It looks like Sim City on steroids to me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZbLdezwSJk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DScmQMoqaHE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imlrDGJ2miw I would embed the videos but the youtube tag seems to be broken, it keeps redirecting this thread to the youtube homepage so I posted the direct links.
If you've followed the Anno(Dawn of Discovery in the US) series you will know they put out very well made strategy games. Sort of like Settlers meets Sim City meets the ocean. edit: The only reason I haven't bought it yet is because the impending steam sale(That will likely take place in 2 days) may have it at a drastically reduced price. I haven't played a bad anno game yet, definitely a good buy if you're into Settlers style games(Fuck ubisoft) Post coming soon with more info.
CBA to type up an entire post for the three people here who will read it so here is my shamelessly stolen one. Before I start talking about Anno 2070, as a quick note the Anno series are massively addictive PC games that are a city building and trading game with some real time strategy elements. Here is a short list of common themes between the games: Building cities via a system where your people are your “tech tree†As you gain a larger population and fulfil their needs then they will need new different resources to keep happy, if kept very happy then they can upgrade to another social level which require new resources (such as peasants to citizens in anno 1404). Higher numbers of people and their social levels will give you access to different buildings, start with a simple Woodcutter and ending with things such as glassworks which require 4 or 5 different structures to get the resources to make glass. Many varieties of resources and goods. These all need differing structures to make plus different uses of the resources such as Glass which can be used by your people to upgrade their own houses or by yourself to build new structures. Water-based trading between islands Goods and resources can be traded between your own islands or even NPC islands with a vast network of boats and ships that allow you to form trading routes to supply your items with needed items or sell them for profit to NPCs. Military real time strategy combat Create armies and castles on opponents islands to fight over their resources and break down their cities. Anno 2070 The release date is the 17th/18th of November. OUT NOW! http://anno.ubi.com Minimum System Requirements OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7, Vista, XP PROCESSOR: INTEL Pentium DualCore 2GHz or equivalent RAM: 2 GB VIDEO CARD: DirectX® 9.0c compliant, Shader 3.0 compliant Video Card with 512 MB, or equivalent DIRECT X®: DirectX® 9.0c (included on disc) DVD-ROM DRIVE: only for installation SOUND CARD: DirectX 9.0c compatible HARD DISK: 5 GB PERIPHERALS: Mouse, keyboard OTHER: Temporary broadband connection required for one-time product registration at first launch of the game, permanent broadband connection required for multiplayer. New Gameplay Features In this section is an assortment of gameplay features that are new to Anno 2070 compared to previous games. More and expanded information to follow soon! Factions – Tycoons, ECOs and SAAT Players can choose to play as either the industrial Tycoons or the ecological ECOs. Tycoons will focus on efficiency and mass consumption, Ecos are more about sustainability and environmental friendliness. The SAAT are an AI robot faction that are non-playable but can be traded with. World Council You are allowed to vote for a council to run the world for a number real-time days which effects all your games. Choose from the Global Trust (Tycoons), Eden Initiative (ECOs) or SAAT (NPC AI robot chaps). These offer different usable bonuses to your game for their duration of running the world, however the item itself often has a cooldown time. You can see which bonuses each faction will give and then you vote on the faction with the bonuses you like best, this is while all other real players also decide which faction they want to vote for. After a set period of time the voting will finish and whoever received the most votes runs the world council and gives those bonuses to all players. They typically give you bonuses such as extra credits or improvements towards the efficiency of buildings/units. As an example of one of the bonuses there is one called Robotic Workforce which reduces the maintenance costs of production and energy producing buildings by 50%. This lasts for 30 minutes and has a 50 minute cooldown period. Senate This is another vote between the Global Trust, Eden Initiative or SAAT which adds and effect to all your games for a period of real time days. The senate will pass a powerful law which is usually a positive (but may have something negative attached to it) benefit across the entire game plus this does not have to be toggled on or off as it is always in effect. Much like the World Council you vote on which of the factions you like the law of best and vote for them while other players also vote for their preferred law until voting ends and that law becomes locked in for some days These laws can give you effects such as improving the Ecobalance of all islands, or one that for a positive increases production for all fisheries but as a negative increases the construction costs of ships. Power Power is a new feature of Anno 2070 where nearly all structures in the game consume power (with the exception of housing and power generating buildings.) If you go into negative power then the efficiency of all buildings on that island will drop so you will need to build various power plants to keep your power levels high enough to keep