Hey Anno Community!

Last week we released the “End of an Era” Pack, and we didn’t choose the name as a joke: With this Cosmetic DLC ends the postlaunch phase for Anno 1800 – about five and a half years after the initial release in April 2019.

What a ride it has been!

Announced in August 2017, Anno 1800 was at the center of everything we were doing for many years: from the big exciting announcement and the launch of the Anno Union over many, many DevBlogs, fan meetings at gamescom, playtests and livestreams to the release, over four seasons of postlaunch gameplay DLC and then two more years of support with Cosmetic DLC and updates. It’s certainly been quite a journey!

We were also happy to ultimately add mod support to the game (and see the modding community flourish), successfully launch Anno 1800 on consoles and celebrate both the Anno series 25th, as well as Anno 1800th 5th birthday with you all.

However, ultimately, this didn’t overshadow the fantastic success that Anno 1800 had become or the incredibly appreciation we have seen from all of you, motivating us to continue working on the game throughout all these years.

Certainly, we did not plan for Anno 1800 to have such a long post-launch life, or to see so many smaller and bigger expansions. Looking back, we’re incredibly proud of our work over the last years – even while we are at the same time also happy to close this chapter of our history and start writing a new one. Now in ancient Rome instead of in the time of the Industrial Revolution.

We’re also incredibly proud of having had YOU all with us on this journey! We couldn’t be luckier with this awesome community we have – that is (even when something goes wrong) polite and patient, welcoming to new players, incredibly inventive and has created some of the best memories of our careers as devs.

You’re playing a huge role in what we’re doing, in many decisions we take and in why we can work in jobs that bring us joy.

Thank you!

Team Anecdotes & Messages

Therefore, to round things off, we think it’s only appropriate to finish today’s blog with some messages and memories from the team:

Let’s start with two easter eggs that we think haven’t been found yet!

We’re not going to reveal the full details but… let’s imagine there’s a first-person mode that lets you use one of the swan boats from the “Pedestrian Zone” pack. Now, let’s assume there’s a button that lets you… do some acrobatics with the boat. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Johannes, Senior Gameplay Programmer

If you’ve really messed up the water quality in the “Eden Burning” scenario, nature is protesting. Vehemently. At the beach.

Nico, Lead Programmer

Then there are of course some development stories…

Did you know we, for a while, seriously considered a scenario involving aliens in Season 4? It was supposed to draw on some 19^th century science-fiction works and involve a defense against non-human invaders.

Dominik, Game Designer

Did you know that when the team first introduced cats and dogs to the game, they assigned them the regular “pedestrian kid” behaviour since we didn’t have a specific “pedestrian animal” behaviour yet? The result was… interesting, with gangs of cats and dogs heading to the zoo to watch the other animals there.

Jan, Gameplay Programmer

The time we forgot to remove the “strange idol” item from a cancelled questline in DLC 12. We hoped you wouldn’t notice but… of course you all did. And not just that, this even resulted in some elaborate conspiracy theories about secret messages and teasers (and we never do teasers, as you know).

Jannika, Game Writer

Wow, End of an Era is here, and my memories from working on 1800 are flowing in, everything from starting my first job for a big game publisher on Anno 1800 in 2021 till my last work on 1800 – the Eldritch pack.
 Anno 1800 has given me so much joy and experience in working with game development, people and crafting great content for you, the player.

A couple of highlights are:

• Introducing New World Rising in our Season 4 Trailer.
• Being in charge of the Seasonal Decorations pack on the QA side (still annoyed it got released with the wrong icon, the placeholder was just that good hahah).
• Working on the creative mode with Dominik, coming up with a lot of suggestions of what to add, like that every resident tier can be built directly, that every zoo and museum module could be built as an ornament – and just so so many ornaments!
• And then, close to the end, when we added the mod support to Anno 1800, the great collaboration between the few of us that were still working on 1800 back then.

All in all, I want to say thank you to all of you – the fans – for supporting the game and our team these years. It’s been amazing and I can’t wait for you to see what Anno 117: Pax Romana has to offer!

Sic Parvis Magna
Jan, Development Tester

Thank you so much for every minute you played at Anno. Your support, your having fun while creating your own little world is the biggest joy and gratification a designer could ask for <3
Thank you for being the most wholesome community I ever joined! Nothing warms my heart like joining the twitch lives and reading your comments on Reddit.

The end of 1800 is just the beginning of a new chapter and the beginning of your new empire!
See you in Rome!

Elisabetta, UI Designer

There’s no doubt that we have one of the most wholesome communities in gaming. Both in the interactions with each other as well in interactions with us from the dev team, the calm, friendly and constructive manner in which you engaged with others made the lives of players and devs (especially mine <3) of Anno 1800 just so much better.

