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DevBlog: “Tourist Season”

Bente Jorgensen appears to have set a precedent. Young men and women all over the world are setting out on travels of their own— ravenous for art, culture and some proper grub— only the most exquisite of destinations will do!

Fresh off the boat they hit the Hotels, springing open their cases, before jollying on down to the riverside for an Éclair, hoping to advance their broad-brims into all the most bijoux pockets of the Old World. Street mimes, artists, sophisticated-looking backgammon players drinking Montmartre 75s.

And then they see it… through the heaving crowds… a glimmer high, high above— a tower of iron, so wild and audacious, it could only be here, right here…

With “Tourist Season” we’re bringing some color and entertainment to your cities! People far and wide have heard about your vast capitals, your Museum collections, and the delicacies from all around the globe which you have on offer.

In this DevBlog we will go over all new features of the “Tourist Season” DLC: The Tourists themselves, their needs, the bus system, Restaurants and recipes, the new goods you need to produce and the Iron Tower, a new multi-stage monument for your cities.

It’s not all about the Tourists themselves, though, as fulfilling their needs does also have a direct impact on your existing population, as you will soon learn.

Tourists and Hotels

Tourists are a new Resident Tier in the Old World who stay in your city over night – in contrast to Visitors who only arrive for a day trip to see the most exciting cultural spots of your city.

First, you need to attract them and the basis for this is upgrading your Public Mooring. This can be done when reaching 500 Engineers.

Which means, that the next thing to do is building Hotels. These are imposing, elegant establishments which are expensive in construction and take up quite some space with their size of 9 by 7 tiles, but make up for it not only with their impressive looks but also with a capacity of up to 500 Tourists each.

In order to attract more Tourists and fill your Hotels to the brim, you will need to fulfil their exquisite needs. These are again split into Basic Needs and Happiness Needs and are a mix of existing and new products, the new food and drink venues, as well as cultural buildings like the Variety Theatre, the Zoo, or the Museum.

Who is the Tourist?

Do not let her over-familiarity and lively conversation fool you, the Tourist is as informed a critic as any, particularly when it comes to food & drink. A dry sponge, or a flavourless Chantilly cream might see her vexedly reaching for her notebook and a 2H pencil. Yet if you can stay on the right side of it, that same pencil is the rod of enchantment to draw her many daffy friends to your shores, through letters and postcards riddled with hyperbole about the wonders of your Zoo, or quite possibly, Botanical Garden— So chum up with her if you can!

– Matt, Lead Narrative Designer

While you can easily spot the status of each need via the Hotel’s UI, there’s a change on how happiness impacts your new Tourist population:

The fulfilment of a need can be limited by their happiness. This is marked with an unhappy red icon next to the respective need and the info, to which percentage a need can be currently fulfilled. Possible causes for limits can be low island attractiveness or a lack of variety when it comes to Hot Spots like Museums. Solve these issues to make sure Tourists are willing to visit your island and to maximise the number of potential Tourists in your city.

Happy Tourists spend more money in your city – and since the pockets of these wealthy individuals are well-filled, it’s definitely worth fulfilling their demanding needs.

 

We said above that Tourists are a new Resident Tier. As part of that mechanic, they’re also providing a sort of “workforce” which we called “Customers”. These are essential for your Restaurants, Bars and Cafés which thrive on tourism. For them to work at 100% capacity, a certain number of Customers is required. If a venue lacks Customers, the buff to the surrounding residences is decreased – more on that in the next paragraph.

Lastly, we need to warn you that Tourists are a spoiled, demanding bunch (let’s not say “lazy”) and absolutely no fans of long walks. So, in order to fulfil their needs, you will need to set up a complete bus network on your island with Bus Stops next to all important places. We’ll go into detail on the bus system later in this DevBlog.

