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Arctic Arrival Finally after distraction, procrastination and forgetfulness I’m starting on Lady Faithful’s expedition! This update and the next will mostly be about The Passage, it’s a relatively small and short storyline compared to Land of Lions. The Arctic region is actually probably the simplest region in the game, especially if you go in with fore-knowledge. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t it is boring. If you played 2205 I’m going to say that a lot of this zone is going to look familiar. I suspect that the Anno devs straight up pulled some textures and models and spruced them up a bit. Not that there’s any problem with that: there’s only so many ways to make ice and snow.  Not that I mind your company but why the sudden change of heart? The Arctic is not a welcoming place. Because I wish to be as far away from that man as possible In the meantime, I build a pair of chemical plants on La Isla. One for the ethanol to make celluloid, and one for the celluloid. It’s not the best setup, but it’s a start and gets me resources I didn’t have before.  I also start producing cognac for the investor skyscrapers. Cognac is a mixture of grapes, cherry wood (which are made from different cherry trees than the jam) and sugar from the New World.  Much like Land of Lions, The Passage has the player go through a map-based expedition. Or perhaps I should say that the other way around considering The Passage came first? Either way the “pro gamer” move is to go south, though honestly it’s a minor thing.    Most of the expedition is really nothing to write home about. Oh and yes, there’s a reason I brought 3 stacks of coal and it’s not just because of the hunting bonus.  AGS: Always Go South.   Who knew hauling 150 tons of coal makes one a crack shot.  As a side note: turns out scholars can get sick! Of course this is just normal plague spreading and not 2070’s “Oh we released smallpox into the population to get a better model of transmission”     And this is why we go south! This entirely missable event where we trade for a bunch of relics from the lost expedition! This was once the only way to get this item, and without it one can’t complete the Icebound set. Of course that was fixed within a patch or two of The Passage being released. Qumaq, the arctic trader, now has it pop up semi-regularly in his sales list and the scholars can research up a copy. I mainly went south to bring up this tidbit.   And with that the expedition is done!  For reference, here's the path I took.   It’s been two years, the Admiralty say they have tried everything, but then, they haven’t lost a husband.  But we imagined as much, didn’t we?--and my John picked a fine spot--perhaps they left some sign as to where they went… Welcome to the arctic. Filled with riches, frostbite, and Lady Faithful’s regular cash infusions for hitting quest goals. Of course I’m at the point where money kind of means nothing but it’s a nice thought. Looking at the map one might notice a few details. First of all: There’s a large unexplored region to the north despite the game having set the map to be revealed. This area is covered by permanent fog of war...excluding the occasional post-patch hiccup. Secondly: No AIs! Until the player reaches a certain point expanding AIs aren’t even allowed into the sector. It makes some sense if you imagine the other AIs being oblivious to the profit until after you’ve set up camp. It’s why I had no real rush to start this DLC/region as compared to...well everywhere else.  Just as they left it! We’ll rake over the remains, and then make a refuge for ourselves. It’s just like c-c-clearing D-Ditchwater in the b-beginning...b-but colder!Clear away the camp and…  Yes she actually says that.  Lady Faithful wants to rifle through her husband’s journal. Nate and I have more practical and immediate concerns. First of all I move the trading post over to the far edge: coastal tiles are valuable and the Arctic really doesn’t have cosmetics.  Now here is the big mechanic of the Arctic: heating and everything that comes from it!. Heaters consume 2 coal/minute and have a range of 11 road tiles. The Arctic has no paved roads and no items extend a heater’s range, so there’s no way to expand that range. All production buildings with the exception of the charcoal kiln require heat. Houses don’t require it but it’s the easiest way to satisfy their warmth gauge.  S’cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, gorr, get the coal fires burning posthaste. Or...I could save local workforce and bring coal in from Ditchwater.There’s a couple hiccups with this plan at first, but it’s honestly the better idea in the long run.  A canteen to satisfy community and the explorers are doing fine. As said, houses don’t need the heater, but it provides as much warmth as both sleeping bags and schnapps combined. Warmth supplants happiness in the Arctic. No happiness stat means no riots! However lower (or completely lacking) warmth means houses have an increased chance to catch and spread the incredibly virulent “Arctic Flu”. Warmth needs still provide extra cash.   The Scholars helped me locate the figurehead to Nadasky’s ship for the last piece of the Battle of Trelawny set. It’s kind of annoying that the Queen gives only 2 pieces of the set, but at the same time it’s understandable as the player is supposed to use the diving bell to find the last piece. This set’s an interesting one: the defensive weapons on the island become stronger as they lose HP. Meanwhile the ships in the sector gain bonus damage to sailing vessels.  Oh and Nate has set up a shop here in the Arctic, he’s not just here as a voice of advice! Can’t reach him yet though.  On a side note: I’ve discovered that engineer and investor skyscrapers both consider themselves taller than the matching skyscraper size of the opposite population class. So this level 2 engineer skyscraper is getting bonus Panorama from the level 2 investor skyscraper across the street, and visa-versa! They should be detracting from each other. I guess the engineer tower considers the investors intellectually inferior, while the investors consider the engineers financially inferior? Either way makes me think of plans to mix engineer and investor towers together.   The first Arctic good is pemmican! Ground meat mixed and pressed with tallow/fat. Perhaps with some berries added in for flavoring. The explorers make pemmican out of venison and whale oil. More heaters have to be built to heat both the hunter’s hut collecting venison and one on the coast for the whaler’s pier and the pemmican kitchen. Production buildings that are heated have a little red grille showing they’re active. This is disgusting! And yet you’re on your third serving. Yet no matter how much I shove into my mouth I still feel like I’m starving! It’s the arctic chill. Your body’s burning energy to heat yourself up to ward off the icy frost. The fats in the whale oil hold the venison together and provide the fuel your body needs to keep itself warm. With the explorers fed, it’s time to read the journal. An inuit trading post to the north eh?  Easy enough to find with the map fog turned off! Meet Qumaq: he’s unique in being the only trader that, as far as I know, has no unique purchase prices. Oh he’ll buy anything, he just doesn’t buy anything for double or more than normal like other traders. Much like Ketema, it’s easy to pick up large chunks of the Arctic sets for museums and zoos, not to mention specialists and items for slotting into Arctic Lodges, at Qumaq’s shop.  Qumaq gladly shows the path the expedition took, a path that’s blocked off now. The Hades and Styx came this way, if it takes our last breath we must find them. Here’s something more. It’ll take our best efforts to clear that frozen channel. Lady Faithful gives another $75K for coming this far and gives the next goal: get oil lamps for the explorers, which takes 500 population. In the meantime: the Ranger Station is unlocked! In the theme of doing more with less the ranger station acts as both a firehouse and hospital. This is something of a double edged sword. It’s good because it does condense both services into one building. The downsides? Well in every other zone there’s happiness, and extra happiness unlocks extra workers for the emergency buildings. The Arctic has no happiness so the ranger station has 1 ranger...and only one ranger. And that ranger can be easily overwhelmed if a fire and an arctic flu breakout overlap. So it’s still a good idea to build multiple.  Crown Fall's beauty grows, and the palace’s abilities do as well! Any investor building in range of a town hall now gives +1 influence  I’ve also built enough wings that the influence is reaching into my industrial zone.   With the extra influence from the palace’s investor house perk I can comfortably pick up a few more zoo modules. Turns out I have the fishies for the Sunken Treasures Luminaries set. Not the strongest bonus but not going to complain about more beauty.  In the meantime my shipment of celluloid has arrived!  Ah, how I relish working with a professional! If only that was the norm, wouldn’t you agree, miss Jenny? Indeed Mr. Bader. I too wish that was the case And with that, vacuum cleaners are for sale! I set up another Shopping Arcade to sell them. Effective and fairly silent, a winning combination. I may yet keep miss Jenny on!  The next  This is good because the warehouses currently can’t hold enough coal for all of the heating necessary between trips, even with 2 cargo boats bringing supplies. At this stage I’m dealing with regular arctic flu pandemics and work slowdowns due to cold living and working conditions.  With the sleeping bags provided, my explorers should at least have a reduced chance of getting sick, even when the heaters are on.  Forgot if I showed this before, but none of the items for the final negotiations in Enbessa are unique or missable.   It’s not long before I hit 500 explorers which means two things! I can build lanterns and my explorers are now thirsty Finally something reasonable to drink.Also the world map is getting a bit messy with all the trade routes criss-crossing. I love seeing it.  With both schnapps and sleeping rolls the inhabitants of King William Island are nice and toasty. Having both of those goods gives them a reasonable amount of warmth even if the heat gets cut off.  Oh and I can start banging some lanterns together. Just add whale oil for fuel! As a side note, I do find it interesting that both The Passage and Land of Lions has some form of lantern.  The lanterns let me upgrade the housing and provide technicians!  Yes I’m a zeppelin technician, but really I’m much more than that. Which means I finally have upgraded trading posts and depots for storing enough delivered coal.  You’re a little festive there, aren’t you pal? What with your bright colors and sombrero…  Oh and my license research for an Advanced Distillery comes through. My rum consumption outstripped my production hours ago. I have more than enough income from other sources to make up for this, but rum is one of my biggest income sources so my swings have been noticeable. Adding a small trickle in Crown Falls should help a bit. Like the roaster, the Advanced Distillery is basically a reskinned, more mechanized version of the New World distillery.  Time to move the plot forward! With 500+ explorers sated with lanterns Lady Faithful gives the player an Ice Breaching Brigade to take to the flow that blocks the way her husband went.   The brigade disembarks and starts digging into the ice flow, laying charges.   And when it’s all done we get a nice blast! Boom, clearing our way to continue! How far did they really expect to take those boats?  Not much further it seems. Good thing there’s a path...odd how it's still here nearly two years later. No ship, even an icebreaker, can carry us from here, nor will we cover enough ground on foot… You need a bloomin’ airship, you do. Eh, what do you mean borrow mine?--get out of it! Why not build your own airships? You’ll want to employ a lot of fusspot pseuds though, so watch out. Hmm...perhaps we can start a new business going into airship production...all the better to show up Edvard’s ghost! I have no idea how expensive that will be, but here. Here, I hope that’s a start.Another $100K donation from Lady Faithful...which is good because airships are expensive  Before I finish up I might as well satisfy the first technician need for additional population: a post office! Not only will this provide more technician population, but it unlocks the cafe’s Arctic recipe:  I’d expected strange things when they opened up a post office in the frozen wastes, but venison? At least someone got creative from it! That’s right! In the middle of all those baked goods, the cafe now provides venison tartare if I so desire.  And with that I’m bringing this update to a close before I get too sucked into the Arctic.     Here are some current Crown Falls images for the thread. Hopefully these give a good idea of what's going on with my mess of planning.
