Tag: DevBlog

DevBlog: Land of Lions – Scholars and Research

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

To the hallowed motto of the Old World’s greatest university, « Ardua Veritatem » many a young, aspiring Scholar has amended their own witty epigraph, one of which remains, etched in pale strokes, to this day: « Ex sapientia immodus ». Through hardships, truth; from wisdom, immoderation.


Though these ambitions have never failed to leave a trail of flustered supervisors and browknitted deans in their wake, there is no arguing the spirited genius of the countless young prodigies whose tireless labour and many sleepless nights consistently push against the frontiers of human knowledge and understanding for the greater glory of Science – and a modicum of personal glory, naturally.


Scholars are infused with the passions and trailblazing fire of youth. To live, to dream, perchance to inspire or set a trend, whether in the quest for knowledge or that for a fashionably dandified wardrobe – these are the waters within which a Scholar’s heart blooms. To these fascinations and wild ambitions, they have sacrificed much, leaving families, friends and lovers behind, in their distant homelands, to heed the call of that Magna Mater – Science!


Easily smitten with novelty and extravagance, Scholars are nonetheless remarkably hard workers, readily expending much of their time and energy to the pursuit of the tantalizingly obscure minutia of wisdom and progress, working together towards a brighter, better and sharper-dressed future.

Hello once more, dear Anno Community!

In this last DevBlog for Land of Lions we will focus on the influence of Enbesa on the Old World.

If you have missed any of our previous blogs, have a look at the dedicated ones for:

  1. The Shepherd population tier and the irrigation system
  1. The Elder population tier and the story of “Land of Lions”

Already in our overview blog we mentioned that besides creating a new world for you to explore and a new story for you to discover, we also wanted to incorporate a specific point of feedback we received from you after the release of “The Passage”: Having closer connections between the different sessions to offer more than just a one-region-specific challenge.

With “Land of Lions”, this comes in the form of the Scholars.

When you’ve upgraded your first Shepherd Residences and the initial Elders are moving in, you unlock the last new feature of the “Land of Lions” DLC: With an influx of students from Enbesa and the rest of the globe to the Old World, first the construction of the Research Institute (requires 300 Elders) and later housing for the new Scholar population tier (requires 1500 Elders) is unlocked.

The Research Institute is a new, 3 stage monument that can be constructed once per player in either the Old World or Cape Trelawney. It is a place of study and research, a place where your eager scholars analyze artefacts and plants – and where they come up with technological breakthroughs known as Major Discoveries.

Aside from requiring plenty of workforce for the construction, you will need large amounts of building material – but will be rewarded in turn with a beautiful new landmark for your city which in addition unlocks the new research feature, allowing your brightest minds to engage in what they like doing most: science!

Before we jump into the details of the research system, let’s first take a look at the Scholars.

Being a separate population tier, they will require their own appropriate housing. Scholar Residences have a size of 4×4 fields and – due to their love for academic research – require immediate access to a university. Due to their larger size, these residences also house significantly more people (120 eager students of science) than, for example, an Investor residence does.

It takes time and effort to build up a reputation as a Research Institution. Scholar Residences are tied to permits: Only by acquiring more permits via research in the Institute will you be able to build more of them and be able to invite more Scholars. This will also open up further research options, and unlock additional needs for Scholars.

 

The scholars represent a typical international student: hailing from distant Enbesa and other parts of the world, but living in the Old World. The duality is reflected in the Scholar’s needs: They will ask for fancy Old World clothes, requiring you to build new production chains for Leather Boots and Tailored Suits, as well as increasing your output of Bombin Hats. And while as students they enjoy a social Rum and the convenience of Canned Food, nothing tastes better than a memory of home. Their loved ones in Enbesa will only be too glad to ship Seafood Stew and Hibiscus Tea over to the Old World to assuage any feelings of homesickness.

The Scholars’ keen interest in new technologies and inventions means they also desire gramophones, the newly developed telephones and a cutting-edge new public building: The Radio Tower.

With their needs fulfilled and the construction of the Research Institute finished, your scholars will get to work and generate a constant stream of research points. The more Scholars you have attracted, the faster they accumulate research points and the more research points you can “store”. More advanced research requires points in large quantities, a feat, small research groups simply won’t be able to accomplish.

Another way of acquiring research points is by donating items – for science! The amount of points received depends on the rarity of the respective item.

Researching items and especially Major Discoveries takes time, even for such a talented bunch as your Scholars. To speed things up, you can assign parts of your Engineer workforce – the Scholars’ tutors. Just make sure they’re not needed elsewhere.

 

Now, a variety of exciting research options are opened up to you, providing plenty of advantages for your empire. Let’s go over what kind of options the bright minds in the Institute came up with.

First, the item research. A recurring feedback since the release of Anno 1800 has been the wish for more direct ways to get items for specific purposes. Item crafting with Old Nate in Cape Trelawney and the Artic provide one alternative to purchasing and questing, while the item overview with details about the sources gives you a clearer idea where you need to look for that last missing zoo animal. Game Update 9 will change the number of items offered by AI parties from 8 to 12, which means less re-rolling to get the one you want. Owners of “Land of Lions” will have to live with a small restriction here, though, to balance the option of donating items for research points: Only 20 items can be purchased from a single NPC trader in a 30-min window.

With the Research Institute you can now develop almost any item in the game and this way specifically focus on the ones that make the most sense for your islands and for your overall strategy.  The items have to be discovered and analysed by your researchers first, requiring research points, and you can choose between Cultural Science (Animals, Cultural Items and Plants), Technological Advancements (all kinds of machines and tools) and Talent Development (Specialists).

Secondly, there are the Major Discoveries. These present you with more ways to specialise aspects of your economy, but they also address existing community feedback.

For example, the appropriate research allows you to move Oil Springs and Clay Deposits to another place on the island, change the fertilities to grow hops instead of paprika or change the ore of a mineral deposit to one you need more of. This will help you to further specialise existing islands and e.g. move that one oil spring just in range of the refinery, while also helping with layout creation and city beautification.

Furthermore, via a Research Kit you can directly identify items you already own and then develop them in the Research Institute, while additional Great Eastern Permits allow you to… well, build more of these magnificent ships!

Pier Upgrade Permits let you upgrade existing piers to Advanced Piers, increasing their loading speed and allowing you to specialise them: You can now dedicate these piers to a single type of good which helps you with directing your trading ships to specific places on your coast.

And don’t worry: If you, for example, create a dedicated coffee pier, all other goods on trade routes transporting coffee to your island will of course also be handled by the Advanced Pier.

 

Finally, to continue with the coffee topic from above, there’s something for all coffee lovers on your islands: Modern technology will enable you to produce New World goods in the Old World, by using replacement products. Specifically: You can unlock Advanced Coffee Roasters, Rum Distilleries and Cotton Mills to help you with any shortages.

Running out of space for high quality coffee beans in the New World? Don’t worry, just mix in some locally produced malt coffee – your investors won’t notice!

 

To round off, Land of Lions will of course also bring new item sets for your cultural buildings, for example a Lion (quelle surprise) or a Giant Snail for your zoo. On top of that, there will of course be some region-specific items for Enbesa, to for example boost local production, like the Tea Selector for your Tea production or Flood Gates to increase your pump’s irrigation capacity.

 

All of this will be open for you to explore as part of the “Land of Lions” DLC on October 22nd, available via the Ubisoft Store, Epic Store and Steam.

As usual, we will release a free update alongside the DLC including a bunch of quality of life improvements alongside plenty of bug fixes and tweaks. The full release notes will be posted next week, but if you haven’t done so, you should definitely check out our DevBlog detailing all the improvements of Game Update 9 which we posted a few weeks ago.

DevBlog: Land of Lions – Elders and Story

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

“He is the shepherd of the flock, Who gives life and age. Tell me now: Yes, His laws are boundless.” To these tenets of the spiritual poem Al-Muthallathu none are more faithful than the Elders of Enbesa. Shaped in the crucible of indomitable belief, wrought by the creeds of a culture older than the time of legends, they know much and ordain more.

