Category: Union Update

Union Update: Like busy bees

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

In today’s Union Update blog, we want to give you a brief Anno 1800 production update and provide some additional answers to questions inspired by some of our recent blogs. Later this week, you can look forward to a DevBlog on some of the game’s customization options for sandbox games. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Production Update
As our February 26 release date looms large and inches ever so closer, we have been busy little bees and made some great progress. We recently finished another milestone, so let us check in with our Production Team to get an update on was has been happening these past few weeks. Keep in mind that these are just two notable highlights, but by no means a comprehensive list of everything we have worked on, as all the disciplines and teams (like Art, Game Design, Game Programming etc.) have their own separate goals for each milestone.

  • All Guns blazing
    We know that many of you are very curious – or should I say burning – to learn more about our naval combat. Which is why we want to make sure that when we show it to you, it will all be live and in action inside the game, rather than with a lot of text and mock-up images. Which is why you will be happy to hear that we have made great progress with the polishing of the naval battles during the last milestone, laying the foundation we need for an in-depth look in the future.
  • Sights, meet the sounds
    We are also right in the middle of our localization and audio efforts for the game. During the month of September, we recorded all the English voice acting for the various AI characters and the cast of our story-based campaign. At the same time, with all the game text now largely finalized, we are also busy working with the respective teams to translate it into all the other languages we will support (some of which will have localized voice recordings as well). We are happy to say that we will be supporting localized text in more languages than ever before in an Anno game, giving all new audiences the opportunity to immerse themselves in the 19th century in the language of their choice.

We are also analyzing the feedback from the recently concluded playtest to see which items need to be addressed. Given this late stage of development, we have to always consider what changes are feasible, and how they may affect development of other features to make sure that we make the best use of our remaining time. With that said, the feedback from our play testers is still highly valuable for us, especially as we will focus more and more on nailing the game’s balancing. This is also where the data from our upcoming larger-scale test will come in handy to give us insights from a big group of players.

Reminder: Our Expedition Contest ends next week
A reminder for all you writers and expedition event designer out there: the expedition contest submission deadline ends next week on October 22.10 so make sure that you hand in your event ideas until next Monday. And if you have any questions regarding the contest, we will try to answer them in the comment section of today’s update.
You can find the contest details here.

Vienna calling: Play Anno 1800 at Game City Vienna
For any of you who live in or visit Vienna this week, our game will be playable at the Game City event in the city hall. You can find all (German language) information here: https://www.game-city.at/

Community Questions and Answers

Hexagon19
I like that products from the old world will be required in the new world, so my ships won’t have to make the return trip with empty loading bays. Talking of which, the production chains shown in the blog include wood. Could this also be imported from the old world?
Answer: Yes, you will be able to just import goods from your Old World to use them in your production chains in the second session and vice versa.

Phyllus1
Will it be possible to save blueprints for future use, for example to save entire production chains as templates, which could then be quickly placed in the future?
Answer: It won’t be possible to save whole layouts as this would require a lot of work on UI and UX, as we would need to develop a whole interface for that feature including menus, possibilities to save and to sort your layouts. However, we like that feature and closely watch how players will make use of the blueprint mode and how much feedback we get regarding that feature after launch.

Mr.Beko80
You mentioned a botanical garden in the blog. I already suggested this when you first revealed the zoo, so I was wondering if there is still a chance to see such a garden in the game?
Answer: At release, Anno 1800 will come with the Zoo and the Museum as large building projects supporting the new city attractiveness feature. Both projects come with a huge amount of assets, from modules, animations and dozens of items each. As always, we will watch feedback closely and see what the post-release future may hold for Anno 1800.

BlueBreath
So the small stuff in your exhibition you can only see as icons, isn’t there some form of a magnifying glass to show you what is inside? Like when you click the building , the roof get’s stripped off and you could see what’s inside but magnified a bit?
Answer: Small items will all have their own artwork for their actual icon but with the huge amount of museum items alone in mind, this would mean that we would have to model 80 3D assets just for the museum alone and also find ways to display small pieces like a necklace inside a building. We just implemented a nice overview window accessible from the zoo or museum entrance that will allow you to check how many items from which set you own.
The museum wing buildings in combination with the amount of huge open-air exhibition pieces will nonetheless offer a lot of visual variety to express your inner museum curator to your heart’s content.

