u/Basic--Annual

@Devs: Idea for a simple but consequential gameplay mechanic: Link the Happiness and Health status of an island to the productivity of production buildings on it

### The Concept:

Pretty much what the title says. The basic idea behind the mechanic is that an island’s health and happiness status would directly influence how productive its workforce is. I think this makes perfect sense from a gameplay and authenticity perspective, as a workforce that is healthy and happy is also more productive. A workforce that is sick and unhappy is not able/willing to work.

Somewhere in the game setup settings, there could be a new option - something like “Workforce Productivity & Public Wellbeing” - with a dropdown menu next to it. Clicking that dropdown would give you three different options that determine how strongly this mechanic affects your game.

Inactive: The health and happiness status of an island has no effect on the productivity of production buildings on it. This would essentially preserve the current gameplay experience for players who do not want to have this mechanic be part of their game.
Positive Effects: Only positive island health and happiness matter. If your population is healthy and happy, your production buildings receive productivity bonuses. If conditions drop into negative values, there is no punishment, you simply lose the bonus. For example, every certain amount of positive health or happiness could grant production buildings on that island a productivity increase. A well-managed island would be economically stronger because its workforce is thriving. The exact balancing would obviously need proper testing, but just to illustrate the concept: every 400 points in health or happiness could provide a 10% productivity bonus. That would mean an island with 2000 health and 1600 happiness would receive a total productivity bonus of 90% for all its production buildings. The exact numbers are less important than the underlying principle: healthy and content populations should feel economically beneficial.
Dynamic Effects: Health and happiness affect productivity in both directions. Strong health and happiness conditions improve the productivity of an island’s workforce, while disease and unhappiness directly reduce output. If conditions deteriorate badly enough, productivity could eventually drop all the way to zero, because at some point a population that is sick enough or unhappy enough would realistically stop functioning as an effective workforce altogether. Using the same example scaling, an island sitting at –800 health and –1200 happiness would only operate at 50% productivity.

To make this system fit different playstyles, the default implementation could also be tied to the difficulty settings. Easier difficulties could automatically default to the “Positive Effects” setting, rewarding good management without introducing harsh penalties, while harder difficulties could default to “Dynamic Effects” for players who want a more demanding economic simulation.

For clarity and usability, the system should also be transparent in the user interface. Just like clicking on a shrine or temple gives you an overview of your island’s religious status, clicking on a Medici or Custodia building could open a dedicated overview showing the current health and happiness values of that island, as well as the exact productivity modifier resulting from them.

You could also implement this feature in another way. But let’s first look at how this game mechanic could influence the gameplay experience. I put the alternative way to implement this feature at the end of this post.

In the Screenshot you can see my Albion capital btw. I tried to integrate public service buildings, production buildings, farms and resident houses, as the game incentivizes you to do so to a certain degree and because it looks gorgeous. To me it just makes so much sense that a workforce that is thriving is also more productive and would love to be incentivized to bring even more industry to the island.

### How would it change the gameplay:

I have never had that much fun building beautiful looking cities in an Anno and to me 117 is the best city builder game of the genre yet. At the same time, it feels to me like a worse resource management game than its predecessors. The aspect that I so far regarded as the core strength of Anno. The criticism of 117 that I tend to hear most often is its flat late game. I think the game mechanic change that I am suggesting could address this by affecting the following aspects of the game:

