Anno 2070

[Xeio]

Anyone looking forward to this? I loved Anno 1404 (aka Dawn of Discovery in some regions).

Looks like it might be a somewhat standard sequel, which isn't wholly a bad thing given I spent quite a few hours on 1404's scenarios. Though I'm sorta curious how the ecological "resource" will actually affect gameplay (and how the two factions will play differently) since the demo never really gets that far. It just sort of teases flooding a bit but that may just be campaign scripting at work.

[Vaniver]

Game website here, demo available here. (I really enjoyed the music on the trailers.)

I think the only games in this series I've played have been 1404 and 1701. I'm not sure how I feel about the "ecos" vs. "tycoons," as that seems like it could get anvilicious. (tvtropes) The Europeans / Arabs divide in 1404 was cool in that it required you to progress on two parallel tracks- for example, the Arabs needed honey grown on European islands to progress past a certain point, and the Europeans needed spices grown on Arab islands to progress past a certain point. (You could, if I remember correctly, just buy what you needed from an AI on the other islands, but it's almost always better to produce your own supply.) If the ecos and tycoons both operate on the same islands, need the same resources, and just represent different playstyles, then that seems problematic, especially if the difference is that tycoons deplete resources and ecos don't (and thus the tycoon player wants to start a war and end the game early, before they run out, whereas the eco player wants to trade and end the game late, when their sustainability pays off). I hope you can have both types under your control at once, but we'll see.

I do like the climate change as the explanation for the islands (it was unexplained and sort of odd in 1404), though I'm not sure how they're going to deal with the resource/wealth level. In 1404-1701, you've got people whose quality of life is sickeningly low by modern standards ("Hey, we've got a supply of clothes now! Rock on!" "Oh man, two varieties of food to eat! I was getting pretty sick of fish!"), and so it made a lot of sense to have the gradual transition from pioneer to aristocrat as they became wealthier and wealthier. But it's hard to imagine a modern society that runs on just fish and beer, especially if the resources include consumer goods like "silicon." Are they just not going to make computers until they get access to that? As well, one of the necessary components for having the specialization of labor that we have in a modern civilization is the massive market to buy up large quantities of goods produced. There's no point in investing in the ability to make 10,000 nails a day if the local market only consumes 500 a day.

Well, the demo just finished installing: checking it out. [Edit] The demo takes you through two introductory missions that reminded me a lot of the 1404 introductory missions. Your boss is building something, you supply the critical piece, an engineer warns that installing the piece without testing will cause a catastrophe, your boss orders him to charge ahead, and SURPRISE! There's a catastrophe. You help clean up the mess, and your boss's boss promotes you and demotes your boss, who then swears to take revenge.

More interesting, though, are the buildings and gameplay mechanics, of which you see unfortunately little. You probably remember the mine locations from 1404- in 2070, it looks like each island has a supply of various minerals, all accessible from the mine locations. You can also build strip mines anywhere, though, that'll tap into that supply- which I suspect the tycoons will be able to do more than the ecos. Thus, an island with two mine locations and both iron and coal in the ground could either support an iron mine and coal mine to build tools, or two iron mines and a number of coal strip mines to build twice as many tools, and run a coal power plant. The consumer resources seem to be very similar to previous games- in the demo you just see fish, liquor, and 'convenience food'. I suspect you choose whether workers develop into employees (the second tier for tycoons) or whatever the second tier is for the ecos by your choice of entertainment building (of which the first one for the tycoons is the casino), but it might also be that you have to pick a faction at the start.

[Izawwlgood]

So, what, it's a Sim City/Civ/RTS?

[Vaniver]

So, what, it's a Sim City/Civ/RTS?

More a Sim City RTS. There aren't that many Civ elements, although it looks like that might be increasing.

The primary goal you focus on for most of the game is keeping your population happy and upgrading them by giving them access to more resources. The buildings you have available to you depend on the level of your citizenry- you start off able to build a handful of buildings and harvest a few resources, and once you've gotten a steady supply of all of those you get access to new production buildings.

Military has generally been secondary, but it seems they may be increasing its importance this time around.