all of your buildings running at full efficiency. Both factions have different ways for generating power such as Wind Parks (the efficiency of these will drop the more you have in an area) for the ECOs and Coal Power Stations (which require the resource of Coal to work) for the Tycoons. Island Ecology This is a new feature which is basically the wellbeing of a particular island. The structures and facilities you build on your island that have a negative Ecobalance rating will remove some of the Ecobalance which will lead to penalties on that island. You can however build facilities that improve the Ecobalance of the island so you are not stuck with a negative Ecobalane. Faction Differences Both factions have things in common that they use such as Building Modules (discussed below) or resources that fulfil a similar function but are different for either faction, such as the resource needed to fulfil the Need for Drink is Tea for the ECOs and Beer for the Tycoons. As mentioned above there is a resource called Building Modules, these are used to build most early structures (similar to how Wood is used in earlier games, however Wood is still used in Anno 2070 but it is not the most basic building resource anymore). The biggest difference is how the two factions gain the Building Module resource which is a two stage process for both. For the ECOs they use a structure called a Basalt Extraction. This allows you to place down two production plants from it to extract an item called Pellets. Then the ECOs use a building called a Smelter to turn the Pellets into the Building Modules. These buildings can be placed anywhere on an island where you have space to create these items. One Basalt Extraction will use 1 unit of power and have no effect on the Island Ecology. For the Tycoons they have a building called a Basalt Crusher which simply mines out Pellets and another called a Smelter which turns the Pellets into Building Modules. However one Basalt Crusher takes 2 Units of Energy and reduces the Island Ecology by 4. Videos and Screenshots All of these (current images) can be found on the official website, but I have re-uploaded them here for easier viewing, please click on them all for the larger version. Here is a direct link to the trailer video hosted at gametrailers: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/debut-trailer-anno-2070/712787 An assortment of screenshots from the main website: Harbour. Ozone Maker Ozone Maker 2 City Tycoon City Coal Power Plants Harbour 2 City Landscape City 2 Black Market Ship Here are some structure concept images they have released: Educational Network Eco Monument Concert Hall Concert Hall 2 Distillery Anno 1404 and Anno 1404: Venice (Dawn of Dicovery) Purchase Links: Steam: Currently unavailable sadly http://www.direct2drive.co.uk/10095/product/Buy-Anno-1404-Gold-Download - Cheapest, and my recommendation if in the UK/EU! http://www.getgamesgo.com/product/anno-1404-gold - Thanks Fazana http://www.direct2drive.com/9058/product/Buy-Dawn-of-Discovery:-Gold-Edition-Download http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-A1404GOLD/anno-1404-gold (thanks NoNotTheMindProbe) http://www.getgamesgo.com/product/anno-1404-gold (thanks Brick Moses) Game Information: Developed by Related Designs in Blue Bye Software Anno 1404 was released on the 23rd of June 2009 in the USA and on the 25th of June 2009 in Europe. The expansion Anno 1404: Venice was released on the 26th of February 2010. Currently this is the latest game in the series (until 2070 is released) and is the game that most fans of the series are playing, therefore this will be the most detailed section until Anno 2070 is near. Major changes from previous games The setting has changed from discovering the New World to exploring the Orient (the Middle East) and colonizing islands there to trade and forge diplomatic relations with the Orientals. Differing from previous games the Occidental (European) civilization progression is Peasants > Citizens > Patricians > Noblemen. Diplomacy with the Orient will lead you to build Oriental structures on islands to gain resources that you cannot access with your standard Occidental buildings. The oriental buildings have a separate two tier population which start at Nomads and upgrade to Envoys. These require different food and resources to your Occidental population and will allow you to create/mine resources the Occident needs. The Venice Expansion adds the Venetian NPC faction who will offer you more and different quests and resources/items. What do I actually DO in this game? At the most basic level you colonize islands to build cities and spend your time keeping your population of people happy while trading resources to where they are needed. While that may not sound very exciting it is addictive in a way similar to Sim City or Settlers or other similar games, you want to keep designing your city to look lovely and be efficient, you want to keep your people happy and paying you lots of taxes, you want to set up mighty trade routes of many ships to transport and sell your produce. You want everything to be bigger and better and you will become addicted to doing this. Depending on what game mode you are playing you will have various objectives or things to do in addition to the main focus of building your cities. Campaign: Standard campaign mode with focused objectives following a storyline, showing you different aspects of the game. This is very much a tutorial teaching you the game. Scenarios: There are a variety of scenarios with specific objectives which are far more involved than the Campaign mission, you usually have a few objectives such as a Build a Cathedral and settle 5000 Noblemen which can take you quite a long time and are very