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Oct 29, 2021 09:32
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The arctic looks interesting. Can you slap down charcoal kilns up there for coal, or do you have to import everything? I'd be a little worried about having enough coal production to satisfy anything significant on that map. (And thanks for the shots of Crown Falls! It's looking great.)
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Oct 29, 2021 23:02
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You can make coal there, and I tend to do, but shipping it in is also viable.
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Oct 29, 2021 23:38
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Arcturas posted:The arctic looks interesting. Can you slap down charcoal kilns up there for coal, or do you have to import everything? I'd be a little worried about having enough coal production to satisfy anything significant on that map. I mentioned that yes, you can slap down charcoal kilns locally and they're the only self-heating production building. I'm just actively going for a challenge...and find it kind of annoying. The good news is the charcoal kilns only compete with lumberjack huts: they don't compete for forests with any hunting hut. You're hauling in so many goods into the Arctic anyways, what's a few thousand tons of coal?
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Oct 29, 2021 23:50
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I know you had mentioned that before, but I always forget that you can layer charcoal kilns on top of other forestry buildings like fur harvesters. That’ll boost my coal production from my fur islands for sure. What’s the rule for stacking on the jam orchards and new world orchards? They stack with charcoal but not timber?
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Oct 30, 2021 02:17
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There is one way to increase the Heaters range, but that requires an airship first.  Personally, my current session is going with a setup that creates four super-boosted coal mines on a tiny island in Trelawney which also spit out shitlaods of oil and gold ore, so I'm actually running a massive coal surplus and have no reason not to import it into the Arctic. Only time I'm using charcoal kilns there is on tiny resource production islands that aren't really worth their own supply route.
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Oct 30, 2021 02:44
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This actually raises a question I'm running into in my game. How do I get more gold ore/gold? I need tons for jewelry for tourists and my various citizens' needs, but the new world mines each produce about half an ore per minute. I haven't dug into the trade union options for it yet, but those don't seem great either because the gold mine locations are so far apart.
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Oct 30, 2021 03:14
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I always feel like trying to supply coal to the arctic from the arctic uses up so much space and workforce, given how much it consumes. I feel like they probably expected you to import most of your coal and the charcoal kilns basically exist to try to smooth out the curve so you don't get those sudden "we're out of fuel" production drops and arctic flu outbreaks while waiting for the next shipment to arrive.Arcturas posted:This actually raises a question I'm running into in my game. How do I get more gold ore/gold? I need tons for jewelry for tourists and my various citizens' needs, but the new world mines each produce about half an ore per minute. I haven't dug into the trade union options for it yet, but those don't seem great either because the gold mine locations are so far apart. The arctic itself actually has gold mines that produce much more than the new world mines, but the best option for this stuff tends to be the docklands. A cheesy trick is to just trade something from higher up in the production chain for the raw materials used to create it - the way the game calculates out the value you'll get way more from that trade than you had to spend to produce the items you are trading, so functionally you have supply chains that are paying for themselves, so long as you can afford that bit of extra overhead of needing to overproduce so you'll have enough of a surplus that there will be something to trade away when the ship arrives. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Oct 30, 2021 |
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Oct 30, 2021 03:15
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Arcturas posted:This actually raises a question I'm running into in my game. How do I get more gold ore/gold? I need tons for jewelry for tourists and my various citizens' needs, but the new world mines each produce about half an ore per minute. I haven't dug into the trade union options for it yet, but those don't seem great either because the gold mine locations are so far apart. Besides the deep gold mines in the artic, there's a few alternate gold sources that work great: There's a legendary harbormaster guy that can have fisheries produce extra gold bars (not ore, outright bars), another TU guy that can have sand and salpetre mines produce extra gold ore and Jörg von Malching, who causes old world mines to also produce oil and gold ore. He's kinda insane given that you can fit four mine slots into a TU radius on some small OW/Trelawney islands, turn them all into iron or coal (fastest base production speed) and then stack a stupid amount of productivity boosts through electricity, a Local Department and more mine items. Like, that's enough oil for multiple power plants and like 20+ NW gold mines worth of gold ore, as long as you manage to get rid of the giant amount of iron/coal so it doesn't clog up the storage and stop production. Or alternatively, just use the Docklands to import it. Magni fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Oct 30, 2021 |
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Oct 30, 2021 06:21
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Arcturas posted:This actually raises a question I'm running into in my game. How do I get more gold ore/gold? I need tons for jewelry for tourists and my various citizens' needs, but the new world mines each produce about half an ore per minute. I haven't dug into the trade union options for it yet, but those don't seem great either because the gold mine locations are so far apart. As mentioned gold production: -New World Gold (laaaaame, but it's there) -Arctic Gold (each mine is worth 2.5 New World mines) -Gold from harbormaster/trade union items -Purchasing from pirates (expensive) -Docklands. Part of the reason I'm going to the Arctic is that two of its major exports are gold ore and furs. Arctic gold mines produce every 1 minute (compared to 2.5 minutes for New World, we ain't finding any equivalent of Cerro de Potosoi here) and Arctic fur camps produce 4/minute compared to the Old World's 1/minute. Magni posted:There is one way to increase the Heaters range, but that requires an airship first. Oh right, I forgot that one item you can get from Nate boosts heater range, which makes one of my favorite items even better. Nate also crafts the funniest gold source I feel: a harvester item that has your crop farms producing 1/25 gold.
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Oct 30, 2021 09:09
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Awesome, thanks all. Sounds like I’ve just been relying on the worst form of gold production.
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Oct 30, 2021 19:51
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I mean, New World gold is thematic and is basically the "vanilla" way. Every other source besides purchasing from pirates is either RNG or DLC. Also you can attack the problem from the other direction. Pocket watches have an item that has them being made out of brass instead...and about half a dozen items to have various processes build pocket watches on the side.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:49
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Yeah, I have plenty of pocket watches. It was just gold for jewelry that I was short on. Which was upsetting my tourists.
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Oct 30, 2021 23:16
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You can never have enough sugar cane or sugar cane derivatives after you unlock the tourists and high rise buildings. If they do another season of DLC for the game they should add a not-Australia region for the late game where you can build gently caress off huge farms and mines to produce entire fleet loads of raw resources.
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Oct 31, 2021 03:37
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:You can never have enough sugar cane or sugar cane derivatives after you unlock the tourists and high rise buildings. If they do another season of DLC for the game they should add a not-Australia region for the late game where you can build gently caress off huge farms and mines to produce entire fleet loads of raw resources. Yeah, tractors in the new world have been doing some heavy lifting, but I’m sure I’ll start running out soon. I’m also finding obrero population to run coffee factories somewhat annoying, though I haven’t bothered to set up power plants or significant trade union stuff for that yet.
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Oct 31, 2021 05:20
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Arcturas posted:Yeah, tractors in the new world have been doing some heavy lifting, but I’m sure I’ll start running out soon. Yeah a big thing that sucks with the New World, and all the other "side" areas, is that because the populations are only two tiers, it means the high tier citizen houses only hold 20 people, so filling workforce requirements can be a real pain when you have some buildings that need like 100 of them.
