Anno 2070 Released

[persself]

This looks really good! Always wanted a city builder game based on more modern/future time. I've loved the Anno series of games.

Here's one of many trailers: http://www.gamespot.com/events/tgs-2011/video.html?sid=6334774&pid=626105

[persself]

Play as one of 2 factions: Ecos and Tycoons. This video explains gameplay for each faction:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/anno-2070/video/6336134/anno-2070--faction-tutorial-video

[Kraken]

That looks great. I played 1701 AD -- was that even an Anno game? -- but it ran like a dog on my old machine. I only ever finished one game.

[persself]

Hi, Kraken! Thought you might be one of the OO'ers who would find this interesting.

Yes, 1701 was an Anno game: have you tried it since you got your fancy new computer/laptop?

[persself]

DRM appears to be online once for initial activation, unless multiplayer. But I will wait a few days after release to be sure this is true. If so, I am definitely buying this one.

[Kraken]

Hi, Kraken! Thought you might be one of the OO'ers who would find this interesting.

Yes, 1701 was an Anno game: have you tried it since you got your fancy new computer/laptop?

No, because it seemed to be mostly about micromanaging trade routes. IIRC I spent a lot of time babysitting ships. Maybe I should give it another whirl...it's possible that I was just doing it wrong.

[persself]

No, because it seemed to be mostly about micromanaging trade routes. IIRC I spent a lot of time babysitting ships. Maybe I should give it another whirl...it's possible that I was just doing it wrong.

You know about setting up auto-routes for ships to pick up/deliver whatever amount you want?

[Kraken]

No, because it seemed to be mostly about micromanaging trade routes. IIRC I spent a lot of time babysitting ships. Maybe I should give it another whirl...it's possible that I was just doing it wrong.

You know about setting up auto-routes for ships to pick up/deliver whatever amount you want?

Yeah, but pirate attacks and changes in supply required constant adjusting. I might be misremembering, though, as I only played one game to completion and it was a couple of years ago.

[Chaz]

No, it's German, so there's a lot of micromanaging and adjusting trade routes. The city-builder aspect is there and good, but yeah, trade routes.

Maybe in 2070, they'll have perfected teleporter technology. I'm looking forward to the game, but have no faith that Ubi won't manage to screw up the DRM or release somehow.

[JonathanStrange]

Looks and sounds interesting; I've the previous Anno games and remain hooked on citybuilders and related games. Heh, but war still plagues us in the future!

[Paingod]

No, because it seemed to be mostly about micromanaging trade routes. IIRC I spent a lot of time babysitting ships. Maybe I should give it another whirl...it's possible that I was just doing it wrong.

You know about setting up auto-routes for ships to pick up/deliver whatever amount you want?

Yeah, but pirate attacks and changes in supply required constant adjusting. I might be misremembering, though, as I only played one game to completion and it was a couple of years ago.

Perhaps.

One of my "tactics" for dealing with Pirates is to simply keep shipyards near ports and defenses in place if they get too close to shore chasing a trade vessel. The trade ship gets repaired as it comes in and leaves, and the Pirates get beaten down by towers. I'd also run around a couple Small Warships to respond to threats out at sea. I never really had to re-route my trade ships just because of Pirates, though.

I may have been inefficient with trade routes (wouldn't surprise me), but they weren't something that needed *constant* tweaking. An island that ships out Oil and Booze will always ship out Oil and Booze unless you need to break it for something - or add more products being exported. I think I'd sometimes make complex routes - four islands; one drops goods at an intermediate where it may or may not get used to keep trade routes short and quick, and another ship collects the same and brings it to the primary island for final process/use. I recall liking to ricochet goods this way, building ports on either end of an island so they chained together smoothly.

This thread got me into this 1701 again, and I would certainly rank it in my top 10 games. It's complicated enough without being overly obtuse that the learning curve isn't a big deal. It's pretty, sounds nice, and is all-around fun to just play. I've never hit a point of "Oh, god - this s*** again?" like I do with some games.

