Modding Spotlight: Towards New Horizons

Hey Anno Community,

Today is a great day for Anno 1800, as it marks the release of the “New Horizons” mod! After 5 years of hard work and effort, we wanted to celebrate the release of this highly anticipated mod together with its creators and the Anno Community as a whole. The team behind this massive project includes Taubenangriff, jje1000 and Hier0nimus – well-known names in the Anno modding community.

Who can explain the content of the mod better than the people behind this big project? So, we asked them:

What can Anno 1800 fans expect in the New Horizons mod?

In Vanilla Anno 1800, there are four regions, the Old World, New World, Arctic and Enbesa, each with their own population and production. In New Horizons, we are adding a fifth region, Horai, which is inspired by East Asia, mostly Japan and China. Horai itself has two population tiers, as does each Colony region, and its residents want products like porcelain, tea, sake and koto instruments. On top of that, the session comes with its own challenges and mechanics: First of all, your farm production in Horai is going to be regularly interrupted by monsoons, something you might have already experienced in the Seasons of Silver scenario. If you need additional workforce and money, you can provide your Horaiese population with street food, and if you look to complete fancy architecture projects, you can rebuild the Wonders of Horai on your islands.

Not only does New Horizons contain an Asian-inspired session, it also adds a sixth population tier in the Old World at the end of the progression where Investors can now upgrade to Magnates, who turn the endgame economy on its head by providing little income for high efficiency, and it should come as little of a surprise that Magnates primarily want goods from the Horai session.

As with previous Modding Spotlights, we’ve prepared for you an extensive Q&A with the team behind the mod – both about their modding experience as well as about the mod itself. Without further ado, let’s dive into it!

Q&A, Part 1: Modding experience

What would you advise someone who wanted to get into modding Anno?

Discovering your creative side takes a lot of effort and time, and you will never find out about it if you do not start off just creating things. Creative skills can be learned, and ultimately you do not have to be the best in your discipline to create cool stuff and have fun with it. It takes a bit of stubbornness and persistence to transform your vision into reality.

But most importantly, do it for the fun, not for the result. And you will always have learned something valuable in the process.

 

Did you have any prior modding knowledge or specific skills (programming, 3D Art, UI Design, …) when starting to mod Anno?

We had and have a lot of talent on the team that was involved, and what we can do covers pretty much the entire palette that you might need when creating and modding games. That reached from being very capable at reverse engineering and programming to bringing 3D art skills or general knowledge of how to code mods for Anno 1800. But most importantly, no single person on the team could do everything, so it was very important to assign tasks based on who could do what. This collaboration was very important during development, because this way every task could be handled by someone who knew what they were doing.

 

The skillsets on the team could be very specific, we even had someone on the team who specialised in Sound Engine modding, which became very handy when porting and implementing resident voice lines from other Annos into 1800, because none of the others on the team could have done that. Some of us also used New Horizons to expand and practice their skillset, like learning and improving 3D art skills with and for the project, which was a great learning opportunity.

How did you get into modding? What prompted you to create Anno 1800 mods specifically?

Taubenangriff: I used to do record building on Anno 2070 a lot before 1800 came out. That was roughly the time where I learned general programming. Then 1800 came out and it all started at a white empty Plaza tile that was missing from the release, but which I wanted to build. So, I tried my luck on it, it worked, and through that I got to know a lot of awesome people that also tried their luck with modding Anno 1800. Mind you, that was even before there was a modloader for the game.

Well, in the midst of that pioneer era of modding, we started getting better and better and eventually went crazy with our ideas – that is when New Horizons was born out of pure hybris and megalomania. Well, and now 5 years later I’m here and it’s done.

 

Not too long ago we did an interview with Hier0nimus. You can check it out here.

Q&A Part 2: Behind-the-scenes of the “New Horizons” mod

For the second part of this spotlight, we were of course very curious how the team handled the development of the “New Horizons” mod.

 

Did you know what you were committing yourself to when starting the project?

