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In today’s Union Update, we will be looking at the release notes of our second Game Update for Anno 1800, scheduled for next week; this essentially means you are getting two updates for the (nonexistent) price of one. Just what would Leonard von Malching think about our deal making skills?
Release Notes for Game Update 02 ( planned for May 15, 2019)
Update 02 will include several bug fixes, improvements to the game’s stability as well as balancing updates for Influence and some of our ships. We will continue to improve the game based on community feedback with future updates, including further balancing and quality-of-life improvements.
One focal point for this update was the Influence system and the rate at which players can gain influence points to spend. We have also received a lot of feedback on Royal Taxes, but rather than simply rebalancing some numbers we are looking at a rework of the system in a future update.
Finally, we are happy to say that Madame Kahina seems to have found a new, more reliable supplier for European fertility items, so make sure to check out her Emporium’s stock.
Balancing Changes
Influence
With the newest changes,
players will have an easier time acquiring influence from population as well as
from investors. Our goal is that player are able to embrace their own playstyle
more freely, which could be hard for players who were heavily engaged in war or
complex trade route networks in the earlier stages of the end game of Anno
1800. We also changed the Influence gain population soft-cap from 14.000 to 16.000
citizens.
Finally, we tackled some influence perks that players felt were not rewarding enough considering the influence investment required. As it is our goal to reward the commitment to a certain playstyle, we buffed the overall benefit gains from influence specializations.
Influence Rebalancing:
– Influence gained from population increased from +10 to +15 per increase
– Influence gained from investors increased from +1 to +2 per house
– Exponential scaling for influence from population kicks in later, at 16.000 Global Population instead of 14.000
Influence Bonus Improvements:
– Propaganda category: Newspaper Effectiveness boosted from 5%/10%/15% to 7%/15%/25%
– Trade category: Movement Speed boosted from 5%/10%/15% to 7%/15%/25%
– Military category: Attack Speed boosted from 5%/10%/15% to 7%/15%/25%
– Optimization category: Maintenance Cost boosted from 1%/2%/3% to 3%/6%/10%
– Culture category: Attractiveness boosted from 5%/10%/15% to 10%/20%/35%
Changes to naval combat
and ship diseases
We are happy to see that
many players are engaging with the naval combat of Anno 1800 and will continue
to improve the system based on community feedback. With Update 02, we wanted to
focus on the passive defensive stance, which was not working as intended as
well as an overall balancing pass on our ships. Our goal has always been
to strive for a balance where both sail and steam-powered ships have their
place and uses in the game, but we may have fallen a bit short when it comes to
making steam ships a viable and attractive option in the late game. With these
changes, we hope that we are putting more of the “dreading nought” into our battlecruisers.
We also re-balanced the
illness on ships, so pandemics spreading through a network of trade routes
should be less likely now, as the overall timer for the spread chance to
trigger was raised significantly.
Rework of the “Passive Defense” ship stance
– Renamed to “Hold Position”
– Ships using this stance do not move to attack a target
Steamship balance
– Battle Cruiser hit points increased from 5000 to 6000
– Battle Cruiser Damage per shot increased from 245 to 275
– Battle Cruiser Upkeep Cost lowered from 1000 to 850
– Monitor hit points increased from 2500 to 3000
– Monitor Upkeep Cost lowered from 600 to 300
– Collier hit points from increased from 3500 to 4000
Illness on ships
– Ship disease spread chance was 1% every 10 seconds; spread chance now is 1% every 30 seconds
– Ship disease duration was 15 minutes, and has now been lowered to 10 minutes
Changes to Madame Kahina’s item pool
Now, 20% of items offered at Madame Kahina’s harbor consist of European fertilities, with rarities (uncommon, rare and epic) depending on player progress.
Improvements to game
stability
With Update 02, we
improved the overall stability of the Anno 1800 game client as well as fixed
specific issues, which could cause the game to crash.
– Fixed an instance where toggling the Victory Conditions could crash the game when starting a new game
– Fixed issues which could lead to crashes If the game was running under DirectX 12
– Fixed an instance which could lead to crashes during campaign gameplay
– Fixed an instance which could lead to a crash while upgrading residential buildings
– Fixed several rare instances that caused general client instability
Fixed an issue which
could prevent players from receiving further quests or character
notifications
We have fixed an issue
that could prevent players from accepting any new quests or interacting with
other characters in the game world, which blocked them from progressing in the
campaign or with their sandbox quests.
Fixed some issues causing the railway system to stop working properly.
The issue could cause
trains to ignore the Oil refinery when the internal storage of the Oil Harbor
was at max capacity, which could happen when players had a more complex network
of different refineries connected to the harbor.
Fixed an issue where happiness count would instantly drop when building a commuter harbor.
This issue could create a
significant drop in residential happiness as soon as the commuter harbor was
constructed.
Various gameplay fixes
– Fixed an issue that prevented the achievement “What’s that smell?” from unlocking
– Fixed a rare issue where the player could get locked out of expedition events
– Fixed an issue where losing an island with Trade Unions would not refund the influence spent on those unions
Fixed graphical issue in top-secret, nonexistent first-person mode
Various fixes and visual improvements to the First-Person Mode Easter Egg. Which totally does not exist. Enjoy the view!
Fixed a variety of UI issues.
– Fixed the button positioning on “Desync Detected” screen
– Fixed an issue where the button of “Father’s Diary” would shift positions at some screen resolutions
– Fixed an issue where “Unmute All” text shifted position on the multiplayer chat settings window
– Fixed an issue where City Incidents buildings would interchange their object menus
– Improved the info tips for fertility items, as they were unclear on what they could be used on