[Kraken]

No, because it seemed to be mostly about micromanaging trade routes. IIRC I spent a lot of time babysitting ships. Maybe I should give it another whirl...it's possible that I was just doing it wrong.

You know about setting up auto-routes for ships to pick up/deliver whatever amount you want?

Yeah, but pirate attacks and changes in supply required constant adjusting. I might be misremembering, though, as I only played one game to completion and it was a couple of years ago.

Perhaps.

One of my "tactics" for dealing with Pirates is to simply keep shipyards near ports and defenses in place if they get too close to shore chasing a trade vessel. The trade ship gets repaired as it comes in and leaves, and the Pirates get beaten down by towers. I'd also run around a couple Small Warships to respond to threats out at sea. I never really had to re-route my trade ships just because of Pirates, though.

I may have been inefficient with trade routes (wouldn't surprise me), but they weren't something that needed *constant* tweaking. An island that ships out Oil and Booze will always ship out Oil and Booze unless you need to break it for something - or add more products being exported. I think I'd sometimes make complex routes - four islands; one drops goods at an intermediate where it may or may not get used to keep trade routes short and quick, and another ship collects the same and brings it to the primary island for final process/use. I recall liking to ricochet goods this way, building ports on either end of an island so they chained together smoothly.

This thread got me into this 1701 again, and I would certainly rank it in my top 10 games. It's complicated enough without being overly obtuse that the learning curve isn't a big deal. It's pretty, sounds nice, and is all-around fun to just play. I've never hit a point of "Oh, god - this s*** again?" like I do with some games.

Based on your writeup I'm going to install it and give it another chance. My main problem with 1701 was simply a computer that couldn't handle it.

[persself]

This thread got me into this 1701 again, and I would certainly rank it in my top 10 games. It's complicated enough without being overly obtuse that the learning curve isn't a big deal. It's pretty, sounds nice, and is all-around fun to just play. I've never hit a point of "Oh, god - this s*** again?" like I do with some games

Yeah, 1701 has remained on my hard drive, as it is a go-to game when I can't figure out exactly what I want to play. Since that happens somewhat often, I play 1701 rather consistently.

[Paingod]

Based on your writeup I'm going to install it and give it another chance. My main problem with 1701 was simply a computer that couldn't handle it.

Here's a little more information, which may contain game mechanics that could be regarded as spoilers:

Spoiler:

The Sunken Dragon expansion (comes with the Gold version) is the Campaign mode, anything else is sandbox or scenario play. I've played through most of Sunken Dragon and a few scenarios, but mostly sandbox mode. The campaign has a story to it, and a lot of interesting things going on that you wouldn't normally encounter in the sandbox mode, so it can be a nice diversion unto itself. Once you beat a stage, you can go back and retry it on a harder difficulty if you want to.

The sandbox game starts with whatever settings you give it - kind of like Civilization might - world size, island types, resource quantities, AI opponents, etc. If you choose to, you can start with just a ship (with enough goods to settle) and the map exposed (so you don't have to scout every island, which isn't difficult to do but is time consuming). Doing something like this can really let you choose a good strategic starting point - or you could let the game challenge you and place your first settlement for you, which might be less than ideal.

Every person in your settlement has needs - basic and expanded. Meeting their basic needs keeps them happy. Meeting their expanded needs lets them evolve into the next tier. As you gain more colonists, different building options open up - which lets you 'naturally' evolve your colony over time. You can't jump out of the gate and go for Tier IV units by hammering research to it - you must play the game and build a thriving colony to win.

You can set tax rates for colonists, which isn't about fiddling with percentages and dials - but rather selecting a dwelling type and sliding a bar. The happier a household is, the more you can tax them before they start resenting it. If they're elated they evolve, increase population, and generally have a good time. If they're only happy they stop evolving, but continue to increase in population. If they're merely content, they don't evolve or increase in population (this is the "yellow" zone, where you'll likely keep taxes while you're building to meet needs for the next evolutionary step, and then you'd decrease taxes to encourage evolution). If they're unhappy, they start leaving your colony. If they're angry, they'll leave in droves and even riot - destroying buildings as they do.

