• Building cities via a system where your people are your “tech tree”
  As you gain a larger population and fulfil their needs then they will need new different resources to keep happy, if kept very happy then they can upgrade to another social level which require new resources (such as peasants to citizens in anno 1404). Higher numbers of people and their social levels will give you access to different buildings, start with a simple Woodcutter and ending with things such as glassworks which require 4 or 5 different structures to get the resources to make glass.
  
  
• Many varieties of resources and goods.
  These all need differing structures to make plus different uses of the resources such as Glass which can be used by your people to upgrade their own houses or by yourself to build new structures.
  
  
• Water-based trading between islands
  Goods and resources can be traded between your own islands or even NPC islands with a vast network of boats and ships that allow you to form trading routes to supply your items with needed items or sell them for profit to NPCs.
  
  
• Military real time strategy combat
  Create navies, armies and castles on opponents islands to fight over their resources and break down their cities. In Anno 2070 all combat is ship and air power based.
  

• A new civilization rank
  
• Underwater expansion
  
• New ways of energy extraction
  
• New missions about the energy research of Hiro Ebashi
  
• Revised research feature: Multiple new items
  
• Hostile take-over of islands without using a single bullet
  
• New Tech Monument including new gameplay options
  
• Fascinating new production buildings and goods
  

• Factions – Tycoons, ECOs and SAAT
  Players can choose to play as either the industrial Tycoons or the ecological ECOs. Tycoons will focus on efficiency and mass consumption, Ecos are more about sustainability and environmental friendliness. The SAAT are a secondary faction similar to the Orient from 14040/Dawn of Discovery.
  
  At the start of a game you pick your chosen faction of ECOs or Tycoons and build up their needs and whatnot until you reach population level 3 of 5. When you reach 3 the Tech faction (the equivilant of Orientals) will contact you and you can buy access to their technology at your Ark for 10,000 credits, so you can build all of their structures. When your initial faction reaches level 5 population the other faction will contact you and offer you their technology which also costs 10,000 credits. You don't have to take up any of these on their offers if you don't want to though (but Techs are needed for the highest resources for your faction just like Orientals in 1404).
  
  Basically after enough time in a game you'll have the two main factions and the Techs all running under your control should you chose to do so.
  
  
• World Council
  You are allowed to vote for a council to run the world for a number real-time days which effects all your games.
  
  Choose from the Global Trust (Tycoons), Eden Initiative (ECOs) or SAAT. These offer different usable bonuses to your game for their duration of running the world, however the item itself often has a cooldown time. You can see which bonuses each faction will give and then you vote on the faction with the bonuses you like best, this is while all other real players also decide which faction they want to vote for. After a set period of time the voting will finish and whoever received the most votes runs the world council and gives those bonuses to all players. They typically give you bonuses such as extra credits or improvements towards the efficiency of buildings/units.
  
  As an example of one of the bonuses there is one called Robotic Workforce which reduces the maintenance costs of production and energy producing buildings by 50%. This lasts for 30 minutes and has a 50 minute cooldown period.
  
  
• Senate
  This is another vote between the Global Trust, Eden Initiative or SAAT which adds and effect to all your games for a period of real time days.
  
  The senate will pass a powerful law which is usually a positive (but may have something negative attached to it) benefit across the entire game plus this does not have to be toggled on or off as it is always in effect. Much like the World Council you vote on which of the factions you like the law of best and vote for them while other players also vote for their preferred law until voting ends and that law becomes locked in for some days
  
  These laws can give you effects such as improving the Ecobalance of all islands, or one that for a positive increases production for all fisheries but as a negative increases the construction costs of ships.
  
  
• Power
  Power is a new feature of Anno 2070 where nearly all structures in the game consume power (with the exception of housing and power generating buildings.)
  If you go into negative power then the efficiency of all buildings on that island will drop so you will need to build various power plants to keep your power levels high enough to keep all of your buildings running at full efficiency.
  
  Both factions have different ways for generating power such as Wind Parks (the efficiency of these will drop the more you have in an area) for the ECOs and Coal Power Stations (which require the resource of Coal to work) for the Tycoons.
  
  
• Island Ecology
  This is a new feature which is basically the wellbeing of a particular island. The structures and facilities you build on your island that have a negative Ecobalance rating will remove some of the Ecobalance which will lead to penalties on that island. You can however build facilities that improve the Ecobalance of the island so you are not stuck with a negative Ecobalane.
  
  
• Faction Differences
  Both factions have things in common that they use such as Building Modules (discussed below) or resources that fulfil a similar function but are different for either faction, such as the resource needed to fulfil the Need for Drink is Tea for the ECOs and Beer for the Tycoons.
  
  As mentioned above there is a resource called Building Modules, these are used to build most early structures (similar to how Wood is used in earlier games, however Wood is still used in Anno 2070 but it is not the most basic building resource anymore). The biggest difference is how the two factions gain the Building Module resource which is a two stage process for both.
  
  For the ECOs they use a structure called Basalt Extraction. This allows you to place down two production plants from it to extract an item called Pellets. Then the ECOs use a building called a Smelter to turn the Pellets into the Building Modules. These buildings can be placed anywhere on an island where you have space to create these items. One Basalt Extraction will use 1 unit of power and have no effect on the Island Ecology.
  
  For the Tycoons they have a building called a Basalt Crusher which simply mines out Pellets and another called a Smelter which turns the Pellets into Building Modules. However one Basalt Crusher takes 2 Units of Energy and reduces the Island Ecology by 4.
  