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Oct 31, 2021 15:10
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+workforce town hall and -workforce TU items are almost mandatory in the new world for Obrero-using industries IMO. Coffee and chocolate production ironically I found best to run with minimal workforce reduction item combos, though. The total impact for the coffee roasters is IIRC 240% productivity at half coffee beans required and extra chocolate, plus a 10% reduction in workforce. The chocolate factories meanwhile work at 190%, use coffee beans instead of sugar and produce extra coffee, rum and refined sugar. Fun fact, some finagling can get 20 Coffee Roasters into a single TU radius. Magni fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Oct 31, 2021 |
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Oct 31, 2021 16:26
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Industrial Sabotage Right...what was I doing last time? Expanding the Arctic to finish the questline and unlock all the shinies the DLC offers? I should absolutely get onto that...after I get distracted and do everything else    As mentioned previously the Arctic zone has no AIs until the player reaches a certain point so I go ahead and grab all of the islands! It costs a bit of influence but the small islands are 3-4 points and larger ones are 8-12. So soon I’m the owner of every island in the Arctic to keep the AIs at bay. Every single one but 4 specific, special islands that I can’t reach yet.  In the meantime I also set up a far better way of producing Ethanol: as a byproduct of my rum production! Get Rich Quick Vol IV: The Wasteland will boost any drinks production building by 20% and has them produce 1/4 bonus ethanol! It does increase the building’s workforce and maintenance, but those are small payments since the item outright removes a New World chemical plant from the chain. Seriously it's a change of 2/minute using a specialized building to 6/minute as a byproduct. I’m absolutely going to have the scholars reprint a few copies of this. I remove the 1 Ethanol and 1 Celluloid chemical plants on La Isla and replace them with 2 Celluloid plants on El Zarao while shipping the excess ethanol to Crown Falls.  Oh and I move my brick/concrete factories closer to the Palace to get the 10% trade union bonus. Sadly neither brick nor reinforced concrete factories count as “heavy industry” so they don’t get the free 1/3 production bonus.  As I said, I got distracted. I build my first Furniture Store shopping arcade and set the default recipe of Bankers Lamps. A hit! Of course my Galeria Baderette is the best. Let’s keep it that way. The lamps are old news, we need a new best seller! We could even ask the customers… Well the investor has no issue speaking up! The unlock condition for Writing desks is “sell lamps” so that’s basically a freebie. Also this shot shows off nicely how I’ve snuck a Botanical Garden in the middle of the Palace. I’ve coaxed a few citizens into a so-called marketing ‘survey.’ Your input is appreciated, can you stop by the office? So what coaxing did you use? Threats? Thugs? Free food and wine. That’s all? Nothing heinous? That’s all! Offer free bubbly and snacks, make them sign on the line some boilerplate about ‘bla-bla-blah you can’t sue us for using any idea you express at this event’. Good publicity and keeps things simple. A trio of banquet tables appear (the third is on the far side) with a Recluse, Cheapskate and Romantic survey subject. The Romantic one wants some interior furniture since the skyscraper apartments are all the same inside. The Reclusive one wants someone to top off their drink and some privacy in their skyscraper office, and the Cheapskate wants something...cheaper since everything is so upscale. A whole bunch of demanding so-and-sos in that survey. How you put up with them on the daily is beyond me. Let’s skim the results, pick out our best-seller!  So here’s the thing: at this point I can choose either the Vanity Screen or go for the furniture options. Let’s take a look at the options:
So the Four Poster bed is comically easy to unlock. Both Four Poster and Lounge Seating are cheap to make. Vanity Screens take a bit to work but have an absolutely annoying unlock of completing a 6-item zoo set.       And with that the Vanity Screens are unlocked!   Here’s the recipe pages for the Vanity Screens and the Writing Desks that were given out basically as freebies. The posters are up-- can’t be missed! I gave Miss Jenny some time off, she didn’t look her usual self…  Next big event: I finished the Teeming Lakes set which gives a flat 20% free production on coastal buildings.   I also finished the Lost Tribes set which gives 5% reduced consumption of Sewing Machines, Canned food and Coffee.  Meanwhile in Enbessa:  Would you like a banana? Um… It’s free food! And not offered by a white man. Say yes, silly boy! So this is what comes when Enbesan tradition meets New World curiosity? Ooooh my! Delivering plantains to Enbesa is the unlock condition for the Banana Surprise, the last Cafe recipe.   And now something I’ve been holding off on:construction of the World’s Fair, which is the ultimate monument of Anno 1800! Or at least Vanilla Anno 1800. It costs $300,000, 100 lumber, 200 bricks, 160 steel beams, 150 windows and 150 reinforced concrete just to place the foundation. Phase 1 takes another 150 lumber and 300 concrete (non-reinforced). The World’s Fair foundation and phase 1 construction unlock as soon as you get investors, the later stages unlock as you get more with the final stage at 5K investors. It’s entirely reasonable to build the World’s Fair slowly as you work through getting Investors. However every time the World’s Fair construction comes to a halt that risks fomenting unrest due to negative newspaper articles. I prefer to wait until the last phase is unlocked at 5K investors and build it then. Of course, when I hit that mark in this file I got Skyscrapers and went “Ooooh, shiny!”   Phase 1 goes quickly and half an hour of me fiddling with stuff later it’s time to move onto Phase 2. There’s 4 phases of construction, and each one basically requires the workforce 50 houses worth of the matching population tier. As for why the Queen is here: this is the ultimate finale for the secondary questline in Cape Trelawny of building a new metropolis for her.  There’s nothing hugely important about this newspaper edition but it does include one little detail I wanted to show off. Once you unlock the Arctic the newspaper pages will include a little note paperclipped to the top reminding the player that the Arctic is immune to any positive or negative Newspaper effects.   Next comes the artisan phase! Things slow down a bit as I scramble to upgrade worker houses to meet the workforce needs.  In the meantime I get around to actually building some of the scholar residences I’ve acquired licenses for. Which means my Scholars now want Seafood Stew. I toss in some Hibiscus Tea to keep them happy as well.   Finally the last tier, one! I’ve got more than enough engineers thanks to the skyscrapers, I just need to reduce the amount that are dedicated to research projects.  Oh and set up fresh power plant, bring in new oil for it, and of course increase not only my rubber production but add a second cargo ship to the line. So you know, it’s almost like it’s all done!  Oh and I satisfied my Arctic explorer’s needs for canned food, which was the next thing on their list. So um...I did make some Arctic progress!   I also take one of the arctic islands and set up some fur camps here. The Arctic offers up Prime Hunting Cabins which produce at 4x the rate that normal Old World ones do. A whaling station is slapped down on Snifsdalur’s coast to provide the ingredients for some Glogg to reduce the beer consumption on Crown Falls.   And it’s done! The World’s Fair monument on Crown Falls is complete! Much to the delight of, well, everyone!    As a thank you for obeying Her Royal Command, the Queen and the Visitor grant the player a couple of items. Wait, it was that easy all this time!? What was easy? I thought the monument was a massive undertaking. No, the coffee! All this time and you had some specialist that just...makes coffee appear out of thin air? Fernando de Faro reduces the coffee consumption of Crown Falls by over 12 tons a minute! So let’s take a look at the World’s Fair and what all it entails. For a lot of things the World’s Fair is an item vending machine. Of course there’s a good deal of randomness involved, and if you’re looking for specific items it’s good to grab the wiki. The four categories are:
So the player still needs alternate sources for specialists and zoo items.   There’s 3 tiers of exhibitions. The first one unlocks at 5K investors...which means it’s basically unlocked for free. The next one at 7.5K and finally 10K. I’ve blown past those goals with skyscrapers so all three are available. What these do is determine which tiers of rewards an exhibition pulls through. There’s 9 tiers. Modest pulls from tiers 1-5, Large pulls from 3-7, and Sumptuous is 5-9. Each tier has its own pool of items. You do get to choose which tier you select from at least. The higher tier exhibitions also ask for fancier goods. Right now I’m mainly grabbing Large exhibitions while I play since I find those goods easier to provide.  Select an exhibition and the World’s Fair will start grabbing supplies. The more supplies provided, the higher the exhibition’s appeal will become, and the higher reward tiers will be unlocked. This is a Large (middle-tier) exhibition so even if I flounder horribly I can grab a tier 3 or 4 reward, but if I fill the bar up I can grab a tier 7 reward. A dash of coolness on a warm afternoon. Very left bank, very bohemian. Oh and a fresh recipe is unlocked at the bar thanks to doing all of this exhibition work.   And when the preparation is complete the exhibition begins! During the exhibition the World’s Fair gains bonus appeal, and once it’s done the player gains 3 rewards, one for each of the three pools in the tier. Yes it’s a bit confusing and over complicated. For a Botanical Exhibition the first item will always be either sheet music or flower gardens.  While all of this goes on some Resin orchards go up and finally a Lacquer plant goes down. All multifactories count as heavy industry so the 1/3 production bonus is applied. I really can’t overstate how much I love just producing a free copy of a factory’s primary good every 3rd cycle. Especially more advanced goods considering that’s effectively multiplying every single product that went into producing said advanced goods. It’s probably something harkening back to my Factorio days.  Anyways, with the lacquer ready, it’s time to start selling Vanity Screens. Everything should be just fine...right?  Nope, nothing involving Bader can be drama-free.  So now we’re on a merry chase. The newsboys send us down to the dock  Where we find a pile of disguises (and realize I really need to clean this up)  A nearby visitor says they saw someone in a blue dress matching the one we found feeding some birds.  The culprit left a note that sends us back to the start…  And we find a note from an angry employee. Angry worker you caught, was it? Predictable. But I have half a mind to thank him for his work pro-bono! Worked wonders for our sales, you know! The ‘vanity screen with the red and white logo’ is the talk of the town! Well I’ve decided to follow their model. I’ve made that graffito our new brand logo! For following through we get an untouched copy of the original advertisement as an item. -20% workforce +50 appeal for every Shopping Arcade in its range. There’s a vandalized version that’s only half as powerful which is what I assume you get if you let the timer expire without following the clues. This werd loser’s really obsessed with me! I mean I’m impressive, takes lots of work to look like this. Are you into grooming? Cosmetics and such? Bader’s train of thought is leading to the drug store which is the final shopping arcade. But that comes later. For now: I manage to expand the Palace’s range long enough that it’s reaching the far shore of Crown Falls. Now I can take advantage of the Coastal Reforms Act by slapping down an otherwise empty harbormaster. Any coastal building in range of a harbormaster that’s connected to the Palace by roads will gain a whopping +300% productivity. This means that 2 of the 4 sand mines that Steven MacLeod are touching are running at 570% productivity. The game just reports the processing time as 5 seconds.   While I was fiddling around trying to make stuff look nice, Tobias informs me that one of my goods has reached the top of the pyramid! Oh boy! So any item in the gold slot will straight up trade at 2x its value, and having gotten an item up there has unlocked the last of the Docklands modules. It also starts the Dockslands questline! Yes, the ONE questline!  Deep Blue - the shark - she was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Like a ghost, a white memory in the vast blackness of water and time. What I’d give to see her again… You recon you could help? I haven’t much but I can share my ship’s plans… Captain Tobias gives the player a foghorn that goes into the Main Wharf as he rambles on about how it was a dark and foggy night. I’m gonna be honest, I was kind of tired and out of it at this point and just slotted the item halfway through his speech. Perhaps that’s what called her. The sink of quiet millenia in the deeps, without a people. She’d heard the horn and came in to answer. Sure enough the shark appears! He asks us to take a picture, which we do! And then it gets published...which understandably sets off Tobias. Now this big, rare shark he adores is likely going to be poached!  A pair of battlecruisers is more than enough to keep Big Blue safe. As a side note: von Malching’s a money grubber to the point that there’s an achievement for getting him to give the player money. I got it years ago...but it’s easy enough. He loves it when someone raises their population’s work-hours and keeps them raised. Ditto with Dr. Mercier, he loves increased work hours but for different reasons.  Once Deep Blue is saved, Tobias gives the player the Deep Blue Ship Blueprints. This lets the player build World Class Reefers. I’ll show those off next time.  And with that, I bring this update to an end. Next time: More Arctic stuff if my ADD doesn’t get the better of me again.