You start with basic buildings - pioneer huts, logging camps, fishing huts, game hunters, and a few other basics. As you increase your population, your available structures increases. Get enough Pioneers - whose basic needs are just food and a settlement, and you'll earn the ability to make Wool and Cloth, or place a Church. Once Pioneers have Cloth and Religion, they evolve into Settlers. Settlers have everything Pioneers had for needs - basic and expanded - as their basic needs; only now Settlers have additional expanded needs. Give them Tobacco, Schools, and Alcohol and you'll get Colonists. Colonists have all the needs of Settlers - Food, Settlement, Religion, Cloth, Schools, Tobacco, Alcohol - plus an additional set of expanded needs. It goes on like this through two more tiers - Merchants and Aristocrats; each needing everything the group before it did plus some extra. The final Aristocrat level produces houses with the highest populations and the best taxability - but their needs are equally large. Your colony will likely span across three to four islands with multiple automated trade routes running between them in order to support Aristocrats.

There are supply chains to build and design to use your island space optimally. For example: to produce Cloth efficiently, you need two sheep farms. The sheep farms could be on a different island with a trade ship hauling wool back for production - or you can place the weaver right next to the sheep farms and he'll walk over and collect the wool for himself. Building placement is a concern, but what's most important is building solid supply chains. If you've got an island full of Cattle Farms producing cattle, you could effectively ship them all to your mainland with enough ships and keep all of your Butchers going strong; if you lost a few ships or interrupted that chain somehow, your Butchers would faulter and your food supply would start shrinking.

The goods you produce get consumed regularly. Online guides can tell you exactly how many of what you'll need to support certain populations, but having an overstock means security and the ability to trade excess for cash, weapons, or needed supplies. As you increase in population, their demands will increase with them - you'll need to produce more food, more cloth, more everything. This means that your colony size is dictated mostly by your ability to control land and defend what you've got. It's also possible to trade with AI players to get what you need, but you shouldn't rely on this to keep your colony evolving.

On top of the economic simulation, there's an underlay of naval and land combat. You can produce two kinds of warships to defend or attack with, and a few kinds of troops that can be used to protect your islands or attack your foes. The combat side of the game is the 'weakest' - as it typically is in games with a focus on building - but it's functional. It's been my experience that both kinds of combat really just boil down to who has more cannons/spears/swords.

There's also an element of research - once you build schools they generate research based on the population around them. You can make Weavers more efficient, learn how to demolish rocks, uncover mining techniques that can unlock unlimited resources (a mine needs to be "unlimited" before this is researched for it to work), get better ships, and even learn a little about spying and stealing from your enemies.

[Kraken]

I got two error messages about unsigned drivers when installing 1701 in Windows 7. Completed the install anyway and patched to 1.02, but the game will not launch. The DVD menu's Website link takes me to AD 2070 and the Support link tries unsuccessfully to load support.aspyr.com.

Have you played it in Win7?

[Chaz]

I know I've played the Steam version in Win7 64, and I think I may have even run the disc version of the EU import on Win7, but I honestly can't remember for certain. I don't remember having to do anything strange to get it running.

[Kraken]

Well I'm not going to buy it a second time, so Steam is out. Google was unhelpful regarding signed vs unsigned drivers. Aspyr is a Mac gaming site with no mention of 1701.

[abr]

Probably a dumb question, but did you install the patch(es)?

edit: Btw, we *are* talking about 1701, not the more recent 1404, right?

[Kraken]

Yes, I patched to 1.2. Version 1.4 is apparently for the Gold Edition. I have the original DVD.

[abr]

Sorry, I now suspect I actually sent you the wrong page, at least if you really have 1701.

The reason I say this is that for 1404 the patch numbers seem to be in the 1.x format, while for 1701 they seem to be in the 1.0x format.

