Anno 1800

Losing power for four to five days really taught me to appreciate electrical power more.  So what better way to celebrate electrical power then play a game during the time period it was invented in?   As such we move onto the latest game in the Anno series, Anno 1800 set during the industrial revolution!  And yes, in the late game you get to harness electricity, and it's an important gameplay element.

Such a beautiful image full of pollutants!

Anno 1800 has a story mode like Anno 2205, which after it completes turns into sandbox mode, or you can jump straight into sandbox mode and skip the story which is basically just anno 2205's story except in the past.  I won't spoil it, not that there's much you can't guess what happens yourself, but it involves you being a rich sibling, building a shipping company from scratch, the mysterious death of your father, and a sale of land to a rebel group against the British Empire.

Unfortunately, the story leaves many things unanswered, but acts like it had no loose strings after finishing.  Just like Anno 2205's forgettable story.  I completed it once, and now when I build cities I just skip to the sandbox mode.

Anno 1800 also took from anno 2205 the difficulty, uh, calculator and such.  By calculator I mean you can change various things, from the amount of money you make from taxes to the amount of fertilities on islands, to how aggressive and how many NPC opponents you have, and it tells you how difficult you just made the game, assigning one of three difficulties to you.  I always play on standard for two reasons, standard slash normal difficulty is how most game are usually supposed to play on, and I am also not good at economics or city building. 

Unlike Anno 2205, there are NPC parties trying to outcompete you in the game, and they can and do go to war against you.  Luckily, you can make warships and cannons and later even bigger and meaner weapons.  I am grateful for this, as pirates will always be a problem in Anno 1800, on both core game maps.

Yes, anno 1800 uses the same mechanic as Anno 2205, but instead of multiple maps, there are only two large ones with different islands on them.  They also bring back Fertility, meaning what plant or something can grow on the island, so colonizing different islands is a good idea and needed to even in the early game.

Anno 1800 also improves on the workforce of anno 2205, so each of the four tiers of residences in the city gives workforce, which is then expended in, well, factory's and farms and the like.  certain buildings need only farmers, for example, while some need workers or artisans.  SO you need to keep a stable of lower residences that might not net you a lot of taxes, but are needed nonetheless.

Each residence has needs and luxury items they want, and you'll want to fill all of them, since luxury items more often then not give cash as well as happiness, and happy citizens make festivals which make even more money.

You might get to Artisans rank, the third tier of residents, and think this game is pretty easy.  But then, you upgrade them to engineers, and I find my profit plummets, because they want things that need factory's that have -power-.  Those bastards.  Oil is used to make electric power, and it is only found on starter islands in the Old World.  in the New World, it's found pretty much everywhere, so you'll need to make trans Atlantic routes for your ships.

Shipping and making things is the main part of the game.  The mix of new mechanics from anno 2205, and the previous annos makes this a highly enjoyable game for me, and I already have...way too many hours spent in it then I want to admit.  The influx of DLCs that add more complexity and mechanics to the game is still ongoing as of this writing, and the 3rd year of DLC is still being made.  I Highly look forward to it.

Anno 2205

 Anno 2205.  It's...I mean....well...you know...

It's hard to put into words for me.  I both enjoy and dislike the game.  As you might guess, Anno 2205 is set in the distant future, but still on planet earth, but, the whole storyline is about going to the moon for colonization purposes.  So let's put on our dancing shoes and learn to moonwalk.

Look, you try to come up with something funny from this.

Anno 2205 simplifies the entire Anno premise from the previous games.  While I applaud the UI simplification and how some buildings work, they removed a lot of features from previous Anno games.  Most notably, all of the islands in a map automatically trade resources between them, including manpower, which is required to run buildings now, and power.  Fertilities between different islands are gone as well, meaning you can grow any type of crop on any type of island.  Other players, AI or human?  Gone.  having to protect your islands from pirates? Gone.

Before this sounds too depressing, you get more then nine maps to build cities in.  However, each maps is basically it's own island, meaning you trade between maps, and not islands.  To make things a little bit more depressing, the maps are divided into three, uh, biomes?  Types.  One is temperate, where your biggest cites are going to be.  Arctic is where you build specialized items to ship to the temperate maps, and Lunar maps are a late game addition that give you energy to transfer to temperate maps.  There is little diffrince between the differnt map types, meaning the same production chains adn goods can be made or grown on all of the maps of the same type.  IE, you can grow rice in all temperate maps, lunar crops in all moon maps, and fish farms in all arctic maps.

In the place of war between different players, we have instead 'crisis missions' where it's more of a classic RTS where you lead a small fleet of ships against inexplicable large fleets of mercs.  While I found these enjoyable, they are no replacement for the pirates and war hungry players in other Anno games.

Production chains are also simplified, except for very late game ones.  But, there is one thing Anno 2205 does well: statistics.  By that i mean you get a clear number representing how much demand of a product you need, how much your making to meet it, and the total you are producing after demand takes some away.  I sorely missed this ease when playing Anno 2070.

Overall, Anno 2205 is a poor entry into the Anno series, simply because it simplifies all that makes Anno a good game series.  But, depsite this...I really like it.  I'd give it a B rank.  Why do I like it?  Because it's a simple, easy going city builder.  Combat is completely optional, making produciton chains is easy, and all you have to worry about is having enough power so your citizens don't complain the TV isn't on 24/7.

So yeah, most people who are avid Anno fans wouldn't like it, but, I do because for me, it's what City Skylines is to a lot of people. (City Skylines is a modern day city builder, with less empathize on making goods and more on just building services and residential areas.)

Anyway, next time will be Anno 1800, which to me is the best on yet.