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Nov 1, 2021 08:37
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Used to be that you would only get exactly the reward tier the exhibition landed on, instead of getting to choose between it and all lower possible tiers for that exhibition size. You actually had to manually cut off deliveries to the World's Fair to hit specific reward pools. That's luckily been changed by a patch eventually. Also, another little thing about the World's Fair is that the more investors you have living near it, the less goods you need for the exhibition preparations. Magni fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Nov 1, 2021 |
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Nov 1, 2021 20:41
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Probably won't be an update until next week. Reached the point where my ADD brain rejects anything Anno, so for my sanity I can't really touch it. I'll be back in a bit though, just need to give myself breathing room. That and Deep Rock Galactic had a massive update this weekend so...Distraction Time!
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Nov 6, 2021 10:17
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Trade Options Last time we settled the Arctic, and now it’s time to expand things.  Starting with expanding our fleet! Captain Tobias gave us the plans for his World Class Reefer that he visits with. By slotting the plans into a harbormaster’s office (or in this case the Docklands Main Wharf on Ditchwater) a new option appears on the Steam Shipyard. In addition to the Cargo Ship, Battlecruiser, Monitor, Oil tanker, and Great Eastern slots there’s now a slot for the Reefer.  It doesn’t take long to produce one. So what is a Reefer? Well it’s pretty simple: it’s a cargo ship with a bit more HP, 1 less inventory slot but it gets double speed on the world map. In return it costs more resources to produce, and has a heftier upkeep: 6 influence and $750, versus a cargo ship’s 3 influence and $500. It’s not quite twice as fast as a cargo ship since it still has to cross any map at the same speed as a cargo ship, but it’s definitely a step up if the player can afford them. I put the Steamed Bream II and the next reefer I make on the Arctic route to help make sure King William Island (and therefore the entire Arctic region) has coal.  Back in Crown Falls Level 3 Engineer and Level 4 Investor towers start wanting Typewriters so I might as well slap down an Assembly Line building for them. And if anyone is curious: yes the production chains for High Rise materials cause me to wince in pain every time I unlock a new one.  Thankfully some of the pain is alleviated by getting Gerhard Fuchs here who makes spectacles out of wood instead of brass. With a side of more free pocket watches. So yeah, that frees up a lot of brass all of a sudden.  I also research and use a Change Ore Deposit license. Crown Falls originally had 3 limestone deposits, but these days I’m getting my limestone entirely via Docklands trade so I’m free to swap one over for much more valuable iron.  Back in the Arctic the Technicians are getting frosty so it’s time to make some Parkas. Parkas are made out of polar bear fur for the insulation with a side of seal skin for waterproofing. White Inlet (which doesn’t seem to have an actual inlet on it) has both fertilities. So I build a small city and place a seal hunting dock and a couple hunting cabins down.  The goods are shipped back to King William Island where my technicians can assemble them into the parkas they so crave for warmth. The final warmth good technicians crave is coffee which, well… No, No, a thousand times no! This is my personal stash! But...it’s so warm...and delicious… If you want enough for the entire island, you need to go and talk to my sister into trying to pry some out of the hungry, hungry hands of every single engineer and investor of Ditchwater and Crown Falls.  Now it’s time to get into what the Arctic is really all about : airships! To do so I need to construct a hangar. The first stage is easy enough: just some wood and steel to claim the land, then some more wood with concrete for the foundations.   Once the foundation is laid, steel and concrete (this time reinforced) provide the structure.   Once that’s all together we add some sailcloth to cover the hangar, windows to let in light, and steam engines to power the equipment…   And done! A fully functional airship hangar! Lady Faithful’s all eager though I’m going to be honest: I’m putting her husband on the back burner for a bit to get airship production up and running first. You see, I need something special to make airships... What’s that you say? No No gas? Goorrr...very well. I s’pose I’ll have to lend you some. That’s right! We need Natural Gas! It takes 40 tons to launch an airship, and thankfully Nate gets us started by giving us enough for two airships! ...In this otherwise empty island’s warehouse...that doesn’t have enough room so 5 tons are tossed in the water for me to pick up. I’m assuming this is a side effect of me just grabbing the entire map confusing the game a bit.   Right well that’s annoying but not the end of the world. Soon I have all the resources and can click on the Big Airship Button to start building.   In the meantime I got some items from the trader to improve my caribou hunting cabins so I slap down an Arctic Lodge. In the theme of doing more with less in the Arctic the Lodge serves as both Trade Union and Town Hall. For influence tracking and Research Institute purposes the Arctic Lodge counts as Trade Union. There are no Arctic Harbormasters. Anyways, some fancy bows increase the productivity and reduce the area required for my hunters so they get squeezed in tighter.  15 minutes of construction time later and we have the very first Jorgenson-Goode airship! A trade vessel that’s, quite literally, in a class of its own. Mechanically an airship has 4 inventory slots, 2 item slots and is affected by the wind. So it’s easy to think of airships as “flying clippers”. Really, really fast flying clippers. Cargo ships and reefers have a base speed of 10.4, while airships have a range of 9.4 to a whopping [b]32.8[b] speed units. So, yes, they’re basically 1 to 3 times the speed of a cargo ship, which means those four inventory slots are very, very valuable. Add in the fact that airships fly directly over terrain which shortens paths further makes them actively better than cargo ships in probably 95-99% of use cases. Oh and they’re invincible! As in the game straight up says “There is no known weapon that can reach them”. Which is historically accurate! The zeppelins bombing Britain during WWI were notoriously hard to shoot down, even with airplanes, until the British figured out how to make incendiary rounds. Weaponry in Anno 1800 hasn’t even progressed even that far so any airship route is completely immune to being plundered. So they have some downsides right? Well for one unlike cargo ships and reefers, airships can’t go on expeditions! Oh well that’s...not a huge deal (and you really shouldn’t send World Class Reefers on expeditions: they have the same innate bonus as cheaper cargo ship and 1 less slot). Oh and they’re horribly expensive! One airship costs 4 influence and a whopping $1,200 per minute for upkeep. Since I’m currently (and forever) fighting for influence and am hovering at +$70-90K income, airships the cheaper option for me right now, at least once I get a good supply of gas going. Now the search can really begin. From high above, this white expanse may seem more finite. Recommence the search where we left it; at the place the Hades and the Styx were abandoned. Do not become them- I will help you find them. Yeah, as said earlier: rescuing John Faithful is on my “to do” list. Right below “Securing Natural Gas supplies”. Anno 1800 works very heavily on “Quest Time Dilation” and I will abuse that. Also I snapped this picture because airships look really cool floating above your cities.  Building an Airship is also the unlock condition for Venison en Croute. I worried transportation from the Arctic would damage the meat’s quality, but it’s simply unctuous! Well I’m sold. So, how and where do we get more gas? If you can’t squeeze it out of old Archie, I’ve seen gas come out of the ground to the north. You mean these...giant glaciers are actually solid terrain? These snow capped slabs of ice that somehow are taller than any local mountain? Ma’am, I swear it really is solid stone and ground below! Barren, yes, but it’s not just solid ice and snow! That would be preposterous. Every other mountain and cliffside shows bare rock, and yet there isn’t a trace of rock to be seen on these cliffs! And there are cliffs for miles! It’s all ice! Solid ice! How would an iceberg have a deposit of gas beneath it? Or inside of it? Look, just because...we can’t see the stone that doesn’t mean there is none! Maybe the gas seeps...cause the ice to be reinforced and grow into these giant glaciers? That is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard! There is nothing you can say to convince me these are solid ice. Maybe it’s...some sort of giant creature. An ancient glacial leviathan feeding off of fish on the bottom and...excreting its waste gasses through the vents? ...wait...really? I mean...it makes sense. Like a giant, immobile whale. Goodness knows those are gassy and unpleasant on the inside. I would know, I cut them up daily. Alright! I’m convinced! It’s a giant glacier because I don’t want to spend another moment thinking about us settling on some leviathan’s back and...harvesting...it’s farts. Right, everybody off! Let’s plant this flag and settle this horrible place. I’ve already got the perfect name for it! It lacks a certain something...and yet...I can’t really argue against the accuracy...The Arctic map contains four giant frosty pillars. They have quite literally no resources on them: no coast, no animals, no trees. Literally just empty plots of land with seeps that produce natural gas. There’s no way to conquer them militarily as well: your option is limited to buying out shares of an island. Oh and this one is nice, but the other three are all squiggly and an utter pain to build on.  In the meantime my continued researching has identified every single museum item. All that’s left is the zoo items and I’ll have every cultural item identified.   Something else I researched: an Advanced Pier license. This lets me upgrade a spare pier in any map to an “Advanced Pier.'' Which sounds kind of silly, but it doubles the loading speed of the pier in question. Obviously not really needed in the Old World/Trelawny sectors but in the New World, Enbesan or Arctic regions it’s a life/sanity saver. Advanced piers also have a slot that allows a good to be set and only routes that involve that good can stop at that pier. So if I were to set that pier to “Coffee” only any route that carried coffee in at least one of its slots could stop at that specific pier.  Back in the Arctic I used the last of the gas Nate gave us to build a second airship. It’s desperately needed: the first one is bringing lumber, steel, coal and pemmican to Frozen Fucksberg. The second one is bringing lanterns, schnapps and sleeping bags with a fourth slot for the gas to bring back.   Back in Trelawny, the Researchers have finished the last piece of the Gods of the Delta set: one of the most broken sets in the game! Suddenly every single Trade Union and Town Hall on Crown Falls, i.e. the BIGGEST island which means I have plenty of them, are worth 30 beauty points AND give a 10 influence rebate, so suddenly I have nearly 100 influence...and any more Town Halls or Trade Unions I place here will be cheap and a further free fat boost to island beauty. I may have actually laughed maniacally at my desk when I got this.  This lets me create a few new trade union clusters. Such as this one with Brewmaster Bill who gives free power to Schnapps Distilleries and Breweries, which gives more room  And this cluster which electrifies carpentry buildings (lumbermill, windowmakers, marquetry workshops and steam car chassis) and has them produce an extra side of marquetry.  