Anno City Builder Series

The Game Room
1

I didn’t see any existing threads for this series of games, so I figured I’d make one. Both to discuss my ongoing adventures in Anno 1800, and to discuss the upcoming Anno 117.

Anno is a City builder series. I’ve only played 1800, but there are a bunch of prior games set either earlier or later in history or the future. The year numbers always add up to 9, apparently.

Anno 1800 is set in the Age of Sail. You start off on an island chain that looks pretty european-esque. Each island has different resources, both slots for mines for things like copper or iron or call and fertility for different types of crops, like wheat or peppers or potatoes. You then move all those raw materials through various resource chains to produce goods that your citizens need.

There are different tiers of citizens who live in increasingly sense neighborhoods (from farmers to workers to artisans to engineers, and beyond) but the higher tier workers need more and more varied and hard to produce goods. Not all of the resources are available on every island, so you need to build up a trade network. For example, to make beer I had to settle a second island that makes hops. Hops just take farmers, so I produce the basics I need on that island and then have massive hop farms. Currently I ship the hops back to my main island to combine with malt (made from wheat) and make beer. But I’m thinking of shifting wheat production to a third island and then shipping malt to the island that grows hops to make beer. The reason is that wheat takes a ton of space and is also used in animal farms that also take a lot of space. But the problem would be needing to ship animals back to the main island for processing… I’ll have to think about it.

Eventually you need goods that can only be produced in the New World, so you have to start taking islands on a whole new map. The New World shares some goods but also has entirely new ones, and your citizen chains are different as well, with different tiers and different needs. I haven’t done too much in the new world (and haven’t reached it all yet on my new save), but the logistics challenge of resource chains that require trade routs across islands is enormous fun.

I haven’t seen too much about Anno 117 actually, but it sounds like it’s basically a refined Anno formula game set in ancient Rome, which sounds great.

2

I’ve played 1800 a bit. I have not been able to figure out trade routes.

3

My daughter took big nap today, which means I got quite a bit further than I ever have before.

On the original map, I have my home island which in the campaign is named Ditchwater; I have a wheat fertility island I’ve dubbed Port McDonald where I am trying to focus my animal farms (farms use wheat to double efficiency, which means I want a bunch of farms together on an island with wheat fertility). I think eventually I can make fertilizer, which I assume uses animal farms as an input? Not sure actually. I’ve also got Port Clay, a tiny island with like 4 clay sources. I am using ships to supply it with Worker tier items, like beer and sausages, because it’s far too small to make anything locally. I also have Hopstopia, where I grow massive amounts of hops to send back to Ditchwater for beer. Recently I moved Schnapps production here as well (it’s the basic tier alcohol and requires potatoes that grow anywhere) and I’m thinking of moving all my low tier alcohol production to this island (so beer).

And I have two other islands I grabbed but haven’t developed yet, I just wanted to snag them before the AI did.

Meanwhile in the New World I have the island you get from the story, a decent sized island next to it, and a truly massive island on the edge of the map. But so far only the home island is developed.

And over in the Africa themed area, I basically just popped in to start the quest chain.

On the mainland, I’ve been pumping out frigates and ships of the line, and managed to take out the pirate base. Apparently they’ll try to retake the island, so I’m just gonna sit there with some ship of the lines and wait for them.

4

I think it took me a couple tries before it really clicked for me too. I think I’ve mostly got it to down now, though. You add holy Islands you want the ship to go to in the order you wanted to go. And then what helps me he’s thinking about each individual slot on the ship separately.

So let’s say I have a schooner with 2 slots. I have Port McDonald making pigs and wool (from sheep) that’s spun into workman clothes locally. So I want to send out pigs (because slaughtering them takes workers which I don’t have on this island) and clothes (because every island consumes these clothes and I only make them here). So my ship’s first stop is Port McDonald, where it picks up 50 clothes and 50 pigs.

The route then goes to Hopstopia, where it drops off 20 clothes from the first slot. It doesn’t pick anything up here (it cannot) and it doesn’t drop of the whole load (because the island doesn’t consume that many clothes). It then goes to Clayport, which has a very small population so it only drops off 10 clothes. Finally, it goes to Ditchwater, where it drops off 20 clothes and all 50 pigs.

You can also reuse slots, if you empty them first.

Say I go from the same origin, Port McDonald, but now I go to Ditchwater first and drop off all 50 pigs, and 20 clothes. I still have clothes in the first slot so I can’t use it, but I could pick something up in the slot where the pigs were. For example, I could get Soap. Then go to Clayport and drop soap and clothes off for the workers there, or maybe I could go to Hopstopia to drop off the soap and pick up Schnapps, then go to Clayport to drop off the last of the clothes and the half the schnapps, finally bringing some back to Port McDonald to finish the loop.

5

Man… I played 1602 - the first one!

6

There is a quite good Anno 1800 board game:

Brian

7

So - things have… Progressed.

Getting my interisland resource chain set up in the Old World is actually proving to be quite the challenge. A really interesting one, but a challenge nevertheless.

I can definitely see the benefits already. I had a moment working on Hopstopia (renamed Hopseuser-Busch now that I’m producing all manner of alcohol there) where I thought, “oh no… To produce beer I need workers, who need sausages and soap, which means pigs, which is a whole other resource chain…”. And then I realized, “wait, I already have these goods stockpiled on this island, because Port McDonald is shipping them over!”.

