The Industrial Revolution hits the ninth generation

Ubisoft has announced that its celebrated grand strategy title Anno 1800 is finally ready to set sail onto console platforms, fol?lowing on from its PC release back in the spring of 2019. It will launch on PS5 and Xbox Serie??s X on March 16, priced at around $40. Pre-orders are now live on PSN and Microsoft Store.

Anno 1800 is a real-tim?e-strategy city-builder, set against the backdrop of the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Players are tasked with the micro-management of citizens, factories, economies, tourism, and the overall maintenance of industry, residential life, and local politics, guiding the people and politics of the 1800s into what would come to be known as "The New World".

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p1TDbV0g?BA&ab_channel=Ubisoft

Anno 1800 offers?? up several ways to play, from single-player stories and multiplayer PvP, to an hour-eating sandbox mode, which allows you to build your own empire unencumbered by interference or regulation?. Online co-op is also available, allowing you and a friend to build an economically viable new world together. Additionally, players can send voyages across the seven seas to discover new produce, technologies, and people, further enriching the environment and industry back home, and expanding your burgeoning empire into bold new horizons.

Anno 1800: Console Edition launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X on March 16. Pre-order customers will receive an in-game bonus in the form of a dig?ital artbook, digital soundtrack, and access to the "Imperial" and "Founders" DLC packages, which will include "Cosmetic Bonuses". Additionally, a Deluxe Edition, retailing for around $50, includes further cosmetic expansions "The Pedestrian Zone", "The Amusements Pack" and "Vibrant Cities."

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Ubi catalog to roll out on Valve platform once again

Following on from recent rumors and speculation, publisher Ubisoft has confirmed that it will be rolling out its catalog of recent releases in a return to Valve's popular PC storefront, Steam. The lead title will be Viking adventure Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which wil??l arrive on the Steam pl?atform December 6.

"We're constantly evaluating how to bring our games to different audiences wherever they are, while providing a consistent player ecosystem through Ubisoft Connect," said Ubisoft in a statement to Eurogamer. "Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Anno 1800, and Roller Champions are among the Ubiso??ft titles that will be releasing on Steam."

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eCw20F0zmA

Ubisoft had been regularly releasing its games on Steam since the platform's advent back in 2003, but chose to separate from the storefront in 2019 to publish its wares through its in-house Uplay service �and then later via Epic Games Store. Ubisoft's return to Steam was heralded by several database leaks spotted by known Ubisoft leaker YoobieRE, ?before the publisher finally confirme?d its storefront comeback yesterday.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla, originally launched in 2020, is getting set to receive its final DLC update �titled The Last Chapter. As such, this is a smart time for the game to make its Steam debut, allowing new players to pick up the epic adventure alongside all previously released DLC content. The next Assassin's Creed title, Mirage, is currently in development at Ubisoft.

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Build the night away

I can't let us tumble into 2020 without remembering Anno 1800 – especially while it's temporarily free. Ubisoft is hosting a free-play event from?????????????????????????? December 11 at 5:00am PT to December 18 at 9:00am PT.

During that time, the free version of Anno 1800 will be accessible from Uplay and the Epic Games Store w??ith "the first three residential tiers in sandbox mode as well as all free Game Updates, which means multiplayer and co-op for everyone (alongside previously released content like the day and night mode."

What's that about co-op? It's a new mode as of Update 6. Four teams of up to four players compete.

The only downside with the free weekend is that if you end up buying Anno 1800, your save files won't transfer. On the flip side, that's okay – th??ere always comes a point in these games where you'll want to start fresh and do things more efficiently after stumbling through the empire-raising process.

Should? you try this out? Yes. Sincerely. It's a great game, one you can appreciate as a fan of the city-building series or even as someone who lacks that starting point. If you're the type of person who enjoys establishing seafaring trade routes or plotting districts and neighbor??hoods, you'll be in heaven.

Anno 1800 Free Week [Anno Union]

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Can't beat free

It takes a lot of money to build a city. But, this?? week, it won't cost you? a dime.

Now through August 25, Ubisoft's Anno 1800 is free?? on Uplay. After that, you'll need to shell out some coin. But, maybe spending a week with the Old World you built will help convince you it's worth keeping around.

Further, Ubisoft laid out some DLC plans for Anno 1800. The second expansion, Botanical Gardens, launches on September 10; the frosty, icy Passage add-on releases later this winter. 

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Sold four times as well as previous entry

Anno 1800 has become the fastest selling entry in the 20-year series. Ubisoft excitedly announced the news along with a bunch of other figures for how popular 1800 has become. Despite being exclusive to the Uplay and Epic Games stores, 1800 has sold four times as many copies as the previous game, Anno 2205, in its first week.