Viper_R.K.O
Will I always get the same results when I do an expedition again and pick the same option, or is there a random numbers generator at work behind the scenes that will allow for different results? And will there be rewards for nice and beneficial decisions, or only if you act mercilessly and reckless?
Answer: Every decision you make has a chance of success based on a general difficulty and the skill ratings of the items and characters you brought along. In addition, some items will offer unique additional decision options on specific events and some combinations even guarantee a success. If an event fails, there are various outcomes for the story to progress. As you might have seen during the various instances of our Love Island presentations (RIP Captain, Comedian and Bishop).
The type of decisions you make won’t have an influence on the final reward pool of items during an expedition, even though special decisions and events can reward you with items from the event pool.

Union Update: Something big is coming

Posted on by Bastian Thun

We are knee-deep in the de… the final development phase of Anno 1800, and while the big event season with the likes of gamescom and EGX lies behind us, there is still plenty happening in the Anno Union world. Another Union focus test round just concluded and we are working to finalize our content roadmap for those all-important last few months prior to the release of the game. Due to that workload, it can happen that some content might suffer a slight delay, as some of you might have already noticed, but we are working hard to ensure you are well entertained leading up to the big launch date.

To give you a glimpse at our upcoming content: We plan to host Livestreams more frequently, will provide fan material such as wallpapers, highlight your community projects and will tackle important outstanding topics such as naval combat or multiplayer in detail. And not to forget, we will also open the floodgates of our focus playtesting to allow more Union members than ever before to test the game.

While we are on the playtest subject: we need to talk!
The players of the latest focus test provided us once again with a large amount of incredibly helpful feedback and we are still going through the extensive test reports. But we are confident to say that the latest results show that Anno 1800 is on the right track to deliver a game Anno fans can get excited about, even though there is still a lot of work to do prior to the release in February.

In order to make sure that we get as much feedback and data as possible, we want to invite a significantly higher amount of Union members for the next phase of the focus test. This huge test will happen as early as this year and will be exclusive to members of the Anno Union. So if you are just a reader on our page, make sure that you register on the Anno Union page with your Uplay account as soon as possible to secure your chance at being invited.

And to give you some visual impressions from the latest test, here are a few screenshots from our testers (we won’t publish the names as the test is still covered by an NDA).

AnnoUnion_Focustest_ComShot_FarmsEverywhere
Okay this guy won’t have any issues with Tier 1 workforce anytime soon!

Parasite problems? EWWWW

Hey that’s what I call a teaser!

Keyword feedback: We have not missed your comments regarding the Ship Design Contest in last weeks Union Update. Because of that feedback, we will make sure that for future votes, we give you a chance to vote on a final selection on entries to determine the winner. When talking about the skill regarding the execution of these submissions, the idea behind an entry is as important for us as the actual craftsmanship of the community member, be it a drawing, writing or any other submission (even though we are often amazed by the true display of skills in some of your work).
When we are talking about content that is supposed to be added to the game, keep in mind that we also have to check if an idea is feasible within our production pipeline.

Notwithstanding the above, we want to honor exceptional creative takes and creations with a proper showcase on our Anno Union channels.

And with that, we are already at the end of today’s Union Update. Don’t forget to share your thoughts, suggestions and feedback in the comments below. Moreover, we are always eager to get your ideas for the Anno Union and the Union Updates.

Union Update: And what a pretty ship it is!

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Our team had to fight their way through a flood of incredible ship designs coming from our creative Union community, and as such, it certainly was not easy to select just one winner. While not every entry met the criteria of creating a variation of the “Imperial Pride” ship, but the general level of creativity and skill on display was highly impressive to us.

And while we can only immortalize the winning entry in the game, we will try to showcase some other creations on our various Anno union channels in the future.

So without further ado, let’s cut to the chase- the winner of our Anno Union ship design contest is (please imagine a sufficiently industrialized drum roll)…

While we liked many of the ideas for mighty warships or utilitarian barges, we fell in love with the idea of the touristic “musical steamer” „Haydn“ by Union member redtoasty. Conceptualized as a “top of the line” luxury ship, we could immediately imagine a crafty investor using lots of paint and decorations to turn a decommissioned steamer into the perfect ship to lure in the ladies and gentleman of high society.

Our team will now get to work to turn the „Haydn“ into an actual in-game model for you all to play with. In addition to seeing his creation immortalized in the game, redtoasty will receive an Anno Union shirt as well as our highly limited bronze pins.

We also want to say a big “thank you” – and ask you for a hearty round of applause – for all other community members and their submitted designs. Make sure to keep an eye on all of our Union channels to see some of them in the future.

