Oh, and don’t forget fiddling with the tax levels for each class! You can’t just build anywhere on an island either, you need to be within a certain radius of a market or storage building.īuilding placement is also key in the game. (And don’t forget building escort ships if you’re at war) On top of managing trade routes, you have to set the buy/sell prices of goods at your markets.

(And you can only plant a certain number of foreign seeds per island) Once you colonize an island you have to set up trade routes with ships to carry the goods. Often you have to buy the seeds from either the orient or your boss if that island doesn’t support X farm. Not every island will be fertile to every crop you want to plant. Not all of the raw materials you need to satisfy a class’ needs can be found on your starting island. This may seem simple, but it’s immensely complicated. Then from patricians come nobles, again, more building options, more needs. Once all of a citizen’s needs are met, they can advance to patricians, who again bring a whole new set of building options along with more needs. Citizens allow you to build more buildings to further expand your settlement, but they also have Y needs. Once X needs are met, they will advance to citizens. You start of with peasants who have X needs.

The main focus of the game is managing your town’s economy so that it grows. There is no tutorial other than the campaign, but even that leaves a lot of things out. There is so many options and things you need to keep track of in this game, it’s taken me over 40 hours of play to finally start to wrap my head around it. There is one big problem with the game that will become evident as I describe the features: the difficulty curve, it’s as steep as a castle wall. (bonus points if you can name who they are based of off)

There is also a host of other NPCs who are all comical knock offs of actual historical figures. You can also trade with him and buy needed items that might not be on your island starting out. He is your basic in game advice guy who will give you tips along the way. “Lord Richard Northburgh” who claims to be the close cousin of “the emperor”. You start off on an island with the rest of the map hidden except your “boss” island. There is so much to this game, describing it will be difficult, but here it goes: Every map is an archipelago. Dawn of Discovery, or Anno 1404 as it’s called in Europe, is a 15th century city sim game, and it is beautiful! Just look at some of these screen shots: I have just discovered my new favorite game.

Anno 1404 how to capture ships