazuka has made a brilliant video for the people who are new to Anno 1800 or are interested in learning the basics before starting their first session! Check it out if you would like to learn more or if you have someone that might be interested!

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Union Update – Community Page & New Forums

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Community Page launching

Today, we’re launching the “Community Page” here on the Anno Union!

Its main purpose is to be a place where you can find links to all important community resources like the Anno Wiki, Subreddit and various tools created and maintained by you. We’re extremely proud to have such an active, passionate community and therefore want to highlight the things you do here on the Anno Union.

You will also find links to all our channels as well as the download for the most current wallpaper pack there.

Finally, we feature a “community spotlight of the week” in addition to the ones in our Union Updates. So make sure to let us know about all your video and fan art projects! Since we’re starting on a Thursday, we’re running this “weekly” for 1,5 weeks till July 12th and feature two creations instead of just one.

This page is by no means considered final and we’re planning to expand on it with additional sections as well as links to even more community content in the future.

So, if you’re missing a specific link or have a suggestion for what else should be on the Community Page – let us know!

Anno is getting new forums

We also have an announcement regarding the official Anno forums which are available in English, French and German:

On July 20th, we will be switching to new Anno forums. This is part of a wider initiative to slowly move all Ubisoft forums from the old forum software to a new system, which is done in waves. You can already have a look at the new forums for e.g. Assassin’s Creed and The Division here.

What does this mean for you?

Firstly, the current forums will be switched to “Read Only” on July 20th. You can still access them and read all old posts but can’t create new posts or reply to threads.

Secondly, with the switch to the new forum software, we will not automatically transfer any existing threads to the new forums. We will manually take a few threads that were pinned anyway and re-post them in the new forums.

Private messages, visitor messages, post counters and ranks are also not transferred. Everyone is starting with a fresh slate.

Thirdly, the new forums are accessible as usual with your Ubisoft account, you can login and continue there as you used to.

 

We will keep you updated on this topic and link to our shiny new forum as soon as it’s ready.

If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to post them below this post.

The Green Game Jam voting has ended

The voting for the different concepts presented for this year’s Green Game Jam has ended on Monday.

You can have a look at the top 5 and their concepts here on the Playing For The Planet website.

We want to say a big Thank You to everyone who voted for Anno 1800 in the Player’s Choice Award! Our “sustainable cities” concept came in 3rd, and we can’t wait to show you more later this year. Stay tuned!

Cosmetic DLC #5 – A first tease…

After the end of the Community Vote – which the “Pedestrian Zone Pack” and the “Vibrant Cities Pack” decided for themselves – we slowly started working in more detail on the two Cosmetic DLC. While their release is planned for after “The High Life”, we thought you might appreciate a first glimpse at the “Pedestrian Zone Pack”!

These are some early scribbles for possible ornaments. They might not end up looking just like this in the end and, as you can see on the example of the underpass, our Concept Artists create several different versions for each idea, before we then decide which of them should be turned into the 3D model for the game.

If you want to get some more insights into the development process of a Cosmetic DLC, have a look at this older DevBlog.

Union Update – AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

earlier today we released Game Update 11.1 and addressed several issues you’ve been reporting to us. Have a look at the full Release Notes if you haven’t done so yet.

As you can also spot in the Release Notes, we’re happy to announce that we’re adding support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (short: FSR) with Game Update 11.1!

 

This of course leads to the question: What exactly is FSR?

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is an upscaling tool which helps you boost performance on higher resolutions with minimal loss in quality. Basically, it creates a higher resolution image based on a lower resolution input which, however, performs better than if you’d have natively chosen the higher resolution.

This means that even with a lower-performing graphics card (short: GPU) which wouldn’t be able to natively display high resolutions like 4k smoothly, you can get a boost in performance that helps you play the game in upscaled 4k after all.

There are four different quality modes available, depending on if you value performance or image quality higher. Generally, AMD FSR is not limited to AMD’s own graphics cards but is also compatible with graphics cards from other companies.

You can check their website for more details regarding supported graphics cards and games.

This general explanation out of the way, let’s take a look at the implementation in Anno 1800: What kind of advantages can you as Anno players expect from using FSR?

FSR significantly reduces the GPU load for high resolutions and helps you avoid that your GPU is the bottleneck when playing Anno 1800 (i.e. avoiding that the GPU is the piece of hardware in your PC that is limiting performance). It also replaces AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) which was already in the game and available via the graphics settings.