The Irenya, as they are referred to in Enbesa, are the ever-vigilant guardians of their land’s storied traditions and history. Stalwart in their faith and their conviction that the fundamental truths of Life can only be sought across the span of ancient laws and a millenial religion, they care little for the bustle and blare of progress. Why seek to change that which has seen generations past live a devoted and orderly life?

The Irenya command great respect from the people of Enbesa, though there are those who would resent the harshness with which they hold to tradition, toiling away fervently at the crafting arts while the ‘lower’ Shepherds work the land and more menial charges. Few complaints ever reach the keftanya moots – the city-ruling, Elder-held councils – however, as Elders seldom fail to show compassion and care to the people of Enbesa under duress – so long as they respect the Ancient Ways.

Hey Anno Community,

and welcome back to the third installment in our series of DevBlogs about “Land of Lions”. This time, we want to focus on Enbesa’s Elders, and the strong narrative elements of our final Season 2 DLC.

If you missed them, you can catch up on our previous blogs here:

DevBlog 1: A “Land of Lions” overview

DevBlog 2: Shepherds and Irrigation

Always respect your Elders

The Elders are the second of Enbesa’s new residential tiers and represent a completely different aspect of life in their region from the Shepherds. Whereas the latter enjoy their time in nature and work the land with the freedom of youth, the Elders’ experiences in life have given them an altogether dourer outlook on things. This is especially true for their representative, an elderly widow who has seen her fair share of grief in life. While she can be harsh and judgmental (especially towards outsiders like yourself), her poignance belies a caring nature towards those who manage to earn her respect.

A long life of working hard has taught the Elders many useful skills which they apply to seven new production chains such as Ceramics (a basic need), Tapestries (a luxury good contributing to their happiness) or Seafood Stew. Unlike the self-sufficient Shepherds, some of the Elder’s production chains also require goods from other sessions, requiring you to expand your network of trade routes to supply them. The Elders also produce the Mud Bricks needed for more advanced construction in Enbesa, alongside the Shepherd’s traditional Wanza Timber.

In total, the Elder tier will introduce 17 new buildings, including of course some public buildings like the Monastery, which contributes to their Happiness.

Let me tell you a story…

While last week’s DevBlog and this one have so far focused on the new gameplay Elements that Enbesa will introduce to Anno 1800, there is a lot more for you to experience. So, let us talk about story and narrative elements. This is one aspect of the game we have steadily been honing and improving throughout the development of Anno, starting with the original campaign, across the “Sunken Treasures” story and up to the icy world of “The Passage”. This DLC specifically received a lot of praise for creating an atmosphere that was quite unlike the usually bright and cheerful Anno world, taking on a more somber and tense tone. Basing the story on the infamously tragic events of Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to find the Northwest passage (albeit with a slightly happier ending, and less cannibalism) and the introduction of heat as a quintessential replacement for the happiness of other sessions helped to create an atmosphere unlike anything else in Anno, replacing the usual cheerfulness with a grim fight for survival. Seeing player reactions to the Arctic emboldened us to try to go one step further when it comes to creating a believable, breathing “Land of Lions”.

To put it simply: The story of Enbesa presents one of the biggest narrative efforts the Anno Team has ever undertaken (and we are not just talking about 1800, either)! We expect that first-time players will take a good 10-15 hours of playtime to experience all the story threads introducing the cultures and people of Enbesa. These story elements come I two distinct flavors: the main story, and story islands.

 

For the Emperor!

The concept of the main story should be a familiar one to Anno 1800 players, as it follows the same structure as previous DLCs like “Sunken Treasures”, slowly introducing you to all the major new characters, as well as gameplay elements like residential tiers, irrigation and the Research Institute. As with these other new sessions, your journey to Enbesa begins with an Expedition that becomes available at the Artisan tier.

It is during this expedition that you will meet one of the key characters, Biniam. A gifted young academic, Biniam serves as a diplomat to the ruler of Enbesa, Emperor Ketema. Through his service, he hopes to one day bring abut his dream of a research institute in which the brightest young scholars from around the world can work. It is Biniam who introduces you to Emperor Ketema, based on your proven credentials as a skilled city-builder.

Ketema is a warm-hearted yet ambitious ruler, who dreams of Enbesa entering a long-lasting era of peace and unity through diplomacy and trade, earning the recognition of other powers.  As a symbol of these efforts, he asks the player to enter his service as the architect of Enbesa’s new capital city, Taborime. This leads to a unique setup among the islands of Anno 1800: while we normally separate player and Ai islands, you will actually be building Taborime for Ketema on his island, surrounding his already existing magnificent palace (which will also visually evolve throughout the story). Of course, it would not be an Anno story if things ended there, and you can expect a few plot twists. We will leave it at that, as we don’t want to spoil any surprises for you…

Unity, but at what cost?

As mentioned earlier, this classic story structure is only one part of “Land of Lions”’ storytelling, with the other being our three “story islands”. These are essentially lovingly crafted, visually unique islands that each offer an additional optional storyline, all of which are entwined with the larger history of Enbesa (for example, one of them is the birthplace and home of Biniam). These islands will not only offer new quests for you to undertake to help their residents, but will also call upon you to make some tough decisions, which can have some dramatic consequence (including, but not limited to, these islands looking very different from how they started out…).

With that said, let us introduce you to these three locations and their people:

Angereb is a mighty fortress rock on a rocky island, inhabited by a fiercely independent people who see no reason to join forces with Emperor Ketema.

Kidusi Anitoni is an ancient monastery and library, home to a group of religious scholars who are doing archaeological work to uncover Enbesa’s past.

Waha Desher was once a flourishing Oasis and center of commerce that has since fallen on harder times but may yet be reawakened.

The quest structure of these islands is much looser and non-linear than the main story, leaving it up to you how and when you want to meet the residents of these three islands. We will leave it up to you to find out much more about them come October 22. Between DevBlog 2 and this one, you should now have a good idea of all the new content awaiting you in Enbesa. But, as you know, that is not all, so make sure to tune in next time for a deeper look at our new Old World goodness: The Scholars and their Research institute!

In the meantime, why not let us know your thoughts in the comments?

Stay safe,

The Anno Team

DevBlog: Land of Lions – Shepherds & Irrigation System

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
None are more faithul to this creed, laid down in contemplation by philosopher Mawlānā Rumi than the selfsame Shepherds of Enbesa. The Meniga, as they are known by other populations in Enbesa, revel best in the open heartlands, the bountiful beauty of Enbesa, stretching across valleys and dells, with boundless horizons across the water.

A people of the land, respectful of all that came before them but ever intrigued by new opportunities, new prospects of peace and betterment for their peers. Kind-hearted and hard-working, Shepherds look to those who rule to guide Enbesa to a united future, one of justice and consideration for all. Long centuries of unhindered pastoral life draw to a tantalizing close as the Emperor raises his mighty capital from the ground, drawing all in Enbesa to him, birthing a new culture and a novel way of life.

Though they relish the deceptively simple arts of landwork and animal care, Shepherds are well aware that a new age is dawning upon Enbesa, one which they hope will see mirth and tenderness and friendship be held high in the hearts of the mighty –manifold lights to guide and heal the people of Enbesa.

Earlier this week we gave you an overview of what you can expect regarding Anno Union content up until the release of Land of Lions. It shouldn’t come as a big surprise therefore that this week we’ll be talking about the beginnings of your Enbesan settlement: The Shepherds and the irrigation system!

Shepherds are the first of two residential tiers in the Enbesa session (the second being the Elders). Similar to the farmers in the Old World, they live in smaller houses, usually a main dwelling with a stable, outbuilding, storage hut or small workplace attached. Together these houses form small communal places where the Shepherd population can, for example, gather around a fireplace.

The Shepherds loves nature and stories by the campfire. City life and politics seems to tire them, much as it does the game’s Farmers and Artisans in the Old World.

Instead they prefer to spend time out in nature with their animals, because the Shepherds’ skills lie in agriculture and animal husbandry; for example, herding goats and sanga cows for milk and meat or growing linseed to darn clothes and hibiscus flowers for hibiscus tea. The Shepherds rely solely on the goods they produce locally, and do not require any imports from the other sessions. Though they have many talents and much wisdom, they are always quick to play these things down, being modest and humble.

To satisfy their needs for community and culture outside of the company of family and friends, they will, however, ask you to build a musicians’ court to enjoy some music together with their fellow Enbesans.

