Electronic Vanguard: Anno 2070
Created | Updated Jan 11, 2013
As the game Skyrim is now among the top 10 conversations on h2g2 I thought it is time to start with writng game reviews. So here is the first one. It is not about Skyrim. Maybe I will buy Skyrim later. For now I hope you will enjoy this – Tavaron
Anno 2070
In the not too far future the planet Earth is a different place than it is today. The polar caps have melted, flooding vast proportions of all continents, leaving the population struggling to find a place to live and get the necessary resources. But how do they achieve this? With windmills or nuclear power? Photovoltaic or coal?
This is the scenario of Anno 2070, the 5th part of the Anno series published on 17th November 2011. All the Anno games are a mixture of economic and social simulations and strategy games. They have been developed by German companies and published by Ubisoft (yes, they are available in English). Anno 2070 is recommended for children from age 6 because it doesn't show any violence, but it is unlikely that a child of this age is able to understand how the game works. It also requires to have Internet connection and registering at the Ubisoft homepage. While the first parts all played in the past (1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) this time Anno takes a look at the future.
calibrating planetary rotation…
The game still follows the old Anno principles:
The player views the world in 3d from above, zooming in it is possible to see individual people and plants, zooming out they can see whole islands. You can even hear people talking. The map of one game includes several of these randomly generated islands with some water in between.
The player starts out with a boat that has building materials and some money on board. then an island has to be chosen (at first the map is blank and will only reveal where land can be found once the player moves the boat there). The first building which has to be erected at the shore is a warehouse. Here things can be loaded and unloaded to and from ships and traded with – here it comes – other players, who may be either real people or moved by the computer.
Beginning with the warehouse a settlement is founded, consisting of houses, workshops, farms and facilities for the entertainment and welfare of the population.Every building has an area of influence that defines where other buildings of certain types can be placed or which buildings are affected by its benefits. All areas of production like farms and mines for instance have to be near to a warehouse so goods are transported away from their limited storage space and are stored centrally. Houses for people have to be close to a town centre and an opera in the town increases the happiness of all people in its area of influence, while the fire brigade will only put out fires that are close enough and let all other buildings burn and be destroyed. Every building of course costs money and certain building materials which have to be manufactured or brought from natural resources. The player has to be careful never to spend too much and plan in advance which buildings have to be placed where to be most effective and therefore reduce the number of buildings of a certain type and save money.
To keep the population happy more and more goods are required. At first they may be content with eating fish but later they will want chocolate. If the people living in a certain house are happy enough they go to a new social level (Some may never get out of their farm house if they do not have access to certain buildings.). To raise even higher they then need even more fancy things but they will also be able to pay higher taxes and this way bring more money to the player.
Sooner or later this will result in the island not offering the goods that are needed for the next step because one island will never bring everything. Now the player has different options: occupying another free island if there still is one, trading with other players or trying to push another player off their island. An additional handicap offer hurricanes, volcanoes, pirates and other hings like that.
Once more islands are occupied the player has to build more ships and install trading routes to always make sure that needed goods are available to the population.
Another aspect of the game is diplomacy. Computer generated players will regularly ask the player for favours which he can grant or not, which will then influence the relationship. Some will be allies, other will not be favourable. Sometimes war is the result but it is not the goal of the game, just a possibility.
digging deep sea trenches…
So, let us have a look at the future now...
The nice little half-timbered houses of the old Anno games have been replaced with high tech buildings that grow many storeys high in the course of the game. the little men with wheelbarrows who run back and forth between workshops and warehouses are not there anymore, in their place we see flying transporters. It is an unusual sight in an Anno game and the atmosphere changed, but still... it's Anno. No mistake about that.
Anno 2070 offers a few different game options:
1)The campaign which tells a story and at the same time is a tutorial for the game, if you have never played Anno start here.
2)continious game: this game goes on forever or until you run out of resources if you did not find sustainable solutions for this
3)Different scenarios with certain goals that have to be achieved. Some of these change monthly, some even daily and completing them gives in-game rewards. This is a reason why the game requires an internet registration with Ubisoft.
4) Multiplayer for up to 4 players via the Internet.
The continious game is always the hart of Anno, so I will go on describing this, but all other playing options are not much different. A novelity is that at the beginning the player has to choose a faction: either the Ecos (the name says it all) or the Tycoons, who rely heavily on resources like oil and coal.
fudging eco balance …
Right at the beginning the player does not only have a boat but an ‘ark', something like a floating headquarter on the sea. This ark can be moved and later upgraded to bring benefits to the player's settlements. These benefits can be taken to new games where they will again appear on the ark.
As usual the player only has few building options at the start of the game and more and more buildings are added later. But the first few buildings already show the difference between Ecos and Tycoons:
While a settlement of basic houses of the Tycoons looks like a trailer park, the Ecos' houses have something futuristic. While Ecos obviously have dogs (they run around in the gardens), Tycoons just need a satellite dish. If that is not enough Ecos go to the concert hall while Tycoons spend their free time in the casino. Energy is produced either with windmills or coal... guess who uses what. But Ecos also can't live without coal, at least not initially, they need it for melting metal. Even in food issues the two are different: for Ecos tea plantations, cows for milk and vegetable fields, Tycoons crave for pork, alcohol and artificial flavours. This goes on and on. even the music is different: while Tycoon music sound like a hammering machine Eco music can only be described as hopeful.
While the Tycoons are able to grow faster and use less space the Ecos of course do a lot less damage to their natural surroundings. This shows in the eco balance that is for the first time implemented in the game and always visible next to the finances. As even the Ecos don't manage to do no damage at all there are ways to ‘repair' the eco system: monitoring stations to reduce air pollution, weather control systems and ozone making stations. Depending on the faction and the interaction with the environment the look of the island slowly changes to either a polluted wasteland or something resembling a futuristic garden city.
As the game progresses the populations of the islands progress. Higher houses are built and the towns expand. More and more factories, plantations, mines and other buildings are needed. There are even tv stations to influence the population.If the neighbors get angry there are defense turrets and war ships – probably even other things later in the game. the natural resources of all islands can be mined out completely, which of course is especially a bad thing for the Tycoons, but even they can become Ecos later. If they want.
At a certain stage of the society a third faction gets into the game: the Techs. They are helpful to both, Ecos and Tycoons. Once the first tech houses, the lab and later the academy are built they start to research things that make life better. With their help it is even possible to build underwater bases that can be accessed with submarines. This is a completely new thing for Anno. But again: to progress Techs have certain needs and they are not the same needs as Ecos and Tycoons have. Techs crave for coffee with lots of sugar. And ‘functional food' made of algae. And even Ecos get angry if they don't get their tea and as a result don't want to pay their taxes.
The graphics of the game are really amazing. They are extremely detailed for a game like this. Lots of people are walking in the streets, teenagers can be watched when they show off their breakdance in the street, vegetables can be watched as they grow and are watered by automatic systems and the pigs roll on their backs in the mud. Harvesting robots chop trees, birds fly over the islands and even the grass is visible in detail.
I really recommend this game. I haven't played it all through myself but I can't wait to see what will come next. Some may think it's a little boring because it doesn't involve a lot of fighting, but it is a really interesting game that requires much thinking.
For all those who are interested now there is a demo available on the Anno 2070 homepage. You can also have a look at some screenshots there.