Generally speaking, FSR is made up of two components: An adaptive upscaler and a sharpener. The upscaling feature detects polygon edges in the image and keeps them sharp while upscaling the image. It works best with long edges, which you encounter especially in near camera views. Anno 1800 is of course played from much higher up, so most edges are shorter, making them harder to detect during upscaling.

However, thanks to the additional sharpening of FSR, even here you will be able to see clear improvements: FSR adapts to each pixel’s surrounding area, trying to produce an overall sharpness that best matches the original image. Higher resolutions have an especially high impact on your GPU, even more so when features like Anti-Aliasing (e.g. MSAA) are activated, since they greatly increase the number of pixels, further increasing the load on the GPU. This is where FSR is a great solution to avoid your slower GPU limiting your gaming experience.

 

Have a look at the example below: The original screenshot, a 200% upscaled version using regular bilinear upscaling and a 200% upscaled version using FSR.

(click on each image to view them in full size)

While it functions with every type of screen resolution, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is an especially great solution when you want to play Anno 1800 in 4k, which our game originally was not optimized for.

 

Worth mentioning, though, is that FSR only affects the load of your graphics card. It has no impact on your processor (CPU), which means its load will stay the same independent of the resolution. Depending on your setup (What’s your strongest component – your GPU, your CPU? Do you have enough RAM?), your CPU can therefore still be the limiting factor, impacting overall game performance.

MainzFrame

If you want to learn more about UI Design on Anno 1800 specifically and learn about the daily tasks and challenges our team is working on, check out the latest episode of “MainzFrame”, with two of our UI Designer: Farah and Jaq.

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A few words regarding the Green Game Jam

We’ve been very excited to announce our participation in the Green Game Jam last week (you can still vote for our concept here!) and happy to see so many positive reactions.

Today we just wanted to use this opportunity to quickly address something that popped up in questions since then: Our concept for the Green Game Jam will be added to Anno 1800 later this year as a separate little game mode. This means that it will be its own, separate mode and won’t have any influence on your main game. Following the general idea of game jams, this is not a major addon or an alternative way to play the main game but a smaller scenario-like experience.

We hope this clears up some of the questions. We can’t wait to share more details with you later!

Union Update – Game Update 11.1 & Community Spotlight

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Addendum: Balance Changes from Game Update 11

With Game Update 11 we also introduced a few balance changes to item sets from Zoo, Museum, and Botanical Garden. Due to an oversight, these were not included in the original Release Notes.

We added them now and you can find them here.

Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

Game Update 11.1 coming soon!

Talking Game Updates: Game Update 11.1 is planned to release Tuesday next week, June 22nd. We will have the full release notes ready for you on that day.

Green Game Jam

Yesterday we gave you an overview of the Green Game Jam with the goal to create new game modes or other activities in existing games to promote combating climate change. With the game mode that we are currently developing, players will have to focus on sustainability and nonetheless growing their population in the setting of Anno 1800: the age of industrialization. Excessive deforestation, monocultures, and overfishing will ultimately result in a dead piece of land and ocean that is unable to be revived for many years if at all – just like reality.

Sounds tough? Don’t worry, the rogue-like elements will make it possible to replay the mode while keeping your technological improvements and knowledge.

 

Additionally, our concept is up for a vote alongside the projects of our developers as part of the “Player’s Choice Award”. If you like our concept, vote for us! (we will develop this new mode independent of the outcome)

Elevator Music Download

Let’s assume there’s an elevator in the “Tourist Season” DLC which you can ride – hypothetically. And there was dedicated Anno elevator music.

So, if that was the case, you could then download the full music track here.

Annoverse Contest Reminder

One last reminder that the “What would your next Anno look like?” contest organized by Annoverse Discord is ending on June 20th. So, you got a few more days to write or draw your ideas and post them in the #giveaway-submissions channel – with the chance to win some prizes.

At least we as the Anno Team had a lot of fun reading through the submissions posted so far.

Community Spotlight

Once again have the new buildings inspired many of you to share their creations with us. We know that finding the perfect place for your hotels can be tricky, especially since many cities are already quite crowded. Here we have gathered a couple of screenshots of people who had some lovely ideas on how to incorporate the new “Tourist Season” content, as well as some additional clever ideas integrated into their busy cities.

 

Laudica starts off strong showing her incredibly symmetrical 5-star resort. Simply the perfect location for a unique and almost ostentatious place to stay for our spoiled tourists.

