• Union Update

Union Update: outlook for this month

In our last few DevBlogs, we tackled some big new feature additions to Anno 1800, but that was just a glimpse at what’s to come. This week, it is time to take the next progressive step with the fourth residential tier.

But there is of course more to come this month: The next Episode of the AnnoCast will air Thursday the 17th of May, 5pm CEST!

In our fourth episode, we will show you some visual improvements of the game (we mentioned the UI overhaul, didn’t we?) and use the chance to show you our visitor and zoo features live and in action!
As always, we will share a blog with the embed livestream before it goes live and you can leave your questions for the Q&A part of the stream below.

Feel free to follow to our twitch channel, where we stream development updates about Anno 1800, celebrate anniversaries of older Anno titles and have plans for some additional upcoming shows: twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte

The Union feedback on these big features such as city attractiveness and projects like the zoo was once again incredibly valuable for us. It gives us a first indicator whether we are going into the right direction and additionally helps us to make changes based on your thoughts.

But there is only so much you can do with a blog or a live stream, and that is where our Anno Union playtests come into play. We are currently making the final preparations for the next round of the tests, where Anno Union members get the chance to play and provide detailed feedback for the development team.
We will share some details soon but one reminder for you all: If you have applied in the past but have updated your hardware setup, please send us an update (best would be a response to your initial application to union-playtest@bluebyte.com) of your rig, including your Uplay/Union display name.

If you haven’t applied for the focus tests yet or even never heard about our Union tester program, you can check out all the details here: https://www.anno-union.com/playtest/

Community Q&A

Das_ist_Phil
Will it be possible to catch animals on your island just by clicking on them?
Answer: There are many different ways to acquire animals and other items. Catching animals will be one option but it will be more than just clicking on wildlife grazing on your island. We are still working on a few details but can say that some specialists will offer their wildlife-related skills to you.

Lord_Desert
Oh boy, the kitties surely had a bit too much in their food bowl. A bit less food and it wouldn’t be less obvious that the enclosers for zoo animals are a tad too small ;D
Answer: Thankfully, our feline predators seem to prosper even in captivity! The size of the zoo animals is not final and we are still working on the right proportions. As you know, the proportions in Anno are adjusted to the bird’s eye view, which is what player’s spend most of their playtime in.

onkel2015
Is there a maximum limit for modules or will I be able to expand my zoo as much as I like?
Answer: There won’t be a maximum limitation for zoo modules. Construction space is an important resource in Anno and that alone is a well thought investment if you expand your zoo. Hey, maybe marvelous outsourced zoo islands become a thing in Anno 1800?

Annorevolution
The entrance seem to the anchor point for all modules, which sounds for me that they don’t need a street connection on their own. Does that mean that we can design the form of our zoo freely and do not need to stick to the square form as shown in the video?
Answer: Zoo modules need to connect by one tile, which leaves you a lot of freedom to create a zoo layout of your liking and to leave construction space for ornaments. We placed a few ornamental objects in the zoo for our video example.

Gradyowens12
Will the game have some sort of hotel system to house the tourists that come to the island, or will they come to see the island and then leave?
Re1Synth
Tourists surely bring financial benefits but will they have their own needs such as hunger or craving for luxury items etc.?
Answer: Tourist will land with a ferry, travel around the island and leave after a while with the same ship. With the city attractiveness, we introduce a complex new feature to the series. We tried to add some deeper management layers to the visitors but figured out that the micromanagement aspects gets easily out of hand, especially considering all other management aspects of Anno in the larger picture. As visitors are a crucial, but by no means only, part of the city attractiveness feature, we decided to go for a working albeit a bit simpler implementation. As usual, the Anno Union gave us a lot of interesting feedback and we are open for the idea to enhance the feature if we find a concept, which is not falling into the same complexity trap and which is not too time consuming for us to develop.

IppoSenshu
I really like that beauty building is now meaningful, that part was always missing in previous titles. Will the city attractiveness have actual impact on the reputation of the player?
Answer: Your city attractiveness level, the positive or negative rating of some of your attractiveness criteria as well as the different ornaments and attractiveness relevant buildings will have an influence on your standing with other characters. If you build a zoo, there will be certain AI characters who will react to that very excited and friendly while others might think that you do not have the necessary edge to lead a big company, as you are just toying around in a kid’s sandbox. If and how they care about such things like your parks or the pollution on your island will depend on each characters distinctive nature and backstory. We can’t wait to share more details about the illustrious cast of Anno 1800 second and third party characters. Who knows, maybe one of the next big topics in the Anno Union?

Miguelito-87
You described that there are basically three buildings which can slot items. How big is the influence radius of each building? How many items will they be able to slot?
Answer:
The three buildings (town hall, guild house and harbor office) will be able to carry more than one item, but we are still playing around with the exact number of slots. When it comes to the size of the influence radius, balancing plays a big role. We want that you can specialize your districts and for that, we need to make sure that things like overlapping radii won’t cause an issue.

Comments

 

 

5 Comments
  1. b banan1996.1996 May 11, 2018

    My question:
    Will there be limited ascension rights like in 1404 or 2070 or will only needed workforce limit us from upgrading our population? Since now workforce is split between each tier I hope we can upgrade as many houses as we want as long as we have enough workforce.

    Suggestion about hotels:
    Maybe hotels and tourists could work in a similar way as beggars in 1404. Building a hotel would let tourists stay for a bit longer (they will leave sooner or later anyways but staying longer would let us earn more money). They could need certain goods like beggars needed cider and fish. But they would require some more sophisticated goods presumably from Artisans or higher tier but only food and drinks.

    Unfortunately I will have to be at university during the stream but I will definitely watch it as soon as I get back home.

  2. M MyLittlePiglet May 8, 2018

    Will there be some system which includes account development/rewards/achievements that carries over from session to session, or by finishing tasks within sessions? I absolutely loved the achievement system in Anno 1404, which rewarded you with some sort of currency with which you could buy titles, ornaments and/or aesthetics (player color, banner, etc). I especially loved the golden ship achievement!! It’s really something that keeps me going.

    Another thing I wonder is if there will be a system with which you could save special/rare items which you found in one game session, and carry them over to a new session (similar to how the Ark feature worked in Anno 2070).

  3. B BertProesmans May 7, 2018

    “Hey, maybe marvelous outsourced zoo islands become a thing in Anno 1800?”

    Welcome, to Jurassic Park!

    • U Ubi-O5 May 8, 2018

      You didn’t say the magic word, though.

  4. i iruet May 7, 2018

    Another good blog 🙂

    I have a question though: Is it possible to create some sort of blog around the best way to provide feedback? I did see several people being mad at the forums or comments… And their feedback was more like screw you I dont like this… And then they did not explain what they did not like and how to change it positively

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