At the heart of all construction and expansion in Enbesa is the new building material Wanza Timber. The Wanza trees do not require fertile soil but their wood is needed for most buildings in the new session. This means you cannot rely on old-world timber imports but must plan for sufficient local production to fuel your construction needs. Later on, will you also need to produce mud bricks for advanced buildings… but the Elders and their production chains will get their own DevBlog.

And while the use of these local goods and the Enbesan architectural traditions influence the construction and style of all buildings, you will see and easily recognize familiar buildings like the Trade Union, various harbor buildings or the Fire Station, which are buildable at the first residential tier. The last building already does provide us with a good segue to the next topic, since the Fire Station now has a special requirement: it needs a water connection!

So, let’s talk about Land of Lions new irrigation system.

Veterans will remember the irrigation system of Anno 1404 in which norias were responsible for pumping water up from below ground and watering the desert or savannah in a certain radius around them. This created fertile green spots in otherwise dry land that allowed for the cultivation of e.g. dates, indigo and almonds. Some might also remember that these norias had to be refilled manually, creating a lot of busywork.

Therefore, when approaching the design for Land of Lions, we knew that a) we wanted to include an irrigation system as a regional challenge due to its popularity with our community and b) we wanted to improve on Anno 1404’s system, reducing unnecessary micromanagement, while on the other hand providing another kind of challenge.

In Enbesa this challenge comes in the form of water canals, using the various rivers crossing the islands as a source for irrigation. Under their Emperor Ketema, the Enbesans use self-developed water pumps that are placed on dedicated river slots. The water taken from the rivers is then distributed via the canals, which fertilize the soil within a certain radius. The lush green areas that have been watered can then be used to grow Hibiscus or Indigo flowers, among other things.

This of course brings with it the challenge of creating an efficient canal system, squeezing in your farms and fields, and making the most of what little fertile ground you have, in addition to the usual limitations of building space on the islands. We’re sure min-maxer will have a great time working out the best layouts.

Each water pump can only pump its water so far, so there’s a limit to how many canal tiles you can place. However, combining two pumps also combines their irrigation capacity, allowing you to build a much longer canal than a single pump would’ve been able to support.

 

While most Enbesan farms require fertilized ground to function, animals can also graze on the dry savannah – though they prefer fresh green grass, which will directly improve the productivity of the relevant building.

Given the importance of water for agriculture, make sure to check for the number of available river slots on each island: it’s worth keeping in mind that aside from the irrigation pumps, these slots can also be occupied by clay collectors, and later, paper mills – prioritization of the valuable river slots is another water-related challenge you will face in Enbesa – just to ensure you won’t get bored!

 

Finally, when talking agriculture: Owners of the Bright Harvest DLC will also be able to bring the knowledge and advantages of modern farming to the lands of Enbesa by constructing silos and using tractors. However, this does require the import of oil.

Next week we’re going to look at the second residential tier, the Elders, and present you a bit more about the setting and story of Enbesa which sets it apart from previous DLC.

 

Land of Lions livestream

But wait, don’t leave quite yet. We still have one more announcement!

Next Thursday, October 15th, we will be holding a Land of Lions livestream, showing you the beginnings of an Enbesan settlement and talking about what’s currently happening in the world of Anno.

Join Ubi-Volty and Ubi-Thorlof at 5PM CET over on twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte

We’re looking forward to chatting with you!

DevBlog: A “Land of Lions” overview

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

If countless comments and questions are anything to go by, some of you are rather keen to learn more about our final Season 2 DLC, “Land of Lions”. So, you will be delighted to hear that we will finally start revealing more today, starting with this first DevBlog. “Wait a minute”, I hear some of you shouting, “what do you mean starting and first?”.

See, the thing is that “Land of Lions” is by far our biggest DLC for Anno 1800, including a lot more content than “The Passage” last Fall! To properly present all the good news and to tide you over until its release on October 22 we will instead have…four DevBlogs for you all!

Part 1: “Land of Lions” Overview

Part 2: Shepherds and Irrigation

Part 3: Elders and Story

Part 4: Scholars and Research

 

And that’s it for toda…wait, you wanted more of an overview? Alright then…

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New Residential Tiers in Enbesa

Let us first talk about Enbesa, the eponymous “Land of Lions”. Enbesa will be a session in the Southern part of the world map once you have unlocked access to it via an expedition (as with our other additional sessions).

The similarities to sessions like the New World and Arctic do not end there; much like them, Enbesa is also the home of two residential tiers, with their own associated housing, production chains and trade goods!

First, we have the Shepherds. The Shepherd’s representative is humble and loves nature, but he is also a keen poet and storyteller who will share his insights into the events around him with the player. In gameplay terms, Shepherds are focused on the agricultural production of new goods like Teff Grass or Hibiscus. As such the Shepherds will of course also play a central role in the new irrigation system.

Enbesa’s second resident tier are the Elders. They are represented by a devout but stern widow, who is an appreciated leader in the community and key to its social life. The Elders are focused on the crafting in Enbesa, producing important goods such as lanterns or tapestries for their people.

Making the Savannah fertile

As hinted at during the announcement of Season 2, “Land of Lions” is revisiting a classic element from Anno 1404: making the land bloom via irrigation. Instead of using the Noria again, the trick to making things grow in Enbesa are rivers and irrigation canals. Rivers on islands have a limited number of river building slots, which you can use not only for some production buildings, but also as the starting point of a new canal. Whereas the land of Enbesa is often dry and infertile, tiles next to water will become green and fertile, allowing you to grow fields on them.

A land of culture and history

Beyond all the sandbox game elements mentioned above, “Land of Lions” is also offering a lot to any players who want a side of story with their city-building gameplay. This starts with the main storyline, which sees you enter the services of Emperor Ketema of Enbesa, who enlists you to construct his mighty new capital, Taborime. As with previous DLCs, the main storyline will introduce you to all the new gameplay elements in the DLC, while also giving you insights into the people of Enbesa.

Besides the traditional story, we are going a step beyond to deliver one of our most elaborate narrative experiences in an Anno game yet, which will give curious players ample opportunity to learn much more about Enbesa’s culture and history. To achieve this, we have created three unique story islands that will serve as quest hubs and may even pose some tough decisions for the player to make.

Old World? New Research!

When we released “The Passage”, we received a lot of feedback from players who said that while they loved the atmosphere and vibe of this frozen session, they wished that it had been more closely entwined with the Old World, and the rest of the game outside the arctic. When we set out to come up with ideas for “Land of Lions”, we knew that we wanted Enbesa to be more closely entwined with the rest of the game. Meet the Scholars!

The Scholars are a new late-game residential tier based in the Old World (but unlocked as part of the “Land of Lions” storyline in Enbesa). So, who is the Scholar? As stylish as he is gifted, he is representative of the well-educated international students coming to the Old World to work in the newly founded Research institute.

Which brings us to the Research Institute itself. Not only is this impressive new building our latest monument in the game (which means that it is being built in several lengthy stages), it also fits in well with our existing university, which served as the artistic touchstone for the Scholars and all related buildings. The Research Institute also serves to tackle several issues we have seen come up in your feedback since launch. For once, it allows you to research and subsequently craft almost every item in the game, giving you an endgame alternative to hoping to get lucky with rewards. It also allows you to use your research points to make “Major Discoveries”, which are powerful abilities such as moving a claypit across your island to another spot!

And that’s just the overview!

As you can see, we were not bluffing when we said that “Land of Lions” is the biggest DLC for Anno 1800, bringing with it not only a ton of new content, but also the much requested research feature many of you have been asking for. We look forward to revealing much more to you all over the coming blogs and weeks.

Until then, stay safe!

The Anno Team

DevBlog: Amusements Pack Cosmetic DLC

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

Today we want to take you a bit behind the scenes and magic of your very own future amusement park, which will open its doors next week thanks to the release of the eponymous “Amusements Pack” Cosmetic DLC.