1. It would make the happiness and health status of your island feel consequential:
The happiness and health (and fire safety) status of a city tend to be pretty irrelevant for my game experience. I mostly try to keep them positive for the sake of it and so that there are no severe outbreaks. But I really only care that they are above 0. If they are much higher than 0, then you increase the likelihood of festivities happening on that island. But those bring you mostly money and at some point, I don´t really care about that anymore. In the late game, when I have a lot of islands, I tend to just click the notifications away that tell me about a festivity that can be hosted somewhere. I can´t be bothered. Whenever I´ve watched a streamer or a gameplay of someone building at a large scale, then you basically see -4k happiness/ health on every one of their islands. Both stats just don´t feel that consequential. If now, on the other hand, happiness and health would yield productivity gains for my production buildings, then those stats are something that I would want to optimize for. It would increase the puzzle factor for my cities so much. Suddenly, you want to optimize big cities for those stats but also have enough space to add industrial districts. The best way would not just be to have one big city on one island and then some production islands, where you just spam production buildings and enough houses to support those (all with detrimental health and happiness stats), but more big cities that also feature industrial districts. This does feel very authentic to me.

2. You would be much more incentivized to fulfill your citizens´ needs
In a previous post I was writing about why Patricians feel somewhat lame as the highest-tier population: (https://www.reddit.com/r/anno/comments/1tde5uy/anno\_117\_why\_do\_patricians\_feel\_somewhat\_lame\_as/) One of my arguments, is that I don´t feel like the game incentivizes you in a very good way to fulfill all their needs. This is partly because needs are optional and partly because the bonuses that they provide don´t feel that strong. One of the reasons why they don´t feel that strong is because they provide bonuses to the health, happiness and fire safety stat of your city (also other stats that don´t feel consequential to my personal gameplay like prestige and knowledge but that’s another story). As I just said, I don´t very much optimize for these stats and therefore don´t feel particularly incentivized to fulfill my Patrician’s needs. If, however, fulfilling those needs would mean that they would indirectly increase the productivity of my production buildings on that island, then I would find so much more value in fulfilling them. It also has some intricate dynamics as fulfilling a need could boost the health stat of an island which in turn could increase the productivity of the production chains that produce that respective good if produced locally.

3. The Colosseum would become more impactful:
It looks beautiful and I love being part of the crowd watching a game, but right now, the Colosseum doesn´t feel that impactful to me. It gives you some temporary buffs, that themselves don´t feel very strong and that you also don´t really want to build your economy around as they are only temporary in nature. The strongest effect that it has is the +3 boost to population. The other effect that it has is the boost to happiness. This again just doesn´t feel that strong because again this stat just doesn´t really seem that important. If this mechanic were to be implemented, the Colosseum could single-handedly indirectly provide a strong productivity buff to all your production buildings.

4. Your late game economy would feel more complex
In another post of mine, I was comparing the 1800 base game with that of Anno 117 (https://www.reddit.com/r/anno/comments/1tagcer/feedback\_and\_thoughts\_on\_anno\_117\_vs\_1800\_basegame/). My argument was that they feel different because they handle the scaling of your economy very differently in the late game. The 1800 (base) late game to me felt catchier as it provided so many parts to integrate, that if done well, made your economy just so productive. Supplying a late game city just didn’t ‘feel like X times the amount of work as supplying an early game city but rewarding and challenging. If the mechanic I´m describing in this post were to be implemented, then I think this would help 117 in this regard. Supplying a big city would not just mean more of the same work but integrating different aspects of your game with each other to make your workforce and therefore your economy more productive. Optimizing your cities for a healthy and happy workforce to make your economy more productive could be an equally viable way compared to just building more of the same. An alternative way in the late game to increase your economic output could be diplomacy. Being allied with Tarragon gives you a 10% boost in happiness for all of your islands. This would translate into increases in global productivity and might provide an interesting new way for scaling your economy in the late game.

5. Items would feel more powerful
A lot of people liked them in 1800, some people didn´t. I myself thought they were overpowered, but I do agree that 117 specials feel somewhat weak. If you want to boost a production chain, in Anno 117, the best way is to build that production chain on an island, where you worship a god, who boost that respective production chain. With a small city, you can easily get enough belief for a 40% productivity boost. With the right specialists, you can get another 60% and then have your production buildings produce at 200%. If now, you move your production from a designated island to a big city island, with the right gods you can easily boost productivity to 300%. Specialists would play a bigger role in that. You would not only want to use specialists that directly boost productivity but also utilize a lot more specialists within Officiums (probably not the plural) within your city to boost happiness and health directly and thereby productivity indirectly. Specialists would still be weak compared to 1800. But if you have a game mechanic where you can indirectly leverage specialists to boost productivity of your production buildings, then you could utilize a lot of those weaker specialists to have a similar result in the end.