Our „Design your own Expedition“ contest starts NOW

Ever since we first unveiled our new expeditions feature at gamescom 2018, we kept receiving the same question over and over- and no, it was not “why does your crew seem to die horrible deaths on love island during all of your live streams” 😉

Instead, many of you wanted to know if there was the possibility of running a contest where Union members could try to design their own expeditions. And since we love nothing more than to try and please our players wherever possible, this very contest starts… right this moment! We want to see your ideas and concepts for an expedition that you would love to see implemented in Anno 1800.

Some rules to keep in mind:

  • Come up with your very own ideas for an expedition- from mysterious encounters in lush jungles, to humorous adventures in a harbor tavern far from home or gruesome challenges on the high seas, there are few limits to what you can imagine.
  • Let’s keep it free-form: Simple concepts, short stories or even audio recordings are just some of the ways you could convey your idea.
  • Given that our team will need time to review and rate all of them, we would ask you to keep your submissions short and concise

The submission deadline for this contest is October 22nd.

You can post your creative ideas and submissions in this forum thread: >>CLICK ME<<

Union Update: New focus test, QnA and more

Posted on by Bastian Thun

The end of September is near and we are about to wrap up our big gamescom feature list with this week’s blog about the New Worlds residential tiers and a brief look over the museum and the blueprint mode in the week to come. To give you a glimpse of the upcoming month, we are working on some exciting DevBlog topics many of you want to see for a while now.
On another note, the next round of the Union focus test has started and we are looking forward to daily feedback reports from our testers. However, there is more to come, as the Union tests will be soon open for bigger groups, allowing the Union to test the game in a larger scope than ever before.

We will also add the first Anno Fan Initiative pages to the website and if you are a fansite admin or content creator, do not forget to apply for the program!
You can get further details about the program here: Union Fan Initiative 

As we are also working on some fan resources such as wallpapers, are there some specific things you think are a must have or other material such as streaming layovers or even emotes you would like to see?

EGX Birmingham Anno 1800 Panel
A short update from our tour to the industrial Birmingham. During last week’s EGX expo, we had the chance to present the game on stage during a live-stream and if you missed it, you can watch the recording of that presentation here:

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Our Expedition blog raised some questions in the Anno Union, let us finish this week’s Update with another Community Q&A

ako199
I am curious how you manage the availability of expeditions and how many different missions you will have in the game?
Answer: Reaching residential tier III will also unlock the Expedition feature. At that point, the captain will notify you about available ventures in the expedition menu. Expeditions will be randomly generated and spawn in intervals, while harder ventures will be available in the late game. You will be able to take on as many expeditions as you like, only limited by the currently available adventures.
We have currently four main types of expeditions: zoological, archaeological, rescue missions and pirate hunts. For every type, we have a large amount of various events you will encounter, with the challenge and amount of the events based on the difficulty of the expedition. All together, we have a large amount of events with many branching choices, depending on which items you brought along the journey or how a previous encounter turned out. The expedition window will only give you an idea about the difficulty, type and likeliness of challenges you might encounter during an adventure, which gives you a chance to prepare, but only hints on the various possible encounters.

AmpeImann
I really like the idea of the expeditions, but I have a couple concerns about how they will exist in the game. Are the expeditions going to be necessary to core gameplay? Or will they just be an extra thing you can do if you want some rarer items? Will expeditions be as useful or interesting in the late game? Are the rewards potentially game changing?
Answer: There will be various alternative ways to get your hands on items, such as trading with neutral factions, quests, the tourist harbor or the world fair exhibitions. The items you can acquire through expeditions are based on their various types, with the focus being animals, cultural artifacts, specialists and military equipment from pirate hunts. While you will have alternative ways to get your hands on all these item types, expeditions will be the only way to get the rare animals and artifacts for the zoo and the museum specifically. That means that if you want to have a collection of the rarest exotic animals in the game, you will need to take on challenging expeditions.
Drop rates of items are based on expedition type, climate, rarity stat and difficulty of the Expedition. Which means that a rare black panther have always the same chance of dropping in a hard zoological expedition to the new world. Furthermore, you will always get three items from the loot table with every expedition.
Bottom line: they will be a risk to acquire but you have an idea about what items you can get when choosing an adventure. We don’t want that expeditions are a necessary feature for Anno’s core gameplay and we will also make use of our Union focus testers to see if the feeling and the balancing is right.

Der3ine
How will you notice that you already got a reward from an expedition before finishing it?
Answer: The rewards for the expedition will be always granted at the end of an adventure. First, your ship will travel to its destination and when arriving at the marker, encounter various events, which you have to go through.  During the events, your morale bar will sink but you will be always able to send your ship back after every encounter. If you send your ship back, you will not get any rewards from the expedition itself but will keep items you acquired from succession in special event encounter. These rewards will be immediate granted after the specific event encounter and therefore, you will be always aware if you got already items, which might be worth saving before finishing your expedition.