[Xeio]

So, what, it's a Sim City/Civ/RTS?

I'm trying to think of a relatively equivalent game, but there aren't a whole lot. It's a RTS but the emphasis is more of building a massive economy and supply chain of resources. In 1404, in the largest scenario, this meant over a dozen individual islands, probably twice as many shipping lanes, plus managing armies and fleets to defend from the corsairs or other players (unless you ally with them, of course).

Vaniver is probably right, it's close-ish to Sim City, where you can trade between cities and such (each island is basically a city, though they don't necessarily need populations, unless that changes in 2070).

I really do hope they improve combat in 2070 though, ship-to-ship was ok in 1404 but land battles were just... painful...

[Vaniver]

Got this when it came out, been playing it off and on (it's tough to compete with Skyrim).

My fears about the Ecos being significantly better than the Tycoons did not come to pass. Each of them has different annoyances- the Ecos require a lot of space, and the Tycoons require a lot of resources. Lots of Eco buildings will take up 2-3 times the space of Tycoon buildings, or have areas of influence that can't overlap- the wind power plants, for example, need to not be near each other, and produce way less power than a coal plant, and so you'll need lots of them as you grow. The main annoyance for Tycoons is that they require a lot of electricity, which they can only get through coal or uranium. If an island that you want to farm doesn't have coal on it, well, your boat that picks up its produce needs to send it coal (and you need to deal with the slightly reduced production from pollution).

Once you get engineers (the third tier of workers) you get access to the Techs, and once you get executives (the fourth tier) you get access to the other faction, which allows you to run a nice hybrid strategy that can bypass most of the annoyances of running just one faction.

[ArgonV]

Good to know. This game gives me a sort of instant-onset OCD, which makes me want to figure out optimal placement and production chains immediately. That, combined with my lack of free time, hasn't allowed me to get above the second level of (Tycoon) inhabitants

[ArgonV]

Ok, those ultimatums are just lame. Yes, my main Island is powered by nuclear power. No, nothing's gone wrong just yet. So why are you forcing me to demolish it or face a riot?

[Xeio]

Are they Ecos? Because I guess it would sorta make sense in that aspect...?

I haven't played any free mode yet though so I dunno what that's like. On the last campaign mission now.

[ArgonV]

I don't think Ecos can even build nuclear reactors, this was a Tycoon island. So I thought it was kinda strange. I mean, if there had been a near-meltdown, ok. But how are non-existant incidents at a nuclear reactor bad for the economy?

[Xeio]

I don't think Ecos can even build nuclear reactors, this was a Tycoon island.

Well, you can still build tycoon buildings on an eco island, you just need one island with the required level of tycoons.

[Vaniver]

I don't think Ecos can even build nuclear reactors, this was a Tycoon island. So I thought it was kinda strange. I mean, if there had been a near-meltdown, ok. But how are non-existant incidents at a nuclear reactor bad for the economy?

Unfortunately, the ecos have the silliness of real-world greens. "Demolish that nuclear power plant!" "But, I'm just going to replace it with coal plants, that have the same eco-balance cost but produce a tenth the energy!" "I don't care! It could release raaadiaaatiooon!"

Apparently both ecos and tycoons are unhappy about nuclear, but ecos more so. I say screw em. The riots (that I've had to put up with) are just that your public buildings don't work, and so every upgraded person becomes unhappy for a few minutes.

[ArgonV]

Yeah, but in my case a lot of them downgraded, costing me lots of precious advance building materials.

Got even worse after that, after threatening with riots because of nuclear power plants twice, I then get threatened with a riot if I don't build a nuclear silo

Has anyone found a decent house-building layout yet? I've been experimenting, but haven't found anything decent yet. I had a very nice system in 1404, unfortunately that only works for the techs, since they have the city center size and radius 1404 used to have.

[Xeio]

Got even worse after that, after threatening with riots because of nuclear power plants twice, I then get threatened with a riot if I don't build a nuclear silo

Ubisoft went all out with the realism in this game.