6. The game on the hardest difficulty setting would become more of a challenge:
If you play on the hardest difficulty setting, then having a positive balance does become quite a challenge. Managing the other stats is also challenging, but it just doesn´t feel that important to address them. If you would play with setting 3 “Dynamic Effects”, however, then you would have to work very hard for keeping these positive. Otherwise, you would have to deal with a decrease in your island’s productivity. Instead of mainly focusing on one stat, you would now need to more actively manage different aspects of your city. I am genuinely excited by the idea of having this be part of my games.

There are probably a lot more aspects of the game than the ones that I mentioned that you would approach in a different way. Some aspects of the game would need to be rebalanced around this change (maybe now the happiness buff of the Colosseum would be too strong, maybe the alliance buff of Dorian and Tarragon would be as well). But apart from that, no immediate downsides came to mind. If you would want to approach the game in the exact same way as you approach it right now, then you could. To me it doesn´t really seem to interfere with any of the people’s save games. (Something that I know Ubisoft pays a lot of attention to before changing anything about the game). The more I think about this mechanic, the more excited about it I get. I think it would connect so many aspects of the game that feel a bit isolated right now and give so many aspects of the game more meaning. I think this simple change could honestly motivate me to spend 2x the amount of time with the game that I have so far. Sure, Ubisoft Mainz could wait to find a way to implement this with one of their DLCs, but it feels to me like such a good core mechanic, that I would love for this to become part of the base game. It would be a great message to those diehard Anno fans, for who the game didn´t have much appeal (the reasons I mostly heard were the flat late game, which I think the game mechanic that I am suggesting could partly address). If you are afraid of implementing such a core mechanic this late after release, then ask people what they think of it first. You do have a big social media presence. If you would get a lot of positive feedback, then I wouldn’t expect there to be any backlash. I know that people from the Dev team also read posts in this community (Oli for example, that you see in most official life streams). I would love to get a response and hear what you think about it! Same goes for everybody else reading this.

# Alternative way to implement the feature

Instead of having the health and happiness status of an island independently influence the productivity of production buildings on that island, it could also function as a combined effect. They would function like a logical AND function. The lower stat of the two determines the productivity boosts/ decreases that you get. This would make the mechanic feel a bit more authentic. Your workforce is only more productive if they are healthy AND happy. You can´t just balance out a -4k happiness stat with a + 4k health stat. The increase/ decrease in productivity that you would get if your island has minimum of X points in the health/ happiness stat would be doubled. If your island has 400 health and 400 happiness, then you would get 20% increase in productivity. If it is 400 health and 300 happiness, then you get no effect. If you have 400 health and -400 happiness, then you get -20% productivity. Maybe Fire Safety would also be part of this mechanic. Otherwise, Fire safety would again feel relatively inconsequential as a stat. It also makes sense that if your population has to worry about their home burning down, then they are not as productive as they could be.

u/Basic--Annual — 1 day ago

▲ 190 r/anno

Anno 117: Why do Patricians feel somewhat lame as the highest-tier population?

To me, the highest population tier feels less worthy of pursuit than in previous Annos. I don´t find myself incentivized to have a lot of them. I just have as many as I need to. And for those I also don´t feel particularly incentivized or challenged to fulfill all their needs. Does it feel different to you guys?