BfVorsteher
Is it possible that an Expedition has a negative effect such as bringing back an illness to your island. Imagine you don’t have enough doctors in your city which leads to 20% of your residents dying while if you have a good medical supply, only 5%?
Answer: Expedition events won’t influence your city, economy or have any other effect on gameplay elements outside the expedition itself other than the items you get as a reward and can use in your city. While Expeditions are an exciting feature to explore the world of Anno and to refine your gameplay with items, we do not want that they become the central gameplay element for Anno 1800.

Schminky
I think it would be interesting if various original scenarios from the expedition which actually happened back than would be used for inspiration such as the competition to reach the South Pole of the Asmussen and the Scott. Will the background artworks for the expeditions represent the specific region and climate?
Answer: Many of our Expedition events are inspired by actual adventures, scientific journeys and stories from the 19th century. We will send you to various climate zones, represented by the markers on the world map, artwork and their own specific encounters.

CreatureotS
You often talk about difficulty levels, which was a thing in many Anno titles before. Will we be able to customize our own difficulty by altering parameters, such as the likeliness of fire, or will the game just have preset difficulties?
Answer: We will have three difficulty levels in the game: Easy, Moderate and Hard. But as the sandbox experience is part of our core DNA, you will be able to create your custom game rules affecting many different parameters of the game world and the AI. How does the idea of an own blog showcasing the customization options of a match sounds to you all?

Union Update: Anno 1800 at EGX and Q&A

Posted on by Ubi-O5

A new week has arrived and that, of course, means that a new Union Update chock full with Anno wisdom is here. Before we start the promised elaborate Q&A Session, let us first make you aware of two possibilities to see Anno 1800- live and in glorious color! Also, as a heads-up, in this week’s DevBlog we will dive into the world of Expeditions.

We’re at the EGXs – Plural!

As announced, this Thursday on the 20th at 1PM BST / 8AM EDT, we’ll be streaming a panel with Anno 1800 from EGX in Birmingham which you can view live at https://www.twitch.tv/egx

But wait, there’s more: We’re also happy to stop by the first EGX in Berlin! Our presentation where will be on Sunday, the 29th of September and it’ll be live at 5PM on Twitch, so mark your calendars – or even better: Visit us!

Enough with the prelude – you have questions and we’ll try to give you answers!

Sir_Obelexxus
There were a few Anno T-Shirts at gamescom. As I didn’t have an opportunity to get one, I’m asking myself if it’ll be possible to get merch at some point, especially T-shirts?
Answer: The number of our gamescom shirts was very limited and the demand was huge, so we don’t have any shirts left. We’ll keep the interest for the shirts in mind for the future, however.

Grieswurst
Will there be visible ship crews?
Answer: We often hear the request for crews being visible at work on their ships, due to our love for detail and visual feedback in the cities, similar to how you are able to see your citizens doing their daily work. While visual feedback taking the form of crewmembers is technically possible, the implementation would be very time-intensive and require us to overcome a few technical hurdles.
One of the reasons for this is the size ratio. As you might be aware, the citizens of our Anno world need to have a good mix between visibility and realism, so there won’t be realistic size ratios all the time. And while the ships in Anno 1800 are bigger than ever, the ratios are not necessarily the same ones as with buildings and streets.
In short: The characters on the ships would have a different size as the ones in the city, as they would otherwise look out of place – especially when your ship lies in the harbor.
But there are other points, which made us decide against the visible crew. We wanted a big list of varied ships and ship types and having the crew would’ve possibly been at the expensive of ship variety. Visual feedback of the units you move around in fleets can also be taxing on the eye and make the game seem visually restless, even chaotic. And the further visual feedback that needs to be calculated would also be a strain on performance – and these are just a few points, that we have to take into account when thinking about these decisions.
As you can see, in production we always have to evaluate if the benefits of a feature outweigh the disadvantage or justify the expected effort at the expense of other content (which we could work on instead).

