News from my settlement

A long time ago (probably), I wrote the last post about “Anno.” It’s “Anno 1404” by now, the currently last part of the series.

Again, some things have changed, others have stayed the same. On the whole, I can’t say anything real bad about the new part. Nothing has gone from good to bad, only some things the other way around. The game still isn’t perfect – but which game is?

All pictures in this post were taken from the same game, although during various stages, so the settlement has developed in the meantime.

This is the very beginning of a settlement (well, not the ‘beginning’ beginning). We have a market place, a church and a couple of houses. The first citizens have already moved in as well.

Here the settlement has grown quite a bit already. You can see the pub in the middle of the picture and there’s another market place with a second church in the far right of it.

This is the view from the eastern farms (hemp production for clothes and ropes) towards another island. This island is inhabited by the representative of the emperor – he’s a nice guy, sells a lot of goods and also offers missions for more fame and various wares.

In the middle you can see the first houses inhabited by aristocrats, the highest level of settlers you can get. (It’s farmer, citizen, patrician, aristocrat.) I haven’t had many of them yet (and have a lot of development to do for my oriental settlement – you need one for several wares and products).

Still, with the rather early production of tools (you need tools and wood for basically every building in the game, later on also stone and glass), the game has become a little bit easier over time. In the first game of the series (“Anno 1604”), you could produce them very late in the game – and always buying tools is extremely expensive. This way, you might need to buy tools once or twice before you can produce them yourself.

“Anno 1404” is a very good game and fun to play. You don’t need to wage war on others to win and can build quite some interesting things. And managing two settlements now is actually quite interesting.