Following are the reasons that came to mind, when thinking about why I feel they way I do about Patricians being a bit dissapointing as the highest population tier:

What you see in the Screenshots: The patrician house is inhabited by 36 people, the Liberti house by 22. I am missing supply of caviar, so the patrician house should max out at 39 inhabitants. This means that the highest tier house isn´t even housing twice as much population as the starter tier house. This is because the strong population boosts of public service buildings like the Forum, don´t just apply to the tier, which has the Forum as its need, but to houses of all tiers. On the one hand I like this feature as I regard Liberti and Plebeian Workforce as the most valuable resources in the game and this allows you to generate a lot of those. I have done my fair bit of criticizing 117 for the missing depth in the late game. I feel like this aspect helps with that as only in the late game, you are able to generate that much workforce to sustain the according army or fleet. On the other hand, it does devalue the patrician tier. One of the late-game goals of every Anno was always to pursue a big total population. The highest tier house would always give you much more than twice the amount of population than the lowest tier house. Patricians in that regard are somewhat inefficient.
The goods which you need to supply your Patricians with to fulfill their needs don´t provide particularly powerful buffs. They give you better boosts than a lot of mid game goods, but not significantly better ones. The more efficient ways to address your balance or population size or what not, I feel like, is to just build an Equites city on another island. In Anno 1800 the upkeep cost of a lot of late game production chains/ ships was scaling hard. You could only afford them if you supplied your engineers or investors with the goods they needed, because they themselves scaled crazy in how much money they gave you. In Anno 117 you don´t have such scaling. I don´t mind, but I am kind of lacking the incentive to supply my Patricians with all their needs. I mostly do it to address certain attributes of my city.
The goods which you need to supply your Patricians with to fulfill their needs aren´t particularly interesting or challenging to produce. A lot of them need to be produced in Albion. Because of the optional needs system, you don´t necessarily need them to progress. Where there used to be a challenge, because you had to integrate regions in order to fulfill your people’s needs, you can (and it does give you some buffs), but you don´t need to anymore to progress. The production chains are a bit more complex than mid-tier production chains, which is nice, but they don´t involve any other game mechanic like electricity as in 1800 but follow the same production-chain logic as any other good.
Patrician workforce is not very valuable. You only need it for the production chains of a few of their own needs. Other than that, I haven´t found any use for them.
Reaching patricians or having lots of them doesn´t really give you access to any new aspects or mechanics of the game like in 1800 where engineers gave you access to electricity/ steam ships or investors that gave you influence.

To me the Equites Tier feels more exciting to reach. They have the Bathhouse and Forum as their needs which at least involve connecting said buildings to a water source. They also introduce aqueducts and give you access to more military units. Their houses also look somewhat like the Patrician houses.

P.S. In my posts so far about Anno 117, I have been very critical of the game. I don´t want to sound too negative. I am having fun with the game and in no Anno before did I enjoy the city building aspect of it as much as in this one. It has the setting, it has the looks and to me personally, it is the best city builder Anno yet. All the criticizing I only do in the hope that the things the game isn´t good at become visible to the dev team one way or another and become addressed in the coming years by patches and DLCs.

u/Basic--Annual — 7 days ago

▲ 41 r/anno

Challenge in Anno 117: Defeat the Emperor with only 1 island, no navy and in less than 10h

For those of you that have spend some time playing Anno 117, don´t know what to do anymore in the game and that enjoy the military aspect of it, maybe you enjoy the following challenge: Try to initiate a rebellion and become pro-consul as fast as possible on a single island and without a navy. I had lots of fun with it, and it really does feel like you are being under siege. It took me around 14h. However, I was just having fun with the “scenario” and taking my time. It’s possible to do it in less than 10h. Some of you will probably manage in 5. It truly does remind me of the Anno 1404 scenarios, and it definitely is a challenge. Screesnshots below.