ObiVanDamme decided to create a fantastic chess board that reminded us of Alice in Wonderland – let’s see if we can find the Queen of hearts in this majestic world.

shane868 posted a variety of screenshots, but this one was our favorite – the sun is just shining through the opening of the aircraft while the Iron Tower stands tall watching over the awakening city.

Mithaldriel shows us a phenomenal screenshot of the opening ceremony of the Iron Tower in midst of a vivid and lively city.

Last but surely not least shows us Poppytat a mesmerizing shot of the new cocoa production, including two graceful waterfalls. Who wouldn’t just want to book their next vacation here?

We’re participating in the Green Game Jam

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community!

 

Today we want to give you some information on our participation in this year’s Green Game Jam which we have previously briefly mentioned on World Environment Day.

So, what is the Green Game Jam?

Let’s start with quickly defining what a “Game Jam” is:

In its most basic form, it’s a time-limited contest during which participants create a working video game (or at least a working prototype) in just a few days. Nowadays, there are quite a few different Game Jams organized in a bigger way, which differ in scope, goals and rules.

 

The Green Game Jam is a bit different from most others since it’s focused on live games, meaning: It’s not about creating completely new games but about creating new game modes or other activities for existing games.  The goal is to brainstorm and prototype ways to combat climate change and portray those via these games.

The idea itself is a result of the creation of the “Playing for the Planet Alliance”, an initiative by various companies related to video games, following the Climate Summit in New York with the goal to make game development more sustainable and reduce emissions in video game development. Ubisoft is amongst its members.

Check the links above for additional info.

What’s this year’s GGJ about?

This year’s Green Game Jam is focused on forests, but split into two themes:

Play4Forests is about forests on land, focusing on the conservation and reforestation of areas around the globe.

Glowing, Glowing, Gone on the other hand is about “underwater forests”: Coral Reefs which support many different kinds of fish and other marine life.

Several different game studios participate in the Green Game Jam, and from today on you can vote for your favourite project over on this website. The winner will be announced on June 25th.

All participants pledged to implement their idea into their game, to raise awareness for the above-mentioned issues, so let’s talk about our participation.

Where do we come into play?

We were quickly on board with participating in the Green Game Jam and ultimately decided to go for the “Play4Forests” theme which we thought would be a great fit for Anno 1800:

We want to create awareness for sustainability and explore the interdependencies in eco systems which are barely present in Anno 1800 despite it being set in the age of industrialization.

Prior to the Game Jam itself where we came up with our concept, we were able to attend various workshops and presentations to educate and inspire the team on these topics.

What’s our concept for this year’s GGJ?

Anno is about growing settlements into huge metropolises, about massive production chains and vast amounts of resources being produced and shipped around the world. And with Anno 1800, all this happens in the age of industrialization, where players have to build new polluting factories and can achieve completely new population records – but the idea of sustainable growth is barely present.

Our idea, therefore, is to put this aspect more into the spotlight with the following concept:

Players would start on an untouched island with low population and are required to create a sustainable city. If you don’t keep the downsides of your growth in mind and find measures to counter-act them, your island’s eco-system and your city will ultimately collapse. These can be things like only growing monocultures leading to decreased fertility, aggressive deforestation leading to deserted island and over-fishing would rule the oceans out as food source at a later date.

Have a look at the concept art below to get an idea of what we have in mind: From an untouched island over a small settlement to a failed first attempt. Followed by a more sustainable second attempt.

As a twist, we’ll also be introducing a rogue-like element here: Unlike in the real world, you will be able to try again and improve on your previous attempts. Not only with the knowledge gained from this last attempt, but also with technological improvements you can research, and which will stay unlocked for all future attempts after being unlocked once.

All this would come as a completely new, separate game mode to Anno 1800 – no worries, you won’t suddenly need to reorganize your islands 😉

Next steps

Right now, we’re still rather busy with “The High Life”. Therefore, we’re planning to release this new game mode later this year, currently aiming for December 14th (keep in mind the date is not 100% set in stone yet) and will provide you with more information closer to that date

For now, head over to Playing 4 The Planet to vote for us! (the mode will be developed independent of the result)

 

And of course, check out the websites for Play4Forests and Glowing, Glowing, Gone and sign the petitions to do your part to protect the forests.

“The High Life” – Technical Test

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

Today we are looking for some experienced city builders who are not afraid of heights to join us in the constructions of the first skyscrapers as part of the “The High Life” Technical Test! Similar to what we did last year for “Land of Lions”, this Technical Test will over the course of a few weeks invite a number of Anno Union community members to play Season 3’s last DLC early, and to help us find issues and problems.