[ArgonV]

Ok nice! I've got an effective city building plan figured out. I'll make a schematic and put it up later, if anyone's interested. Futhermore, word of advice: The Ecos thermal generators generate power depending also on the type of houses surrounding them, with only Eco workers, you're never gonna get to 100% (it stops at 40, I believe).

[Xeio]

Ok nice! I've got an effective city building plan figured out. I'll make a schematic and put it up later, if anyone's interested. Futhermore, word of advice: The Ecos thermal generators generate power depending also on the type of houses surrounding them, with only Eco workers, you're never gonna get to 100% (it stops at 40, I believe).

I'm pretty sure the generator and waste compactor are based on number of inhabitants, not necessarily building type (obviously higher worker levels -> more workers per house). I think you need most of the surrounding buildings to be 3rd tier or higher (depends on how many buildings you manage to cover) to get 100% efficiency, though I'd need to check that.

[Vaniver]

I have a somewhat effective Tycoon building plan worked out. Right now I'm more concerned with figuring out when I need to up my production chains / what's profitable to sell to third parties.

[ArgonV]

I'm using 2x3 blocks of houses now, works pretty well for me. It's modular enough to accommodate every public building where it's needed most. Only Convention/Finance Centers are a bit of a pain, but all in all it works well enough.

Vaniver, this might help a bit: http://2070.anno1404-rechner.de/
It's in German, but self-explanatory enough. You put in the number you have/want and it'll show you how much of each building you need and how much will be used.
As far as sales go, end-products are usually what you want to sell. Basic building material can be produced in bulk easily, but won't fetch you much. Stuff like steel and glass seems to sell well, but you might need them for production. I'm a big fan of turning excess iron into weapons and selling those. Of course, the higher the things are up the tech chain, the more they'll sell for. But usually I just sell overproduced end-products, to make a profit and stop clogging up my warehouses.

[SurgicalSteel]

Hey ArgonV, would you mind describing your system for 1404?

[Vaniver]

Thanks! That'll be helpful. There's an English one here. It doesn't do production but does calculate how many inhabitants of each type you can get for a certain number of houses. (When planning out your city it's nice to know how many houses you'll need to hit minimum population to build everything).

I've been getting massive revenue out of selling Devi functional food, but I can't tell if that's the highest profit. It takes quite a bit of investment to get access to Tech buildings and then to build underwater, but once you've made that investment (and I'm typically going to do that to get access to techs anyway) it seems like a good thing to do.

[edit]I have no clue why, but for some reason I am drawn to the Power Games mission. (Probably that it's the hardest mission.) I hate it, though, since the pirates are incredibly powerful and after 2 and a half hours you get attacked by a massive army. Hopefully by posting about it I will not start up that mission again.

[ArgonV]

Hey ArgonV, would you mind describing your system for 1404?

Sure
This is my system for techs in 2070 and in general in 1404 (spoilered for bigness)

Spoiler:

Techs and 1404

This is what I'm using for Ecos and Tycoons

Spoiler:

Ecos and Tycoons

Red are city centers/marketplaces. Gold are the houses, empty cells are streets. Public buildings aren't shown here, but I just usually fit them in wherever I feel like, seems to give the best coverage for me. I know they're truncated around the edges, I like to keep everything in grids and usually use that space for industry, but you can place houses there as well.
In the techs/1404 one you might also be able to use 5x2 and 6x2 grids instead of 4x2 and 5x2 respectively. Gonna try that next time.

[Izawwlgood]

So, are random maps any fun? Is this game entertaining outside the campaign?

[Vaniver]

ArgonV: for Techs, though, the public buildings (i.e. academies and laboratories) are the important parts.

The wiki seems to love corridor designs (like here), but I'm a fan of circular ones (more like yours). Let me tinker around for a bit and see if I can come up with something cool.

Izawwlgood: Yes. I personally don't find the campaign missions as enjoyable as the continuous games. It's sometimes tough to decide what the win condition should be, though.

[ArgonV]

So, are random maps any fun? Is this game entertaining outside the campaign?

I think continuous games/scenarios are more fun the the campaign to be honest. The campaign did teach me a few things.