DLC Synergy
Owners of any of previous DLCs can look forward to a certain level of interconnectivity, which gives them alternative ways of fulfilling your Tourist’s needs. Ingredients from the Artic or Enbesa open up new recipe options (how about a dish with fresh Lobster or Caribou Meat?) while visiting your impressive Docklands or a mighty Palace can distract Tourists from the fact you didn’t build a Museum on your island. While not providing stronger bonuses, having activated any of the other DLC does give you different options on how to tackle “Tourist Season’s” new challenges

Restaurants, Cafés and Bars

So, we created a place to stay for our Tourists. But as mentioned above, they’re rather more demanding than your regular Visitors, and having an attractive island with a Zoo or a Museum is not enough.

When staying for several days, culinary needs naturally become a matter of great import, which makes the Tourist’s request for Restaurants, Cafés and Bars quite understandable.

All three buildings function in a similar way to Public Service buildings but in a more challenging way since they use the new recipe system and therefore combine production and public service. Based on the recipe you choose, the building will prepare a dish, dessert or drink and fulfil the Tourists’ needs while also providing a boost to regular residences in a certain area. Let’s take a closer look:

“We had Flour, Sugar and Chocolate but could not bake a cake – that always floated around in our heads when thinking about new content. The recipe system solves this and allows us to combine goods to new products that would otherwise be too specific for our normal needs system.”

– Dominik, Game Designer

As you can see, each recipe requires certain ingredients – so make sure you got a Warehouse not too far away. Some recipes might require ingredients from different sessions, while others have ingredients that are easier to obtain. Since we’re always looking for a) new systems to try out and b) ways to spice up your gameplay with new features, we came up with the recipe system as a new challenge.

All recipes fulfil the Tourists’ need for Restaurants, Cafés or Bars in the same way – they will enjoy any of the delicious dishes you can present them with. However, the aforementioned boost to the surrounding residents varies: If your Restaurant, for example, serves the “Archduke’s Schnitzel” then your surrounding residents will receive a +3 boost to their happiness while consuming less Bread, Fish and Chocolate. If you choose the “Stroggof Goulash”, nearby residents receive a +2 happiness boost and consume less Fish, Sausage and Canned Food.

Restaurant placement as well as choosing recipes based on the required ingredients and the surrounding residences (with their respective needs) should provide you with a nice puzzle challenge if you love optimization.

Selecting any of these three types of buildings will display their influence radius with a circle, while the affected residences are additionally highlighted.

More recipes are unlocked either via quests from the Tourist or by fulfilling certain conditions: Have a look at the recipe book for details.

In-Game Tutorial

With the maturity of Anno 1800 and being in the third Season of DLCs, a lot of new features unlock with the Artisan level. This can result in a lack of focus by the players in our onboarding, leading to them not understanding features and ending up with a bad gameplay experience. “Docklands” introduced new gameplay concepts. We felt the players would benefit from being able to reference the concepts’ explanations at their own pace, outside of the onboarding flow.

For “Tourist Season” it made sense to follow the same approach, with the newly introduced bus system and Tourists. All new features have direct links to the tutorial pages, where the new game mechanic can be revisited at any given time.

The challenge was to find the right balance with the explanations, being both concise and not omitting information the players might need. We are excited to hear player feedback for our new in-game tutorial so we can keep improving it.

– Jan, Lead UI Designer

 

Orchards and Chemical Plant

Of course, using only existing goods to fulfil the needs of your Tourists and for the creation of delicious new dishes would be… boring? So, let us introduce you to two new production buildings: The Orchard and the Chemical Plant.

 

Orchards produce new agricultural goods which are either directly fulfilling the Tourists’ needs (Jam) or are functioning as input goods for recipes. They function similarly to your Lumberjack’s Huts by planting trees in an area around them. You do not have to build fields like you do for a Red Pepper Farm or a Vineyard, which would have required a rework of the existing system so that modules or farm fields can be upgraded or would automatically change. Lumberjack huts already had such a system in place where they modify their surroundings by growing trees, the new goods all required trees, and so using this system was the much more fitting way.

Not all the special new ingredients can be grown in the Old World, though, so you will have to make some space in the New World to also build Orchards there. Only then can you produce goods like Cinnamon, Camphor Wax or Citrus Fruits for new products like Shampoo or Lemonade. More on that in a second.