Back on the Frozen Fucksberg the first trio of wells have been capped and are being mined. Each gas mine takes 250 technicians, so the goal of these ice-capped islands is to get however many technicians you need and nothing more. There’s 4 clusters of gas seeps so I’ll need 1,000 technicians on this island (maybe a few extra to cover for population fluctuations if there’s any fluctuation in goods) at which point I can clear out any explorer houses that didn’t upgrade. Now what is natural gas used for? Besides obviously airships there’s a couple recipes for shopping arcades and, yes, restaurants that use them. Oh and power! Yes, The Passage DLC adds natural gas power plants which are larger, more expensive power plants. The bonus is they have a larger range and you don’t have to do rail shenanigans. The downside is you have to do all of this to fuel them. I don’t build one this update because they require a whopping 6 fuel seeps to supply.   Next up I complete my first Botanical Garden set! Botanical Garden sets are interesting, and powerful. Many of them grant island-wide fertility, and with a bonus! Basically it’s like getting the effect of a super-fertility granting item but it covers the entire island and not just a single tiny trade union’s radius. So all of the wheat farms on Crown Falls are getting an extra +25% production which...seems small compared to mechanization but it does add up and is basically free. It also means I could perhaps swap out Crown Fall’s wheat fertility for something else, like Niter or Red Peppers, and still keep my wheat farms. And yes, all culture buildings can be built in the New World as well: tourism (at least of the vanilla visitor kind) applies in the New World  Next on the to-do list is a questline from Archie. Apparently the World’s Fair inspired a ship-builder to create a new ship. Or it did inspire him, only Archie bungled everything and lost the plans.  Thankfully the shipbuilder can recover enough of his inspiration to redraw the plans: all he needs is a photograph of the World’s Fair which is easy enough to get.   Next, Archie asks for some steel to build the monster. Thankfully he shows up to Ditchwater which has been vomiting out steel beams forever so it’s a trivial request to fulfill. Of course we then need to go fetch the propellor which is so huge it fell off of the tug. Thankfully a dip in salt water has reduced it to an item that will fit in any cargo slot, even on a clipper or gunboat or, in my case, a monitor.   Add some steam engines to top everything off.  A few minutes later and Archie gives us  Finally, the Great Eastern is afloat! Please, do keep her -- I’ve had quite enough of her, and frankly, Her Majesty has lost interest too. Don’t be surprised to find Mr. Bhargava aboard -- he has, after all, a most positive impresion of you, and is rather keen to work with you again in the future. Indeed the   What is the Great Eastern? Well in the game it’s a massive cargo ship with a whopping 8 cargo holds, 3 item slots, and is ever so slightly faster than a standard cargo ship (11 knots vs 10.4, so it’s a very, very slight difference). You get one from this questline for free-ish after throwing an exhibition at the World’s Fair. With Land of Lions I’m able to research licenses to build more of them. Which means I’ll probably be slotting a few of these into some of my trade routes while keeping one or two around for expeditions. They’re not cheap though: 10 influence after the first and $1,000 upkeep. In game the Great Eastern uses the model of the Extravaganza Steamer which is, you guessed it, another cargo ship. If I had pirates I’d be able to sometimes snag one for sale, otherwise I need an item to build them. I probably won’t be building any Extravaganza Steamers even if I get a copy of Anna Union (a play on the Anno Union site name). As said Extravaganza Steamers are literally bog standard cargo ships only they have an extra item slot and a comically low upkeep (only $100), but they cost the same6 influence as a Reefer, and it’s not cash I’m short on. In real life the SS Great Eastern was a very real ship with an interesting history. In short: it was a giant behemoth of a hybrid sail-paddle-propellor ship designed both for trans-Atlantic journeys as for travelling around the horn of Africa and off to Asia (hence the name). Only, well, the Suez Canal opened up in 1869, about a decade after her completion. Considering the SS Great Eastern would continue to hold the record of being the largest ship being built until 1901, she would have fit even worse in the original Suez Canal than the Ever Given fit in the modern one. The amount of time the Suez Canal saved on shipping people and cargo kind of made the ship’s planned purpose of traveling around Africa rather obsolete. So she generally puttered back and forth across the Atlantic, did some minor things like, oh, laying the very first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. Shame she was also famous for never once being profitable to run.  Back in the Arctic, three of the four gas wells on Frozen Fucksberg are built. I’m suffering a bit for workers since I don’t have enough space in my zeppelins to bring canned food as well.  And the final production line for the Arctic is brought online: Husky sleds! Add some seal skin to logs to make sleds, then add some cute huskies to pull them!  With a third airship online it’s time to finally find Sir John Faithful. This is a rather quick mission actually: everything up to this point in this update is a good 4-5 hours (maybe more). Finding the lost expedition? 30-45 minutes.  The trail starts at the stranded and abandoned icebreakers. Like before the arctic north doesn’t want to give up its secrets and is covered in a thick fog of war. Unlike previously: with an air ship the expedition is no longer limited to water. I dislike it in the clouds. There-- clear tracks leading away from the boats. I...what...how!? Sir John was last seen 2 years ago. These tracks have to be a minimum of weeks, more likely months, old. Surely there has been fresh snow since he passed. Sometimes the snow does not fall for many months I believe what our native friend is trying to say is that many arctic regions are technically considered deserts. Very low precipitation, it’s just that little precipitation never melts and since it never really leaves it builds up over centuries.  Following the path soon leads to a fresh cairn heaped high by John’s highland hands. These mean we’re going the right way. Each one also contains a journal note from the expedition’s journal.  And yes, hauling boats of those size through snow would leave quite a solid path indeed. *unintelligible* I-I’m sorry I didn’t catch that… I believe that could be translated as “Stupid White Men”, and in this case I believe I agree wholeheartedly… You speak inuit? Some, but in this case it’s more that I’ve had previous experience being the Stupid White Man in question. Only I lived through the experience, I suspect we’ll find many of these gentlemen didn’t.  A base camp is found where the lost expedition stopped and scouted their options. North was a dead end, East was a fatal end (and you’ll find the poor souls if you go that way), the only way is across the “Snow Dunes” The snow dunes...I fear for them.  The trail ends in a chasm where the expedition lost the last boat-sled, and at least 1-2 crew. The high winds on the snow dunes erased the tracks so just keep heading east. If you stumble across Santa’s Workshop that means you travelled too far south and need to head north-west. Yes, that was a sentence I just wrote.   The next destination is a base camp set at a frozen lake beneath a frozen waterfall. They dropped it all to make the difficult climb. Why did Qumaq just walk back into the engine room muttering about Stupid White Men again? Why!? Why would you climb a frozen waterfall? Send some scouts and surveyors up to mark and record the place, get a good view of the surroundings? Of course! But if the Northwest Passage exists I have a hard time believing it exists on top of the mountain range!  The trail is getting a lot harder to read. Less people with less equipment making less of an impression on the snow. The next note shows things are finally getting dire. Bear country. Hunters must be strong to come here. Welp. The bears clearly won that fight. Look! Tracks to the north, some of them managed to flee and escape!  The trail leads up to these spiky canyons. It does limit the possibilities of where the expedition went, but I still manage to get lost a couple of times: sometimes someone strays off from the main group to go die frozen and alone, and I end up following that trail instead. On the plus side I find some Lost Expedition Scrap. Yup, much like Trelawny, the Arctic has crafting in it and has its own source of scrap. These boxes will randomly spawn out here in the fog and provide a small handful of abandoned scrap left over from various failed expeditions out here. I also find a quest item that becomes a legendary museum artifact when I turn the item in after all of this.   After following some false leads I finally stumbled upon the main path again. And we finally get confirmation of what we all knew was going to happen when we knew we were retracing the steps of a failed polar expedition: the desperate survivors reduced to cannibalism in order to survive.   It’s not much further before the next note is found. The expedition, two ships of men, was whittled down to 6 and are now down to merely 3: Sir John, Remi Des Yeux and Irving the cabin boy who fought off the remaining 3 when they tried to eat him. The men who followed your Faithful here, can be men no longer. Look! Look! There they are! We found them!       I am sorry about Sir John. He’s had a hard time, they all have. I am ever so grateful to you, and do not think I have forgotten about your reward, but for now I must get my dear husband home.  A little white lie never hurt anybody! The truth will likely one day come out, but I fully intend on muddying the waters until the survivors are long dead. It’s the least I can do. Didn’t eat each other?! Got to be pulling my leg… oh, too soon? When we get back to King William Island, Lady Jane gives us the final reward for the questline: a fat pile of cash (not needed but appreciated), a legendary museum item (to join the one I basically tripped over when lost) and a legendary airship item that gives +20% speed and +100% loading speed. Oh yeah, that’s one more annoying downside of airships: despite having 2 slots for items, only specific airship items can fit in them. The only way to get those are quest rewards and Arctic crafting. Still not gonna be upset about having an airship with more zoom though.   And right as I start to wind down for the session the explorer asks me to do another quest real quick. Every now and then she’ll ask you to head out into the foggy unknown to pick up some salvage, and in doing so get more scrap for crafting at Nate’s airship.  Now that I have airships to reach him, and have completed finding Sir John Faithful and can scavenge the frozen waste for scrap Nate’s crafting station is open for business. There are some disgustingly good items in available here.  And with that this update comes to a close with the Arctic questline done. Still lots of things to do. Building up Ditchwater and Bright Falls, more specializing of islands, expanding the Scholar population, finishing the Tourist questline (building our first Iron Tower) and continuing building more skyscrapers. Feel free to suggests any projects or ideas for future updates. Alkydere fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Nov 19, 2021 |
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Nov 19, 2021 07:11
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I would like to apologize for my silence. No the LP isn't dead, no I don't plan to abandon it. It's just between life and distractions I've been busy. I also, for the record, work for Amazon and we're entering THE HOLIDAYS. Between life and the fact that I've chewed through over 90% of the game's storyline quests, so I'm basically building cities: updates are going to be a lot slower in the future. Just giving everyone a heads up.
