Looks good, been a while since I've been excited for an Anno game, here's hoping they've learned from the problems that plagued 1800
Seen a couple of videos for this and am very hyped for it, recently just started a new game on 1800 with my brother trying the new horizons(I think?) mod, what issues did you have with 1800?
2205 whilst visually impressive dropped the ball and neutered the complexity, 1800 tried to add back the complexity but they confused it with tedium and instead balanced the game to punish every step you took by forcing you to take 2 back to artificially lengthen the game. the artisen/engeer hump was the fun killer forcing major side stepping; the "off island" (where your forced to develop a whole new island to harvest non native resources) came far too late in tier 3 (artisan) while in 1404 and 2070 it was early tier 2, there's often a second "off island" that lands usually mid tier 4 but in 1800 it lands slap at the start of Tier 4 (engineers) with electricity forcing you to essentially start from scratch on another island if you didn't have native oil resources and if you did have oil on your starter island the sheer amount of steel you need to build it and tier 4 housing meant you need to build more steel mills but then you run into the problem of not having the population to run them, hooking them into the grid doesn't work because you to need double the input of iron and coal and building extra pop doesn't help because royal taxes **** you for anything more then 1000 of each pop class. Try to pre plan your island beforehand and royal taxes start to kill you and shipping people in via the pier comes too late at tier 4 as the costs to do so kill your income. its as if it doesn't matter how you try to attack the model it forces you to essentially spend your time tediously building nothing but tier 1 and 2 islands. it would have been easier if industrial revolution that came with tier 4 engineers could be developed to retrofit previous tier production to be more efficient when it came to workforce but that **** was was sold off as the BRIGHT HARVEST DLC and even then only worked with non field production in tier 2, if you wanted to bolster fields then **** you, its only available from tier 4 and you need ****ing oil. the whole game was balanced arse about face and rather then try fix it they just keep shitting out more DLC adding even more aerodynamic drag to a game with a boot full of lead. /rant
2205 is the one newer anno I've never played (I think they removed multiplayer which is what I enjoyed doing with my brother so never tried it) so can't comment on that, and it's been a while since I've played 1800 with no dlc, but played a couple of games with my brother a decent way into it, each time adding a dlc or two, most recently adding land of lions and this mod so there's always plenty of 'new' stuff. Haven't played 1404/2070 for a while so I guess I don't find it as jarring going from needing to go to that 2nd island early for spice in 1404 vs probably red peppers in 1800, always remember finding it slightly annoying how early you needed a 2nd island to be fair! I don't think I've ever actually worked out what royal taxes are, just part of the general costs, but I do agree electricity throws a massive spanner in the works suddenly needing space for railways etc, never remember to even try to plan for it. Almost always play on fairly easy settings as we like to have a fairly chill time playing so maybe that's it. Either way I'm happy to keep playing until this comes out and then maybe we'll start a new game when it does!
getting a second island in early imo is better as it often eases production later on, for 1800 my best starting strategy before flipping the table at the arty/engineer hump was to build 2 supporting islands first before starting the main, tier 1 being self sufficient so long as there's a potato fertility on both with one island focusing on "no T2 fert" early production (sausages, soap) with the other working on "T2 fert" (needs common starter island wheat/barley and hops fertility) production (bread, booze) with both island shipping the run off excess over to the other, both islands would be built to 1000/1000 t1 and t2 residents to dodge royal taxes and by having each island focus on half of T2's production chains it frees up workforce for flexibility to build whatever you need going forward depending on the fertilities of those starter islands, once they're full id build a little more of each t2 production to create more overspill on production before shipping both sets of trickle down run off onto a main island that had red peppers, the rest is then just a slog to end game.