No, absolutely not. This project is the result of the pure stubbornness to complete a vision that we came up with years ago. We knew that this project was not going to be easy, it was going to be a lot of work, but the scope kept on growing and growing – which primarily came down to increasing standards. When you compare the visual quality of the early Anno 1800 mods with mods that are more recent, there is a huge apparent upgrade, and that upgrade coincides with our skillset and toolstack growing.

So, not only did we create all of New Horizons, but we also updated old assets multiple times, because we just knew that we could do better than what we created earlier.

 

You’ve mentioned multiple times in reddit posts or videos the different contributors to the mod. How big of a team worked on this mammoth project? How did you collaborate?

We always had a core team, which for the first two years or so pretty much consisted of Taubenangriff doing art content by himself, but the core team expanded to 2-3 people, namely bringing in jje1000 to create and overhaul a lot of art assets and Hier0nimus for coding and item work. Moreover, a lot of people joined to contribute in the form of individual projects over time, where they would create a single part of the mod, i.e. a set of ornaments, a single wonder or the magnate houses. So, in total around 15 people worked on the project but they never did so at the same time.

 

To organize our effort, we set up half-yearly milestones where we would define tasks in advance and distribute the work among the team, and regularly shared our progress internally, as well as using version control to backup, manage and bring together our work.

But we also regularly stepped in to help each other complete our tasks, so that everyone could bring in their skillset where it was suited for best. This was perhaps the most important part in getting the mod to a reasonable quality level, being pragmatic about who should commit on doing what on often very limited time and resources.

Well, we know Anno 1800 doesn’t always make modding very… straightforward. What were your main challenges? How did you tackle them?

The main challenge during the development was that we could often not edit certain parts of the engine – like islands. Often, we then wrote our own tools to give us those possibilities for New Horizons, which were often then made public and have since become widely used in the modding community.

 

What is something players will have to get used to that they don’t know from the unmodded Anno 1800?

The regular seasons in Horai will certainly be a challenge for players, as storage space suddenly is a central resource. You will need to stockpile 30 minutes’ worth of farm production to get through a monsoon unimpeded, and that means you will need to invest extra space into building storages – but there is only so much building space to work with, and every tile that goes towards storage cannot be used for production buildings.

 

If you install the optional Item Rebalancing that comes alongside New Horizons, your items also suddenly will do different things – as an example, you cannot circumvent Steam Carriage production with Susannah Brightwoman anymore. But I want to stress the optionality of this, this is meant to be part of the mod, but ultimately up to your choice whether you care about better balancing or not.

If other players want to know more or have questions, where would you want them to go?

I reckon this is pretty much a standard answer by now, but you can always find us on the Anno 1800 modcorner discord. Don’t be shy, join and ask your questions there .

And you can visit the New Horizons modpage on mod.io: https://mod.io/g/anno-1800/m/new-horizons

 

 

A big thank you to the “New Horizons” team for taking the time for this modding spotlight and congratulations once more on the release of the mod!

We love seeing the Anno 1800 community still going strong and are sure this long-awaited mod will make many in the community very happy.

That brings us to the end of today’s blog. Make sure to check out “New Horizons” on mod.io and as usual: leave a nice comment over there for the mod creators if you enjoy their work.

Union Update: April developer livestream

Hey Anno Community,

As you might have seen from our social post last Friday, we announced a couple of things happening in the upcoming weeks.

Back in February, during our IGN Fan Fest segment, we mentioned we would show more of the game in April… well, we got the months mixed up. The full gameplay reveal will happen during the week of 19th May.

In the meantime, what about a developer livestream next week? During this livestream, we will be talking about changes to the Needs and Attributes system with Creative Director Manuel and Game Director Jan. So, if you’re curious to more about these topics, don’t miss out our livestream on Twitch, 15th April at 5:00 PM CEST / 9:00 AM PT.

We’ll see you there!

Union Update: Recapping a busy February

Hey Anno Community,

We have a packed Union Update with news for you today, so, grab some coffee or some posca and read on.

First: As some of you noticed, we currently have some issues here on the website with the login and comment feature specifically. We’re working on a resolution and hope to soon discuss Anno with you in the comment section again.

Beta sign-up and playtests

A few weeks ago we announced that we’ll be having beta tests later this year and opened registrations. You can still sign up for those playtests by following this link .

