devtrackers.gg
So I figured out how time works in Anno 1800. And I can't find anyone else that did, so I'm posting it here. Now if you don't want to read everything below, the campaign starts in january 1818 and every minute of gametime is 1 day.
Days on the high sea
Expeditions give us a notion of how long our ship has been away. I timed it and 1 day on the high sea is exactly 1 minute. That means 1 hour of gametime is about 2 months and 6 hours is a year. 1 second is 24 minutes.The Battle of Cape Trelawney
The queen tells us the sea battle took place 15 years ago. The report from the shipwreck is dated 1805, that means the questline takes place around 1820. In my games, playing things slow and easy, I usually get the quest a few hours in, which means the game must start around 1818/1819.The Newspaper
If you play through the tutorial without skipping the cutscenes, the game starts at around 5-6 minutes in. When you're about 6-8 minutes in, you'll get the first newspaper. It is still published from Bright Sands and filled with Edvard's propaganda. As opposed to every other newspaper published from Ditchwater, this one has a date! Thursday, January 8th and a "dog ear" conveniently covers the year. There is however only one year shortly before 1820 that had January 8th on a thursday: 1818.
Implications
* Roleplaying
This makes the game far more immersive for me. I made an Excel matching the gametime with it's corresponding historic time, giving me a sense of a timeline throughout my campaign. The game ends in a sandbox and is therefore different for everyone, but if you have around 120 hours of gametime, that means 20 years have passed since the beginning.
* Technology
So I saw most people making educated guesses based on the the technological progression. True, the end game looks alot like the 1910's or even 1920's. From a character perspective though, this would make them all over a 100 years old. Technology progression doesn't make any sense either way, because Bright Sands is the only one already heavily industrialised from the beginning. Prosperity already has a trainrails network. Rigid airships are introduced around 1820 as well, while they were invented in the early 1900's. It's clear that Anno's technological development does not correspond to that of real history, and therefore should not be considered reliable sources when making a timeline.