In a press release, Benedikt Grindel (managing director at Ubisoft Blue Byte) said, "Anno 1800 has been an incredible journey for all the excellent people working at Ubisoft Blue Byte and we are so happy to see that players really enjoy playing our game. Since the announcement of the game, the community of Anno 1800 has provided us with countless useful feedback through our community platform Anno Union and helped us release an excellent game." He thanked the community for its continued support and ended by saying the team is excited about all of the post-launch content coming to 1800 over the year.

In addition to general sales figures, Ubisoft gave out some stats about what players have done in 1800. Across all play sessions, players have reached nearly ??seven billion citizens across their islands, built more than 10 million ships, constructed over one billion grain fields, and settled on over three million islands. A lot of these figures eclipse historical statistics from the same time period.

If you're curious about Anno 1800, you can check out Destructoid's review. As Josh Tolentino wrote, "This leaves us with Anno 1800, a refined city-building game with a delectably savory approach to logistics optimization,? a lovely core aesthetic, and a time-devouring rhythm. For me, that's worth ?the cost of a historical anachronism or two."

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Age of Optimization

I've never understood math. I was terrible at it in school - I had to take remedial summer math classes before I could be admitted into my high school - and ever since I've either shied away from any pastime involving calculation, or when it couldn't be avoi??ded, quickly reached for the nearest available cheat sheet.

Playing Anno 1800 - my first experience with the now twenty-year-old city-building franchise - leaves me with the impression that "this must be what it's like for people who like math."

Anno 1800 (PC [reviewed])
Developer: Blue Byte
Publisher: Ubisoft
Released: April 16, 2019
MSRP: $59.99 (Epic Game Store and Uplay)
Reviewer's Rig: Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070, Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40Ghz, 16GB RAM

Mind, when I say that, I don't mean that Anno 1800 is particularly heavy on manual calculation, though you could really get into the weeds with that stuff if you feel like it. I mean that, unlike many games of its type, where I'm content to just blunder through and let things lie as they will, I want to optimize my Anno 1800 settlement. I want to find the perfect geometric arrangement for a series of lumberjack huts in my island's forest, so that they can be served by just one timber-processing plant. I want to make sure my schnapps distilleries, weapons factories, windowpane manufacturers, and residences have just the right amount of coverage from the local fire station that they don't go up in smoke the next time someone drops a lantern. I want to kaizen the shit out of my little colonial outpost, make the queen proud, and rake in a ton of money. And if it takes me th?e whole weekend or a few ??riots from the proles to do it, that's just what it takes, right?

Anno 1800, more baldly than a SimCity or Civilization, channels the joys of optimization, the same engaging feeling you might get conducting a productive time-and-motion study at work, or when you finally understand that Six Sigma Yellow Belt junk you took at work just to make it look like you? cared about being promoted.

It does this against a frankly gorgeous aesthetic backdrop of quaint 19th-century industrial-age architecture. Be it in the guided tutorial/narrative ca??mpaign mode, or starting fresh in a new session, players will build residences for their laborers, meeting their needs by building production infrastructure. But each product demanded requires an entire series of buildings and infrastructure to create it.

For example, one basic demand that a tier-one Farmer has is for clothing. To create that, players need to build a sheep farm, which generates wool. Then the wool will need to be processed by a Frame Weaver into clothing. A luxury item, like schnapps, demands a potato farm, and a distillery. These and more all demand storehouses to hold the goods, roads to connect them, and layer upon layer of infrastructure. Viewed from the perspective of an educational tool, Anno 1800 is remarkably good at impressing upon oneself the sheer complexity of modern manufacturing and logistics. If even this simplistic rendition of the mod??ern production chain can be this complicated, it boggles the mind to imagine what went into building something actually complex, like the computer I'm typing this review on.

Things get even wilder once you expand out past your initial settlement. Variations in soil fertility and available resources will ensure that most players won't be able to build everything they can without expanding outward to other islands - islands that may be occupied by other players or factions. To that end, players can settle unoccupied islands, trade for what they need, buy shares in occupied territories with a bit of diplomacy, assemble happy economic coalitions or even organize a hostile takeover. And when all else fails, there's always war, though the combat is pretty simplistic and not at all interesting. If anything, having to make a fight of it feels like a failure in Anno 1800.

And then there's the New World. One can't have a colonial game set in 1800 without actually having colonies, so the Latin American-inspired environs of the New World are it. Settlements in the New World are established and maintained much like they are in the Old World, though colonies have their own unique production chains, aesthetic style, architecture, and worker tiers, all with unique needs. Eventually, colonies can supply the homeland, and v?ice-versa, with exclusive products, like rum, furs, and advanced machinery. 

