Ubi-Thorlof

Completely unbiased opinion: It's absolutely worth picking up the game for 15€!

But: I think that money is better spent on non-gaming expenses... DM me and I can send you a key for the game instead.

No, completely different studio, completely different team. There are 3 German studios under the "Blue Byte" umbrella: Ubisoft Berlin, Ubisoft Düsseldorf (originally Blue Byte) and Ubisoft Mainz (originally Related Designs). And a team at Ubisoft Düsseldorf works on The Settlers, while Anno has always been a project at Ubisoft Mainz.

Of course. Like many other featuresof Anno 117: Pax Romana, we'll also go into detail on the combat side of things and how & why we're doing what we're doing in dedicated DevBlogs.

Alright, the topic always results in heated discussions, as we know very well. I'd still appreciate if you'd all keep it a bit more civil - and don't make up claims if you have nothing to back that up.

If you personally want war in Anno or not is very much an opinion, and everyone can decide for themselves if they want to engage with that mechanic: disable opponents or pick easy ones for a "no war" approach, or pick the harder NPCs for a challenge.

However, I feel there are a few points that I can add from an official perspective:

- Anno is not a city builder, correct. Anno really is much more than that and includes logistic and economy management, as well as diplomacy and - accordingly - war. None of these elements will be removed from the game as they are essential to what we perceive makes Anno, Anno.

- However: The picture (we have data, after all) is far more diverse than both sides of the front here make it look. The vast majority of our playe...

Personally, I can't wait for the theories on why the game's entire world is changing over the centuries.

Great catch! There are multiple scenes with the detective, actually.

If you want to read a bit more on it, we covered this (and the work of our Game Writing team) in a blog post back then :)

https://www.anno-union.com/devblog-game-writing-and-detective-stories/

Well, colour me intrigued.

Sorry for the late reply: not for me to say, maybe a mod has some input on this.

If you do a post every week, for example, that should be totally fine, though

That's a great initiative, looking forward to the rest of the advent calendar!

That is super impressive and must have taken a WHILE. Mad respect for this project.

No buildings this time in Anno, sorry. It's mostly about landscapes and long hikes through the hills and along the beaches.

(we will, next year!)

Then we're in good company, that's a gorgeous game.

The store page is very much an early version and will be expanded with more information next year.

Nope, they only need the goods + service buildings listed in their respective interface. The need usually just carries over to the next tier but not further.

(I believe there's a mod that changes that, however, if you prefer the extra challenge)

Even more specific: we're Ubisoft Mainz. "Ubisoft Blue Byte" is the combination of all three German studios (Berlin, Düsseldorf, Mainz).

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 ...