Before we dive into the process of bringing these new ornaments to life, let us go far afield to talk about ornamentation and the concept of Cosmetic DLCs in general. One thing that makes the Anno community so special is that the games manage to attract many different types of players, who all manage to carve out enjoyable niches within the games’ plethora of systems to find what they are looking for. Traditionally, two of the most prominent tendencies within the community have been the min-max-ers who don’t mind their citizens living in abject squalor as long as they can manage to cram just a few thousand more onto an island to reach that next record- and then there are the self-styled “beauty builders” who use Anno games as interactive dioramas to realize their wildest modelmaking fantasies without too much worry about the efficiency of it all.

When coming up with ideas for our post-launch strategy and DLCs, we always have these different playstyles in mind, and try to think up with new content that will offer something for everyone. Both of our currently available Season 2 DLCs, “Seat of Power” and “Bright Harvest” are good examples of this philosophy, as they offer new gameplay mechanics for the economically-invested crowd, and add stunning new sights to the beauty builder’s toolbox.

The downside is of course that such fully featured DLCs will take several months to develop, which inevitably means that there are always some lulls between new Anno 1800 content coming out. This is where Cosmetic DLCs come in, as they allow us to deliver some new Anno 1800 content in-between the major DLCs. Where a DLC like Land of Lions takes months of work from a sizeable team, the Cosmetic DLCs will take a few artists a couple of weeks to design and implement. This also gives us the opportunity to create some strongly thematic content that may not appeal to everyone (for example, anyone who is not into Christmas themes id unlikely to enjoy the Holiday Pack).

This is also why we do not include the Cosmetic DLC Packs in the Season Passes, as we do not want to drive up the price with content that we know won’t appeal to a big part of the community (the min-max’ers). That is why we think that an à la carte approach is the best way to go with the cosmetic packs, allowing everyone to get exactly the content they want to see in their cities.

These were some of the considerations we had in mind when we came up with the Holiday Pack last December, which was the first such DLC for Anno 1800. Following its release, a few things quickly became clear from your feedback: 1) Anno players love more ornaments but would 2) prefer content that would feel right at home throughout the year, rather than just in the run-up to the Holidays. We also immediately received lots of feedback and long wishlists for future cosmetic packs (these lists were the origin of the agricultural and industrial ornaments that were added to the Bright Harvest DLC).

As a next step, we took this list of community ideas to our artists to see where they saw the potential for a nice themed pack of 15-25 ornaments (depending on their size and scope), and to check the feasibility. For example, we saw a lot of players asking for some form of harbor ornaments, and we actually did some technical tests to see what form these could take, but found the idea clashing with the general lack of harbor front building space.

In the end, the team came away with three topics that we could see making for visually interesting Cosmetic DLCs: a circus, general props for urban life, and the amusement park. With this list, we decided that it would be cool to give the Anno Union who has been so supportive of the game throughout its development the choice of which pack we should tackle next.

That’s why we launched our latest Anno Union vote in April, to give you all the deciding vote between the tentatively named “Bustling City Life, “Trip to the Big Top” and “A Day at the Amusements” DLCs. Of course, every one on the team had their own favorite they were rooting for, so rest assured that we kept close tabs on the voting, and every change at the top of the polls was immediately shared in various chats! In the end, the Amusements Pack took the day, with the slimmest of margins over the City Life Pack.

With that decision out of the way, our artists immediately got to work on ideas, starting with a series of quick concept scribbles. These sketches are intended to quickly produce a wide range of potential ideas, allowing the team to get a feeling for what things could look like inside the game.

When selecting which scribbles, we want to take to the next stage, we consider a few things:

  1. Player fantasy: What are things that players expect based on the chosen topic? For example, it was obvious from the start that the Amusements Pack should include a ferris wheel, so we even put it into the artwork for the vote.
  2. Variety: We want our Cosmetic DLCs to have a good mix between different sizes of ornaments, to give players flexibility in how they can use them. In general, we want to have 1-2 big showpieces (like the Holiday’s Pack’s merry-go-round), a few medium sized ornaments, and several versatile small ornaments you can use to fill any gaps between other buildings.
  3. General fit: Despite rumors of an alleged first-person mode, Anno is of course played from an isometric perspective. This is of course also something we need to keep in mind, as not everything that looks cool when standing before it in real-life will translate well into an isometric game perspective.

It was during this phase that the idea for a rollercoaster as the second centerpiece of the DLC alongside the ferris wheel first came about, with everyone loving the idea of having such a massive ornament (one of the biggest in Anno history).

Next come the first rough 3d models for the chosen concepts. While very rough around the edges and untextured, they give the team a good feeling for how well they fit into the game world, and alongside already existing buildings and ornaments (see #3 in the list above). Once an idea passes this final hurdle, it is in for good, and we can get to finishing and polishing to be ready for its grand debut in the game.

Of course, it would not be Anno if the world weren’t bustling with life, so of course the Cosmetic DLC packs also call for some customized feedback units. If you are unfamiliar with the term, “feedback unit” is our internal term for any kind of citizen walking around your city to give you visual feedback for how things are going (like the groups of tourists gathering around the rarest zoo exhibits). For example, our Christmas market from the Holiday Pack just would not have been the same if the man himself, Santa Claus, hadn’t been making an appearance in it!

Once all ornaments and their respective feedback units are finished, all that is left to do is to create the thumbnails for the construction menu to allow you to place these all over your burgeoning industrial empires, which is where our UI team comes in to help get the DLC over the finishing line. Speaking of the build menu, some of you may be curious about what exactly is included in the Amusements Pack? If so, look no further:

  1. Ferris Wheel
  2. Rollercoaster
  3. Ticket Booth
  4. Ice Cream Stand
  5. Cotton Candy Stand
  6. Tin Can Alley
  7. Shooting Game
  8. Food Stand
  9. Beverages Stand
  10. Strongman Game
  11. Face in Hole
  12. Barrel Organ Player
  13. Balloon Seller
  14. Portrait Painter
  15. “Welcome” Gate (with a second variation of it)
  16. Bar Table

And the best thing is that you won’t have to wait very long at all for your very own amusement park to open, as our second Cosmetic DLC will already be out on August 11, at 6pm CEST/ 12pm EDT/ PDT, for a price of 4,99€/$.

There is one last question to cover, and that is the “Bustling City Life” Pack, which put up a very brave effort in our Anno Union vote and came in an extremely close second. We have been receiving lots of questions about the possibility of doing this second pack as well ever since. The answer is that we would love to do so! Should the Amusements Pack prove to be as popular with players as we all hope, we would be very excited to do the City Life Pack for you all for release after Land of Lions, towards the end of the year, including a small pond with pedal boats to help your citizens cool down in the heat. For now, we cannot wait to see all our beautiful screenshots of the Amusements Pack next week!

Stay safe,

The Anno Team

DevBlog: Anno 1404 History Edition

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Hey Anno Community,

Welcome to the fourth and final part of our series of DevBlogs covering the four classic Anno games included in the upcoming Anno History Collection. This time, we will cover perennial fan-favorite Anno 1404. If you did not get a chance to check out our previous three blogs yet, we would encourage you to do so before reading on (especially the first one):

DevBlog Anno 1602 History Edition, and our general philosophy behind the History Collection

DevBlog Anno 1701

DevBlog Anno 1503

Classic gameplay on modern PCs

As outlined before, our priority with this collection and the four games included (the History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) was to maintain the classic gameplay that we have all grown to love over the past two decades, while ensuring that playing these games on your current PCs is smooth and hassle-free. This is of course also true for Anno 1404 History Edition:

The game has been completely ported to be 64-bit only, meaning it can now take full advantage of the RAM in your PC, which helps improve performance and stability. This is especially relevant for Anno 1404, as we will discuss in a moment.

 

An idyllic countryside scene in Anno 1404 History Edition

As with the other three games, Anno 1404 HE will support screen resolutions all the way up to stunning 4k, with the game automatically scaling the user interface to remain comfortably playable even at such a high resolution.

Improved and enhanced multiplayer functionality via Uplay. In addition to the tried and true multiplayer setup you are used to, there will also be a quickmatch function and desync recovery like the one seen in Anno 1800.