#The setup:

The challenge isn´t necessarily based on not having a navy. I just think that within a few hours it´s just not feasible to build up a fleet that is able to rival the emperor’s fleet. With one island you probably also don´t have the income to support one. This is why once the invasion starts, all the ships that you have will eventually be destroyed by his fleet. It´s not worth bothering rebuilding them. So, I just built a few military ships in the beginning to fight NPCs but let them be destroyed by his fleet. I just focused on building up a bastion, to defend against the troops landing on shore. If you are wondering about how to deal with his fleet, more on that later.

The “only one island” part is also a bit of a lie, as you need at least another island to progress to the equites and patricians tier, which should ideally also have marble. Once the invasion starts, however, and all your ships are being destroyed, there isn´t any trade happening between your islands anyways, so you can just destroy their trading posts and get rid of them. So, when the invasion starts, you truly only have one island.

#General strategy:

Anybody who has played with the military aspect in 117 knows that a military is super expensive in terms of workforce. Building up your defense needs lots of Liberti (gates) and Plebeians (ballista towers). The main type of army that I went for were catapults, spearmen and archers, which again require Liberti and Plebeian workforce. The best way to get lots of those, is Ceres of course (haven´t tried out the new god) and building their houses under the influence of late game buildings. I rushed Patricians so that I had access to the temple and then only upgraded as many Patrician houses and Equites houses as needed. Even though the Colosseum provides another strong population boost, I didn´t deem it worth building and in the end managed without. Your balance is also something to pay attention to. All your troops and defenses weigh heavy on your balance, which is why you want to put as many production buildings (that have an income boost) as possible in your city even though they might also have negative area buffs. I went for the biggest of the islands (Cinis wasn´t out yet and I think you know what other island I am talking about) and loaded up several games until I had fertilities I was happy with. Then you want to have as many of your houses under the influence of a bathhouse, temple and forum. One very important thing is that you start the game with other NPCs. You need to hardcore farm negative reputation with the emperor as soon as possible. You want to declare war on the other NPCs as soon as possible and ignore the emperors’ order to stop the war. I went for Neferneru (before being patched), Zara Nitu and Tarragon. You then prepare your defenses and ready yourself for the invasion.

#Military strategy:

When his fleet reaches your island, his troops land on your shore and try to take down your villa. In the meantime, his fleet starts patrolling your shores and destroys your trading post and all other buildings withing reach. This is why you can only build your city away from the shore. If your walls and towers are within the reach of his catapult ships, then they destroy them immediately and his troops flood your city. The first priority is to defend against his land troops. You want to have at least one stone wall in their way and maybe even two. You are limited in how close you build towers next to each other. With gates that also fire arrows, you aren´t. Staling his troops in front your wall and bombarding them with catapults and archers works well. The first priority of your catapults should be to take out his catapults, as one hit can easily takes out one of yours (will be your most valuable unit). The second priority of your catapults is to take out his archers. At some point, there will be so many of his troops, that they will breach your defenses. For this situation you also want to have melee units. Legionnaires would be best, but they need to be researched and are expensive to maintain. Spearmen also do the Job and are easily replaced. When you know that the walls will be breached, you want to evacuate your catapults early (I can´t stress this enough. They take forever to build. If you lose too many of them, then you don´t have enough for the next wave to take out his quickly) fall back with your archers and let your melee units block choke points in the city. By themselves, your spearmen would quickly fall to his legionnaires, but with the help of you archers and catapults, you should defeat them quickly. I have experimented with cavalry, but they are worse in holding chokepoints compared to spearmen and are more expensive. They also don´t do a great job at flanking his troops in front of your gates or rushing catapults, because his fleet still lays at your shores. They take down your unupgraded cavalry so quickly.