involved in building up your entire civilization across multiple islands. The Venice Expansion adds more scenarios with typically a stronger mission based objective than the base game Scenarios. Continuous Mode: This is typically most players main mode of play for the game. There are no major objectives except for which you decide on yourself and there is no end to this mode until you quit. You can set up a variety of settings such as the number of AI players, the size of the map, whether there are natural disasters or not, how abundant resources are, the size of the islands, and more! You can basically make the game as easy as hard as you like in this mode. Additionally across all game modes NPCs will give you quests and allow you to buy resources and items from them that will upgrade your islands or your ships in various ways, such as increasing ship speed or increasing the Cider production on a specific island. For people who enjoy fighting there is combat in the game, the main focus is building your own cities but you can build armies to invade your opponents islands to crush and steal everything they have, along with mighty Warships to destroy your opponents trade routes and cripple their resources. With the Venice expansion you have access to espionage and you can infiltrate your opponents islands and perform acts such as poisoning water supplies or setting fire to their buildings. I’ve just bought Anno 1404/Dawn Dawn of Discovery and I’m so confused hdear: The first thing you should do is play the Campaign. It is very good at teaching you the mechanics of the game and provides a great deal of information of how to play and all the different aspects of the game. I am in the process of creating a video series (albeit only one video right now) which talks of some of the aspects of the game, mostly going into things that aren’t covered by the campaign such as extra UI features and information. Part 1: Useful keys and UI control features F11 = Game speed control display. . = Rotate building. Tab = Scroll between all your ships. I = remove the UI for pretty screenshots. At the top left of the screen is a resource display for the island you are currently looking at. You can customize what this displays for each island individually by dragging a resource on or off this. You can drag any building from the build menu or a ship onto a row of action bars at the bottom of a screen for easier access. You can also drag up to 3 buildings onto the right click menu for quick access to these ones. I typically add Oriental houses and warehouses here to add symmetry for the Occidental Houses & Warehouses as all of these are usually my most used buildings. More detailed explanations of certain aspects Warehouses All warehouses on an island are connected by some 15th century magic and will share the resources on the island across each other so you don’t have to connect all the warehouses together by road or even to the warehouse on the coastline you start with. If you want a resource you must build a warehouse in range and connect it to the resource gathering or production building so it can be collected by a cart sent out by the warehouse to pick up resources and return them to the Warehouses so they can go into use for yourself to build things or for your population to use themselves either to upgrade their houses or use as one of their needs. Every resource must be picked up by a cart from a Warehouse to go into your stockpile, however there is an exception in that some resources needed by a production building can be collected directly by the building that needs it. For example you could build a Wheat Farm next to a Mill and the Mill will directly take the Wheat to turn it into Flour. If you have a Bakery next to the Mill then the Bakery will collect the Flour and turn it into Bread. However you will need the Bakery connected by a road to a Warehouse so that the Bread can be picked up and put into your stockpile to be used. Mines When a mine is low or empty of resources you can click the button on a mine to regenerate its resource. This costs you some gold but allow you to continually use the mine. You can also shift-left click this to regenerate all the resources of this type on the island. Norias Norias provide a fertile area to allow you to make farms on southern (Oriental) islands. They have a finite resource that must be replenished by clicking the button on the Noria when it is low or empty of water. You can also shift-left click this to replenish all Norias on the island. There is also a “Noria Exploit†that allows you to stack multiple Norias in a small area to increase productivity in a small area (even on northern (Occidental) which can save on space and the number of farms. This link will explain it better and in more detail than I can: http://anno1404.wikia.com/wiki/Noria_exploit Honour While most typical resources such as wood or tools can be bought with gold there is a secondary resource called Honour which is used to buy items, gifts for the Orient (called Prestige) or Attainments (more on this later). You get Honour by doing a great variety of things through a game, such as upgrading a city to a new city level or trading with an NPC multiple times. Attainments If you press F10 or click the Attainments button in the bottom right you will open the attainment menu which is basically a selection of perks which can affect your empire in various ways depending on which NPCs you have and which ones you purchase, you can purchase all of these with Honour. Examples of Attainments would be gaining access to different resources from an NPC that you can buy with gold, giving you access to a larger trading or war fleet, the amount of water in a Noria, and many others. Depending on the scenario