Anno 1404: One for the ages

As we mentioned last week, Anno 1701 was a game of many firsts. Not only did it mark the franchise’s first foray into full 3D gameplay, but it was also the first Anno game from the current team at Ubisoft Mainz (née Related Designs). Having very successfully assumed the mantle of Anno stewards, the team set out to work on the “Empire” to their initial “New Hope”. When the game eventually set sail in Summer of 2009, it immediately captivated the imagination of players with its lovingly detailed worlds, allowing players to create picturesque renaissance cities that were bustling with life. Having proven their mastery of the classic Anno formula with 1701, Related Designs felt ready to introduce some big new features with 1404, many of which (or at least their influence) are still evident a decade later in Anno 1800.

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The most eye-catching new element was of course the Orient as a second new playable culture in addition to the European-inspired occident. Having an architecturally, culturally and geographically distinct second part of the game, with two separate residential tiers as well as new production chains and goods was not only mind-blowing to players of Anno 1404, but will also sound familiar to avid industrialists who have been spending time in 1800’s New World or the Passage. The Orient even had its own major building project with the Sultan’s mosque (as a counterpart to the Occident’s Imperial Cathedral), and special regional gameplay with the Norias. These machines came in two variations and were used, much as in the real world, to help water the land, allowing players to construct farms in the otherwise arid land. Rumor has it that you may soon see a new spin on this established concept when it is time to travel to the “Land of Lions” in the last DLC of Anno 1800’s Season 2 this fall. The game also put a bigger emphasis on building a living world for players to get lost in with its ensemble of beloved AI characters such as the benevolent Lord Northburgh and his wise oriental counterpart Grand Vizier Al Zahir, the despicable Cardinal Lucius or the fan- and meme-favorite Leif Jorgensen, as well as a huge selection of quests to further flesh them out. As Anno tradition at the time demanded, the game received a popular expansion the following year, called “Venice” (one of the rare references to a real country or city in the otherwise fictional Anno series). The expansion not only added the highly anticipated multiplayer mode, but also some impactful new features. Chief among them was the espionage system, which gave players some interesting ways to mess with their opponents in covert ways, and the assembly, which could be used to buy out other islands (similarly to Anno 1800’s island shares).

 

Norias can be used to make the orient bloom

Having been well received before, the “Venice” expansion raised Anno 1404 to the level of an all-time city-building classic, and the game has generally been considered the franchise’s high-water mark prior to Anno 1800. It is certainly no coincidence that the next two Anno games would explore futuristic new frontiers instead of continuing to explore the middle-ages. It would be a full decade between Anno 1404’s release, and Anno’s return to a historically inspired setting with 1800 in 2019.

With Anno 1404 still looking great and playing just as well, we focused our efforts for the History Edition on making the multiplayer work properly via Uplay (as discussed above), and the late game crash that has been plaguing some players for years. First, let us clear up a misunderstanding we have seen surface a few times since the announcement of the History Edition: the late game crashes in Anno 1404 are not the result of a “bug” in the game, but a consequence of the inherent inability of 32-bit software to address more than 4GB of RAM in your PC. In other words: once your empire reaches a certain magnitude, the game will run out of usable RAM, which will lead to a crash. It is also worth pointing out our general philosophy for Anno, as we do not put hard limits on buildings or units the way many other strategy games do. Instead our approach was always that you can keep building until you max out your hardware or run of out of space in the game world, and we are often deeply impressed by resourceful players finding some tricks to cram just a few hundred more citizens into their cities (you are very lucky that there are no building safety inspectors in Anno!). In the case of Anno 1404, the game unfortunately came out at a time when 32-bit software and operating systems were still the standard, and so players had to contend with the limits of their hard- and software at the time. With the 64-bit version that is the History Edition, the issue of the game running out of Ram will be one of the past, and you should be able to reach new levels of building uninterrupted. Let the citizen-cramming begin! Please note however that due to this change, the system requirements of all History Edition games are much higher than for the original games (though still very modest compared to today’s games, of course). The system requirements for the Anno History Collection are:

 

  Minimum Recommended
Operating system Windows 7, 8.1, 10 (64-bit) Windows 7, 8.1, 10 (64-bit)
Processor Intel Core i3-3220 3.3Ghz AMD FX-4130 3.9Ghz Intel Core i5-4460 3.2Ghz AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 3.2Ghz
Memory 4GB RAM 4GB RAM
GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2GB) AMD Radeon R7 265 (2GB) NVIDIA GeForce 770 4GB AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB
DirectX DirectX 11 DirectX 11
Hard Drive 30GB 30GB
Sound DirectX-compatible DirectX-compatible

Other improvements to Anno 1404 History Edition include:

First, because we all know the question is coming: Yes, everyone gets access to the silver ship. You are welcome.

 

The highly coveted silver command ship

Multiscreen support, so you can not only have a globe- but also a monitor-spanning empire.

Borderless Window mode, in addition to Fullscreen and Windowed

Optional multi-placement of residential buildings, to make painting down new housing for your citizens quick and painless

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/655249185

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Anno 1404 HE will of course also have save game compatibility, meaning that you will be able to take your old save games and pick up playing where you last stopped.

You will also be able to create new custom scenarios or to import and play old scenarios created with the editing tools. One small caveat though: We will not be bringing back the old “Gate to the World” portal for scenario sharing, though there are of course plenty of ways to share your scenarios with other players these days.

Finally, languages. Anno 1404 History Edition will support English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, and Russian languages.

Bonus Content

As mentioned in the Anno 1602 HE blog, we have asked Dynamedion to compose a new History Edition Suite encompassing the main themes of all four games, which you can of course also enjoy with Anno 1404 HE, alongside the rest of the game’s digital soundtrack. Beyond that, buyers of this version can look forward to a special commemorative Anno 1404 wallpaper, and a company logo for use in Anno 1800. Keep in mind that anyone who buys the full Anno History Collection on Uplay will also get an additional fifth company logo, plus a special ornament for use in Anno 1800.

And with that, our series of DevBlogs/ retrospectives comes to an end. All that is left for us to do is to share a list of all versions and where to buy them next week, before the Anno History Edition launches globally on June 25! Stay safe and stay building!

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DevBlog: Anno 1503 History Edition

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Hey Anno Community,

Welcome to the third part of our series of DevBlogs covering the four classic Anno games included in the upcoming Anno History Collection. This time, we will cover Anno 1503, and a black mark on the Anno franchise that we are incredibly happy to finally erase after 18 years! If you did not get a chance to check out our two previous blogs yet, we would encourage you to do so before reading on (especially the first one):

DevBlog Anno 1602 History Edition, and our general philosophy behind the History Collection

DevBlog Anno 1701

Classic gameplay on modern PCs

As outlined before, our priority with this collection and the four games included (the History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) was to maintain the classic gameplay that we have all grown to love over the past two decades, while ensuring that playing these games on your current PCs is smooth and hassle-free. This is of course also true for Anno 1503 History Edition:

The game has been completely ported to be 64-bit only, meaning it can now take full advantage of the RAM in your PC, which helps improve performance and stability.

An Anno 1503 city in its full 4k glory (low UI scaling)

As with the other three games, Anno 1503 HE will support screen resolutions all the way up to stunning 4k. As with Anno 1602 HE, you will be able to manually select a UI scale to ensure that the UI remains comfortable to use even at 4k.

“Now hold on a minute”, we can hear you shout, “what about the improved multiplayer?”. Well…why don’t you grab a cold (or warm) drink of your choice, get comfortable, and we dive into another history lesson together?

Anno 1503: A great sequel with a glaring omission

While small Austrian developer MAX Design had developed several decently successful games like Oldtimer before, nothing could have prepared them for the meteoric success of Anno 1602 when they first released it in Spring 1998. Between rave reviews and stellar sales in German-speaking markets, Anno did right out of the gate become a heavy hitter in the then-burgeoning PC strategy market. Of course, with great success comes great expectations, so when it was time for the team to plot a course for their next game, they had to do so with the newfound burden of developing a sequel to Germany’s best-selling PC game of the year.

With that in mind, it should not be too surprising that Anno 1503’s development took unusually long for its time, coming out more than four years later in Fall 2002. When it finally did come out, it not only offered a plethora of new content (such as several different biomes and hundreds of building models), but also some big shake-ups to 1602’s tried-and-true gameplay.