If you have defeated all his land troops, it´s time to take care of his ships. The next wave of the invasion only starts when you have cleared the entire previous wave. This includes his military ships. Since you don´t have a fleet on your own, you can´t engage with his fleet on the water. You have to do it from the land. Your own catapults are actually very good at destroying his ships. If there are no more land units left of his, then your catapults can move pretty freely on your island. 5 catapult units can take care of a quinquereme quickly. You first want to take out the ships that have archer towers and ballistas as your catapults outrange those. After this you want to take care of his catapult-ships. They are a bit hard to get rid of. They have the same range as your catapult units and a single hit immediately breaks the moral of a catapult unit and they start fleeing. There are two things that work well for this. 1. My general tip would be to build your trading post in a walled off bay. His ships will be drawn to it while your catapults have a good angle and the highground (I think we all know that this means that it´s over) to attack from. 2. Spearman are mostly fast enough to dodge catapult fire when running and are easily replaced. Use them to kite catapult fire and use your own catapults to destroy his ships in the meantime.

The last thing to mention is that the emperors’ troops land on different beaches of your island with each wave. This makes it necessary to have defenses in all possible locations that you can be attacked from. As mentioned, catapults are your key defensive unit. The thing is that they are slow as heck. You won´t be having enough time to move your catapults from one line of defense to the other in between waves. This is why you need to have small armies positioned at every location that you can be attacked from. Your archers and spearmen are more mobile and can reinforce the location that is being attacked in the current wave, but you need to have a group of catapults stationed at every access point to your city. For my island it was 3 defensive positions.

#General Tipps

After every wave you have a short period to breath. You want to use this time to replace troops and rebuild everything that was destroyed. For this you need to have a strong supply of concrete, planks, weapons and ropes.
I think I started the invasion with around 100k gold and a slightly positive balance. This is a good buffer for replacing troops, rebuilding and tanking a negative balance if one of your production chains goes down.
Oversupply fish. His fleet will destroy all of your fishing huts during a wave. You can quickly rebuild them, but you don´t want to run out of fish, during a wave, lose the population that you gain from it, lose the workforce and have your production chains downspiral.
Skorpio Towers are surprisingly good. If you place them strategically so close to the shore that they can attack troops that land on the shore but are not in range of archer towers of the ships, then they just need one hit to take out enemy catapult units.
Have at least 3 siege workshops and barracks as units take some time to produce and you want to be able to produce several at a time if you need to replace units quickly

Some Screenshot from my game:

Trading post in protected bay area

u/Basic--Annual — 9 days ago

▲ 90 r/anno

Feedback and thoughts on Anno 117 (vs 1800 basegame)

After playing around 200 hours of Pax Romana, which I had fun playing, I picked up the base game of Anno 1800 without any DLCs and spent another 200 hours with it. I did this because so many people were comparing the two games, and Anno 1800 is widely considered the gold standard of the genre. Because of that, I think I’m in a good position to compare them directly and I feel like I understand what people are missing.

Soooo, Anno 117 is a beautiful game and as someone who enjoys building cities, that are beautiful looking and optimized to a certain extent, I really enjoyed a lot of the new features of 117. I think that the buffs that production buildings give to the surrounding area, incentivize cities that look more authentic and at the same time provide a nice puzzle mechanic to optimize your cities. Connecting the city status to the attributes of your city I think is also a great move (it just feels a bit misbalanced), as you have to adapt how you build your growing city and decide what goods to provide citizens first, depending on which attribute you want to address. The religious system is neat, the idea behind a research system I like (even though I think it is poorly implemented, but more on that later) and I love land combat.

