Anno 1800

Anno 1800 — the new game in the real-time management strategy series Anno. The events unfold at the dawn of the industrial age, during times of great discoveries, diplomacy, and industrialization. You will be able to test your skills as a ruler, as you will need to create vast megacities, plan efficient logistics networks, explore and settle new lands, and dominate your opponents through diplomacy, trade, and war.

Anno has returned to its roots — you need to extract and process resources; build complex production chains and trade routes; meet the needs of residents, advancing them to the next level of development and forming a class society. However, the developers of Anno 1800 have gathered the best ideas from all the previous games in the series and presented them in an excellent compilation.

Planning has been significantly improved and simplified. Firstly, right after loading, you can lay out a road network across the entire island. Secondly, you can place layouts of future buildings (including those for which there are currently no resources) in the desired locations.

The layouts look like transparent shadows of themselves. You can convert a layout into a building as soon as the time comes or the necessary resources appear, so the player does not need to remember their positions.

Some innovations from Anno 2205, which simplified the gameplay, have been discarded, and some simplifications have been reworked. City centers are not limited by a frame, allowing you to place residents' houses anywhere, not just around them. Fields at farms are now set with a flexible frame, and pastures and other working areas at estates are placed with ready-made elements.

The coastline will provide new opportunities for construction and storage, so it makes sense to pave it up to the port zone level. The employment system remains, and residential quarters need to be located closer to farms and productions so that labor resources can reach them.

All games in Anno 1800, except for the story ones, take place on procedurally generated maps. As usual, many settings are available — the number and area of islands, starting resources, the amount and types of resources on the map, the number of traders and rivals, victory conditions, and so on.

If you played Anno 1701 or Anno 1404, you remember that there were several climate zones on one map. Now each zone has its own region, with its own islands, NPCs, raw materials, and resources.

At the time of release, there were two biomes — continental Europe and the tropical islands of the Caribbean. In subsequent expansions, the biomes of Africa and Greenland appeared, each with its own opportunities and needs.

Regions operate simultaneously and can be switched between instantly. To enable development, trade routes must be established. For example, rum is produced only in the warm climate of South America, while steel is produced in Europe.

There are also cross-region opportunities where raw materials are in one region, and final processing is in another. For example, cotton for coats is obtained in the New World, while the coats themselves are made in the Old World when cotton is combined with fur.

The world's detailing is at a very high level. Each island now has a simulation of wildlife, corresponding to its biome. In a normal climate, for example, you can see deer and goats grazing, wolves hunting them, and a bear coming out to stretch.

The visualization of buildings and interactions between them is unprecedented in the series' history—there are many more people, bustling in the fields, tending to livestock, and working in enterprises; they go on demonstrations and strikes; carts transport goods and nobles; shopkeepers trade; a priest absolves sins; and musicians and artists entertain onlookers.

As always, each map offers a limited set of resources. Other islands will help find the missing resources for production and consumption—some of them can be settled, while others can be turned into raw material appendages, exporting all the most valuable to the metropolis.

Anno 1800 offers a single-player campaign consisting of four acts with a total duration of 10 hours and three difficulty levels. Starting in the north, the player will embark on an exciting journey to the south. Accordingly, the conditions and requirements of the residents will change. By fully completing the campaign, even a novice in economic strategies will master all the game's functions.

Additionally, the authors provide an interesting story featuring many well-voiced and animated characters. The campaign includes a maximum set of tasks and unique quests, which excellently diversify the economic and strategic routine. The quests include a moral aspect and various ways to solve problems.

The era of the Great Industrial Revolution is also reflected in a whole range of situations for the late game. Workers begin to strike and protest, seeking better working conditions and other social demands. All these must be addressed, or they will oust an unworthy ruler.

After completing the campaign, the game will offer to test your skills in the sandbox mode—against the computer or other players. Here, you can reveal your talent as a manager and logistician, building the most complex production and trade chains involving dozens of islands, hundreds of ships, and thousands of people.

At the beginning of the scenario, you can set starting parameters and victory conditions (or disable them). There are many possibilities—builders can disable competitors to fully occupy all the islands with constructions and earn solid money from trading on the global market. Those wishing to engage in combat can add several competitors (AI or human) and then build frigates, cruisers, and battleships to dominate their rivals.