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For example, rulers in Anno 1503 could no longer rely on taxes from their citizenry to fill their coffers. Instead, the game followed a more mercantile setup where players had to build market stalls where they sold wares to residents to finance their empire. While some of these changes proved highly controversial, no one could accuse MAX Design of playing to safe with their 1602 follow-up! More impactful changes that first made their way into the series were different cultures such as Venetians or Inuit and the fact that some traders now had their own island rather than just a periodically visiting ship.

While the execution of course varies, you can still see many of these ideas living on in Anno 1800, with our geographically varied sessions and traders like Madame Kahina or the Inuit in “The Passage”. And of course, Anno 1503 stayed true to the form established with 1602 by being a stunningly beautiful game, with highly detailed 2D graphics that were filled with small details that brought the world to life. Much like its predecessor, the game also became an instant success in Germany, immediately topping the charts and becoming one of the biggest hits of the year. In other words, everything could have been perfect for MAX Design, Sunflowers and Anno 1503… if not for that pesky multiplayer mode.

1503 managed to be even more detailed than Anno 1602

During development, it was promised that Anno 1503 would come with a multiplayer mode that would allow players to compete for resources as they built their empires. However, it turned out that with this promise the companies involved may have bitten off more than they could chew, as they struggled throughout development to get the multiplayer mode to be stable with the amount of data being sent back and forth between players. Come release, players found that the “Multiplayer” button in the main menu was greyed out, with a promise of it coming later down the road as a free update. Weeks became months, and when even the game’s expansion pack “Treasures, Monsters & Pirates” (which is of course part of the History Edition) was released without the promised multiplayer, Sunflowers had a proper scandal on its hands.

In the end, it was announced that work on the multiplayer mode was scrapped roughly 1 ½ years after Anno 1503’s release, bringing the inglorious saga to a sad ending. Despite all the work and even a beta test, the team were unable to reach the level of performance and stability required to release the multiplayer mode officially, instead opting to remove the previously greyed-out button from the menu. The resourceful Anno community eventually made the mode available via mods and fan patches, but the black mark of the long-promised and ultimately cancelled multiplayer mode has stuck with the game and the Anno series ever since, to the point where people still brought it up when Anno 1800 was announced more than a decade later by a completely different developer and publisher!

When we started talking about doing the Anno History Collection, this quickly became the crucial point- could we finally erase the black mark and officially release the Anno 1503 multiplayer mode after all these years? If not, there would be no point in doing this collection, so the first step for our programmers was to dive into the old source code to see if we had everything needed. Once we managed to get it running and performing well, we knew that we could offer long-time Anno fans special surprise with the History Collection.

As with the other games, Anno 1503 History Edition’s mode will be powered by Uplay and have not only all the originally envisioned features, but also a quickmatch mode and desync recovery. In addition, we even created all-new content in the form of three additional multiplayer scenarios, to round out the two from the original developers!

Other improvements to Anno 1503 History Edition include:

Three new optional mouse cursors to pick from in addition to the original style

Borderless Window mode, in addition to Fullscreen and Windowed

Optional multi-placement of residential buildings, to make painting down new housing for your citizens quick and painless

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Optional mouse-scrolling for smoother movement across the map

We fixed a graphical glitch that would appear on coastlines; as with the other improvements, this is entirely optional, in case you prefer to see how things looked back in the day

All these improvements can be select from a new options menu, which also offers an overview of all hotkey bindings.

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Finally, we fixed an old issue that put a hard limit on the number of available units in the game(the so-called “FIG value), which would result in a crash once that number was reached. That means that record builders will no longer be limited by this issue and can once again start the race for new citizen records!

The 1503 HE will of course also have save game compatibility, meaning that you will be able to take your old save games and pick up playing where you last stopped.

There is some bad news, however. We sadly will not be releasing an updated version of the Anno 1503 editor, as it was only released in German previously, and issues with the source code prevent us from localizing it. You can however still use scenarios that were made in the original editor in the History Edition. Also, three tracks from the original game’s soundtrack will not be coming back, due to licensing reasons.

Finally, languages. Anno 1503 History Edition will support English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch languages.

1503 was the first game to introduce different biomes into the Anno series

Bonus Content

As mentioned in the Anno 1602 HE blog, we have asked Dynamedion to compose a new History Edition Suite encompassing the main themes of all four games, which you can of course also enjoy with Anno 1503 HE, alongside the rest of the digital soundtrack. Beyond that, buyers of this version can look forward to a special commemorative Anno 1503 wallpaper, and a company logo for use in Anno 1800. Keep in mind that anyone who buys the full Anno History Collection on Uplay will also get an additional fifth company logo, plus a special ornament for use in Anno 1800.

And that is it for today! Let us know about your favorite Anno 1503 memories in the comments and join us soon for our look at the History Editions crown jewel, Anno 1404.

DevBlog: Anno 1701 History Edition

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Hey Anno Community,

Welcome back to part two of our in-depth look at the games included in this month’s Anno History Collection. Today we want to tackle Anno 1701, which is a special game to the team in many ways. But before we get into the specifics of 1701, let us recap our general approach to the Anno History Collection and the improvements that have been made across the board on all the games. Should you have missed our first blog on Anno 1602 History Edition, we would encourage you to give that a read first.

Classic gameplay on modern PCs

As outlined before, our priority with this collection and the four games included (History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) was to maintain the classic gameplay that we have all grown to love over the past two decades, while ensuring that playing these games on your current PCs is smooth and hassle-free. This is of course also true for Anno 1701 History Edition:

The game has been completely ported to be 64-bit only, meaning it can now take full advantage of the RAM in your PC, which helps improve performance and stability.


Anno 1701 History Edition making the lightning strike twice

Online multiplayer is back! Anno 1701 originally used the since deprecated Gamespy middleware, which means that playing the game online has not been easily possible for years. This History Edition will allow you to play via Uplay, with all the previously available options of classic Anno 1701 multiplayer coming back. In addition, there will be an option for quickmatches, and desync recovery (the error that occurs when the game state between the participating players is no longer synchronized), like what is offered in Anno 1800.

Higher resolutions: As with the other three games, Anno 1701 HE will support screen resolutions all the way up to stunning 4k. And of course, the UI will automatically adapt to your chosen resolution to make sure that the game remains easy to play, no matter if you chose 4k or keep it old-school at 1024×768.

Anno 1701: A game of many firsts

As mentioned above, Anno 1701 holds a special place, for two closely intertwined reasons: not only was it the first Anno game to be in full 3D, but also the first one to be made by the team that is today known as Ubisoft Mainz (that’s us!). Time for a little history lesson!

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As you may know, the first two Anno games were developed by a small Austrian developer called MAX Design, for their publisher Sunflowers. While both Anno 1602 and 1503 were tremendously successful, the way the industry was going was clear, with most other major strategy game franchises of the day making the jump to 3D graphics. This proved to be an issue, with the tiny MAX Design team being unprepared for the challenges of 3D development. And being based in the small town of Schladming, which is best known for winter sports, recruiting outside talent was not an easy solution either. At the same time, publisher Sunflowers had started conversations with a German developer called Related Designs about a potential collaboration on a military-focused realtime-strategy game codenamed “Anno Wars”.

Eventually, things came to a head between MAX and Sunflowers, with the latter instead opting to contract Related Designs to develop the next full Anno game. This would prove to be a major turning point for the Mainz-based studio, which had previously found some success with its 3D real-time titles Castle Strike and No Man’s Land. If this was a fairytale, we would be ending this history lesson with “…and they lived happily ever after”, but more accurately we should say “while they changed their name from Related Designs to Ubisoft Blue Byte and eventually Ubisoft Mainz, they happily developed all main Anno games ever since”.

So there you have it- Anno 1701 not only brought a beloved mix of city-building, trade, discovery, and warfare into the 3D dimension, but was also the first game from the same core team that is still hard at work on Anno more than 15 years later! In fact, if you were to compare the credits of Anno 1701 and 1800, you might notice that more than a dozen people from then are part of the Anno 1800 team, with even more working on other projects inside the Ubisoft Mainz studio. Finally, this was also the first Anno game to make use of the musical talents of Dynamedion for its soundtrack, with the studio becoming our partner for Anno music ever since.