One of the unique things about Anno 1800 is that every tier of population proves necessary to the health of a settlement. Each tier of laborers (for example, the Old World's Farmers, Workers, Artisans, Engineers, and Investors) can only be used to populate specific categories of building, so maintaining a balance of ev?ery type of laborer is? paramount. But with the addition of considerations like tourism and "attractiveness," players working at scale may end up specializing their production over several islands, in order to keep things efficient (and keep at least some territories from getting polluted by heavy industry). 

Outside these core mechanics, other considerations pop up. NPCs generate mini-quests to undertake, usually simple combat or fetch missions, in return for infusions of cash or resources. Expeditions can be sent out using ships. These return brief choose-your-own-adventure-style story vignettes, with outcomes that are influenced by the quality of the expedition's equipment and crew, generating rewards li?ke unique gear, or interesting finds for the settlement's Museum or Zoo buildings. 

Perhaps it's a bit presumptuous of me to say this, being an Anno neophyte, but Anno 1800 feels structurally like an exemplary version of the type of game every Anno wants to be: A joyful celebration of the perfect logistics chain,?? expressed as an idealized little city-state whirring along in clockwork heaven??. 

Oddly enough, where I feel it falls shortest isn't in the "Anno" part of the title so much as the "1800" part. As one astute commenter pointed out in my Review in Progress, the 1800s carried a lot of historical baggage, to understate things quite horribly. For all we talk about how it was the core of advancement for much of modern society, that same advancement was built on the back of vicious, violent exploitation, be it through institutions like slavery or the whole enterprise of western colonization and imperialism itself. For better and worse, Anno 1800 opts to tackle basically none of that, presenting an idealized, sanitized version of labor relations of that era. About the closest it comes, mechanically, to some sort of accountancy is t??he decoupling of a population's happiness from its productivity. You can grow and upgrade a population so long as its basic needs are met, at the cost of their happiness (if their luxury needs aren't addressed). Lowered ha??ppiness increases the risk of riots and sabotage, which can be countered with special equipment, and buildings like police stations. 

Beyond that, Anno 1800's whole representation of labor feels oddly out-of-sync with its historical inspiration. For example, the game has few pena??lties for maintaining an idle surplus of labor. You can build a vast excess of housing, having hundreds or even thousands of workers of various categories just standing idle, and so long as their needs are met by the production facilities on hand, this will have no real impact on hap?piness or stability. In fact, as long as you can keep needs met while keeping the maintenance costs from sending your earnings into the red, building up a vast surplus of magical, tax-paying unemployed people is a surprisingly viable early-game moneymaking strategy. 

That said, I can't entirely lay the blame at Anno 1800's feet alone. Issues like that are the very definition of a cultural minefield, after all. "Failing to grapple critically with the legacy of colonialism" is a shortcoming very common among games in this genre, and perhaps in most popular culture, to boot. It would be unfair to expect Anno, a game that has never sho??wn a desire for historical accuracy or realism (no one even mentions what country these people are supposed to be from!) to be the one to push that conversation forward, though its conscious omission leaves it feeling a little incomplete, the same way a historical, kid-friendly theme park might appear to a cynical adul??t.

A few more flaws become apparent with lon?ger play sessions. The minimap is too small and weirdly oriented. Ships move too slowly, even with time compression options. The trade route interface is fussy and prone to errors. And it's oddly opaque about telling me exactly where my money is coming from or going to, leaving my settlement's income prone to strange and unexplained fluctuations in cash flow. These are all minor gripes, which could be fixed with a patch, or maybe an expansion in due time, and they don't detract too heavily from the core experience.

This leaves us with Anno 1800, a refined city-building game with a delectab??ly savory approach to logistics optimization, a lovely core aesthetic, and a time-devouring rhythm. For me, that's worth the cost of a historical anachronism or two. 

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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Gamer East India Company

A confession: In my entire life, I have never played a single Anno game. 

Oh sure, I am, at least, aware of the Anno series. The long-running strategy franchise is terrifically influential to many PC gamers, and it's hard not to know its name at a bare minimum. And yet, despite all that, not a single byte of data related to an Anno play session has crossed into my computer before this weekend, when I downloaded the review copy of Anno 1800, Blue Bytes' latest effort.

I have to say, that damn game?? ate my whole Sunday, and I don't regret a minute of it so far.