The biggest difference for me between Anno 1800 and Anno 117 base-game is their late-game. In the late game of any Anno, you try to build a huge empire and (beautiful looking) cities. Naturally, if your city becomes 20 times larger than your starter settlement, it will need roughly 20 times the amount of goods. The crucial difference is how both games handle this scaling. In Anno 1800, you can leverage certain late-game mechanics that allow you to amplify your economic output instead of simply multiplying your early-game production setup by 20. What I did in my first game, was to colonize the New World, set up an oil supply, ship that oil supply to the Old World, where it is turned into electricity, which then boosted production chains. I absolutely loved this aspect of the game because it interconnected the two maps so elegantly. Expanding a city didn’t just mean “more of the same” (which inevitably becomes tedious at some point) but engaging with entirely new mechanics. The output of your economy no longer scales linearly if you integrated these systems intelligently. I didn´t like Items in Anno 1800 as I thought they were overpowered, but I understand why people do. They just added to this feeling that the productivity of your economy exploded. And I think this is what many frustrated Anno 117 players are missing, even though they might not be explicitly aware of it. In Anno 117, there isn´t really a late game mechanic that would allow you to leverage your economy in a way that feels equally rewarding as in Anno 1800. This is why supplying a big city in 117 felt a bit laborious at certain times. Sure, you can boost your fields with aqueducts and have a few specialist, but it just doesn´t really compare to the thrill of scaling up your economy as in 1800. It probably is the same amount of work, but in 1800 it feels catchy and rewarding and in 117 it tends to become monotonous. When in the late game of 117 you want to supply a big city, you basically search for island with the respective fertilities, build a settlement that you devote to the gods, that boost your respective production chains, produce there and then ship the goods to your capital. How you approach building up these islands is pretty repetitive and at some point in my playing time (while building up number 6 of one of these islands) I literally found myself saying, “I’ll continue tomorrow,” and then never really felt motivated to return to that save.

Anno 1800 also managed to give you this sense of progression in other aspects of the late game. It was so cool to build this new class of ships that felt entirely different to the ships, that you build in the early and mid-game. In 117 the quinquereme just feels like a bigger version of the starting boat. The world fair gave you access to specialist, the colosseum gives you some temporary buffs that you don´t really want to base your economy around as they are temporary. I understand the game design choice of optional needs in allowing new players to progress without having to deal with much complexity. But if the two maps can be completely autonomous, they also become somewhat irrelevant to each other. In the late game you are rarely having money issues. If you supply your patricians with goods that boost your balance a bit more or move your fire safety from minus something thousand to some other negative number, this just doesn´t motivate you as much to interconnect these regions. As I said, I understand the reasons for making needs optional, but then I feel like there should be game mechanics or other aspects of the game that make integrating the two regions more beneficial than what it feels like right now. And yes, there are more needs to be fulfilled in the base-game of 117 than in 1800. But I don´t think this necessarily makes the game more interesting. It´s not like producing some late game good feels fundamentally different than producing any midgame good. I much rather have an Anno where there are 10 needs to be fulfilled, but all come with interesting mechanics and interconnections, than an Anno where you have to fulfill 1000 needs that work by the same production chain logic. While I agree with people that Anno 117 in its base-game is having more resources, needs to be fulfilled and a second map that has way more content (and that looks absolutely beautiful) than Anno 1800 in the base game, Anno 1800 managed to interconnect its fewer parts in a very elegant way, which resulted in a late-game that felt way more extensive an catchy to me. The “more” content of the Anno 117 base game just doesn´t interconnect as well in the late game, which is why its late game just felt less “alive”. It was just more of the early and mid- game at a bigger scale, but nothing really new.

This is already a long post, but for those of you that are interested, here is my opinion on other stuff of the game, where I felt like potential of the game was being wasted.

The research tree: While I think the idea is great, I am having two specific problems with the research tree. 1. I never really base any strategic considerations around pushing the technological advancement of my empire. This is because you gain research points by either building a Grammaticus or a Library, (which are needs of my citicens anyway, so why would I not build them) or just by having a big city. In the late-game, your city status contributes the majority of your research points. This is why I am progressing through the game just like I would if the research tree wasn´t a thing and never actively base game-play decisions around it. I just do what I do in any Anno before that didn´t have a research tree and click the technologies in the order that seem the least road-blocky to me. 2. The research tree itself doesn´t really capture the sense of technological progression of my empire for me. I can build big buildings without ever having to have researched something like “advanced construction techniques”. I might just have a few equites, and I can build a huge ass bathhouse, but I can´t upgrade my warehouses? I haven´t checked but I think it´s even possible to build the colosseum without having researched warehouse upgrades. Also, when you research the technology that lets aqueducts boost your plantations or mines, let it be another module than the cistern that has people bathing in it. It looks great in the city but weird in a mining setup. My recommendation would be: make technological advances less specific. Have an upgrade that is necessary to build big buildings or upgrade stuff. Make the upgrades feel more technological and less like a battle pass. And don´t tie research point to the city status (and make them cheaper). It robs the gameplay of any strategic thought regarding this aspect of the game.