Never change, please, and we’ll all continue to have a great time with Anno.

Oliver, Community Developer

It’s the End of an Era! – The release day of the “End of an Era” Pack that is. Our newest Cosmetic DLC is available now!

As the name very subtly hints at: This is the very last Cosmetic DLC for Anno 1800, and the very last piece of content we have planned for the game.

Accordingly, the “End of an Era” Pack is all about celebrating Anno 1800, its citizens and you and your achievements: decorate houses with colourful lights, hold festivals of light on your public plazas and invite your people to a show they have never seen before.

Oh, and don’t forget the fireworks!

If you want to have a closer look at the contents of this final Cosmetic DLC, check out last week’s Twitch livestream with Laura and Jannika.

You can also get a detailed look at all the new skins and ornaments and learn about the inspirations for this cosmetic pack in our DevBlog.

The “End of an Era” Pack Cosmetic DLC is now available on all platforms for 4,99€ or your regional equivalent.

Creative Festival

Finally, let’s not forget the “Creative Festival” is still ongoing until December 8^th! Join other Anno 1800 fans in sharing your best, favourite or simply wildest screenshots of the game using the DLC and CDLC that were released since 2019.

Which ones are your favourites? Share them on any platform (Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Instagram, …) – we’re looking forward to seeing your creations!

Anno 117: Pax Romana Updates

We’ve also published a few updates and news on Anno 117: Pax Romana very recently!

Check out this blog for news on Steam as well as some first screenshots of the regions Latium and Albion! In addition, in the same blog we’re also sharing a more general development update for the game including some of the topics we have been and currently are working on.

Community Spotlight – Advent Calendar

A very short Community Spotlight for today: On Reddit, user FeistyDivide6619 announced their video advent calendar for Anno 1800. Every day, you can expect a chill video with some Anno 1800 beauty building footage on their YouTube channel.

We love the idea! Why not head over to their channel and check it out?

Hey Anno Community,

It’s been a week since the release of the Pirrrate Cove Pack for Anno 1800 – we couldn’t resist the urge to release it on “Talk Like A Pirate Day”. We hope you’re having a great time bringing some pirate-spirit into your settlements!

We have one more, one last, Cosmetic DLC releasing at the end of this year. It’s the end of an era for us – and we’ll have more information on this last cosmetic pack in the coming months.

Community Contest: Quest

The submission phase for our latest Community Contest ended last Sunday and we were blown away by the number of emails we received. Clearly, we struck a chord with this quest design contest!

Right now, we’re in the middle of going through all the quests we received and picking our favourites. We’ll update you, when the voting is about to start.

Thank you to everyone who participated. Amongst the ones we already went through, we have seen many creative ideas, humorous little stories and epic tales!

Upcoming

So, what’s coming up in terms of DevBlogs for Anno 117: Pax Romana in the coming months?

With a little bit of delay due to time constraints, the next blogs will go behind-the-scenes and look at how we develop games, starting with the development of the original vision for the game, followed by a look at the work of the Game Design department and the Production team.

The first of these blogs is planned for early October.

Community Spotlight

Let’s end today’s blog with a Community Spotlight!

First, we simply had to share this forged “A” by Kleseus. The coolest part is that he started with his project before we revealed that we had done the same thing with Owen from Gate Foot Forge, as previously shared. Great project, we love seeing our logo come to life like that!

And we have two massive construction projects we simply had to highlight here

The first one is by Erasmuze, the city of “Wienna” with its many palaces, museums and plenty of places to relax. And let’s not forget about the neighboring spa town of Karlshower. An impressive and beautifully detailed project inspired by the real cities of Vienna and Karlovy Vary.

More recently, he also shared an overview of his city of Santa Cruz in the New World – in case you’re looking for further inspiration.

Finally, with many Lego fans in the team here as well, we can’t help but direct your attention to this project on Lego Ideas for an Anno 1800 diorama. It’s a cute build of a harbour scene – and even includes the World’s Fair. If you like TangTaizong’s creation, you can support it on Lego Ideas.

Hey Anno Community,

We have a winner! And against all our internal predictions, it has nothing to do with the Jorgensens.

No, you chose Annocius, the new god of Anno, as your favourite in a quite exciting, but ultimately decisive vote. Congratulations to HiddenMoon79 who designed it!

Combining 32% of the votes, “Annocius” won the Community Vote, ahead of “Latona” by Lucianus with 24% of the votes in second place.