or campaign mission you may be offered different attainments than other times. Socketable Items I’ve mentioned previously that you can buy items from NPCs or receive them as quest rewards. These can be socketed into a ship or Warehouse on an island to give additional benefits. Some items are powerful and have to be used which gives a bonus for a certain amount of time which then deactivates and has a cooldown timer until it can be used again. On a ship you simply right-click it while it is in the ship and it moves to one of the slots on the right. If it is a passive bonus it will be permanently active on that ship until you remove it, or you must left-click to activate it for an active item. If you wish to remove it then right-click the item and it will go into the ships cargo holds. To use an island item you must first trade it from a ship to a Warehouse on the island you wish to apply the bonus to and if you have no items socketed already then it will automatically be placed in an empty socket on the island. If these are already used b items then to change them you open up the Strong Room tab on the Warehouse and right-click one of the ones at the top you do not want, then left-click the item you want to use in the Strong Room tab. Useful Links and Videos Anno 1404 Wiki - http://anno1404.wikia.com/wiki/Anno_1404_Wiki Building layout strategies on the Wiki - http://anno1404.wikia.com/wiki/Building_layout_strategies Population and Production Calculator - http://www.anno1404-rechner.de/index.php?lang=en Part 1 of my tutorial video: Screenshots Thanks to Poil for these screenshots of his amazing Palace: Amazing City shot by Uberjumper :aaaaa: Once again, if you notice any mistakes or have anything you would like in the OP then please post and I will correct or add the information and credit you as necessary Also some more screenshots showing off the game would be nice! Anno 1701 Purchase links: Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/7870/ D2D: http://www.direct2drive.co.uk/7933/product/Buy-1701-A.D.-Gold-Download Game Information: Anno 1701 (1701 AD in America) is the third game in the series which was developed by Related Designs and released in Germany on the 26th of October 2006, the USA on the 30th October 2006 and the rest of Europe on the 3rd of November 2006. Once more we visit the New World but in the 18th century! In this game the player is actually colonizing and trading for the Queen who you can either pay tribute to or go to war against, either of these options will eventually lead to your independence from the Queen. Once more your civilization levels go Pioneer > Settler > Citizen > Merchant > Aristocrat. Aristocrats return to being a straight upgrade from Merchants like in 1602 ignoring the separate housing from 1503. In Anno 1701 the foreign cultures are: Aztecs, Chinese, Indians and Iroquois, plus NPC opponents who also play for the Queen like you do. Anno 1701 was the first game of the series to add natural disasters such as Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Plagues. It also added player control to secret actions against an enemy such as Espionage and Sabotage. Also included was a simplified streamlined user interface and military combat was also simplified and added troop formations for newer players. Anno 1503 Anno 1503 was the second game in the series which was developed once again by Max Design and released in Europe on the 4th of April 2003 and in the USA on the 23rd of March 2003. Once again this was based around the time of the colonization of the New World however a century earlier to the previous game. This game has a larger focus on trading with NPC native cultures who all sell different goods or resources that you can only get from each specific culture and in return they each want a different specific item for their goods. The native cultures are: Africans, Aztecs, Bedouins, Eskimos, Mongols, Moors, Native Americans and Polynesians. The game makes it very easy to trade with the native cultures from a trade/diplomacy menu and each of these has a different preference for how they interact with you too, some of the cultures prefer a more aggressive approach to show you are worthy to trade with them. However, while you cannot make alliances with these cultures you can interact with them and declare war on them if you feel brave enough, but some of them have very powerful military units and are very tough to conquer if you do attack. Like the previous game, the civilization levels go: Pioneer > Settler > Citizen > Merchant. However unlike the first game the highest level of Aristocrats are built directly and do not upgrade from Merchants, but you still need to have enough resources and buildings unlocked to build Aristocrat housing. Anno 1602 Anno 1602 (known as 1602 AD in America) was the first game in the Anno series based around the time of the colonization of America which was developed by a company called Max Design and released on September the 24th 1998 in Europe and the 1st of February 2000 in the USA. It also featured online or local multiplayer supporting up to 5 [Joe note, maybe only 4, please verify] players. The gameplay has you starting as an unnamed nation from Europe sailing to the new world to discover an island to colonize and use it to build up the resources to expand and colonize more islands to make a great trading empire. The population starts out as Pioneers, which will upgrade to Settlers, who will in turn upgrade to Citizens, they will upgrade into Merchants, and finally these will upgrade into the highest civilization level of Aristocrats.
I want an Anno - 10,000 "Build an elaborate network of caves" "Unlock new classes of humankind!" "Unlock exciting new technologies like: fire, rocks, sticks"