Well... it's quite a colourful pack, that could also include skins, of course...

It's not about ornamental buildings as such, but about the huge ones that Seilofo was asking about. Sure, the rollercoaster, swan pond or the ice rink are larger structures (that's why there's also just always only one of them in a CDLC, if any) but I believe not quite what the original comment was about.

The philosophy is to provide additional, purely ornamental content with no gameplay impact. It's to provide players with more options to bring their cities to life and/or create themed areas (a Christmas market, an old town, etc.) in their cities.

Visual clarity is also important in Anno, i.e. players should see on first glance and without UI help what they're dealing with (that's a factory doing smelting, this place is cooking something, that's a residence, that's a public building, and so on). That also applies to the CDLC, where even larger structures should be clearly ide...

Oh, it's not Anno 117 that's the reason here. Our design-approach for Cosmetic DLC was that we want it to be smaller objects that fit well into cities (or landscapes) to fill up any "empty" tiles and are as flexible as possible.

Most cosmetic packs have a larger structure included (e.g. the bath in the Steampunk pack, the large swan pond in the City Lights pack, etc.) but the rest of the pack focuses on smaller to medium-sized structures.

Large structures (the big ornamental building you mention) are very expensive in terms of workhours; that would mean that (considering the 5€ price tag for CDLCs) there would be VERY few of those in one cosmetic pack. Additionally, from our perspective, putting all this effort into such a huge building (let's use the Cathedral example) and then not having it have any gameplay impact would feel like a waste. There's also a good chance of it not matching player expectations: us adding/selling a huge Cathedral but not giving it any ...

It's not themed to a specific real life event ;)

I understand the wish for ornamental buildings, but that's not within the scope for the Cosmetic DLC and also not part of our design philosophy for these packs, I'm afraid.

That is still the case, yes. We are not planning to release any of the gameplay DLC that exist on PC for the console version, sorry.

Achievements: no, those are bound to your Ubisoft account.

Savegames: You can delete all of your savegames if you so desire, and also deactivate cloud syncs in Connect. That should mean that on a new PC, no old savegames should be present.

Can anyone who has this (or similar) issues please let me know if you're using any mods?

Just gotta say, that we're impressed (or frightened?) every time someone posts their Anno 1800 playtime.

Hope you don't forget about coffee breaks.

Over 120 total, if I remember correctly.

They have not - yet.

But we'll soon start dropping some hints and have more info in the second half of November.

You try to pick to an example that clearly makes little sense... and people end up thinking it's a teaser of sorts. You really can't win...

Not just there, but yes, all big announcements for the game will of course also be featured on the Anno Union.

I assume it's not specifically about beta-testing (beta tests like e.g. a Closed Beta will be announced publicly and will have pulic sign-up phases) but playtests in general?

One good way for a chance tobe selected for playtests (which we have used for the past ones) is signing up here: https://playtest.ubisoft.com/

We're working closely with User Research Labs at Ubisoft to organise (remote and in-person) playtests, managing the surveys etc.

Phew... first time I've personally heard that, but it does indeed not sound ideal. I'd still advise creating a support ticket, but I'll also see if we can investigate on this.

We'll definitely talk about the tech aspects and the PC version specifically at some later point.

Some time at the beginning of next year (exact timing TBD) we're planning to showcase the work of the Level Art team, including island shapes, rock textures - and waterfalls :D

Yes and no. We're using our own, proprietary engine for all Anno games since 1701. Since then, it has of course seen massive overhauls in terms of its toolset, the graphic technologies it supports etc. We tackled the topic about 3y ago in a DevBlog, if you want to know more: https://www.anno-union.com/devblog-the-anno-engine/