Similar to Restaurants, Orchards are also using a recipe system, where you can select the seed you want the respective Orchard to grow from a catalogue. However, Orchards don’t need any input goods.

Also using the recipe system is the Chemical Plant. Patents for three new consumer goods are available to you, all three products are highly requested by your Tourists. Produce fruity Lemonade (using Saltpetre, Sugar and Citrus Fruits), soapy Shampoo (using Soap, Cinnamon and Coconut Butter) and Souvenirs (using Glass, Camphor Wax and Cotton) to make your Tourists happy.

Both the Orchards as well as the Chemical Plant need a Warehouse nearby to gather input goods and deliver their finished products.

Bus System

As mentioned at the beginning of this blog, it’s not enough to simply have a great Zoo or a five-star restaurant: Tourists are demanding and don’t want to travel too far on foot. This is where the bus system comes into play.

Bus Stops have to be placed at all important places in your city which Tourists want to visit. This starts with your Public Mooring and Hotels and extends to places like Variety Theatres, Restaurants, Bars and your Museum. When placing a Bus Stop, you will have to pay attention to two influence radiuses: For a building to be reachable by the Tourists, it has to be in the circle radius. This means, if your Zoo is outside this circle, it’s not part of your Bus Network and the Zoo need for your Tourists will not be fulfilled.

The second indicator you have to keep an eye on is the green street overlay: This marks the overall reach of your Bus Network. For a Bus Stop to be connected to the network, its green overlay has to overlap with the existing network.

Since tourists aren’t fans of long travels when seeing all your city’s marvels, a need’s fulfilment level can be reduced if the distance between Hotel and the respective venue is too far. Keep an eye on the needs overview of each hotel to spot these kinds of problems.

We have covered the bus system in detail in last week’s blog. So, if you want to get some additional insights, make sure to check it out!

Where do our Designers see the most fun and challenging aspect of the DLC?

Well, we assume that the most fun part is the challenge itself: Positioning all new buildings for maximum effect, to minimise traveling distance for the Tourists and make the most out of the residence buffs of the Restaurants, Bars and Cafés. The latter also need constant input to function and provide their buffs, making them significantly more challenging than regular Public Service buildings or Items. Additionally, the demanding nature of the Tourists also means that they’re more likely to leave when their happiness goes down compared to other population tiers.

– Volker, Lead Game Designer

The Iron Tower

Nothing impresses your Tourists more than monuments (except maybe for an Archduke’s Schnitzel), so it’s only logical to give you a completely new monument to build: The Iron Tower. Like other monuments, it’s constructed in three stages and, when finished, not only increases your island’s attractiveness but also provides another option to buff surrounding residences. “La Reine”, the finest restaurant in the land, offers three unique recipes to choose from, each providing a strong buff and reducing the consumption of specific goods, but requiring four ingredients each instead of the usual three. Who could say no to the “Trifle Tower”, the probably most majestic of all desserts?

There’s one more special feature about the Iron Tower: By assigning additional Tourist Customers to it, you can greatly increase the influence radius of its buff. When placed at a central location, it might even cover your whole city…

And let’s not forget that such an extravagant monument might indeed attract royal attention.

Last but not least…

As it is now tradition, “Tourist Season” will also come with a beautiful bunch of themed ornaments fitting to the setting. Build a Souvenir Shop, Lookout Point, Signposts, Flowerbeds, and more to turn your cities into authentic tourist hot spots.

 

And as usual, we will release a free Game Update alongside the “Tourist Season” DLC featuring several quality-of-life improvements as well as bug fixes. We’ll have the full Release Notes for you next week, so stay tuned for more details on that.

 

Finally, for your chance to get some first-hand info from the devs, you should not miss our live stream on the “Tourist Season” release day, May 25th, from 5 to 6 PM CEST (11 AM – 12 PM EDT). Mark it in your calendars!