Anno 1800 (PC [reviewed])
Developer: Blue Byte
Publisher: Ubisoft
Released: April 16, 2019
MSRP: $59.99 (via Epic Game Store and Uplay)
Reviewer's Rig: Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070, Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40Ghz, 16GB RAM

It should be said that I'm not even out of the story campaign, whose four chapters make up an extended tutorial for the game that opens up into its standard "Sandbox" mode. I've yet to discover the game's more advanced buildings, and as of this writing haven't even uncovered Anno 1800's main new feature: The ability to colonize "The New World" and use its unique ?environs and qualities to enhance my ho??me territories.

And yet, the game is easily the most engaged I've been with a city builder?? in quite a long time. I was genuinely shocked when a posh British announcer notified? me that I'd been playing for four hours straight.

Part of that is the visual charm the game exudes. Returning to a history-inspired aesthetic after the sci-fi futures imagined in Anno 2070 and 2205, Anno 1800 takes inspiration from the 19thcentury, the age of industrialization and the height of European colonial dominance. Players are cast in the role of a nondescript western colonizer wit??h nothing more than a fertile island and trading post to their name. 

From those humble beginnings, they'll build residences to house their population, extraction buildings to gather up resources, production buildings to refine those resources, and build infrastructure (mai?nly roads and railways) to cart resources to and fro. They'll settle other isl??ands on the map and establish trade routes with nearby AI factions (or other players) to make more money or fill resource gaps with commerce. 

So far, so city-builder, but Anno 1800 seems to add in some interesting twists on the regular formula. Unlike larger-scale, simulation-style builders like the SimCity games, Anno 1800's driving pressure is ensuring an adequate labor supply for the game's many, many production-related facilities. Rather than a general pool of available warm bodies, Anno's labor force is segregated by tier, and interestingly, each ti?er is necessary a?t all stages of a settlement's development.

Early on, low-level Farmers are all one needs. They demand little and pay less in taxes, but are needed to run the many farms and rural production structures in the early-game tech tree. As farmers have their various needs met (an ample supply of fish, coveralls, and booze goes a long way in the colonial era), their residences can be upgraded to house Workers instead, unlocking more advanced buildings. Every tier of Anno laborer, from Farmers to Workers to Artisans to Investors (plus the tiers unique to N?ew W??orld colonies) sees some use in a healthy settlement, pressuring players to maintain supplies of every necessary laborer throughout their game.

One of the things I like most?? so far is that almost nothing is simp??ly a straight "upgrade" of another thing. Even the lowliest farmer finds use supplying the growing complexity and demands of an advancing society.

That's the idea, at least, and admittedly, I'm not f??ar enough along in my first session to really see how that plays out. Even the cheesy (but detailed) story campaign takes its time unfolding the more advanced concepts. 

For what it's worth though, it's easy to see why Anno was so well-regarded by its fans. If Anno 1800 is at all representative of its peers, I could gro??w to regret not ge?tting into the series sooner.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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I know myself too well to fall into this trap, and yet...

I just can't trust myself with some games, and simulation and strategy titles definitely fall into that category. The open beta for Anno 1800 is up and running on PC, but I'm ??afraid of what'll ?happen if I start playing. A "few minutes" turns into "one more hour" and, next thing I know, it's Sunday night.

It's the reason why I can't casually stroll into a peaceful game of Civilization. It's why I don't dare check in to see how my farm is doing in Stardew Valley unless I'm prepared to let the next few hours fly by me. City b??uilders, in particular, fall into the danger zone. I can't resist making incremental improvements for the sake of it, whether that's only a side activity in a game or the entire point of the experience.

Still, Anno 1800 looks and sounds wonderful in that comfy brain-massaging way. For once, you don't need to pre-order to try the open beta. Ubisoft is running the beta via the Epic Games Launcher and Uplay until April 14, and then the city-builder will launch just a couple days later on April 16. (Reminder: If you want to own Anno 1800 on Steam, unfortunately, your window of oppor?tunity is?? closing fast.)

In this entry, your empire-raising exploits will take place in the 19th century, so industrialization is largely the name of the game. As Ubisoft sums it up, "Anno 1800 provides players ample opportunity to prove their skills as a ruler as they create huge metropolises, plan efficient logistic networks, explore, settle new lands, and dominate their opponents by ??diplomacy, trade, or warfare."

There are a few things to note. This beta is a "near-final version of the game" with a sample of Anno's story mode and progression that caps out at Tier 3. Notably, your ?save file won't work in the full game (due to potential issues related to the AI), ??and the beta is always online (though the full game won't be).