BlueCommander_
Is it now not possible anymore to play a game without switching sectors?
Answer: We played around with various ideas and feedback from the Union focus groups. Many goods that you can import from the New World to your original session are luxury goods for higher resident tiers. With the implementation of separate residential and luxury needs, this means that the rise of your citizens is not dependent on luxury goods, and opting not to use the second session will only partially slow you down. However, the New World will also be the main source of oil, so if you plan to supply your metropolis with electricity at a large scale, we recommend securing an independent influx of the fossil fuel. Trading with AI players, neutral factions and other players in multiplayer are other means with which to get your hands on imported goods. on higher difficulty levels, where other characters will be more aggressive and directly engage with you for economic and even military dominance, a beachhead in the new world can be more meaningful than in a relaxed game on a lower difficulty setting. With that said, we are already very curious to see videos of players, who will push through the highest difficulty without traveling to the New World at all. J

Mr.Beko80
How is it looking with moving buildings around, can you move them anytime or just for a short time after building them?
Will this option have any impact on the difficulty, like the reimbursement of building material in 1404?
Answer: There will be no limits as to when you can move a building. And while the moving of a building is going to be free on lower difficulties, on the higher difficulty settings there will be a cost in building materials.

BfVorsteher
I’m happy that aside from the Darwin Temple, we will also get an altar for the achievements of the „two-legged burrowing mouse“ to expand the cultural diversity of our city. The only question, will space be enough for that? Or will there be revolts due to lack of living space and resulting higher rent?
Answer: Juggling available building space with the needs of your city is one of the core challenges of Anno and of course this won’t change with Anno 1800. Depending on difficulty (which can also influence the size of islands), it can be a challenge to get all the necessary buildings on one island. Ambition plays a role here too, such as deciding whether you want to just have a small “alibi zoo” or push the module system to its limits. In the latter case, you can build museums and zoos that could cover  smaller island all by themselves- provided of course that you manage to find enough attractions to fill them with. We leave the worries about ever rising renting costs to the grey reality, however.

roka71
Will there be an Open Beta before release or a Closed Beta for pre-orders?
Answer: We can’t share any concrete details yet, but we plan to have bigger testing phases with a lot more players prior to launch. However, these will be independent of your pre-order status. If we had to speculate, we would recommend all Anno Fans who wish to play the game before launch to register right here on the Anno Union…

pritam87
Is day night cycle present in the time of release?
Answer: We know that the day/night-Cycle is a beloved feature that also has a lot of fans here on the team. However, we won’t have a day/ night cycle in the game at launch.

SirKju
What really bugs me is the hustle and bustle in the trailer. The graphics are breathtaking, but more people on the street would be nice! Is there going to be a change there?
Answer: Our work around „Visual Feedback“ is not yet done, so don’t consider anything you have seen final. Additionally, when we create a trailer (which have so far all showed actual game graphics), we often have to change the settings of the feedback units, so it can sometimes happen that the trailers show fewer units than you would see during gameplay.

Cilitbangbang
The question that burns inside of me is if we (the Union) will be involved with future DLC? Those could be planned already with some feedback.
Answer: That is the case already! As we are only now starting to throw around ideas and plans for more content for the time beyond the launch for Anno 1800, we will definitely keep close tabs on Union and community feedback – as was the case with our recently announced Anarchist DLC. Here, the fan feedback in combination with the character’s gameplay potential made it an easy choice to include in the game down the road. We want to stress however that it will not be a “Day 1 DLC” – work on the Anarchist will start once the main game is done and we plan to launch it a few months after launch in spring 2019.

chris02918
How can I react quickly if something happens in the world, where I’m not looking at at the moment? An attack? Are resources missing in a settlement?
Answer: With two sessions with one or more settled islands each, it is indeed sometimes possible to somewhat lose track – especially if you also want to keep an eye on various ships and running expeditions. That’s why we put a lot of effort into our notification system which will keep you up to date on important or critical information and developments. With one click, you’ll immediately hop to the place that’s in need of your attention.

Chris9990306
I think that you should reconsider the settling of the new world. I don’t think that having the AI wait for the player to settle before they move in is the right way.
Answer: Our train of thought here was that we didn’t want to pressure players or give you the feeling that you have to explore the New World as soon as possible if you don’t want to lag behind the AI. However, after seeing the largely unanimous feedback on this matter we sat down again to discuss it, and have decided to change this slightly. Whether the AI characters will wait for the player before exploring the New World is now based on the difficulty level.

Union Update: recap, stream and things to come

Posted on by Bastian Thun

Another gamescom is in the history books – and what an amazing show it has been for Anno 1800 and the team here at Ubisoft Blue Byte! With so much going on, let us recap all the things you may have missed and give you peak on upcoming content!

Anno 1800 releases February 26th, 2019
Let’s start with the biggest news coming out of gamescom 2018: Anno 1800 will ship globally for Windows PC on February 26th, 2019! To properly celebrate this news, we also had a new trailer that gave you a first glimpse of a new world to explore.

