Ubi-Thorlof

Egypt's importance for the real Roman Empire was massive. That would be a great place to explore thematically in Anno as well, indeed.

I wish that had been planned... but no, Basti is just bad at hiding spoilers.

This is beautiful work!

So, first of all: no, the "number 9 rule" is not an issue, since it's really just a joke (which we keep if we can) and not a rule. We said before that this would not stop us from making a game in a setting we would like to explore.

However, 1944 or WW2 in general as an era is not something we're very keen on. It's a very dark time, not many positives here. That does not fit with our more light-hearted approach to theme and setting.

Quoting from your original post: "it would have the largest sea battles, coolest ships, imperialism, multiple theaters, resource wars, amphibious assaults.." it also sounds to me like you're looking for a different type of game. Wars and combat are a part of Anno, but would never be a major focus. So, that's another point against the setting. It's not really a time of building, but rather one of destruction.

Highly unlikely that we'll ever create an Anno game in such a setting.

Eh... yes and no, especially when looking at the Roman Empire, which did not have consistent dynastic systems. Either way, that's besides the point since we were not talking about monarchs.

But again, that paragraph by Matt in the DevBlog very much references women's societal role in Ancient Rome and how society viewed them. And here we have some larger differences to e.g. society today and might take some liberties here and there to have female characters play a bigger role and do things they would not be able to do (or highly unlikely) in our world's Roman history.

Of course there were female individuals who wielded power - including Rome (which should be the focus here to not mix multiple time periods and cultures). However, as you also pointed out in your list, it's almost exclusively women born into a position of power (dynasty) or wives or mothers of kings/emperors.

More an exception than a rule - and it might be that we'll bring in some more of those exceptions in Anno 117. With all the implications this will bring.

Hey there! Indeed, we did not send out any confirmation mails for the entries, but as long as you didn't receive an error message from your email provider and also stuck to the guidelines we provided, you can be sure it made its way onto our desks :)

On the voting: we'll likely move the voting to later this week - and instead have a DevBlog this afternoon - as we need a little bit more time to decide for our favourites.

There are many awesome entries, though, with a wide variety of ideas. We had a lot of fun so far.

Thank you, Wuslwiz and MGuenny.

Can't reproduce that myself (tried multiple browsers), I can see all blogs and comments, but will forward to the devs to investigate.

The tags are on me, I'll adjust them, thanks for pointing that out.

Maybe?

And for good reason

Hey all, little bit of (kinda) self-promotion here, but we're organising a community event in Cologne in August!

In addition to the opportunity to meet fellow members of the Anno community, you can also meet (some of) us as we have some presentations prepared by e.g. Lead Game Designer Andrea and Senior Game Writer Matt.

We'd love to meet of you there - more info here: https://www.anno-union.com/union-update-anno-community-event-2024/

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We got so many cool statue concepts, thank you to everyone!

We're going through them this week with the Art Team, voting on the Anno Union will start next week.

Extreeemely impressive - has been shared with the rest of the team as well.

And hey, you already "predicted" the two starting provinces - even if they're different provinces. Very fun read!

The efforts to grab all the different assets alone and making those slides look so clear: great stuff.

Totally fair, the CDLC specifically can be very much up to personal taste.

While the first ones much more focused on providing a mostly authentic bunch of ornaments and/or skins, we really wanted to try out some slightly crazier things now at the end of Anno 1800's development cycle.

That's how the Eldritch and Steampunk Pack came to be: let's see what our players say to slightly wilder cosmetics. If they don't perform well, we also learned something.

They are all digital paintings. Some are by Karakter (Greg Rutkowski), as has already been pointed out, many others are from our internal Art team.

Thank you for highlighting this, will forward this to our Store Team to investigate.