Anno 1800 - Ubisoft Connect EUROPE Digital Key
Anno 1800 for PC is a real-time city-building strategy game. It is the seventh
in the Anno series and returns the game to its historical format following two
futuristic editions: Anno 2070 and Anno 2205 respectively. It is set in the
early 19th century and follows the technological explosion of the Industrial
Revolution.
ABOUT THE GAME
To progress you need to grow your population and keep your citizens happy. The
latter is achieved differently for each type of people: for instance, farmers
subsist on fish and clothing, but are made content with alcohol. Happiness
causes the population to grow – um… as in real life, perhaps? – and once a
farmstead is filled up, the building can be upgraded into workers’
accommodations.
Each class of people brings their own demands, and also their own benefits: so
you must balance their needs against the value they have to your society. Just
as in life, the more complex the building, the more items are needed in order to
craft resources and the more workers are required to run them. Large factories
can require hundreds of workers, all demanding, food, clothing and soap along
with housing
THE OLD AND THE NEW
The game is divided into the ‘Old World’ and the ‘New World’ and you have to
play on both maps, colonising and growing raw materials on one hand and
manufacturing and distributing on the other, in order to maintain supply lines
and manufacturing capacity. This is where the game can get very interesting in
multiplayer mode, as a raid in the New World can bankrupt your Old World factory
by cutting off a vital line of supply.
BLUEPRINT TO SUCCESS
One new feature in this version of Anno is the ability to use blueprints to help
lay out the city. When planning your city, bear in mind that factories and
industrialisation take away aesthetics (which puts off tourists), even as they
creating valuable resources. Use the blueprint to balance your cities, aiming to
achieve the best of all worlds.
Blueprint mode also allows you to block out buildings that you don’t yet have
the resources to build. Once the resources are available, the construction can
be completed with a single click.
In between building your city, you might run out of resources and find that you
need to wage war to seize assets or land to boost your infrastructure and keep
your people happy. You can battle for the assets, or you can work some financial
wizardry and stage a takeover, seizing control of factories, islands or cities,
for your own purposes.
WAYS TO PLAY
Story Campaign
Follow the suggestions of the AI characters to play around the map, gathering
crates and fulfilling missions. As you play, you will find yourself becoming
busier and busier as your territories expand: your populations boom and you find
you need more and more resources to run your growing settlement.
Sandbox mode
Go off and explore the islands and lands on your own, seeing what there is to
see and only accepting whatever missions take your fancy. This is a slower way
of playing, and one that might suit someone who likes to meander along in a
game, exploring every nook and islet to see what might be there. It is a great
way to stumble across unexpected valuables, so be sure to take notes for when
you decide to play in earnest!
Multiplayer mode
Team up with friends or battle it out to score the best resources and grab
goodies from under other players’ noses. The game can get very exciting as you
have to divide your time between the two worlds, keeping your characters happy
and productive and making sure that other players haven’t swiped your best
assets for themselves.