Keep in mind that you will be playing new content in an early work-in-progress state (as “The High Life” is scheduled for late Summer 2021), so a certain tolerance for dealing with unfinished game elements, bugs and technical problems is highly recommended. Testers will have access to a closed forum where they can share their experiences and feedback with members of the Anno Dev Team, to ensure that we can deliver an amazing DLC and end to Season 3 (plus the associated free Game Update of course, which will also have many quality-of-life improvements players have been asking for).

Interested players can sign up for a chance to be part of the Technical Test by visiting this website.

Please be aware that due to the early state of the new content, the Technical Test will be under a strict NDA, and participants will not be allowed to share information, images or videos from the test outside the closed forum. We are currently planning to start the “The High Life” Technical Test in about one month – you will receive more details if you have been selected.

See (some of you) soon on a skyscraper balcony!

Union Update: “Tourist Season” & Community Spotlight

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Our latest DLC, “Tourist Season”, is one week old, time to dedicate a Union Update to provide some news and updates.

“Tourist Season” – Items

We’ve seen some questions and the occasional confusion about “Tourist Season” buildings like e.g. the Chemical Factory not being influenced by any of the existing items from a Trade Union or Town Hall.

In short: Yes, this is working as intended and not a bug or oversight. The new buildings have their own building class (“Multifactory” or “Food & Drink Venue”) and are not regular “Production” buildings – this way you can clearly distinguish them from other services and see if the items will influence them or not.

While we’re aware this at first might be counter-intuitive to some of you who love creating layouts around Trade Unions, after some testing we decided that we can provide a better, more challenging game experience this way.

A lot has happened since release and it’s no secret that some existing item combinations can be… slightly imbalanced. Getting 10% more residents on an Artisan house with 50 people isn’t such a big deal, while 10% of a Hotel with 500 people is a completely different matter. Walking the tricky path between adding new challenging mechanics while not overthrowing the game’s balance (and breaking all your savegames) is never easy to get perfectly right and as a result, we opted for this solution for the new “Multifactoy” building class.

“Tourist Season” – Bugs

We have also received reports on a few smaller bugs from you, like trees disappearing after reloading a savegame, a randomly disappearing UI or filtered notifications not getting deleted. We’re currently investigating these problems and will keep you updated regarding the next Game Update.

Did you know… ?

  • … you can name all your Bust Stops, Bars, Restaurants and Cafés individually if you want? Personally, I (Oliver) have already opened a Bar called “City Tavern” in my capital based on some good memories from my time in the UK.
  • … there’s a Tourist Guide on board each bus? Just zoom in or use the first person mode to listen to their explanations.
  • … the recipe names were based on feedback from various members of the Anno Team? The Archduke’s Schnitzel was a request by our Programmers, while the Trifle came from our English colleagues. Generally, the recipes are a “’Menu Franglais’ celebrating the culinary achievements of…well of at least one of the two nations involved” as Matt, our Lead Narrative Designer, put it.
  • … you can assign additional Tourists to the Iron Tower similar to the Research Institute? This greatly increases the influence radius of the monument and therefore its buff on your city.
  • … Hotels work just like regular residence buildings in most ways? To reach the maximum population of 500 Tourists per Hotel, you will need to fulfill their basic needs. The needs are unlocked when reaching a certain number of overall Tourists – just hover over a need for the details.
  • … to have the Docklands be part of your bus network, you don’t need the Main Wharf to be in range of the bus stop? Any other part of your overall Docklands is fine, too, as long as it’s connected to the Main Wharf.
  • … we added a little additional questline to Enbesa if you own “Land of Lions”? For it to activate, you will have to have finished the overall Enbesa campaign – Emperor Ketema will then contact you.

Community Spotlight

The new buildings and ornaments of “Tourist Season” inspired so many of you to create your own videos and many, many screenshots, so of course we have to share them here on the Anno Union.

One big challenge of “Tourist Season” is, of course, fitting in the large new Hotels into your cities. Size alone can be a problem already, but aside from that, creating a visually pleasing area around them is the second part of the challenge. If you’re still experimenting, maybe the following screenshots can serve as inspiration:

Cjnewson88 decided to locate their Hotels near the mountain lake on Cape Trelawney. Sure, this means a slightly longer travel from the harbour, but you just can’t beat that view.

This inner city solution by Aestris combines a vast park with the new Iron Tower monument and the nearby Palace.

Bloc75 instead experimented with a separate, small Tourist retreat with all required amenities nearby and a great view of the Clearwater Pool.