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Nov 19, 2021 07:20
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There's a malformed IMG tag in there: [IMG]http://lpix.org/4169056/76.jpg[/IMG
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Nov 19, 2021 15:01
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I'd like to see you getting every single recipe of every restaurant/shopping arcade/whatever affecting a max level skyscraper.
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Nov 19, 2021 15:21
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SIGSEGV posted:There's a malformed IMG tag in there: Fixed, thank you! Missed that first time through. paragon1 posted:I'd like to see you getting every single recipe of every restaurant/shopping arcade/whatever affecting a max level skyscraper. Well that's sort of the goal of the ultimate High Life monument: it's a skyscraper that gives +100 free Investor residents for every active shopping arcade patent on the island.
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Nov 19, 2021 15:27
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Nothing brings in the new money like overpriced drinks and gold-covered burnt "steaks"
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Nov 19, 2021 16:09
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Slaan posted:Nothing brings in the new money like overpriced drinks and gold-covered burnt "steaks" Hah, what I've recorded actually makes this somewhat relevant. Anyways, just wanting to keep everyone up to date. I've done maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the recording I want, but I'm absolutely drained and tired from working Black Friday. Honestly I think I'll be doing good if I get 2 updates in December. Just re-iterating that LP isn't dead just on a capitalism-induced stasis.
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Nov 27, 2021 22:22
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I hope things weren't too terrible and the cleanup isn't too much hell.
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Nov 27, 2021 22:42
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In the meantime, if anyone wants some Anno, Ubisoft is giving away the Anno 1404 remaster for free.
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Dec 6, 2021 17:52
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Also in the meantime: https://twitter.com/ANNO_EN/status/1467912094414737409 I'm not sure if I'm screaming in excitement or for mercy.
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Dec 6, 2021 18:59
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The Big Reveal Sorry for the delays. Life has been getting in the way but we’re back! It’s time for not just one but many big reveals! Starting with…   A new museum exhibition set! Turns out I actually had this one kind of split up between Ditchwater and Trelawny for a while, so I finally brought it together. I’d totally just leave it on Ditchwate because it’s a global buff for my warships, but the Palace demands more beauty points.  Next comes me setting up a gas-fired power plant. These are the main use the natural gas the Arctic provides. Well power plants and building more airships. The gas plant provides a larger effect radius (which is further boosted by the palace) and the gas is delivered entirely via wagon like every other resource instead of oil-train. The downsides are its greater upkeep cost, greater size (an absolute non-issue due to generally being able to save a massive amount of space from ripping up rail lines) and having to support arctic icebergs to get the resources.  The next big reveal is going to take some work. It’s time to finally complete the Tourist questline by building the Tourist Season monument: the Iron Tower. An initial investment of 50 wood, 40 bricks, 30 steel, 30 windows and $100K is required to begin. The Inauguration will be upon us soon. We trust you will satisfy the following requirements with due expediency.The Iron Tower is a rather easy to build monument compared to, say, the World’s Fair, Research Academy or Skyline Tower. Though there is a good amount of pomp, drama and story to go with the first one built.  The Queen’s scribe lays out our marching orders and we can’t build our first Iron Tower without pleasing Her Majesty. She desires:
We trust it needs not be explained that the fulfillment of these requests is essential to ensure our presence at the Inauguration. There are multiple books that will satisfy the Queen (and just about anything with a book icon will satisfy the quest if not exactly please her) but the Tourist questline already presented the player with an ideal book. Part recipe book, part steamy romance novel: 50 Shades of Gravy is exactly what she wants.  Next up comes getting the Queen’s lodgings prepared. At least once I finish simply staring at this...bus-snake.  Not shown: 2-3 minutes of me building and shuffling around nearby hotels before finally just shoving one directly adjacent to the Iron Tower to satisfy the Queen.  With all the drama cleaned up the construction can finally begin.   With the donation of 50 Shades of Gravy Her Majesty provides a copy of a book she just read. So um...yay: traded one flavor item for another.     Finally the Queen’s Handmaiden needs to be taken care of. The player is given three choices. It’s not exactly hard to guess (especially if you hear the Boastful Maid’s voice lines) that the correct answer is the Destitute Maid. She’s not high class but she’s everything the Queen wanted and the player is rewarded accordingly. Well now, let us review. Invitations? Sir Archibald will provide. Accommodation, staff, the reception… Oh dear, we forgot the banquet! Never fear. You, dear steward, will provide. It must be grandiose, worthy of the Iron Tower! And of course a mighty finale; a patriotic trifle of momentous proportions! Something intricate and festive, unforgettable! The world will remember this day - let your pud commemorate that - the Trifle Tower of pastry! But...but...I’m an architect, organizer, world-class adventurer...NOT a chef of any caliber! Regardless, We have utmost faith in your abilities! Um...Yes, your Majesty. If you will, um, excuse me...I need to go plan this. Totally not going to go scream in a closet. Now I’ve entered and won my fair share of bake-offs, and this is no mere trifle! Rather it’s the trifle to end all trifles, a ‘zuppa inglese’ of the culinary gods! Come, I feel the creative sugar rushing! Oh! I forgot about you! My savior!     Another puzzle, this one determines what starting recipe the Iron Tower comes with. Yes: the Iron Tower doubles as a restaurant, only it takes four ingredients. If you get this wrong you start with the Brioche Royale, and if you get all the answers right you start with the Trifle Tower recipe. The other of the two will unlock after the Iron Tower successfully runs for a while. The Trifle Tower answers are Sponge cake (bread), rum, sugar, and jelly (grapes). It’s over! It’s done! The trifling masterpiece of a lifetime, an ode to colour, texture and taste and - oh I’m all atwitter! While that was happening I researched and saved 3 licenses for moving oil springs. This let me move half of the oil-wells up closer to the oil harbor. Doing so means a lot shorter trip for the trains AND I can put it within range of a trade-union affected by the palace which gives the oil well not only a +10% bonus but the additional 1/3 bonus since oil wells count as “Heavy Industry”   Before long the initial foundations are in place and it’s time for the next work crew to start placing the superstructure of the actual tower. I think that you need to hear about it, but I have heard terrible whisperings from crows around the tower. As we will know, heads of state have frequently been targets for assassinations. Murmurs of the Queen and other terrors in the same sentence. I fear some rebels are preparing a coup d’etat or some other dreadful thing for the inauguration. Under no circumstances must the Queen’s safety be compromised!At this point Sir Archibald asks for a police station to be slapped down which reveals three crowds to check into.   The farmers and artisans are happy as can be and excited for the big reveal (and party).  The factory workers on the other hand…   The Queen must be saved at all costs!  We find the gentlemen preparing their mischief down at the docks. Supposedly there’s a choice on if we ship them off to Sir Archibald or not, but I have no idea how to progress without giving them to Sir Archibald. Her Majesty is itching to visit! Have your best curtsey ready! A misunderstanding cleared up, a secure ceremony, cleaner streets… An all-around wonderful job!  Anyways everything is prepared. I have all the ingredients to build the Iron Tower: Steel beams, reinforced concrete and...one visiting monarch!  And with that the Iron Tower is complete. Totally not resembling some other, lesser, French tower built by some gentleman named Gustave Eiffel. We’re Not-British, thank you very much! At least, the moment of truth approaches! Our stratospheric savior of burnished iron awaits! To the Inauguration! Oh, look yon to the horizon! The Royal Airship is approaching! Let us strike up the fanfare! Sure enough the Queen’s return to Crown Falls is aboard an extravagant airship! Traveling in far more style (and with a lot less worried soldiers underfoot) than aboard a stuffy old Ship of the Line. We’re only waiting for you to come to the ceremony. Do you really want to make your Queen wait? What a splendid venue! The perfect shrine for this momentous occasion. Let the Inauguration...begin! The arrival of the queen kicks off a very special festival. I forget the full effects of the “Regal Gala parade” other than the usual festival “+appeal”, but it doesn’t last very long and as far as I know isn’t exactly repeatable.   Pray, commemorate the moment - let all future times remember this instant! And not the moment later when you stagger back to your hotel room drunk and stuffed? Speaking of which, the restaurant atop the tower is only awaiting your arrival. Perhaps it is time to open the banquet? We do start to feel peckish. Tell us, what have you concocted to humor this grand occasion?   Of course we’re not responsible for just the not so trifling Trifle, but the rest of the menu as well! The options for this part depend on if the player has unlocked the various recipes for the dining venues. For the first choice the Daiquiri Tonic is fruity, yes, but a bit too plebian for the Queen, while the Black Muscovy is definitely not fruity at all. For the main course I’m not sure why the Stroggof Goulash is “Contemporary and striking in color” when the Archduke’s Schnitzel isn’t but that’s the option the game is looking for. The final option depends on if the Trifle Tower recipe was correct (which mine is).  Get everything right and you get the Dithyrambic note from the Queen that gives the Iron Tower +150 appeal. Get something wrong and you get the sadly normal note from the Queen that gives a mere +75 appeal.  And with everything else the Trifle Tower recipe for the Iron Tower is unlocked.  