Since we have received some questions since: No, don’t worry, invites haven’t been sent yet. These beta playtests still lie a bit further in the future – you can be sure that we’ll let you know both here and across all our other channels as soon as invites have been sent (just so you know when to check your inbox).

 

Talking about playtests: As mentioned previously, we have already done multiple smaller scale focus tests and diary studies for Anno 117: Pax Romana in the past. These are organized in collaboration with the Ubisoft User Research Labs who are organising similar smaller-scale playtests for all Ubisoft games. We tend to look for a variety of player profiles for those tests and are organizing tests with different focuses. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, you can register here.
Important: This registration does not guarantee you access to any such future playtests but merely adds you to a “pool” of people that the User Research Lab may select candidates from for future playtests.

IGN Fan Fest

For those of you who missed, Anno 117: Pax Romana was at IGN Fan Fest last week! Manuel Reinher, our Creative Director, presented a new feature that’ll be part of Anno 117: Pax Romana – modular ships. We’ve already seen much conversation about this on Reddit and Discord, so feel free to share your speculations and thoughts about it there as well!

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Devblogs

After our very obvious hint about diagonal roads back in January, last week we published the first DevBlog dedicated to the road system in Anno 117: Pax Romana, in which we give an overview of what changed from Anno 1800 and what that means for your gameplay experience.

If you like the DevBlog, then we’ve got great news for you! In the next few weeks and months, more DevBlogs will be published here on the Anno Union: the second blog on the road system topic, where we’ll dive deeper into the technical details and the challenges of the new road system; a devblog fully dedicated to the new modular ships feature, to follow up on the IGN Fan Fest showcase; another devblog dedicated to game design, and much more! So, watch this space if you don’t want to miss out on super detailed blogs on what’s going on behind the scenes here at Ubisoft Mainz.

What about modding?

From Anno 1800, we already know very well: some of you love to create and use mods. In fact, the Anno 1800 modding community saw a fantastic increase over the years, creating some absolutely fantastic, creative mods as well as a bunch of useful quality-of-life pieces. We’re very much aware of their contribution to the Anno 1800 community as a whole, and it was therefore something that we were happy to support in 2023 with official mod support and the collaboration with mod.io.

For that reason, we also want to provide mod support for Anno 117: Pax Romana as early as possible.
For release, we can confirm that a mod loader will already be integrated into the game.

Additionally, our colleague Jakob is happy to help you with information to adjust community tools to changed data formats.

 

There are more ideas and things we want to do but that’s not something we are ready to discuss yet. For now, it was important to us to assure our (modding-)community that modding support is very much on our radar for Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Island Contest

Annoholics, we have a winner! As you may have already guessed from our social post: Congratulations to Logan!  Your design will now become an actual island in Anno 117: Pax Romana and we’re looking forward to sharing updates on its progress with you in the coming months.

As usual, we would of course also like to thank you all for participating in this contest – which quickly became the most popular one of the three, with more than 140 valid entries! The team, especially Level Art, was super impressed by your creativity during the selection process: selecting only 5 entries was a hard task. We’ve put together a collage with all your entries (if yours is missing, apologies: they were A LOT and some of them might have been accidentally missed from this image).

Governor Edition Voting

As you might have guessed from our latest social posts and news, there will be a Collector’s Edition for Anno 117: Pax Romana – the “Governor Edition”. A couple of weeks ago we’ve asked you to vote for your favourite design for the case and the artbook cover of the Governor Edition. The voting was a very close one – today, we share the results here on the Anno Union with you all:

Union Update: Vote for your favourite Island Design

Hey Anno Community,

It’s time for the last phase of our third and final Community Contest dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana – voting for your favourite island design!

Back in January, we challenged you to design your very own Latium island and submit your creation for a chance of your design becoming an actual island in Anno 117: Pax Romana. Well, you clearly understood the assignment and sent us SO MANY amazing designs!

We would like to take this moment to thank each and one of you who submitted an entry for the contest, your creativity and attention to details always amazes us. We had an incredibly hard time to only select a handful of them for the voting, there were so many fun designs!