Well, and what’s next? – We’ll sit together with our colleagues in the Art Team and discuss how to translate the drawing by HiddenMoon79 into a first concept art – checking with its creator to make sure we don’t stray too far from the original. This we will then later follow-up with drafts of the 3D model.

On all this progress, we’ll keep you updated here on the Anno Union. Congratulations once more to the winning design!

Below you can find a collection of all valid entries to the contest. A big thank you to everyone who sat down to create their vision of an Anno statue. We very much enjoyed going through all the entries and hope you also had fun creating them.

Q&A

As the second part of today’s blog, we’re tackling some recent questions related to the upcoming Community Event in Cologne.

When will you send invites to the Community Event in Cologne?

We sent out the first round of invites on Monday to a randomly selected group of people. Please make sure to check your inboxes and spam folders, just in case. As mentioned in said email as well, we would need confirmation by Sunday.

Should several people drop out for whatever reason, we will send out more invites over the next days.

Are you showing something exclusive at the Community Event?

Yes… and no. Attendees will get the information of our next DevBlog a little bit earlier than the rest – and delivered in person by Lead Game Designer Andrea and Senior Game Writer Matt.

However, we will follow this up in the days after with an article covering the same topic here on the Anno Union for everyone.

When is the next Anno 117 DevBlog coming?

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to push the blog planned for early August back to a later date – which, unfortunately, creates a little gap in terms of content here on the Anno Union. The next DevBlog will therefore release on the 22^nd/23^rd of August as mentioned above.

After that we’ll talk about Game Design and Game Production.

Do you have news on the last two Cosmetic DLC for Anno 1800?

Two more Cosmetic DLC are planned for Anno 1800 and will still release this year. The next one is not that far off anymore, and we might have a first teaser later this month, then the full details in early September – the release-month.

The other one will be released at the end of the year and is still in development, information on that will still have to wait a little bit.

I have problems with adding comments below articles, how do I fix that?

Some of you reached out to let us know you’re experiencing problems with commenting on blogs on the Anno Union since the update.

Due to the website update, this often seems to be related to browser caching. Please try deleting your cache (and potentially cookies) and try again. Should the issues remain, please reach out to us e.g. via Discord and we’ll investigate.

Salvete Anno Community,

We’re excited to announce Anno’s first Community Event!

On Wednesday, August 21^st, we’ll be holding the very first Anno Builder Event in Cologne, Germany – and we’re inviting you to join us at the Roonburg (Roonstraße 33, 50674 Cologne) for an Anno-themed evening. The event will start at 6pm and last until 11pm.

There will be food and drinks as well as dev panels with:

• Andrea Fricke (Lead Game Designer)
• Lisa Wittmann (International Product Manager)
• Matt Cook (Senior Game Writer)
• Manuel Reinher (Creative Director)
• Oliver Walz (Community Developer)

Special guest: Owen Phillips, the artist blacksmith, will share his experience on what it was like crafting Anno’s new logo out of steel! The behind-the-scenes video will also be revealed.

Plus, of course, plenty of opportunities to chat with both us and other members of the Anno community!

Note: The event will be in English and German.

How to sign up?

Due to the location’s capacity, there is limited space. You can sign up for the event now by sending an email to AnnoCommunityEvent@ubisoft.com with your name, nickname (from Discord, Reddit etc., optional), and language preference.

As subject, please use “Anno Community Event Signup” to help us sort all emails faster.

Signups will be open until July 31st. If the number of signups exceeds the event’s capacity, we will randomly select people from amongst all emails we received. Confirmation emails are planned to be sent the week of August 5^th.

Any questions? – Let us know! We’d love to meet you in Cologne next month!

Hey Anno Community,

Welcome to a rather lengthy Union Update with news and information. We’ll be talking about next week’s livestream, what happened in the last two weeks and have a Q&A section at the end.

Short reminder here that we had our very first livestream, a dev talk about our vision for Anno 117: Pax Romana and the reveal itself, last week. If you missed it, you can watch the VOD here.

Let’s dive right in:

Livestream on Branding

On July 2^nd, we’re tackling questions that are likely also close to the heart of many Anno veterans: What even is Anno? What makes Anno games special and what are the key aspects and emotions an Anno game has to transport?

Those questions we have to ask ourselves from a creative, and from a brand point of view every time we start working on a new game. Anno by now is a series with a long tradition, a tradition that must be upheld but that also requires occasional self-reflection.

Together with Haye, Brand Director on Anno, and Wayne Deakin, Global Principal at Wolff Olins, we’re discussing Anno’s 26-year-old identity and how it translates into the new branding and logo for the series in general and Anno 117: Pax Romana in particular. Join us at 4:30PM CEST / 10:30AM EDT / 7:30AM PDT over on Twitch.