As is probably obvious by now, the Iron Tower monument doubles as a super-restaurant. Unlike the other dining venues (and the High Life’s shopping arcades) its recipes consume a whopping four ingredients. It also doesn’t provide bonus happiness. Instead its food options give +1 population for houses that have access to -Takes breath- fish, bread, canned food, university, coffee, lightbulbs, champagne steam carriages and chocolate. In short, the bonuses are carefully crafted so that it gives Famer houses +1, Workers +2, Artisan houses +3, Engineers +4 and finally Investors +5. I already have both of the Passage and Land of Lions recipes unlocked as rewards for completing their main quests. The Land of Lions one is interesting as it’s the only food venue recipe that affects Scholar residences: reducing their consumption of canned food, seafood stew and hibiscus tea while also giving +10 scholars for having access to seafood stew. Anyways, the queen was asking for some cotton cloth, I wonder why? And now, fresh off the looms, our tribute - our thanks for your service, your diligence and your loyalty! Now, count to 3! 1...2...and 3! Unveil the surprise, dear subject! What did we get? An alternate skin for the Iron Tower that places banners on the Iron Tower. Anyways, as the queen departs, let’s take a look at the building’s UI in the bottom corner. It has a slider very much like the Research Academy. The Iron Tower’s range is not fixed and the more spare tourists one has to dump into it, the larger range it has: spreading its needs reduction and population boost far and wide.  While I may have both of the other DLC recipes I need to still get the other to Tourist Season recipes. Our Tourist friend is quite the woman of many talents and wants to put on a dancing revue, but she needs the player’s help. None of that drab old ballet; this would be audacious! A tribute to fine art and food! But a show needs dancers. Distinct hues and characters, I think, like a fruit salad.Before I can take care of her quest I get bogged down in taking care of a few production chains that have been neglected for a while. As such I get the Brioche Royale for free. Is it supposed to be a likeness of Her Majesty’s sovereign head… God Save The Poor Girl if her face looks that fleshy!As said, the Brioche is the “lesser” of the two recipes you can get out of the whole Inauguration debacle. Honestly I find its recipe easier to make since it doesn’t involve valuable sugar that the Trifle Tower does. As long as the Iron Tower has enough supplies to keep running it won’t take long to unlock the other. Currently I have the Iron Tower recipe set to Age of Exploration which takes potatoes, beef, red peppers and natural gas of all things.  Anyways, this is about the point life got in the way and I simply did not have the time to really get into Anno. It’s also where I can’t ignore that the game has really started to bog down. Anno 1800 is an infamously unoptimized game, and after 5 maps with 4 different model/texture sets the game starts to hog down. I’m legitimately at the point where loading the files takes long enough that I can go make a sandwich while I wait. As such I’ve turned down the settings to try to speed things up a bit. If the game looks a bit barren from this point on that’s the reason. And it’s only going to get worse. I was nearly done with writing out this update when Season 4 was announced. I doubt I’m going to be taking this LP into Season 4 territory.  So the Tourist needed dancers for her not-at-all-risque dancing show. We find the grape dancer down by visitor mooring. Purple vine, lounging in the sun, the face of and angel… That sense of Bacchic bliss will do wonders! The red dancer is found near one of your hotels. Crimson berries - shows character, daring, a fine addition to this fruit bowl of a revue! And finally there’s the yellow dancer by the Iron Tower itself. What a lovely ensemble! A colourful, bright, sweet, exotic...Marmelade of sorts! Yes, that fits nicely; the Marmelade Revue! We’ll have the audience on toast. The tourist needs somewhere to put on her show, but the current locales available in the city just won’t do. She wants us to build a new one near the visitor’s mooring.  In fact she wants us to create a little Tourist district. A fresh theater, hotel and restaurant within the range of the same bus stop that services the visitor’s mooring will satisfy.  Of course the line announcing this next quest popped up while I was busy digging around in menus, and it popped up in such a way that the text didn’t appear… However the Tourist had a brilliant idea. Normal cloth clothes wouldn’t be exciting enough for her so she asks for 15 tons of citrus to make costumes out of. I think that should about cover it. Well, so to speak - it is a revue after all.Yeah if it’s not obvious by now with the not-so-subtle hints I’ve been dropping… Oh it was a roaring success! The praise, the applause… Even fan mail - here, read it! The Tourist’s review is more of a burlesque show. “Femininity” indeed. I told you this episode would be full of “big reveals”.  My deer Cook was here! I told you the sea would toss him back to me. Here, hold on to this. It’s the least I can do for your help. I’ve no doubt all my fellow Tourists will go wild for it.   And with that all of the Iron Tower recipes have been unlocked. Shame you can only have one...per island! That’s right, I do have plans to build more, at least one on the Scholar island. Thankfully after the first we can skip all the Pomp and Circumstance.   I also unlock the Crockery recipe for the department store by placing a Member’s Club next to a Pub, and then destroying the Members Club to recoup the construction costs.  Also for some reason I absolutely adore this quest where the Arctic technician asks for some steam engines to start trying to warm the polar regions. I’m pretty sure this was put in entirely as a nod to the previous two games which were set in the near, and not-so-near future, and were dealing with climate disasters due to global warming. It’s also intensely period accurate as the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was when such brilliant ideas as “Hey let’s drain the Mediterranean Ocean to create a hyper-fertile farmland” Of course it wouldn’t work out that way: in addition to killing off the marine life people already use to feed themselves, draining the Mediterranean would create a salt-encrusted, heat-blasted lowland. In short: Death Valley 2.0: We Did This To Ourselves. But people didn’t realize that at the time so such outlandish ideas were suggested, much like drive-thru windows for airplane traffic to use: grab your meal off of a pole on your daily personal aero-commute to work!  And with that, I have successfully managed to get an update out during the holiday season! Woohoo! I have an idea on my next projects. Speaking of which: if anyone has ideas for iceberg names, feel free to suggest them. Frozen Fucksberg is nearly tapped. Alkydere fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Dec 6, 2021 |
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Dec 6, 2021 21:21
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Steam has a sale on for now and Saturday for Anno 2070, 2205, and 1404, each 75% off. Is Anno 2205 worth playing?
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Dec 11, 2021 04:24
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Kacie posted:Is Anno 2205 worth playing? It's divisive. It's my personal favorite of the series, but it does a lot of things differently and never got the support and care it needed to overcome its problems. It was shoved out the door half-finished and quickly abandoned in favor of making Anno 1800.
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Dec 11, 2021 04:53
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Kacie posted:Steam has a sale on for now and Saturday for Anno 2070, 2205, and 1404, each 75% off. Buy 1404 (Dawn of Discovery) on Steam if you don't like Ubisoft. Otherwise get the excellent History Edition/remake on Uplay which is Free to Keep if you grab it before the 14th. 2070 is also definitely worth it: it's kind of the counterpart of 1404. If you prefer more historical stuff or beauty building 1404 is better, if you like having more and more complex mechanics (power, submarines, ecological "Balance" score) than 2070 is better. 2205 is an excellent game but...it's different. Some hard-core Anno fans would say it has no soul I'd just say it has a different soul than normal. However it is a solid game and a lot of ideas and tech (and the realization that Anno players might actually want in-game tracking of how much of each resource they're producing and consuming) that went into 1800 came from 2205. Multiple sectors came from 2205. As did alternate recipe/ingredient replacement from the science/technology DLC, and the grain silos/tractor barns of Bright Harvest were basically a continuation of the biocatalyst and aerogel modules from the Tundra DLC. Edit: Oh and 2205 can't be all bad: once you settle the moon you can see your astronauts got to bring their dogs with them and you see them walking along the street in their dog-stronaut suits, right next to the moon motorcycles. Alkydere fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Dec 11, 2021 |
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Dec 11, 2021 05:25
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Iceberg names, in same vein as current one: Icicled Icehole
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Dec 12, 2021 12:27
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NHO posted:Iceberg names, in same vein as current one: Icicled Icehole That's almost exactly what I named the second iceberg: Icy Icehole. An easy enough change to make though.
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Dec 12, 2021 19:57
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Name a place Frosty McFlurry
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Dec 12, 2021 22:20
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Icy lacks the feeling of place menacing and\or being penetrated by pointy spikes of menacing solid water.
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Dec 13, 2021 09:55
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Sorry about the silence. Work, work, work combined with Update 13 coming out. Update 13 involved: -Eden Burning Scenario (which is basically the origin story of 2070's Eden Initiative) -Lots of cool cosmetics for non-skyscraper houses in the Old World -And lots of potentially save-ruining bugs -Like so many potential bugs. As such once the bug reports started to come out I've been loathe to spin up the save file lest it get corrupted until Ubisoft Mainz takes a crack at cleaning up some of the worst. Might take a while though: it's the holidays for them as well! I'm actually close to where I feel it's good to call the LP done, which is mainly when I finish up the High Life content, so I really don't want to see this go up in flames so close to the end. No this LP is not going to continue until the Season 4 DLCs come out: It's kind of bogged down with enough content already. Until then, if y'all need your Anno LP Fix, go check out Cythereal's Freshly Started Anno 2205 LP to see where a lot of the mechanics that made 1800 so great came from. 2205 is a heavily under-appreciated game because it changed the formula so much for Anno games. Yet in pulling themselves out of the comfortable rut the Blue Byte/Ubisoft Mainz crew learned so much which lead to the joy that is 1800.