Comments

 

 

27 Comments
  1. g gege417 June 12, 2021

    un article super de très nombreuses explications.
    une seule chose ,dans le jeu lors des quêtes a réaliser, certaines explications mériteraient d ‘être développées.
    exemple: ou trouver de la lecture pour la reine? dans les explications rien d’indiqué.
    merci pour votre réponse
    gégé417

    •   Ubi-Thorlof June 15, 2021

      Bonjour gege417,
      you can provide the Queen with any kind of literature – some she will like more than others.
      The quest text already provides some hints, e.g. she wants to read something exciting.

      Additionally, you can also continue with the quests of the Tourist and will also get a book the Queen will like this way 🙂

  2. r ruzen_qures May 15, 2021

    Excellence!

    First of all the quality level of the dev blog is superb. Dev insights, giving actual information and all… ANNO communication team has grown so much since the release.

    It’s all sounds exciting but I hope that this (DLC), warehouse for the restaurants would be a stepping stone for the ANNO franchise and we finally see more “city logistics” stuff happening in the future.

    ANNO 1800 is a gamer’s dream game.

  3. Q Queglar May 15, 2021

    Just going to add my kudos to this one – not just for the DLC but because you are also using the dev blogs to explain/discuss your game design choices. Props to the dev blogs!

    Also *really* like where you’re heading with the recipe system as a game mechanic. So much so, I think you should extend it back into existing buildings and residents, because their diets are really… weird… (Yay! I’m a rich investor, I don’t need a balanced diet, I can just live off chocolate, coffee and champagne!)

    Rather than add new items and production chains, just use the recipe system to add buffs and tweak existing resources and needs.

    e.g. If I’m an investor/engineer, I’m not going to a warehouse for coffee, I’m going to a cafe. A cafe in range of a bakery and a market in range of a warehouse with chocolate, can add croissants to the menu. Any residents who need coffee, in range of a cafe with croissants, gets a bonus.

    e.g. I’m a worker, I’m going to the pub for a meal, not some fancy restaurant. A pub in range of a market with access to fish, potatoes and fish oil, can add fish and chips to the menu. Residents who need beer in range of a pub with fish and chips on the menu gets a bonus.

    Since it’s buffs only, you don’t need to invent entirely new resources and production chains, but it also means city design itself starts to look a lot more interesting. e.g. No longer can you just plop a members club in a sea of investors. A members club is required for an investor to get their cigars, but a members club with access to a market with access to basic goods like fish, potatoes, spice, beef, caribou meat, salt etc can start to add “banquet” meals to the menu that provide a buff to all investors in range of the members club.

    You don’t just have to focus on food either of course – you can add these recipe buffs to all sorts of production buildings, and find all sorts of additional purposes for all of the current resources. Since it’s only buffs, it’s just an optional layer of complexity you can choose to aim for if that type of thing floats your boat.

    • D Dravidos May 16, 2021

      Excellent ideas! But all these changes would have to be introduced little by little, in successive DLC, so as not to overly complicate the game and stress players. Anno 1800 would be the game of our life (forever and ever). I hope the Anno team doesn’t get bored with us.
      (Google Translator: Sorry. I hope you understand me).

  4. e enigman138 May 15, 2021

    Oh, now you’re truly spoiling us! 😀

    I love the complexity in the new DLC, the interactivity between the different regions, and of course the gorgeous new buildings – and don’t think the “Trifle” Tower comment went unnoticed either 😉

    I’m going to hold off going back to my current save until this comes out so I can start redesigning Crown Falls for the umpteenth time, ha

  5. D Dravidos May 14, 2021

    I’m going to have a great time playing the new DLC. I love the new residents, the new products, and the new challenges!
    One question: Do tourists only travel to the Old World or also to the Cape?

    • K Katje-Katrien May 15, 2021

      Hello,

      When they talk about the Old World they mean the Old Region. So yes the Tourist will travel to the Old World and to Cape Trelawney.

      Cheers,

      Katje-Katrien

      • D Dravidos May 16, 2021

        Thank you. In the Cape we have a large area to build a beautiful city for tourists.

        • K Katje-Katrien May 16, 2021

          My pleasure. Always happy to help. 😀
          If you own all the DLC’s than you can use it to your advantage to build your dream city in Cape Trelawney.
          Have fun with the Tourist. 😀

  6. f frasoucos May 14, 2021

    Hello Everyone!

