I MUST get this. I bought Anno 1404 on a bit of a whim and absolutely loved it. For a very long time I have been wanting a Settlers sort of game but I found the Settlers series had gone majorly downhill. This looks awesome and I can't wait, downloading the demo now.
I just played the demo and it's a pretty poor showcase of Anno. I felt a resounding "meh" and a feeling like I was reading a book that had only every other page. However if the full game is anything like Anno 1404 then I will enjoy it very much. I really like the idea of the two factions. In 1404 you did have the Occident and the Orient, but you could build both settlement types (actually you kind of HAD to build both in order to get your settlements to their highest development levels). I think add a bit more of variety to it.
theres actually 3 factions and from what ive been reading you gain access to thier technology as you would do the orient. theres a whole research tree to explore as well as building underwater
I've been enjoying the demo so far, it's definitely another game I'll be adding to my collection. I'm hoping they don't repeat the Anno 1404 thing and miss out multi-player until an expansion comes out, that was somewhat annoying... though Venice was a good addition to 1404.
multiplayer is included, they learnt from 1404 FYI nvidia beta driver 285.79 includes an SLI profile for 2070
