I got a question, actually:

We said "no gameplay", as you know, but what's everyone's stance on some insights into animation - on top of the topics we already said we'd cover this year? Of course we'll have feedback units in Anno 117 (i.e. all the people walking in the streets) but also animals to populate the world (incl. oxen like Lola, from the reveal trailer).

Too early to say anything from our side. Of course, with all DLC regions, Anno 1800 has a significantly higher impact on performance than with just the two starting regions. So, some light performance problems in late game Anno 1800 with 5 regions will likely not translate into big performance issues for Anno 117: Pax Romana.

But of course we're pushing things further on a graphical level as well, for Anno 117, compared to 1800.

For smoother performance, CPU and RAM have slightly higher importance than your GPU, so, if e.g. your CPU is your oldest/weakest component right now, that might become a bottleneck in the future.

We're using the same engine since 2006, technically. Or at least the foundation - it has seen massive improvements, changes and additions over the years, and in between every title a lot of work is done on the engine/our tools to make it future-proof.

Self-promotion, I suppose, but we did write a blog post about that in 2021, if anyone wants to read more: https://www.anno-union.com/devblog-the-anno-engine/

We had a livestream just a few weeks prior with both Haye and Manu where we even talked about the games we're all playing right now.

While I understand some of you might not have gotten the information you wanted from this livestream, I'd very much appreciate you not assuming things about people without having anything to back it up.

<3

We'll have a blog in July/August talking about Production Phases and Milestones that should also help clear up a few things. I'm aware that knowledge might not be very widely know outside the game dev sector itself, so, hope this will make things clearer.

But you wouldn't be in Beta so far from release; that would also be way past the point where we could gather meaningful feedback. Same was true for Anno 1800 back then.

I think there's a misunderstanding. We are not trying to explain to you what Anno is.

We're trying to highlight the work that goes into creating a new Anno game and that "What actually makes Anno "Anno"?" is a very important part of that. You can see these kind of discussions even amongst players here all the time, for example:

- Is it a city builder or primarily a logistics game?
- Do military aspects belong in an Anno game?
- Does Anno need islands?

Not looking at your own brand and reflecting on what the DNA of your game(s) is, can easily make you lose track of your identity and lead to a game that goes completely past your fan base.

It's fine if that's not a topic you're interested in, but please don't misconstruct our announcement into a "they want to explain to us what Anno is".

I understand the reason for the request, but right now such a functionality does not exist. It's a great note, though, something for us to consider - even though I can't promise anything like this for 1800.

A "dislike" was not felt as very useful feedback, they preferred for people to comment instead with what bothered them: general dislike, bug, missed info in the readme file etc.

Hey all, please also use the "Report" functionality directly on mod.io to report mods which you think are breaking rules or are not working as advertised.

We'll have a look at this situation in particular.

Enabling comments for a mod is indeed up to the creator, the dislike function was disabled for the entire Anno 1800 section on mod.io as per request from a large portion of the Anno modding community.

We're still very early in the music production for Anno 117, but if this is a topic of high interest, we can definitely dive deeper into this with our Audio Director at a later date when we made more progress.

We have some first tracks to get a feel for it and will use these moving forward for e.g. our livestream intro/outro (goodbye to the Anno 1800 elevator soundtrack) or other types of Anno 117 videos.

There's a balance to be struck between delivering the fantasy of the respective region with specific sounds and yet still having a nice soundtrack, which - as taubenangriff pointed out - would likely be hard on our ears if it eclusively used authentic instruments and what little we know about their music styles.

With all due respect, you can't possibly be arguing that the gameplay content we created over 4 years of postlaunch is somehow something that should've been in the basegame.

The DLC content built on top of what was included in the basegame and by quantity did not diverge from e.g. 1404.

We will absolutely not announce a new Anno game this year, not at all. Sorry.

Small correction on the timing only ;)

1800 was announced in August 2017 for a release in "Winter 2018". That's a bit less than 1,5 years. Ultimately delayed to April 2019, but that was not the plan when we revealed it back then.

Marketing is an essential part of game development - you have to get the word out there. And trailers remain a very important part of marketing strategies.

It's also important to keep the context of when assets are dropped: This was the reveal of our new project, the key messages (for both our existing players as well as people potentially interested) were the fantasy (be a governor, the world is your canvas, build grand cities and production chains) and the setting: ancient Rome.

Don't forget that making people aware of a game is very important, as without visibility and ultimately sales, we are not sustainable.
We love our highly engaged community, but they (not just for Anno, that applies for any game) make up only a portion of the entire playerbase - and we want to make sure as many as possible hear about Anno 117: Pax Romana.

The reception to the reveal and the trailer has been very positive, so, ultimately, I would say players do care about it ;)

These are the kind of deep questions I like to see debated more here!

Cheers, we're having a look