    Since I like to plan the constructions ahead, I am just wondering how many tiles the Tower will occupy? Can anyone tell me? Thank you!

    • S SgtHydra May 15, 2021

      By my VERY rough estimate, ~14 spaces.

  7. H Humility925 May 14, 2021

    I’m not sure it’s not enough to supply whole kind of thing resource, arctic can’t gave away those food resource even, if all a.i had those island as your since island in arctic is so small and limited resource to gave other world.

    • D Dravidos May 14, 2021

      You could import these products, if you have the Docklands.

  8. C Coouge May 14, 2021

    I am super excited about this!

    “This is the way”

  9. S SgtHydra May 14, 2021

    Hearing about greater DLC synergy is such a relief, it’s really what’s badly missing right now. I hope we also get some Arctic and Enbesan resources desired by Investors in the upcoming Skyscraper DLC.

  10. b biwesty May 13, 2021

    Absolutely amazing. This will be huge. Excited

  11. G Gargammel77 May 13, 2021

    It’s not just “cool”, “great” or anything else. It’s just amazing what you have done with this game. And for it, you have my plenty Remerciements et Admiration. Thanks also for the Iron Tower so wonderful ! I love Anno !

  12. E Extr3m3K1ll3r May 13, 2021

    OMG!!

    This is going to be a fun DLC…and cities will have to be re-designed!! Yummy!!

    I like how to slowly are drawing in the other regions with the recipe system. The addition of Orchards…even in the New World? Now we just need better islands in the New World! Less rivers…more space? Can this be done?

    I am looking forward to building my first Iron Tower…and I know exactly where I am going to place it…

    Excellent DLC…lets hope some of the bugs also got squashed…and the performance increased.

    Great work people!!

    • E Extr3m3K1ll3r May 13, 2021

      Just fixing wording:

      I like how you are slowly drawing in the other regions with the recipe system. The addition of Orchards…even in the New World? Now we just need better islands in the New World! Less rivers…more space? Can this be done?

  13. D Darkbirt May 13, 2021

    I’m looking forward to it.
    The only issue that I have is that we can’t accept tourists on smaller islands. The large scale of the hotel is to demanding on the space of small islands. I was hoping their would be a small hotel with a capacity of 50 people or so. I really enjoy building small cities on small islands and make them independent. So it seems they need to live with visitors only.

    I’ve still got some questions:
    1. What is the impact of decorations on the tourists?
    2. What impact does the tourists have on the specialists that visit you’re island. Do we get a new pool with specialists?
    3. Are their new decoration buildings with the DLC Tourist Season?
    4. How many new buildings will be introduced in this DLC?
    5. Is it possible for tourist to visit other regions (New World, etc….)?

    I’ve still got the feeling this DLC will be better than Docklands. I’m still looking forward to it.

    • M Misiek_1991 May 13, 2021

      4: Yes – As it is now tradition, “Tourist Season” will also come with a beautiful bunch of themed ornaments fitting to the setting. Build a Souvenir Shop, Lookout Point, Signposts, Flowerbeds, and more to turn your cities into authentic tourist hot spots.
      5: Hotel, Restaurant, Cafe, Bar, Orchards, Chemical Plant, Bus Stop, Monument (the Tower), so its 8 and Public Mooring upgrade

  14. S STAR_LORD_x May 13, 2021

    Love it already, I have two questions
    [1] Can you share the size of the Iron Tower? I started a new game and wanna build it in the middle of my city
    [2] Do hotels need electricity?

  15. M Misiek_1991 May 13, 2021

    It looks really interesting. The only thing I don’t like is the recipe system in the Chemical Plant. I would love to see 3 new different buildings, each for a specific good, as it is now. I just love your aesthetic building designs 🙂

    • a abflland May 13, 2021

      True! Would love to see different buildings for different products too!

  16. M Mihail_M. May 13, 2021

    Sounds cool! and it will be ice cream or anno-cola?

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