So, after diligently going through all your submissions, the Level Art team has chosen 5 finalists for this contest.

PLEASE NOTE: Entries have been annonymised for the voting. The content has not yet been adjusted to fit the exact realities of the game. That means that any landscape elements, features, buildings etc. mentioned in these designs that have not been confirmed by us are pure speculation by these authors. The winning entry will be adjusted afterwards if necessary.

Click on any of these images to open them in a separate tab if you want to take a closer look.

We know – it’s hard to choose! Once you feel ready, cast your vote by clicking on the button below! Your vote is completely annonymous.

You will have time to vote until March 2nd end-of-day. We cannot wait to see the results of the voting and celebrate the winner.

Thank you all once again for participating in this contest, it’s been amazing to see your engagement and excitement for the game, throughout this.

Anno 117: Pax Romana at the IGN Fan Fest

And, at the very end of this blog, we want to direct attention to Thursday: As part of the IGN Fan Fest, our Creative Director Manuel will also talk about Anno 117 and reveal a new feature.

Tune in on Thursday at 7PM CET/10AM PT for the IGN Fan Fest. The Anno 117: Pax Romana segment will likely start around 8:30PM CET/11:30 AM PT.

Union Update: Beta Registration & Collector’s Edition

Hey Anno Community,

let us quickly update you on two recent pieces of news!

Register now for beta tests

You can now officially sign up for upcoming beta tests later this year via this website!

We’ll have more information on the exact dates of these tests in the coming months. From all registered players we will randomly draw a certain number of people based on the goals of the tests.

These tests serve to both collect your feedback on the game and its features as well as test performance and stability on all platforms and different kinds of hardware configuration.

The Anno 117: Pax Romana Collectors Edition

Just last week we confirmed with a teaser a question that many of you have already been asking: yes, Anno 117: Pax Romana will receive a Collectors Edition: the “Governor Edition”!

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You can register now via this link to not miss any future news on the Governor Edition. We’ll reveal more on the content of the edition later this year…

 

… but wait, we actually have a little sneak-peak already! In fact, we even need your input!

Right now, until February 21st, you can vote on your favourite design for the Governor Edition’s box, as well as the artbook that’s going to be included in the edition. Follow this link to the poll!

We’re very curious which designs you prefer!

Union Update – January news recap

Hey Anno Community,

While we’re in denial that January is already coming to an end – we’re still finishing up all the chocolate stockpiled during the holidays – we thought to have a small recap of the latest news in this Union Update.

Island design contest

Our third and last contest is up and running, Annoholics! Have you always dreamed to have your very own island design for an Anno game? Well, this is the perfect opportunity for you. In this contest, we challenge you to design an island for the Latium region, in Anno 117: Pax Romana. If you would like to submit your entry for a chance to see your island in the game, check the full rules here.

Since we received some questions on the topic of “group submissions” we updated the rules accordingly: two or more people can work together on a single island design.

An update on the Community Statue

Speaking of contests, we thought it was the perfect time for us to share an update on the Community statue! Last August we announced the winner of our first Community Contest – Design a Statue: the mighty Annocius, the god of the 9, created by HiddenMoon79.

A little disclaimer: this is a work-in-progress “highpoly sculpt” of the statue, it will still get texture and colours.

(Which also answers this recent question from Reddit)

Roads? Where we’re going, we… definitely need roads.

Last week, on a very fitting date – January 17th – we shared a little teaser on our social accounts.

And of course, you all at once spotted that something is different compared to previous Anno games. Diagonal roads! We have seen multiple questions on how the road system will work in Anno 117: Pax Romana but fear not: we have got a dedicated DevBlog coming in the next weeks. In the meantime, without too many spoilers on the topic, we would like to address some of the concerns we read in the comments.  

Q: Is this actual game footage or just part of a scene? 

A: Yes, this is a screenshot taken in-game by Oliver, our Community Developer, who diligently placed those roads for this teaser. We think he did a pretty good job, didn’t he?  

Q: What happened to the Anno grid? Did you get rid of it? 