ArgonV: for Techs, though, the public buildings (i.e. academies and laboratories) are the important parts.

The wiki seems to love corridor designs (like here), but I'm a fan of circular ones (more like yours). Let me tinker around for a bit and see if I can come up with something cool.

I know, I tried those corridor designs, but they're too fixed and unwieldy for my taste. Ok cool, lemme know what you find.
Oh and I do kinda like the tech layout on the wiki, the corridor one with 24 tech houses surrounding 1 lab.

[SurgicalSteel]

I enjoyed the continuous games in Anno 1404 more than the campaign as well. I remember in 1404, sometimes your city/island would change between missions. Like, I'd put some houses in a certain arrangement, or a certain number of them, and when I finished the mission and started the next one it would be a different arrangement or a different number of houses, even though narratively it's supposed to be the same city. Does 2070 do that as well?

[ArgonV]

Anno 2070 keeps the towns the same between missions in the campaign. I know what you mean, that annoyed me too.

[Vaniver]

Haven't worked out anything better for the techs. I'm also much happier with the corridor layout than I was before. Before, for tycoons I was clustering the city center, information center, and financial center together into a rectangle (with space for houses or the protection buildings). 4 casinos on the rim gave everyone access to at least employee. Typically the higher class residences would be somewhat lopsided- all of one half would be engineer, and then it would trickle around.

The corridor, though, works well with upgrading houses closer to the center and having marginal houses out by the edge, which gives an appearance I like.

(Also, I'm an idiot and started power games again. I had thought of an interesting strategy to try- you can buy vegetable fertility seeds for your main island and get up to engineers without needing other islands. Things were going ok, but I couldn't set up any serious trade links or the pirates would destroy them, and then the mercenary showed up and refused to throw herself on the ~20 harbor defense turrets I had built, and my iron ran out. I decided I had had enough.)

[Izawwlgood]

I may have just played for 3 hrs. The campaign did something weird, and after the rotten fish mission (incredibly stupid, by the way), I was unable to progress to the next mission. Upon starting a free play map, I basically just started expanding, and then stopped when the game suggested I take a break.

I'm kind of disappointed by a lot of features in this game, or lack of features. I'm not quite certain what the distinction between eco and tech city centers is, aside from the cost and resource consumption differences, and I'm also annoyed there's no easy way to set up an automatic transference of goods between your cities. Setting a trade route to ship food from one outpost to another is fine, but when I want to build something in a new outpost, realizing I'm short 1t of Tools and have to send my ship back for more is sort of silly. The game should have implemented some kind of queue system, to prevent such annoying breaks in your planning.

Also, I've only marginally dabbled in combat, but it's lackluster to say the least. I'm sure I'll keep playing until I have a mega map that I've conquered and utilized ALL the resources on, but for now, I'm somewhat disappointed.

[Xeio]

I'm kind of disappointed by a lot of features in this game, or lack of features. I'm not quite certain what the distinction between eco and tech city centers is, aside from the cost and resource consumption differences, and I'm also annoyed there's no easy way to set up an automatic transference of goods between your cities. Setting a trade route to ship food from one outpost to another is fine, but when I want to build something in a new outpost, realizing I'm short 1t of Tools and have to send my ship back for more is sort of silly. The game should have implemented some kind of queue system, to prevent such annoying breaks in your planning.

A... queuing system? Most of the fun for me is all the managing of resources, and setting up a new island is a non-trivial process anyway, you'll probably need 2-3 ships worth of goods if you want to do it right, why not just bring that much to start off with? You aren't limited to 1 ship to bring the colony's goods after all.

Planning is everything in free mode (or even better, the scenarios, assuming they get as crazy as the last ones in 1404).

Granted, I haven't started free mode yet (gaaah, Skyrim and AC: Revelations... and still haven't finished the Anno 2070 campaign....), but I have quite a few hours sunk into it from Anno 1404. If you don't like to micromanage then this is not the game for you.

[Vaniver]

So, I decided to start up a large continuous play game with no competition, with the win condition of 5k executives of each type and two monuments. (I also planned to do a lot of research along the way, as it looks like formulas you discover might carry over from game to game?)