In terms of system requirements, Ubisoft recommends:

1080p at 60 frames per second on Low Settings

• OS: Windows 7, 8, or 10 (64-bit only)
• CPU: Intel i5-4460 3.2 GHz or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 3.1 GHz
• RAM: 8GB
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 2GB or AMD Radeon R9 270X 2GB
• DirectX: DirectX 11 or 12

1080p at 60 frames per second on High Settings

• OS: Windows 7, 8, or 10 (64-bit only)
• CPU: Intel i5-4690K 3.5 GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X 3.5 GHz
• RAM: 8GB
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 4GB or AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB
• DirectX: DirectX 11 or 12

If I do end up downloading Anno 1800, I am absolutely setting an ?alarm. A loud one, too!

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Building partnerships

Ubisoft has given its support to the Epic Games Store, that much is well-documented, but this allegiance leaves some upcoming games in an uncomfortable l??imbo. On PC, there are titles that have been available to pre-order on Steam that won't eventually be for sale on Steam. How to navigate the choppy waters of a newfound PC ma?rketplace war?

For city-builder Anno 1800, Ubisoft has opted to play both sides in a way that should placate everyone -- presuming they act within the next couple of weeks. Anno 1800 can?? be pre-ordered through Steam up until its April 16 release date. Anyone who does that can launch the game through Steam and will get regular updates through Steam.

However, at launch, Anno 1800 will switch so that it can only be purchased on the Epic Games Store and the Ubisoft Store. That's the Ubisoft and Epic partnership coming into play. Only people who pre-order have the option of launching Anno 1800 from their? Steam library; everyone else has to use a different client. Because multiplayer is filtered through Uplay, all PC players (regardless of client) will be able to play together.

There's a high-profile analog to this situation. It's close to what Deep Silver did with Metro Exodus back in January. But, in that case, Deep Silver pulled pre-orders from Steam on the day it announced its Epic exclusivity. It felt like a bait-and-switch to a lot of people. It was kind of a debacle -- something that Epic later said it expected and would like to avoid in the fu??ture.

Ubisoft's strategy with Anno 1800 is seemingly to give ample heads-up and hope no one feels burned. This will probably be the standard operating procedure going forward, at least for Ubisoft games. That is, until all the currently-announced games that can be pre-ordered are finally released; after that, Epic and th??e Ubisoft Store will be the only ways to go, at least for the foreseeable future.

Ubis??oft is partnering with Epic Games Store for Anno? 1800 [Anno Union]

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Lead an age of pioneering industry, or just put up nice buildings

Ubisoft has revealed the dates for the open beta of civilisation-management title Anno 1800, which launches on PC April 16. Set at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, Anno 1800 challenges players with ??building cities, workforces and a prosperous economy, providing luxurious 19th century living for your citizens.

The open beta requires no pre-purchase or registration, interested parties have only to download the client when the beta goes live. You can then dive into a world of taut balance and management. Industry creates progress, bu??t also pollution. Trade must be negotiated, a populace kept happy and entertained, and a city kept productive, but also attractive.

The beta will run between April 12-14, literally days before the game's official release, so here's hoping no nasty bugs come to the surface. Anno 1800 launches on PC April 16. You can check out the trailer for t??he previous beta be??low.

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The future can wait

Ubisoft Blue Byte is heading to the 19th century for its upcoming city builder Anno 1800. Previously dated for winter 2018, the historical ga?me has now settled into a February 26, 2019 launch on PC.

It should be a nice break from the recent futuristic Anno games. If you want to play through a story mode, Anno 1800 will have you covered, but there's also an anything-goes sandbox mode and multiplayer. I like havin?g structure when I'm finding my footing as an all-seeing, all-knowing entity.

As for what's new, it mostly boils down to the setting and industrialization. "Expeditions allow player??s to send crews of specialists across the globe as they seek fame and fortune, while the new workforce feature makes managing your factories more demanding and realistic than ever. Finally, players will settle South A??merica as they lay claim to the oil powering this new age of industry."

If you have Thoughts about how Anno is shaping up, note that Ubisoft is still actively looking for feedback through its Anno Union community program. Th??e gang ju??st voted on their favorite boats!

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Coming to PC in 'Winter 2018'

Fans of the city-building Anno series who prefer the older games to the last few future-set installments will be pleased to know that the next title is Anno 1800. We're headed for the 19th century, baby!

Even if you don't care much for Anno, this announcement trailer has a pleasant calming e??ffect??.

Ubisoft Blue Byte plans to incorporate community feedback into Anno 1800 with opportunities to vote on features, "create content," and partake in play tests. Right now, there's a poll open for NPCs.

I'm thinking The Occultist should make the cut. Exhibit A: "Her ar??my of acolytes seem bewitched, letting no one and no thing obstruct their leader. They say it is Morel's destiny to set loose universal mysteries – for good or ill – and in doing so, change humankind forever." (There is no Exhibit B.)

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