A: No, we didn’t! For all the efficiency builders our there – do not worry, the grid will still be there in Anno 117: Pax Romana. Our dedicated DevBlog mentioned earlier will explain in detail how the road system works, and which improvements we did to the grid compared to Anno 1800 and previous Anno games. 

A wild Town Crier appears!

Yes, Annoholics! You have seen that right – a wild Town Crier has appeared in Anno 117: Pax Romana! You have already noticed how it recreates the scene from our reveal video, but will you see the Town Crier appear somewhere else? Who knows…

We hope you enjoyed our quick recap of the latest news, and the little teaser we sprinkled here and there in the past weeks. We’ve got more news coming, together with insightful DevBlogs on the new Anno… so, watch this space!

Community Contest – Design an island for Latium

Hello Anno Community,

It is time for the third and final Community quest dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana – where we ask you to use your creativity and imagination to create something that will make its way into the game.

Your third and final quest

From statue designing to quest writing, you have had quite some fun in the past few months! And we have loved seeing your creativity and imagination being applied to Anno 117: Pax Romana. This time, we challenge you to design an island for Latium, one of the twin provinces under your stewardship. Latium is close to the heart of the empire, a place of luxury and tranquility, covered in wheat and lavender fields. Cypress trees adorn paths and provide much-needed shade during the warm summers. With its beaches, open fields and breathtaking views, this province makes the perfect retreat for the wealthy.

  • General rules:
    • You have time until 9th February to submit your entry
    • Only 1 entry per person is allowed
    • Entries must be submitted to this e-mail address: anno-community@ubisoft.com using the subject “Community Contest: Island
    • Entries must be digital, i.e. if you did a paper drawing, you will need to scan or photograph it and attach it to your email
    • Entries must not infringe on any copyrights of third parties
    • Entries that have been created using AI tools will be excluded from the contest
    • Two or more people can work together on a single submission

 

  • Island-creation rules:
    • Design a single island for Latium, the Roman-inspired province
    • You can design your island on any medium you prefer (paper drawing, MS Paint scribble, 3D model, etc.,) and anything from a quick sketch to a detailed model is fine
    • Your island should be clearly visible, and its shape must be clearly defined in top-down view
    • The shape of the island should strike a balance between being interesting to plan and build a city in while looking visually appealing. A balance of a central, cohesive space together with more fractured or narrow spaces. Try to use natural elements like the coastline shape, rivers or cliff lines as your tools to define the space.
    • The island should feature at least one large, cohesive space that is suitable to start building a city in. That space should have a connection to a beach.
    • It should feature at least 3 mountainous elements that could believably host mines.
    • The island should have at least 1 river and up to 3 in total. Rivers may branch.
    • The island should use elevation in large, smooth gradients rather than a high frequency of hills. Mountains should believably support this elevation.
    • Forests should be well distributed across the island – in both smaller and larger formations.
    • Clearly mark all these terrain elements such as mountains, hills, as well as beaches and rivers; keep in mind that if something is not marked as a beach, it will be counted as a cliff-side

If you feel the need to add notes, descriptions, gameplay ideas behind your concept – feel free to do so.  

Here is an example of how such an island design could look like, created by one of our Level Artists back in the days for Anno 1800: 

Once the submission time is over, we will review your entries and select our favourite island designs with the help of the Level Art team. The finalists will then be published in the Anno Union, and it will be your turn to decide the winner of the contest by voting for the island that will make its way into the game. Voting will start in late February.

We hope you are as excited as we are for the last Anno 117: Pax Romana contest! Have fun designing your own Anno island – we cannot wait to see what you create this time! In the meantime, for any question feel free to comment or reach out on our social channels listed below.

*We reserve the right to make adjustments to the winning island design for it to fit the Anno 117: Pax Romana level design and balancing.

Union Update: Happy Holidays 2024

Hey Anno Community,

What a year it has been!

Unbeknownst to you, we were all nervously preparing for the announcement of our new project – Anno 117: Pax Romana! Are we good at keeping secrets? YES. Prior to the reveal, whenever we noticed comments in chat during livestreams or full discussions on Discord or Reddit about a “Roman Anno”, we would secretly cheer inside. So, how often do WE think about the Roman Empire? Every. Single. Day.