While the switch to incredibly detailed 3D graphics has of course been the most eye-catching change to the previous games, 1701 also had some noticeable gameplay changes, like the central town square – with its visual feedback showing the happiness of your citizens, and the ability to set individual taxes for each residential tier. Avid Anno 1800 players may recognize how these concepts evolved into riots and tiered workforce in our latest title! As was tradition, Anno 1701 also received an expansion roughly a year after its original 2006 release, with the most notable addition of “The Sunken Dragon” being the single-player campaign that the core game had been missing. All expansion content is of course included in the History Edition as well.


“The Sunken Dragon” immerses players in an Asia-inspired setting

Building upon a classic

Here is what we are doing for the History Edition of Anno 1701:

Higher camera zoom: Zoom out further than ever before to get a better look at your sprawling empire (please note that this has to be optionally enabled by changing the game’s Engine.ini file)

Multi-placement of residential buildings: As with Anno 1800, you can now drag and drop as many residential buildings as you want (or your resources allow for) at a time

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Multiscreen support: Extremely rare when the game first released, multi-screen setups are commonplace these days, and now you can make full use of their screens. Anno 1701 History Edition goes even one step further by supporting three different UI styles for multiscreen setups: Compact UI, Split UI or Stretched UI. With these presets, any player is sure to find a style that meets their personal preferences!

Smoother scrolling when moving the camera

Borderless Window mode to make it easier to stream the game online

Anno 1701 History Edition is of course compatible with your existing save games, so you can keep playing right where you left off back when 1701 came out! This compatibility also extends to user created scenarios, as we are also shipping the updated 1701 World Editor with the game.

Finally, Anno 1701 History Edition will be available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, and Hungarian.


A typical city in Anno 1701 History Edition

Bonus Content

As mentioned in the Anno 1602 HE blog, we have asked Dynamedion to compose a new History Edition Suite encompassing the main themes of all four games, which you can of course also enjoy with Anno 1701, alongside the rest of the digital soundtrack. Beyond that, buyers of this version can look forward to a special commemorative Anno 1701 wallpaper, and a company logo for use in Anno 1800. Keep in mind that anyone who buys the full Anno History Collection on Uplay will also get an additional fifth company logo, plus a special ornament for use in Anno 1800.

And that is it for today! Let us know about your favorite Anno 1701 memories in the comments and join us next week as we take a look at Anno 1503 History Edition, and the tale of the long-lost multiplayer mode!

DevBlog: Anno 1602 History Edition

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Hey Anno Community,

Last month we announced the release of the Anno History Collection arriving June 25, which will update the beloved first four games in the Anno series to take better advantage of modern PCs, while maintaining the gameplay we all know and love. As promised at the announcement, we will have a separate blog post for each of the games to not only talk about the new improvements, but also about the games and their place in Anno history themselves. As this is the first blog, we will take this opportunity to talk a bit about the History Collection in general, before diving right into Anno 1602 History Edition!

Our goals for the History Collection

The first question that came to many minds upon our announcement was of course “why?”, so let us start with that. As you know, Anno 1800 has been a huge success for the team, becoming the fastest-selling Anno game right out of the gate, and attracting more than a million players within its first nine months on the market. Many of these players have been discovering the Anno series for the first time with 1800, and we have been seeing more and more questions about the older games. Of course, it is also possible that many of our international players have played an Anno game in the past, and simply did not realize! You see, the games industry was quite different one or two decades ago.

In the case of Anno, the history in non-German-speaking markets has been a curious one. The first four games that are part of the collection all had different publishers and distribution partners in different countries, which also resulted in all of them having different names in various regions! Turns out that the 1602 A.D. or Dawn of Discovery games you played in your youth were Anno games! In fact, it was not until the series took a trip into the future with Anno 2070 that the series’ name would be used globally. In this sense, the collection presents a good way to get our entire community on the same page. You may have also noticed that the artworks for the History Editions of the games have new logos that are closer in style to Anno 1800’s, unifying the branding of the series going forward to make sure that you will immediately recognize anything Anno when you see it  (don’t worry- we went with the classic logos inside the games for nostalgia’s sake!).


A typical Anno 1602 city (low UI scaling)

Of course, that is only part of our reasoning- the much more important aspect is enabling players to enjoy these games without issues and tinkering on their modern PCs and operating systems. Both the gaming industry and technology have undergone some huge changes since these games first saw the light of day (keep in mind that even Anno 1404 as the newest of these titles is more than a decade old), which have led to some of these games being harder to play on current PCs and their multiplayer becoming inaccessible. So, when we started discussing the possibility of releasing such a collection, we defined three key goals:


  1. Make them easy to run well on modern PCs. No more fiddling with legacy Windows settings or struggling with hard- and software incompatibilities!
  2. Bring back multiplayer and make it easy to use. Each of the old games used a different multiplayer setup, using either deprecated internal solutions or middleware that no longer exists such as Gamespy.
  3. Above all else, we wanted to maintain the gameplay the community loves, while seeing if we can make some smaller quality of life changes that make playing these games a smoother experience.

Let us go through these step by step!

Porting all games to 64-bit

Given that they were released between 11 and 22 years ago, all the older Anno games were released as 32-bit software (whereas Anno 2205 or 1800 are 64-bit software only). While that was normal at the time (with 64-bit operating systems and processors only becoming widely used much later), it also comes with some inherent problems that the games share with all 32-bit software. The most obvious being the fact that 32-bit software can only address 4GB of RAM in your system, due to a hard limit on the number of RAM bytes the software can address. In other words- no matter how much RAM you may have in your modern PC, these old games can only use less than 4GB of it.

With this in mind, it was a priority for us to port the games to 64-bit, to make sure your growing empires can make full use of all your available resources. You will also note other general improvements to performance and stability, making playing these classics all-around much smoother (this is especially true for the oldest games, Anno 1602 and 1503).

The other big topic on the tech side was of course the graphics, seeing how a resolution of 1024×768 would have already been opulent beyond belief when Anno 1602 first came out. Here we again want to strike a balance between preserving beloved games and making playing them a smooth experience in 2020 and beyond. That is why we have kept all the original game assets intact but have changed the games to properly support widescreen formats and resolutions all the way up to 4k. And yes, full 4k support of course means that the UI will scale with the higher resolution to make sure that you can comfortably play the game! In the case of Anno 1602, you will have the option to freely choose between three different UI sizes at any time during the game.


Anno 1602 History Edition in all its 4k glory, with high UI scaling

Bringing back and improving multiplayer functionality

As mentioned above, time has not been kind to the multiplayer functionality of the classic Anno games, forcing many of them offline due to their previously used infrastructure and middleware becoming outdated or even deprecated. To ensure that you can relive your memories of past battles and will be able to play all four games for years to come, we have ported all of their multiplayer functionality to Uplay, with a feature set similar to what we use for Anno 1800. Regarding graphics, we are ensuring that all the previously available gameplay options and features stay the same, but are in addition to custom lobbies, including matchmaking for quickmatches. In the case of a de-sync (game state of clients differs), we have introduced a comfortable recovery to reduce the impact of such incidents to a minimum (except for 1602 since it uses a different synchronization technique).

With the technical jargon out of the way, let’s talk Anno 1602!

Placing the cornerstone with Anno 1602

The question what makes Anno 1602 special is of course an easy one to answer: Being the first game in the series, there would have not been an Anno 1503, 1404 or 1800 if Anno 1602 had not been an instant hit, and gone on to become one of the most successful PC games ever in Germany. Originally released in Spring 1998 by Austrian developer MAX Design and German publisher Sunflowers, the game immediately became a major contender in the then-crowded city-building genre. Even then, all the hallmarks of Anno were already in evidence: gamers enjoyed highly detailed 2D graphics as they tried to satisfy their citizens’ increasing demands, unlocking ever more complex production chains in the process.

As with all classic Anno games, 1602 would eventually get an expansion called “New Islands, New Adventures”, which not only added dozens of new scenarios and islands, but also improvements to the core gameplay. All this content is of course also part of the History Edition release.

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Building upon a classic

As mentioned, it was crucial for us to preserve this classic gameplay, so new players can see how Anno started out. To this end, we are introducing a few quality-of-life improvements, which are entirely optional (so if you want to play with just one mouse button, be our guest!). These improvements are:


  • Modern controls: Anno 1602 used a very retro control scheme, employing just the left mouse button for all actions. We have implemented the option to switch to modern Anno controls, using the right mouse button for navigation and to order your ships.