Items: As I said before, I think items in Anno 1800 were overpowered and there wasn´t much skill involved in utilizing them compared with other mechanics like electricity. In Anno 117, I feel like the rare ones are well balanced. The green and the blue ones feel useless. I am not going to spend money on a specialist and an officium if the specialist is gonna safe me 20 gold in balance and 5 liberti in workforce. I would be surprised if anyone is using green or blue items frequently. You see that there went a lot of effort in designing these specialists, which is why its sad to know that this aspect of the game is mostly irrelevant for players.

Celtic vs. roman way: Another game mechanic that I like the idea of. It just doesn´t really translate into any strategic gameplay decisions. If I decide for the one way, then 1 hour later I´m going to have both tiers either way. Sure, some NPCs have an opinion about the way you decide first, but does anyone consider this while playing? Maybe have riots, of either the celtic or roman population, if one group is supplied more heavily with goods than the other. Or have celts have a belief bonus for their respective gods and vice verca. The devs have proven in 1800 that they are creative, I´m sure they can think of a game mechanic or two that makes this feels like an actual decision or consideration.

Gold and Silver: When I watched the trailer for Albion and the narrator was taking about “the riches running through the mountains” I was loving the idea of having this valuable resource that you only get in Albion and that is worth pursuing. The way it is right now is that silver is an input in some production chain and feels equally valuable than any other input material. I said before that I am missing game play mechanics in the late-game, that makes connecting the regions feel worthwhile. Maybe silver could be used to hire mercenaries or bribe Rome, so that when you attack other NPCs, the servants of emperor don´t report to him for one hour and he/ she doesn´t interfere in your conflicts. Or have this be a resource with which you pay day laborers that act as an additional work force for islands where you need the workforce.

Final comment: I understand the idea behind “decomplexifying” an Anno, to make it more appealing to a more casual and less “obsessive” Player base. Also, in times in which Ubisoft is feeling financial pressure, I can imagine that a lot of this pressure is being put on the shoulders of their studios. Manuel Reinher who seems to be in charge on the one side of talking to Ubisoft and on the other side to manage the affairs at the studio, seems to be striving for a game that caters to everybody’s needs and doesn´t offend anybody. But by doing so, I also feel like the game is somewhat losing a bit of its identity. I think this is why a lot of diehard Anno fans feel like their interests are being sold out and I understand their frustration. But especially from a business perspective I would encourage the studio to again focus more on these core players. Because they are the ones paying a premium for a new Anno and its DLCs, they are the ones with crazy high net promotor scores, they create tipps and tricks series for Youtube, try to speedrun the game or set up a world record in some way or the other and develop mods for it. I think they really are the ones that got the flywheel spinning and that made the brand as big as it is today. Anno 117 has sold very well so far. But I wouldn´t misread into these numbers. I think Anno 117 is a good game, that sold well, because Anno 1800 is a great game. I myself have for the first time in my life preordered a game, just because I knew how much people loved Anno 1800. Now for the first season pass, I have already moved to waiting until the price of it drops eventually. If the base game of Anno 117 would have drawn me in as much as the base game of 1800, then I would have been willing to also pay that premium for the first season pass. I think Anno 117 has huge potential, the devs just need to start being a bit more creative again, do what they´ve proven they are capable of in Anno 1800 and not be so afraid of steping on someones toes.

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u/Basic--Annual — 10 days ago