So either you have 1404 and applied the 1.2 patch in which case all is well (aside from the game not running ) or you have 1701 and either somehow applied a patch for the wrong game (1404) or not the latest one, as this would apparently be 1.04.

In the later two cases, maybe the patch 1.04 for the US retail version of 1701 will help. (Or did you import the game?)

[Freyland]

So which of the two Anno games is better? I have both and played neither (as usual).

[Kraken]

Sorry, I now suspect I actually sent you the wrong page, at least if you really have 1701.

The reason I say this is that for 1404 the patch numbers seem to be in the 1.x format, while for 1701 they seem to be in the 1.0x format.

So either you have 1404 and applied the 1.2 patch in which case all is well (aside from the game not running ) or you have 1701 and either somehow applied a patch for the wrong game (1404) or not the latest one, as this would apparently be 1.04.

In the later two cases, maybe the patch 1.04 for the US retail version of 1701 will help. (Or did you import the game?)

I have 1701 and I patched to 1.02. 1.04 is for the Gold Edition. I skipped the 1.01 patch, which ought not make any difference...the change log for 1.01 didn't mention any technical fixes.

This afternoon I found several people asking the same question in various forums. In all cases the answer was to run it in Vista compatibility mode. One answer included a link to signed drivers that will supposedly solve the Win7 problem. I had to bookmark the link and leave before I could make sure I'm not downloading Virus.exe -- but there is potentially a fix out there. I'll let you know how it works out after I make time to deal with it again.

[Kraken]

I gave up on 1701 after downloading the signed driver [ur=http://www.tagesprotection.com/main.html]here[/url]. The driver's setup program confirms that it's installed and running. Tried launching the game in both Vista and XP compatibility modes without luck. Tried launching from the desktop shortcut, the .exe in the game directory, and the windows start menu. Tried to run as administrator. In all cases Windows asks me if I want to allow 1701.exe to make changes to my computer. After clicking Yes I briefly get a wait cursor, but the hard drive scarcely spins at all and the DVD drive is never hit at all.

Nada. Nothing. Zip. It's like it's not even trying. Task manager shows no activity from that exe.

[Kraken]

Has anyone tried the 2070 demo yet? I downloaded, installed, and verified that it loads, but haven't played it yet.

It appears to run just fine with all the graphics turned up to high.

[naednek]

I tried it. It's pretty cool, only played the first mission. They've improved on the campaign by a lot. Voice acting is horrible, but it's deeper as far as presentation goes. It's a little overwhelming, but similar to the previous games.

[Butterknife]

I played both of the missions that came with it. They weren't all that fun, but then the campaign never was that interesting to me.

My impressions for the demo were that the game is exactly like the last game, but with a fresh coat of paint. The game mechanics remain unchanged. To me that's not enough to get it day one, although I may pick it up on sale down the road.

[baelthazar]

I got the same feeling that the game was a reskin of Dawn of Discovery. But then again the demo was pretty terrible at showing anything new. You only get basic buildings, no tech, only one food source, and nothing about the meaning behind ecological effects (a modifier of some buildings).

It really was a bad demo - the missions were on rails, gave you boring intro level stuff and only let you play one faction. I think that there may be some major changes from the previous version, but you would never be able to guess them from that demo.

[persself]

Edit title of thread....I will pick this one up most likely, but will wait for OO impressions!

[Sepiche]

I picked this up last week and played quite a bit over the weekend. It's definitely a reskin of the older Anno games in a lot of ways, but the 2 different playable factions and underwater portions among other changes really elevate it IMHO.

There's a very cool balance between the two factions in what they can do and some very subtle differences that make for interesting gameplay. One of the biggest differences for instance is in energy generation. The eco faction starts with wind turbines, while the tycoon faction starts to coal power plants. The coal plants produce more power and many can be safely placed on one island, but they require a constant stream of coal. The wind turbine losses it's effectiveness if it's placed too close to another turbine, but you can still place quite a few on an island, and they don't require any resources to run. To make that even more interesting, another factor is that the tycoon faction can build a surface excavator to harvest coal anywhere, but the eco faction requires a mining slot in order to get coal. The coal mine produces much more coal than the tycoon's building, but uses up a valuable mine slot.