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  • To go alongside that, there is also a new mouse cursor to replace the classic Windows-esque look
  • You can now use the mouse wheel for zooming (this one is a permanent change). Fun fact- back then, many mice did not even have mouse wheels!
  • Borderless window mode, making both streaming and task-switching to look up your favorite guides more convenient. This is of course in addition to full-screen and windowed modes.
  • Given their extremely low resolution, you can now opt to have the beloved cutscenes that play when you find a new resource etc. show in the minimap window instead, allowing you to keep building while you indulge in the nostalgia

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We have also implemented a new in-game menu where you can change these settings at any time and added a new overview screen of all the keyboard shortcuts.

Another especially important feature is save game compatibility, allowing you to take your old saves from previous versions of the game, and to keep building those empires in this History Edition! Even better, this support also extends to user-generated content! Not only have we updated the Anno 1602 Editor to work with the new enhancements, but you will also be able to load up any previously generated user scenarios!

Finally, we need to address languages, with the Anno 1602 History Edition supporting the following languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Polish.

With these improvements, we hope to strike an ideal balance between presenting classic gameplay as it was intended by its original developer, while giving players some optional improvements to make playing Anno 1602 easier than ever for a modern audience.

Bonus Content

Finally, we want to throw in some additional goodies to thank you all for your support of Anno over the years. To this end, we have asked our friends at Dynamedion (the masterminds behind Anno 1800’s orchestral soundtrack) to arrange a new History Collection Suite combining elements of all four games’ main themes, which has been added to the game’s playlist. Other digital bonus content includes the Anno 1602 soundtrack, a special new wallpaper commemorating the game, and a new 1602-themed company logo for use in Anno 1800. Let us know if you have any additional questions about the Anno 1602 History Edition and see you soon for a look at Anno 1701!

DevBlog: Bright Harvest

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

In an office environment “working in silos” seems rarely a good thing, but out there among the buttercups and daisies these silver sentinels must surely be a reassuring sight to a farmer. Though the word comes to us from ancient Greek, Levantine silos for holding grain have been found dating back over 7000 years. The modern farm silo appears to have been the brainchild of one Fred Hatch, who in 1876, finally managed to convince his old man to let him build a grain store in the barn for green corn fodder. Hatch’s cows quickly became inflated distortions of themselves, living out the winter in luxury, and becoming the envy of any neighboring farmers.

Imagine then the effect, at a similar time, of the “portable” tractor, putt-putting its way nonchalantly about the place, undercutting millennia of peasant toil and hardship. Steam-driven, petrol-driven it didn’t seem to matter; the efficiencies were great, and drastic of course in their implications for Frank and Felicity the farmhands, who had to find other work. “Sorry you two, I don’t need ye, I got me a traction engine now…” And while the Luddites were long gone, you can’t imagine that at least some of these new tractors weren’t torched for their impudence…

Despite feeling much longer, it has only been a little over two months since we first announced our second Season of Anno 1800, including three new DLCs. Now the time is almost here to send you all out into the farming fields with our second Season 2 DLC, the agriculturally themed “Bright Harvest”. Today, we not only want to give you insights into what expect when “Bright Harvest” drops this Summer, but also our thoughts behind the creation of this new content. So, time to put on your favorite straw hat, and to hit the fields!


Stylish hat? Check! Tractor? Check! Let’s get farming!

From its conception on, Anno 1800 has always been a game of two worlds. Early on, you build picturesque farming hamlets that tell you little about the industrial revolution that is about to happen. Later, as you construct heavily industrialized districts full of huge, smoke-belching factories, those hamlets in turn start to seem positively antiquated. Of course, this evolution is not only visual, but also expressed in gameplay, with the electricity system giving players the option to give their industrial production a dramatic boost in efficiency later in the game.

So, when we started at possible DLCs for Season 2, we quickly decided that giving players a farming analogue to electricity is something we want to explore. Such content would have to check a few boxes: it should have nice visual feedback (“feedback units” being the term we internally use for all the citizens and units wandering around the Anno world) and it should incentivize players to consider rearranging their farms and associated buildings. The Tetris-like chase of the most optimal way to arrange buildings to make the best use of limited building space is a big part of Anno, and so we want to give players reasons to reconsider their layouts from time to time. With these goals in mind, let us see how we put them into practice.

The new gameplay in “Bright Harvest” comes from three new elements: tractor modules, silos, and fuel. Let us start with what you have already seen in our Season 2 trailer, the tractors. How do you get them? Tractors are activated via a tractor module, of which you can build one per agricultural farm, connecting it to the main building. Doing so will result in several things: allowing you to construct 50% more fields per farm, which you will need to boost the efficiency of the farm to 300%. In addition, the amount of required farming workforce will be lowered. In other words: tractors allow you to work larger fields more effectively, while requiring less manual labor to do so.


A Fuel Station is getting supplied with oil

Of course, simply building a module once and then forever benefitting from these boosts would be boring, which brings us to the fact that your tractors require fuel to function. This is where the Fuel Station comes in, which will (surprise?) produce the fuel needed to keep your tractors running, provided it is in turn supplied with oil via the railway system. Should your tractors run out of fuel, the farm will revert to its pre-industrialized state, requiring more workforce and only working the normal number of fields (ignoring new fields from the tractor boost). As such, tractors (a catch-it-all term we use for several different machines, as you can see in the screenshots) become available on tier 4 alongside steam motors (at 500 Engineers).

During our internal playtests, we quickly agreed that it would be a shame to only have the tractors for the agricultural farms, so we needed a counterpart for animal-based farms. Enter silo modules, which follow the same basic concept of allowing you to construct one attached silo per farm, which will boost the efficiency of your farms to 200%. Of course, it would be gross malpractice to try and feed fuel to the animals, so instead each session has a good that the silos will consume (and which needs to be transported to them): grain for the Old World, corn for the New World, and in the Land of Lio…oh, now that would be telling! Suffice to say that both tractors and silos will be available in all sessions that have farming buildings. Sorry Arctic, at least you get huskies!


A farmer in the New World

Of course, all these boosts could lead to a lot of additional goods being produced, which must be stored somewhere. Which is why you will be able to give your Kontors and warehouses an additional upgrade each: From tier three to tier four in the Old World sessions, and from tier two to three in the New World. Better even, both upgrades are free to all players, as part of Game Update 8. Buyers of the DLC will also get the ability to give their Oil Harbors another upgrade, as they will have to cope with the oil demands of their Fuel Stations.

That is it for the gameplay side, but there is more! When we released our first cosmetic DLC, the Holiday Pack, last Christmas, a lot of you asked for more every-day ornaments with an industrial feeling to further flesh out your cityscapes. As “Bright Harvest” is more of a systemic DLC that includes less new assets than previous DLCs, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to throw in some new ornaments that many of you have been asking for, such as haystacks and walls! In total, “Bright Harvest” will include over 30 new ornaments, with a focus on agricultural and industrial themes (including different fence and wall parts). We cannot wait to see all your screenshots once the DLC is out!


You asked fore them, so here they are: brickstone walls!

Beyond that, “Bright Harvest” also introduces 6 new Ubisoft Club challenges to test your farming skills. We also have new rewards you can spend your hard-earned club points on, but this time they take on a slightly different form- ship skins! Many of you having been asking for a long time for more visual variety in your ships, and so you will now be able to unlock new skins for the Battle Cruiser and Collier. Even better, you will be able to use these in already existing games, as you can change the skin of each of these ships individually to suit your taste. And since we already added this functionality, we are of course also extending it to the command ship and train, so you can at any time chose to use your Imperial Pack skins!

Now, after all this good news, it is time to tamper it with some bad news… As you know, we previously said that “Bright Harvest” is coming in Summer 2020. Turns out that is not the case, as Summer starts on June 20- whereas “Bright Harvest” will already be out on June 2! As always, owners of the Season 2 Pass will receive the DLC for free, while it will also become available for a la carte purchase for 6,99€/$ at launch. Stick with the Anno Union for more news on Game Update 8 as we get closer to launch and stay safe!