Pre-Orders for all our editions are now live
With the release date out in the open, many of you have been asking how and when you could be buying Anno 1800. And the answer to that is… you can pre-order it now, in up to three different editions (based on your location).

No matter if you just want the base game itself, are looking for some digital goodies, or you want a proper physical art book on your shelf, we have you covered. Regardless of which editions you are going for, your pre-order from participating retailers will earn you the Imperial Pack, including a statuesque throwback to Anno 1602, and exclusive alternate models for your command ship and train. Find the full edition breakdown here: https://www.anno-union.com/en/anno-1800-release-date-and-pre-order/

We won some awards!
gamescom started in the best possible way for Anno 1800, with an expert jury awarding us the prestigious “Best PC Game” award. As you can see, we were rather excited! And to cap it all off, Saturday saw Ubisoft win the fan-voted award for the best developer of the show. Thank you so much for your support and votes, we couldn’t be happier with the reception of our game!

Anno 1800 is great – but do not just take our word for it!
A large number of previews (both written and of the video variety) from influencers and press from around the globe have been hitting the web. So if you want to learn more about what we showed behind closed doors at our pre-gamescom events as well as the show itself, here’s your chance! Press were able to play up to three hours of the game, including most content of the first three citizen tiers. And they also got their hands on some all-new features, which brings me to…

The Anno 1800 booth, UbiLounge masterclass and stage presentations
But probably more exciting than anything else during the convention was our big Anno 1800 booth, where fans could get their hands on the game for the first time and take their own special gamescom memento with a 19th century style photo.
Chris aka Ubi O5igther from the community team was also at gc2018 and we found some time for a relaxing foto session.
And the booth was packed – with queuing times starting immediately to ramp up as soon as the convention opened. Even with long waiting times, thousands were able to get their first impressions for the seventh Anno title in the series and we tried to get as much feedback as possible. If you visited us and played the game, feel free to share your take on the gamescom demo in the comments!

Playing the game was obviously a highlight but we had some more Anno cards up our sleeve.
On our big Ubisoft stage, we gave you a glimpse on our newly announced features such as the expeditions, the museum and blueprints. Hundreds of Anno fans gave us not only great company during the daily shows, even in that loud environment of a packed convention hall everyone could hear the “Anno Union” battlecry of the Anno fans (seriously I was surprised how loud you guys can get).
Love Island, our throwback to the story “mutiny on the bounty”, became quickly a running gag during the convention.

During our UbiLounge presentations, we not only gave you a live gameplay demonstration of the actual savegame shown to the press, you could also ask questions in the roughly 1 hour long panel – all in the spirit of the Anno Union. While we mentioned in advance that you should be early, you guys managed to pack the Ubilounge to its absolute max of sometimes 60 and more people attending each master class. Altogether, several hundred Anno fans watched, listened and asked questions during the presentations.
The Union community dinner
A very special highlight for us was the Union community dinner on Thursday evening, where we invited almost 30 Anno fans to come together to enjoy the company, the food and chatting about Anno 1800 and the Union. Even after the restaurant closed its doors, we all had a hard time to call it a day, so it went on until almost 1am. A truly brilliant Anno evening and we are thirsty for more, it might now have been the last time we host such an event?

We compeletly missed to get all attendees on one picture, must have been the nice atmosphere which distracted us. 

But how about the Anno Union members being unable to attend?
To give you a chance to see what we have shown to press and fans for yourself, we decided to will host an AnnoCast stream this Thursday, where we will not only recap the convention but also show you the actual gameshow build in action, including the content we have shown to the press and to fans in the UbiLounge. Last week, we asked you for questions and as this Union Update is already quite long, we decided to answer many of them in this Thursday’s stream.

You also remember that we talked about some nice Anno 1800 goodies during gamescom? To give you a chance to get your hands on the Anno 1800 gamescom loot, we will raffle out several of the pieces during the show, including also some nice giveaways from our friends at Corsair Gaming.
Let us come together this Thursday at 4.30pm CEST for our post gamescom stream at twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte

What’s to come in September and beyond
With gamescom 2018 behind us, there is a lot to talk about. In the upcoming weeks, we will dive into detail about the new world, expeditions and the museum and we start with putting the second session under the looking glass next week. We know that you have a lot of questions and we will make sure that the DevBlogs tackling the new features will answer many of them:
In upcoming Union updates, we will start to kick off a new fan initiative and present you the finalists of the Union ship vote.
But rest is for the wicked and there is still a lot to talk about up to February 2019. With a big Naval combat highlight in the making, more frequent streams, the next round of our Union focus test and even some not yet revealed features – there is a lot of things to look forward to so keep a close eye on Union Updates and Devblogs to come.