I am really aggravated, though, that trade income doesn't count towards balance. My Tycoon population has revolted twice because my balance is -2k, apparently not noticing that I'm selling tons of functional food and manganese to Devi for tens of thousands of credits over an equivalent period, so my wealth is high and healthy.

[Izawwlgood]

A... queuing system? Most of the fun for me is all the managing of resources

Yeah, I'm thinking something like, you click to build a building, and if you don't have the resources, the building is queued. When the appropriate resources are available, the building is built.

I'd also like more information available in warehouses, such as rate of resource consumption and generation.

[ArgonV]

I usually just have a production island, with a large trading ship sailing to all my islands from there, in order to supply all of them with building materials. I suggest using an island you don't need for farming, since the ecobalance will be disastrous

[Izawwlgood]

So you don't need workers on each island? You can build one island of all workers and industry stuff, and one island of all assistants and the like, and just ship goods to it?

[ArgonV]

Jup. You just need to settle an island and then you can build industries. Workers don't have to live on the island. I usually have one big island with only houses, one tech-island and several other islands without houses, but with farms and stuff.

[Izawwlgood]

Huh. Okay, so what's the difference between eco and tech city centers?

I really wish there was a way display resource generation/consumption at any given islands warehouse. And I remember there being a way to cycle through 'all buildings of this type', but it seems somewhat cumbersome to find some of your buildings and check on their flows.
It is also somewhat odd that EcoBalance is not factored per island, but totaled. I dunno, these are all minorish design quibbles on an otherwise fairly fun game, but it seems odd that I can have all my workers on one island, but can't set up my production island to 'always stock 15t metal' or 'ship surplus >10t Ammunition to this island'.

[ArgonV]

Huh. Okay, so what's the difference between eco and tech city centers?

Eco/Tycoon centers are larger (6x8) than tech centers (5x6), but also have a much larger build radius. And I'm pretty sure each faction house needs to be connected to it's own center.

I really wish there was a way display resource generation/consumption at any given islands warehouse. And I remember there being a way to cycle through 'all buildings of this type', but it seems somewhat cumbersome to find some of your buildings and check on their flows.

Can't help you there, but there are external calculators.

It is also somewhat odd that EcoBalance is not factored per island, but totaled.

It is factored per island. Each island has it's own Ecobalance, depending on the structures on the island. Some islands can be completely polluted, but try to keep your farming and housing islands unpolluted (or even raise the ecobalance above zero), because it's gonna affect fertility and population satisfaction. A positive ecobalance boosts satisfaction (thus taxes) and fertility (I've got farms running at 130% at the moment).

I dunno, these are all minorish design quibbles on an otherwise fairly fun game, but it seems odd that I can have all my workers on one island, but can't set up my production island to 'always stock 15t metal' or 'ship surplus >10t Ammunition to this island'.

We playing the same game? You can click on an product in a warehouse to set a minimum level. Everything above that can be taken on trade routes. It can still be used up by the population or factories and can also be used in trading, depending on how high you set those (separate) values.

[Izawwlgood]

We playing the same game? You can click on an product in a warehouse to set a minimum level. Everything above that can be taken on trade routes. It can still be used up by the population or factories and can also be used in trading, depending on how high you set those (separate) values.

Oh I didn't see that. So I can click on any given islands warehouses/docks, and set each commodity to a minimum level, and it won't allow any goods below that to be used in trade? So I can set, say, a Tools route wherein the ship picks up 60t of tools and sells it somewhere else, but set the warehouse to always keep 15t, and it'll only load any Tools over 15t?

[ArgonV]

Yeah, that's what I do on my tools/modules/other stuff island as well. The supply ship(s) can pick up only everything above a certain level, so I always have the necessary resources to immediately increase production, if I so choose.

[Izawwlgood]

Ah, ok. So that makes sense then that you could set up supply routes between islands that basically just include everything above a minimum. It's too bad you can't also include a maximum.

[ArgonV]

What would you use a maximum for? That means you stop trading things above a certain level?