Another important factor in 2070 is the bio rating for an island. Islands start off with a rating of zero, and most buildings you produce will lower that value. Once it hits -25 it starts slowly lowering your agricultural production. The eco faction's buildings generally cause a lower hit to an islands bio rating, and they get access fairly early to structures that can raise the bio rating of an island. The tycoon buildings can in many cases cause massive hits to an islands biorating, and they don't get access to buildings that raise it until a little farther up the tech chain.

I also mentioned the underwater bases, and those are a very interesting addition to the game. In many ways they take the place of the oriental buildings in the last game, but the citizens that give you access to new underwater structures are added on the surface instead of underwater. There's a nice balance here as well where you need certain resources from underwater to grow your high tier populations, and in fact the only way the eco faction can get oil is via underwater oil wells (the tycoons can build oil pumps on the surface that function similarly to coal excavators).

As far as units go you start with the same basic assortment of surface vessels, but eventually you can get submarines which add an interesting element to combat as well as aircraft. Aircraft can only stay aloft so long before needing to land back at base and refuel, but they can act as a counter to some of the larger and more powerful naval vessels.

Through all the little differences like those the two factions end up playing very differently and both have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Overall I'm enjoying it quite a bit and it's manged to hook me a little more than any of the previous Anno games. It was even enough to pull me occasionally away from Skyrim this weekend which is saying quite a bit.

[Lordnine]

I've actually never played an Anno game but I really enjoyed the Patrician series. Are they similar?

[Sepiche]

I've actually never played an Anno game but I really enjoyed the Patrician series. Are they similar?

I haven't played the Patrician series extensively, but while they are both based around trade to some extent, Anno is much more city builder at it's heart with trade just being an important mechanic. The Anno games have LOTS of little elements that make them kind of overwhelming at first, but once you get into it there's a lot to be entertained by. They also seem much more complex in general than Patrician 4 seemed when I played it.

[Lordnine]

I sure hope not. Patrician 4 had what amounted to a 10 hour tutorial.

But I’ll keep my eyes on this one; it’s definitely up my alley. With everything else that has released lately I think I can wait until the first Steam sale probably during Christmas.

[Sepiche]

If you want a little taste you might check out Dawn of Discovery which was the previous Anno game. There's a lot of new stuff in Anno 2070, but the formula is pretty much the same.

In fact it looks like 1404 is on sale on Gamersgate at the moment:
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-DODGE/dawn ... ld-edition

[baelthazar]

The Anno series is practically nothing like the Patrician games. Patrician is a trade game, and you only do limited building of production with your main focus on money and transport of good. The Anno games are, like the Settlers series, a game about building production chains and fulfilling the needs of your citizens.

[Sepiche]

Here's a pretty good walkthrough for anyone wanting to see what it plays like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9KMmDf6LS4

[baelthazar]

Sep, have you found out how do get tools if you start on a map with no ship? I ran put before my tool industry got up and running and basically had to restart.

[Sepiche]

Without your ark? Not too sure. I would presume if you look around at least one of the AI players would be selling some though.

[baelthazar]

I realized you can buy a Warship from the ark. The buttons to purchase things are a little confusing.

[Avenger]

In the year 2070 the only oil resources are at the bottom of the ocean, so I established my first under water city. This is very cool.
I am enjoying the game quite a bit but I still think that $49.99 was too much to pay for an updated Anno 1404. My advice is to grab
this game when it hits 20 bucks. It is certainly fun. It just isn't 50 dollar fun.

[EzeKieL]

I'm really loving this and can recommend it to everyone!

Got tired of the campaign though and I've started a continuous game (loads more fun).

However I'm having trouble with one quest. They're asking me to find 2 architects but I've really no clue as to where I can find them.. can anyone help me out here?