Union Update: Time to recuperate

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Another week has passed, and gamescom 2018 is in the books- and what a gamescom it has been! After countless presentations, interviews and stage shows – not to mention an award (Best PC Game of gc 2018) that we are as you can see very proud of – the Ubisoft Blue Byte team has mostly unscathed returned to the studio to tackle the final 6 months of development before Anno 1800 ships globally on February 26th, 2019.

However, we do need a little bit more time to rest our vocal chords and to read your hundreds of comments on the Union, our forums and social media, so there won’t be any new Union content this week. Starting next week, we will return to our regularly scheduled programming as we start to review gamescom with you, and take a closer look at some of our newly announced features like South America and the expeditions. In the meantime, feel free to share some of the questions you would like us to tackle over the next few weeks in the comments!

UnionUpdate: One year Anno Union!

Posted on by Bastian Thun

It was a hot late summer when we announced the Anno Union at gamescom 2017 in Cologne.  Since then, a project born out of passion from our team slowly developed into the community program we know today. The last 12 month has been an exciting ride, we published over 100 blogs, including over 70k words and hundreds of screenshots of a game which was over a year away from release when we started. With over 10k comments full of valuable feedback, hundreds of amazingly creatively entries and striving fan projects we think it was worth the effort, and the Anno Union is here to stay.

We want to say thank all of you for your passion in sharing countless thoughts, ideas and. Your voice had and will continue to have an impact on many features of the game. The combination of feedback comments, discussions, votes and focus tests has proven incredibly helpful for the development of Anno 1800.

With the release of the game in February 26th 2019, there are still many topics on our checklist and we will not only continue to bring you devblogs, votes and live streams; we will further invite more and more Annoholics to our focus test groups in the weeks and months ahead.

The one-year anniversary of the Union was also the perfect moment for us to launch the new version of our Anno Union website, including many improvements in visuals and usability.
Expect new content on the website to show up in the near future, as we will provide you with fan assets such as wallpapers and will also give fans and fan creations a proper spotlight. But more about that in Union Updates to come!

What is your verdict for Anno Union year one? We put a lot of work and love into the project, which will accompany Anno 1800 up to the launch and beyond.

Union Update: Anno 1800 gamescom schedule

Posted on by Bastian Thun

It’s 7 days until gamescom and today to clearly time to share some more detailed information about Anno 1800’s presence. Nevertheless, we should not forget the teaser for this week’s DevBlog, where we will give you exciting insights in our sound design and how we create believable and atmospheric sounds to carry you away in the world of the 19th century.

As briefly mentioned last week, the game will be playable at our Anno 1800 booth in the Ubisoft area in Hall 6. Your chance to experience the seventh title in the Anno series hands on and we are thirsty for feedback about our gamescom demo.

We have also quite a few things to reveal and to announce in Cologne but rest assured that for everyone who is not able to visit us, we share all the important news the Union. And if playing Anno 1800 is not enough, there is even more during this truly Anno packed gamescom 2018. We will present the game two times a day on the big Ubisoft stage, showing you Anno in all its brimming details and give a glimpse on new features. Furthermore, we bring back our UbiLounge presentations again where we not only demonstrate the game live but also answer your questions.
Based on last years experienced, the UbiLounge presentations are in high demand and the spaces are limited and therefore, we recommend to come at least 15 minutes before the begin of a presentation.  To make it easier for you, here is a calendar with all the timeslots:

We know that you are also curious about goodies but we also love surprises. What we can tell that we there will be free Anno 1800 goodies at the convention for the ones playing the game and visiting our presentations. Try to get your hands on one of them as all items are as long as stock lasts.
During our live streams, many of you mentioned that you really like our Anno 1800 developer shirts, showing iconic characters of the game. We managed to produce a limited quantity of that premium shirt (without the dev tag) for gamescom and you will be able to buy it at the Ubisoft merchandise booth in Hall 5.2.
And if you managed to your hands on one of our goodies or the Anno 1800 shirt, feel free to share your loot with us on our social media channels.

Speaking of which, our Facebook and especially twitter channel will be the easiest way to get  gamescom live coverage. While we will publish several blogs next week with the information about all the announcements, we will provide daily snapshots, news and clips from the convention. After gamescom, we will follow up with Union blogs and a stream covering our Anno 1800 gamescom experience.