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Dec 29, 2021 13:32
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Eden Burning: A not so auspicious start Okay, right, holiday hell is over and now it’s time to climb back onto that horse! Or it would be if there weren’t so many reports of bugs from the holiday update. I really don’t have enough recorded from before that for a full post (I’m in end-game territory where it takes a lot of gameplay to produce a post) and I really don’t want to corrupt my save when I’m this far in.  Thankfully with the update came a scenario to play! Eden Burning is the first scenario since Anno 2070. The older games had a lot of scenarios but 2205 completely lacked any: there was only one mode of play that was a semi-campaign, semi-freeplay mode. Until now the only "scenario" 1800 had was if the player played the campaign story or not.  The story of Eden Burning is that after the events of the 1800 campaign the Pyrphorians collapsed and many of their New World islands are now free. La Xultana is one of those islands where the Pyrphorians left behind their mark including many polluting ruins. The locals would likely need outside help just to clear the ruins away even if there wasn’t an additional wrinkle: while they were here the Pyrphorians built a massive oil power plant to provide power to their industries and then just for the heck of it wired up the local village. The villagers found they really liked having electricity so they want to replace the oil power plant with a less polluting hydro-electric dam.   The leader of the island of La Xultana is Yaosca Rodriguez. Does the Rodruiguez name sound familiar? That’s because   The Pyrphorians are gone: their forces keeping the islands they had enslaved in line pulled out to wage a desperate, violent war in the Old World. The result of that is that the bulk of the Pyrphorian forces shall rest forever under the sea and the rest are scattered. All that remains is the scars on the land, and in the hearts and bodies of the populations they conquered.   No, that's not a graphical glitch over Yaosca’s head. That’s a weird block from the ruins behind her that’s kind of floating on top of another block.   The island is falling apart, and now that the rebellion was successful the local big-shot Isabella Sarmento has been called in.  Eden Burning is part of the Anno dev’s (formerly Blue Byte, now called Ubisoft Mainz) series of attempts to tackle environmental issues. I feel they did a better job with Eden Burning than Anno 2070’s mechanics that were fun in a city builder but kind of ham-fisted story wise. The island’s ecology rating is broken down into water, soil and air quality, and each one is on a scale of 0-1,000. Drop below 750 in a category and events will start popping up forcing the player to make decisions. Drop below 250 in a category and its only a matter of time before a permanent catastrophe strikes the island: an algal bloom, draught or acid rain. Hit 0 in any category and lose the scenario.   The scenario starts out much like any Anno game. It’s very familiar. Deceptively familiar as I’ll show later. One interesting change is that Jornalero houses have a population of 20, instead of 10. Also they have new and different needs, as shown by their new need for access to a water pump.  And of course need to set up a chain to produce wood planks for further construction. The wood cutters go deep in the forest as they cut down the trees: in the Eden Burning scenario woodcutters don’t replant trees, only chop them down  La Xultana is covered in polluting ruins. Removing them will provide construction resources, free up space and improve the island’s eco balance. However they require free workers to be removed.  The island also has a bunch of “unique plants” on it, and more than a few in the water around it. Clicking on them will grant pages of the “Herbarium” <Yaosca> If you bring us any natural knowledge you find as you explore the region, I’m sure my people can find a practical use for it. The Herbarium pages are used as a crafting material at Yaosca’s harbor for scenario-specific items.  Around this time I send out Isabella’s flagship to explore nearby islands. The more eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the map around the island is unexplored. There’s lots of small islands around with various events on them. The islands are completely randomized and there’s enough events Here we rescue a little monkey the Pyrphorians left behind. He runs to his mother who gifts us a massive pile of plantains: one of the needs for the Jornalero population.  Jornaleros also need fish which…isn’t a huge change. Only now they want the fish and plantains separately: no dunking the plantains in fish oil to make chips. The fishery is also changed in that they need to be placed to harvest from specific fish-shoal resources. The fish shoals have a limited amount of fish but provided they’re not over-fished the shoals regenerate. The production rate of a fishery is determined by how many schools it can reach. Putting a fishery in range of multiple schools is a powerful move. Putting multiple fisheries in range of one school will rapidly deplete it.   Over to the north-east of the starting harbor is the canyon hosting the worst of the Pyrphorian ruins: the Barracks, Jail, Factory and the all-important Generator. It’s also where the foundations for the dam project are. We’ll need bricks, hand tools (a new resource added for the scenario) and a whole lot of  Speaking of Obrero: across the inlet is La Xultana’s village. The building at the top is both the city center and host of a research institute run by Maya who has a generic Obrero model. The research institute is where all the unique plants the player picks up are going.   One of the islands is this Mesoan ruin. The front door is locked, but as is the case with all ancient stone-punk temple technology the switch (that is probably actually a couple miles away) still works once you find it.  The reward is some Herbarium pages and a plant. Sadly I don’t have any aquafarms to take advantage of it.  Anyways it’s time to start clearing out some of the ruins. This one especially is in the way.  It also will clear up some water quality damage which is important: Jornaleros in Eden Burning want Work Clothes instead of Ponchos. So 1 cattle farm and 1 llama farm, which do a massive 10 water quality damage each when working at full speed. Despite the updated icon of a cow instead of a hunk of raw beef the cattle farm is the exact same as the normal New World cattle farm, with its six fat field modules. It’s because we use the cows for more than just food now as we’re obviously using the hides for leather work clothes. Don’t worry: they’ll be used for tasty food later on as well.  Clearing that factory gives the island an utterly tiny bit of breathing room but every little bit helps. It also gives a bit of resources (the bricks are appreciated) and some backstory about what the Pyrphorians did here.   A second, bigger Mesoan pyramid is on another island. This one’s switch is in the woods.  It’s also a bit more complicated of an event. I’ll come back later.  On the way back to port the flagship stumbles across one of the better events! We save these birds by cleaning the oil off of them and cleaning up the oil spill. <Yaosca> Black-browed albatrosses? I thought they’d disappeared for good!  And doing that gives a free +20 water eco points.  Back at the island I also decide to clear out one of the big Pyrphorian ruins in the canyon. 300 Jornaleros is a lot of workers at this point, but it means another +9 to water quality.  Also the little chapels from vanilla’s New World show up, providing population influx this time instead of happiness. Happiness simply doesn’t exist in the Eden Burning scenario. Likewise the worker houses also generate cash which isn’t exactly needed. Technically the player can go bankrupt, but I’m not exactly sure how one would manage it. Likewise the player level mechanic from population is still in the scenario and you’ll see the level-up popup appear from time to time but doesn’t have any mechanics for it.  Back at the pyramid with some construction material…   And this event requires even more resources! I’ll admit I played around a bit with the scenario before recording and never got this event before. I’d found the island, but had never found the trigger to open the temple until this playthrough.I feel the Anno crew are learning since this page didn’t let me back with no repercussions like usual so I had to just push forward without any spare resources. Got some lovely pictures which give a nice, if temporary, global production boost. <yaosca> To think such incredible works could be made with such simple tools… I’ll circulate these photographs among our workers -- no doubt they’ll be inspired too!  Clearing out the next Pyrphorian ruin: I need that clay to produce bricks and it’s in the way.  It’s time to set up some industry, near the dam and near these iron mines.  Now while that’s being worked on I’m going to take a moment to show off a little easter egg the devs put in the scenario.   Need to go to first-person mode for this. CTRL-SHIFT-R will let the player have an ant’s eye view of the island. It does take a bit of walking to get there but the player can absolutely walk up the line of steps to the temple at the top.   And in the temple at the top is this mural referencing not only all the Anno games, but the whole 2012 Mayan Calendar hullabaloo and just the mess of 2020.  The water quality is dropping pretty quickly and I need to do something about it.  I trade some herbarium pages and fish for some trash filters. These slow down the fisheries which is a good thing overall as it helps prevent overfishing. The fish schools actually improve the water quality and if overfished not only will their regeneration slow and then stop but also lose their ability to regenerate the island’s water quality. The items will also half the pollution cost of the fisheries. Yes the trap filters say -30% but the fisheries only do 2 damage and due to rounding the cost is reduced to 1.   Ultimately it’s a small bandaid over the larger issue, but to fix the larger issue I need to progress further. The next jornalero need is something familiar to Anno veterans: tools! Make them out of logs and iron! The catch is that the iron mine only has limited iron! As does the clay pit for the bricks I’m making to build the forge, other buildings and later the dam.  In the meantime despite my attempt with the trash-filters the water quality has dropped to the point I’m getting events. These events usually have two expensive-ish options with reduced negative effects and one that’s basically the equivalent of telling your labor force to “rub some dirt on it and walk it off”. All of these effects are temporary. Since Jornaleros have no drink-based needs and I don’t have Obreros, I go with the fancy drink solution. Why yes I’ll take the penalty that only affects the goodsI don’t actually have unlocked yet.  I’m starting to run into a new problem. Just like iron, clay, and fish, trees are a limited resource as well! So my foresters are having to be moved further and further out.   Good news though: the Pyrphorian Jail is cleared up! That’s a whopping 9 water damage cleaned up.   And the first Obreros have arrived!     Back out at sea Isabella finds some useful scrap and a reminder of a painful past.  Like in the vanilla game Obreros want their tortillas and it takes the same ratio: 2 corn plantations, 1 cattle farm, 1 kitchen.  The settlement on La Xultana is growing, more ruins are being cleared. The water quality has recovered…however the air and soil quality are now degrading.  Degrading enough that another event pops up. I really don’t have much to spare so I shrug off the bad effects.  The items slowing the fishing weren’t enough and some of the schools have been brought below the point of being viable populations. They no longer regenerate, they provide no more bonus to the water quality. Might as well run them dry and try to avoid repeating the mistakes on a fresh school on the far side of the island.  I also set up some coffee fields for the Obreros next need: drip coffee pots. However I think things are…going poorly.  Update: everything is going south remarkably fast.  Oh dear, this is basically the death knell for this run. The new Obrero fields were too much and the soil quality has dropped to the point I’ve triggered the ultimate penalty event for Soil Quality: Drought. Farms are now producing at half quality…and this is a permanent effect. Even if I brought the soil quality back up to 1,000/1,000 this would stick around forever.   The island’s nametag at the top now has a backdrop to represent the drought and the color balance shifts to something out of Anno 2070’s ruined islands. If anything I feel the drought effect’s color balance change and sparsity of foliage is worse than 2070’s worst.  Unless I want to go for a challenge run there’s not much I can do at this point besides just let nature take its course. The moment the soil quality level hits 0/1,000 the game over screen hits.  The scenario restarts and everything is exactly as it was.  Or is it? Something is missing up in the valley. I’ll get into the mechanics next time but the game does actually save a few small bits of progression between runs.
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Jan 16, 2022 01:21
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