Behind the scenes of our trailer

If you watched our livestream last week you will already have seen it: We released a little video with behind-the-scenes footage of our trailer shoot. You can watch it below:

Scroll of Fame

While we certainly were nervous before the reveal on June 10^th, we were rather sure about one thing: Our community seemed to be very keen about “ancient Rome” as a setting for an Anno game. In fact, we went and gathered dozens of comments from you and your wishes and requests for a Roman setting. Those comments are now immortalised on the Scroll of Fame, and we also asked our Town Crier to respond to several of them directly:

Statue Contest

On Monday we launched our very first Community Contest: Design an Anno 117: Pax Romana statue!

With just a rough outline, you can decide about the look, shape and colour of the statue that we’ll later implement into the game. Find all the information here in our dedicated blog. The contest runs until July 14th.

We highly encourage you to give it a try and are excited with what kind of ideas you’ll surprise us!

Q&A

Understandably, with the reveal just having happened, you have A LOT of questions on Anno 117: Pax Romana, the story, the characters, features, tech and many other aspects.

Broadly speaking, we are only at the very beginning of our journey when it comes to telling you more about our game. Over time, we’ll give you insights into the world and setting, the player’s role as a governor, the choices you can make and much more. But – and that is no different to our approach on Anno 1800 – this will happen over the coming months until release, based on our production plans.

Today, let’s dive into some topics you asked about:

When will you show gameplay?

We very much understand your impatience to see Anno 117: Pax Romana “in action”. However, we can already tell you that we won’t be showing any gameplay in 2024. We want to make sure we show you the game in a representative state, and since we are still very much in development, there are plenty of moving parts left: features and mechanics that might change – even drastically -, or are still missing, unfinished visual elements etc. etc.

By no means does that mean that we won’t have exciting insights for you in the meantime. Both in terms of game content as well as behind the scenes information on how we develop games. Especially the latter will hopefully also give you a better understanding of our production and communication plans.

Okay, but when will you tell us more about the game??

Very soon, July is right around the corner. Upcoming topics will first revolve around the world of Anno 117 and how we approach creating an Anno world, the research we’re doing etc.

After that, we’ll take a look at the work of the Production department and the planning and organising of a project like Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Having established the basis like this, we’ll move further into the world of Anno 117 with a closer look at both regions – Latium and Albion – and the gameplay differences between the two.

There’s more to come, this is just to give you a first taste.

You said you’re not showing gameplay for now, but how do you want to gather community feedback?

Our main source of very specific gameplay and UI feedback are playtests. We’ve organised a few already over the past months to make sure we are:

1. Fulfilling the fantasy of a builder game in a Roman setting, and
2. On the right track when it comes to creating an Anno game that ticks all the boxes our veterans would expect.

Receiving such positive feedback was a great relief for us, and reassured us in our plans for Anno 117. Of course, there are still features or mechanics that were (and others still are) not ready and, for example, during our very first playtest, we have never seen so many of our veterans go bankrupt so quickly – the balancing very much was, and still is, a work-in-progress.

We’ll continue with such playtests until release.

In addition, we have all the input you gave us before (and are now giving us after) the reveal across all kinds of channels and here on the Anno Union – especially when we start diving into more details about Anno 117: Pax Romana.

You missed out on the opportunity to make the 9^th Anno a Roman one and call it “Anno 9”!

Admittedly, it would’ve been a nice little joke – but ultimately, we really wanted to make a Roman Anno now. Plus, releasing it in 2025 still keeps the 9-joke alive, doesn’t it?

Will you have (quality of life) feature X and Y?

Ah, now we’re getting specific. For the reasons outlined above, we won’t be going into detail on Anno 117’s exact feature-set quite yet. We’re not going to reinvent the (Anno-)wheel with Anno 117: Pax Romana, and you can expect the return of many beloved core features and mechanics. You can also expect improvements and changes to said features and the addition of new ones – to fit the setting and vision of the game. Trains and electricity just don’t make a lot of sense in ancient Rome, for example.

There are also a bunch of quality-of-life features in Anno 1800 that we know you love and of course those are also on our list of things for Anno 117. Blueprint mode, anyone?

In the end, we are working with a detailed production plan and a certain limit of working hours. Which features and mechanics (and in which way) will be present in Anno 117 is something we will be able to confirm at a later date.

I love the Town Crier character, will you add him to the game?

We also love our Town Crier – and are extremely happy that both the reveal trailer as well as the scroll of fame video were so well-received by our community! We’re not quite sure yet what the Emperor has to say when it comes to commemorating someone else than himself but we’ll see.