A fully redesigned city, complete with monument, hotels and a large Docklands can be admired on Verir‘s screenshot:

If you’re looking for a video guide or some advice on how to make the most out of the new mechanics, why not check out Takarazuka’s video on the Bus Network or Itroo’s introduction of the Recipe System.

 

As always, tag us on Twitter with your screenshots or videos or post them on one of the platforms we’re usually visiting like the official forums, the Anno subreddit or the Annoverse Discord server – and maybe your creation will end up in our next Union Update.

Annoverse – 10.000 members celebration

Talking about the “Annoverse”: The dedicated Anno fan Discord server is celebrating a new milestone!

After recently reaching 10.000 members, their admin team decided to organize a giveaway tied to a little contest. Head over to the Annoverse server for all details and instructions on how to participate in their #giveaway-submissions channel.

From us as the Anno Dev Team, we want to use this opportunity to say thank you to the admin and mod team of the server, it’s been a pleasure working with you over the past years, participating in the “Roundtable” AMAs you organized or simply having a chat with the Anno community on this server from time to time.

Reminder: Anno 1404 online services decommissioning

As announced in March, the decision was taken to shut down the online services for some older Ubisoft games with smaller online audiences on May 22nd, which was later moved to June 1st. This includes the legacy (i.e. original) version of Anno 1404.
This means that from today (June 1st) onwards, the online services including the multiplayer are no longer available – the singleplayer experience is not affected.
This is only referring to the original/legacy version of Anno 1404, not the Anno 1404 History Edition.

A list of all games for which the online services are or will be disabled can be found on the official Ubisoft Forums.

Union Update: Let’s start the “Tourist Season”

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

 

today is the day, hordes of Tourists are just waiting to explore your cities, try our expensive dishes and visit all the monuments and wonders you have built in your cities.

For a more detailed look at “Tourist Season”, make sure to check out our DevBlog highlighting all the new features and explaining the DLC’s mechanics. The Bus System even received its very own DevBlog with some additional development insights, considering it’s the feature tying together all other mechanics.

 

As usual, we’re releasing a big free Game Update alongside the DLC. Game Update 11 adds a reforestation tool, a new slow-mode game speed option and plenty of other quality of life improvements. On top of that, we got rid of various bigger and smaller bugs – the full Release Notes can be found here.

We also want to point out that from today on, you can purchase the “Tourist Season” DLC as well as the “Vehicle Liveries Pack” Cosmetic DLC separately via the Ubisoft Store.

 

That said: Let’s start the Tourist Season!

We’re excited to hear and see your reactions and hope you’ll have a great time with the new challenges the Tourists as well as the recipe system provide.

 

The Anno Team

Union Update: Twitch Drops & Vehicle Liveries Pack

Posted on by Lefay

Hey Anno Community,

the release of “Tourist Season” is drawing closer – but not just “Tourist Season”.

Next Tuesday also marks the day when the “Vehicle Liveries Pack” Cosmetic DLC will be released in the Ubisoft Store, Epic Store and on Steam (for owners of the Steam version of Anno 1800) for the price of 4,99€ or your regional equivalent. You can find details about the Cosmetic DLC here.

This is the first of three Cosmetic DLC we plan to release this year, the others being the two winners of the Community Vote. Expect some early details on the first of them in summer.

Twitch Drops

Over the coming days, we will give you the opportunity to already take a closer look at the contents of Season 3’s second DLC – “Tourist Season” –  by watching some of your favourite streamers during another Twitch Drops Event.

The whole event takes place from Friday, 21.05.2021 until Sunday, 30.05.2021.

During the event, you will be able to watch how a variety of selected Twitch streamers turning their cities into massive tourist attraction spots. Oh, and don’t forget about all the new ornaments!
Anyone watching them construct Restaurants, Hotels, Orchards and the Chemical Factory while planning their bus network can grab two brand new ornaments, the “Tourist Season” Flag  and the “Tourist Season” Lamppost. The only thing you need to do is to first link your Ubisoft account to your Twitch account and then watch the streamers during the event for up to 3 hours to receive your loot. You don’t have to watch these hours consecutively to receive your drop; watching them accumulated on participating streamers will also grant you the ornaments.

After receiving a drop, you need to claim it via the Twitch inventory.
Please be aware that all rewards will only be delivered to you after the end of the Twitch Drop Event.

If you haven’t already done so in the past, make sure to first link your Ubisoft- and Twitch-account by following the steps outlined on this website.

You can find the full list of all participating Streamer below:

English

Dutch

Polish

French

German