For all the LIVE Anno gamescom news, follow our Twitter and Facebook channel (we also might sneak in some raffles). And if you are there and want to share your gamescom Anno experience, don’t forget to use the hashtag #Anno1800 or #AnnoUnion:
Anno 1800 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/anno_en
Our official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/annogame/

On gamescom Thursday, we will also have our Anno Union community dinner. Invitations have been sent out and we got a confirmation from all participants.  We know that many of you were eagier to join us for that event and if you were not able to grab a slot, we would love to say at least hello to you during our Anno presentations in the Ubisoft lounge.

But before we end today’s Union Update, we have one final announcement for you. The big Anno 1404 venture seems to cause sleepless nights for Chris and John, so they decided to stream another episode of the AnnoAfternoon show this Saturday, 5pm CEST at https://www.twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte

Perfect timing for a pre-gamescom celebration, eh? 🙂

Union Update: Questions, Answers and Artificial Intelligence

Posted on by Bastian Thun

In today’s Union Update, we will once again give you answers on some of the most burning questions from our communities. You also can look forward to our upcoming DevBlog, in which our programmers Jonas and Johannes will show you how we teach our second party characters how to build a believable metropolis.

But before we dive into our QnA section, we have a small reminder: The Union ship design contest will end next week Monday. We got a few strong designs already and we are looking for the last few submissions entering the race before the beginning of next week.

Without further ado, let’s answer some questions:

DfZug
Will the number of wagons per train depend on your production or is it just a visual feature? Will the trains run faster or slower depending on their weight?
Answer: While the payload will not affect the speed of a train, the number of wagons will be an indicator for you how much oil is currently loaded.

Mr.Beko80
Will you need to construct power plants near to the residential area, which will further have a negative impact on your residential happiness? How will the electrical support work, will you need to power supply lines on your own or can you just upgrade your streets?
Answer: To pander your demanding investors, you will need to support them with electricity from a close by a power plant. However, you will not need to install power lines manually, as power plants have their own influence radii like the marketplace and the fire station. Electrical poles will automatically appear across streets, which are in the influence radius of a power station. When you upgrade your simple farm roads to proper streets, the influence of all buildings will expand which also affects your power supply. Power plants will have an impact on the pollution of your city but are not a real competitor against your smoke covered heavy industry.

Acroz.Gaming
While watching the video, I’ve noticed that they look rather static right now. Will you include more animation and visual feedback in the future?
Answer: Many assets used in the electricity blog are not final yet, so you can look forward to a higher level of detail and more visual feedback. Same goes for the oil harbor, the oils ships and the motor carts, which are currently in a low polygon state or getting overhauled. How about an update on that in a future blog or live-stream?

Sandi.V.
Will the roads cross the railway? Or will the railway line block the construction of road crossing?
Answer: You will be able to cross streets when building railway tracks.

olblf
Are power plants only using oil? I guess it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but historically and logically, coal would have been the go to fuel. I would have liked if powerplants could use both coal and oil.
Answer: In Anno 1800, coal is finding is an important resource for many production chains and it is especially utilized in your heavy industry. Power plants need a very high amount of fuel in order to operate. If we would just use coal for our power plants, we would completely devalue the resource for other production chains and furthermore, we need to ensure that trains could also access the mines. The new electricity production chain including oil as fuel is an exciting new system, which challenges players but also rewards them with technical progress coming to your metropolis. We choose quality over quantity as making use of two fuel resources (oil and coal) would artificially bloat the system while at the same time, watering down the gameplay as a result.

Anno_2070_
Is he ascension to the next tier bound to the need on available and needed workforce or will it be more like in the past, where only a percentage of your residents was able to ascend, which further guaranteed that you always had enough workforce to run everything?
Answer: Anno 1800 will not have the classic ascension rights. If a residential building has all needs fulfilled to reach the maximum amount of residents it can inhabit, you can upgrade the house to the next tier by investing the needed construction material. There won’t be any limit for the number of residents you can upgrade, which means you can let as many farmers ascend to the working class as you like, even if that will cause a bottleneck for farmhands needed on your rural production buildings. Although, you will be able to downgrade buildings if you need an additional workforce in a lower tier.

nico_Darmstadt
If I start building production lines to create luxury goods, will it cause higher upkeep costs but also generate higher income?
Answer: Luxury goods will make your residents and your treasury happy.

Gxy12
Will it be still possible to deny your residents certain goods (such as fish), like it was possible in Anno 2070 or 1404?
Answer: It will be possible to deny your residents any goods you wish by locking it in the specific residential window for each tier. Seems your poor residents have to run dry if you need the schnapps to hand in that quest at your neighbor’s island.