The characters in the game are indeed a bit roughly when it comes to polygons, and that is fully intended for two reasons:
1. You usually spent most of the time zoomed out, where you won't notice it, and crucially
2. It is needed for performance. Anno games can have hundreds of thousands (or even millions, for some of our most ambitious players) citizens whose needs and demands must be calculated, and can have hundreds of beautiful houses on the map. In addition, you can at any time jump to any place on the map, and even the other sessions without any loading times to interrupt your gameplay flow.
While it would be nice to have prettier characters, we think that the scope of Anno is more important, as we want you to really feel as if you are building a huge, globe-spanning empire.
1. You usually spent most of the time zoomed out, where you won't notice it, and crucially
2. It is needed for performance. Anno games can have hundreds of thousands (or even millions, for some of our most ambitious players) citizens whose needs and demands must be calculated, and can have hundreds of beautiful houses on the map. In addition, you can at any time jump to any place on the map, and even the other sessions without any loading times to interrupt your gameplay flow.
While it would be nice to have prettier characters, we think that the scope of Anno is more important, as we want you to really feel as if you are building a huge, globe-spanning empire.