It was a proud moment for us to see Anno 117: Pax Romana on the big Ubisoft Forward screen back in June, but seeing your reaction felt even more special.

Immortalising your omnipresent hope for a Roman Anno throughout the years, was also a big highlight for us – together with the help of the beloved Town Crier!

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Not too long after the reveal, we jumped into the Community Contests dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana. Seeing your creativity in action was a blast, both with the Statue design and the quest writing. A big shout out to all participants and the winners of the two contests, once again! In January, we’ll have a first look at the Annocius statue for you and will later also update you on the “Weapon from the Stars” quest, when the team has done some more progress on the topic.

Last but not least, during our End of Year stream, we confirmed that Anno 117: Pax Romana will be available on Steam from Day 1! For a more detailed update on the game and what we’re currently working on, you can check out this blog.

2024 also marked the end of development for Anno 1800, with the release of the last three Cosmetic DLCs: we started the year with Steampunk vibes, then sailed through the high seas with some Pirates ornaments, and ended the year with sparkles and unicorns for the End of an Era. We’ve discussed at length how bittersweet this feels in last week’s blog, so you know that this game will always hold a special place in our hearts.

So, without getting too emotional (again), let’s celebrate this special moment with some new Anno 1800 wallpapers to complete your collection! Here you can now find the artworks for the Steampunk Pack, the Pirate Cove Pack, and the End of an Era Pack.

Every end of year, it’s a tradition to go through your Anno 1800 achievements. So, let’s see what has happened since 2019 by updating an old image from the week after release with new numbers – and comparing the two!

 

And then, five and a half years later… look at those numbers!

A look into 2025…

Alright, that was 2024 – what about the next year?

As you might know, good things always come in three – of course we’re talking about the Community Contests dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana! So far, you’ve excelled at the tasks you were given, but will you be up for the third and final one? To give you a tiny hint… the screenshots we recently shared might be a good inspiration! The live date for this contest is still not final, but we’re planning for early 2025, around January. Therefore, watch this space if you don’t want to miss out!

We won’t stop there, of course: You can expect many more news on Anno 117: Pax Romana next year. This is when we’ll deep-dive into the game, expect:

  • Many DevBlogs
  • Trailers
  • Livestreams
  • Playtests
  • Events
  • … more?

2025 is going to be a big year for Anno 117: Pax Romana. We know you’re excited to see more of the game and we’re very much looking forward to showing you… everything! More or less 😉

In the meantime, if you haven’t done it yet, don’t forget to wishlist Anno 117: Pax Romana on Ubisoft Connect, Steam, PlayStation and Xbox.

And with that, we’re saying “goodbye for now”: We wish you Happy Holidays and will take a few weeks of rest ourselves as well.

We’ll be back in January and can’t wait for what 2025 will bring.

The Anno Team

Union Update: The Anno 1800 Saga

Hey Anno Community!

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

What a ride it has been!

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

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

Sure, there were, no doubt, some hick-ups along the way:

Veterans might remember an incident with an armada of ghost ships in Season 1 or issues around the release of the “Eden Burning” scenario, which left the game in a rough state for the holidays.
For quite a while, the Influence mechanic remained a hotly debated topic – as were items and their balancing. Some of these topics even make a return now in discussions about Anno 117: Pax Romana.

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

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

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

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

Thank you!

Team Anecdotes & Messages

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

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

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

Johannes, Senior Gameplay Programmer

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

Nico, Lead Programmer

 

Then there are of course some development stories…

 

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

Dominik, Game Designer

 

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

Jan, Gameplay Programmer

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

Jannika, Game Writer

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

A couple of highlights are:

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

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

Sic Parvis Magna
Jan, Development Tester

 

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

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

Elisabetta, UI Designer

 

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

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

Oliver, Community Developer

 

Union Update: It’s the “End of an Era” Pack Release Day

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

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

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

Oh, and don’t forget the fireworks!

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

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

 

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

Creative Festival

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

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

Anno 117: Pax Romana Updates

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

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

Community Spotlight – Advent Calendar

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

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