I’m currently sending regular shipments of construction materials from Ditchwater to the minor islands, which is actually a huge help in developing them quickly. I’ve mostly centralized wheat, pig, and sheep chains to Port McDonald; Schnapps to Hopseuser-Busch; and Clayport is just pumping out clay.

Oh, a really cool feature is called Lifestyle Needs. These are toggleable extra needs your population can have that give extra benefits. So you can give your farmers a Soap need (normally only workers and up need soap) or a Flour need, and then each house will hold more farmers growing your pop, or the farmers will pay more weekly tax.

Some of the lifestyle needs are even for New World goods, for example I could give my farmers Sugar. I have higher priorities (Artisans need Fur Coats which take Cotton, a new world good, as well as Rum, made from Sugar, again a New World good) but it’s cool that once I have my New World infrastructure in order I can get some big bonuses for my very numerous farmers.

I need to set up something similar to what I have in the Old World over in the New. Dedicated islands for different resource chains. Once I’m shipping things back and forth between islands, it’s trivial to add an interzone route. In fact, I already did this - the low tier New World guys have a lifestyle need for Old World goods, including worker clothing, so I have a ship that takes clothes from Port McDonald to La Isla (the storyline island you start with in the New World) and brings rum back to Ditchwater. I’m not making enough rum to fully satisfy the Artisans yet, but it gives the ship something to do on the long return trip.

I do kinda need to hurry or my competitors will claim all the good News World islands, and especially the Enbessa islands where I’ve barely explored at all.

Meanwhile, as I continued the main plotline, a giant enemy fleet showed up that I needed to destroy. I’d been sending more and more military ships to the pirate island where I was defending against occasional pirate recolonization attempts, so I figured I could handle this. I could, but only barely… My navy got pretty badly wrecked. Enough so that I can’t guard the pirate island yet…

8

Oooh, that’s pretty cool. I’ll have to see if my game shop has that.

9

I think the specialization I’m doing will be super helpful in the long term, but right now it’s slowing me down a bit. I really need to get some Artisans upgraded to Engineers so I can get some higher tier ships. But that requires fur coats and rum, and I’m not quite there yet.

10

I was looking at the Anno series last week, thinking it might be up my alley. But the wiki was unhelpful; just a long list of releases dating back to the 90s.

Is 1800 the logical entrypoint nowadays? It’s recognized as one of the “good” releases, if some are considered bad?

11

I think it’s the most up to date one, with the most features. Other Anno games are pretty old at this point. There’s a bazillion DLC, but I got all of them in a pretty cheap bundle on Ubisoft directly at some point ages ago.

No idea if the other ones are considered “bad” or just dated.

12

So, I kinda have my specialized islands down in the Old World.

Ditchwater is mostly making building materials these days. I ship in clay, coal, and iron from any islands that have those things (it’s funny, it kinda reminds me of California’s random oil wells - I’ll have a residential area on an island that’s mostly full of farms, but then there’ll be a random resource extraction point in the middle of the houses or farms, along with a lone warehouse.

I’m also pumping out ships, mostly ship-of-the-line class, and selling them to keep my economy chugging.

13

Meanwhile, I have Port McDonald pumping out sausages and soap on one set of ships, jeans and sails and thread on another (threads and sails only go to Ditchwater, where artisans consume thread and shipyards use sails). I have like 4 ships on this route and they’re barely keeping up with the clothing need, not sure why.

I also make malt here and ship it out to H.B., as well as flour that’s shipped out to farmers at islands across my empire (flour being a lifestyle need).

And Hopseuser-Busch is pumping out Schnapps as well as Beer, finally, which is then delivered to all the other islands.

Most of these trade routes (aside from raw iron, coal, and clay going directly to Ditchwater and the aforementioned malt route) form a circular route around my four developed islands (there’s still Clayport, but it’s looking less and less remarkable these days since clay is coming in from here and there across all the islands).

So that’s pretty much farmer and worked tiers settled. I’m settling surplus soap to the prison island for a ton of money, and not doing much else external trading yet. I set up all my islands to have stockpiles around 800 units large, and to sell any surplus of whatever they produce above 500. It’s not as efficient as selling it with my own trade routes, but I’m mostly dumping excess, not actually trying to make a big profit.

My next step is probably to do something similar for the early needs over in the New World. Once I have the basics on both sides up and running, I can look at Artisan tier goods that require input from both sides (for example, fur coats which require New World cotton) and at bringing Rum for them on scale.

And then I suppose it will be time for Engineers, which I really know very little about.

14

I think it’s more efficient to have ships do loops with 1 good only. So they pick up a whole load of whatever, loop through your islands, and sell and overflow to one of the AI traders.

I’ve slowly been converting my trade routes to this format, starting with the New World. It certainly makes it easier to add another island to the chain on the fly.

I’m making my Artisans happy with fur coats, and shipping sewing machines back to the New World for the tier 2 citizens there. Beer and rum are being swapped back and forth, and I turned on rum for workers as a Lifestyle need.

Meanwhile, the New World pirates (who started off peaceful, unlike the Old World pirates) decided to attack me. With all of my crucial shipping routes, this is actually incredibly annoying. I don’t have the firepower in the New World to tackle his pirate base yet, and it seems more well fortified than the Old World pirates, so I’m going to keep pumping out ships back home and sending over the ones I don’t sell.