  

  Alkydere posted:

  You are right. Both the Ecos and Tycoons serve as the Occident/Europe from 1404 and the Techs operate closely to the Orient/Mid. East.
  
  The Ecos have larger farms, and more of them, that are very sensitive to negative Eco Balance scores, but they have rather powerful tools to negate any Eco Balance damage and even boost it up to +999. You get the Eco Balance above 0 and the Ecos not only get a production bonus from those farms but a tax bonus from happy citizens. Of course, the downside to all of this is these Eco-balance buildings are rather power-intensive and the Ecos aren't all that great at providing power. For example: the standard Wind Farm only has a 3x3 footprint, but only generates 15 power and has a very large radius of exclusion. If these exclusion areas interfere with other wind-farms both buildings will see a decrease in productivity. You'll either need a lot of windfarms (offshore ones are far better) or Thermal Power stations (6x4 buildings that generate power from residences) until you get to Solar plants. Their Tier 2 and 3 building materials are rather easy to make. Wood only needs space (just build a Lumber Mill within range of a Tree Farm and make sure there's room for trees to be planted around the mill), and Glass is the exact same process for the Tycoon's Concrete, only a Tier later when it's easier to deal with.
  
  The Tycoons, on the other hand, use smaller farms that are far less sensitive to environmental degradation. As a Tycoon you really won't notice any major negative effects before about -300 balance. They have large, cheap but polluting rotors that let them mine coal without using mine slots which is damned important as Tycoons need every single one of those mine slots for iron. The Tier 3 building material, steel, will suck up the iron production of two mines. That's on top of any iron mines used up already to make tools or weapons of any sort. The Tycoon building materials (concrete and steel) are a bit tougher to collect than Eco. Their Tier two (concrete) is the exact same process as an Eco's Tier three (glass) which means they need to set up sand extractors and limestone mines earlier (generally on a different island) before they can even build a harbor or their Tier two foods or lifestyle materials. As I said before, Steel takes up at least two mine slots, three if you use another mine for coal. Also, their Eco Balance buildings cannot raise the balance above a neutral 0. These buildings are rather powerful (+50 for Waste Compactor, which uses Houses as a resource like the Eco Thermal Plant, +90 for the Deacidification Station, +200 for the CO2 Storage which uses a mine slot), and since the Tycoons use Coal and Nuclear power (+60 and +500 power respectively) they can afford these building's power consumption without any real hassle.
  
  The two factions are actually really balanced to be honest, while one may excel in one faction the other one is generally no worse than mediocre. Though I wills say the Eco faction is probably the most user friendly and easiest to get a hang of while learning the game. Once you start playing with the Techs and researching stuff in the game you can make some really nice Ark items that can cover up a faction's deficiencies (wind farms, both off shore or on land, get really nice when you have a Tier 2 or 3 item for them in your Ark), or you could boost their advantages to absurd levels.
  

  
  

• Useful links:
  http://anno2070.wikia.com/wiki/Building_Layouts
  http://anno2070.wikia.com/wiki/Production_Chains
  http://odegroot.nl/anno2070/production_chains.php
  http://2070.anno1404-rechner.de/ - Population requirement calculator, however it is in German. Google Translate link here
  
  

• Mahler posted:

  NanosuitNinja, an awesome let's player on Youtube, has posted an hour-long beginners Guide to this game. Lots of awesome tips for a newbie like me.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYFLhADYd3k
  

  
  

• Spakstik posted:

  Thanks a ton for posting this. If anyone is interested in a slightly easier-to-read version of this, I wrote up a list of the Tycoon and Tech building requirements for my own use. The list is a bit incomplete because I've only gotten so far in the game, but I'll try to update it as I go along if people find it useful. I probably got a few of the building names wrong, but it should be obvious what's what.
  
  Building Module Factory: 1 basalt crusher
  
  Iron Smelter: 1 iron ore mine, .5 coal mine or 1 excavator
  Tool Factory: .5 iron smelter
  Steelworks: 2 iron smelters
  
  Concrete Factory: 1 limestone quarry, .3 sand extractor
  Microchip Factory: .3 sand extractor, .5 copper mine or .5 black smoker copper mine
  
  Weapons Factory: 1 smelter
  Explosives Factory: 2 uranium mines or .3 black smoker uranium mine
  Heavy Weapons Factory: 2 smelters, 1 explosives factory
  Advanced Weapons Factory: 1 smelter, 2 microchip factories
  
  Oil Refinery: 3 derricks or 1 oil rig
  Plastic Factory: 1 refinery
  Carbon Factory: 1 refinery, .5 coal mine or 1 excavator
  Kerosene Plant: 1 refinery
  
  Gold Smelter: 1 gold mine
  Jewelry Manufacturer: 1 gold smelter
  
  Convenience Food Factory: 1 flavor lab, 2 meat factories
  Gourmet Food Factory: .5 lobster farm, 2 truffle farms
  Champagne Factory: 2 vineyards, 1 sugar beet farm
  Functional Food Plant: 1 algae farm
  Energy Drink Factory: 1 coffee plantation, 1 sugar beet farm
  
  Manganese Harvesting Station: .5 manganese mine
  
  Chemical Plant: 3 fat factories, 1 algae farm
  Pharmaceutical Factory: 1 chemical plant, 2 manganese harvesting station*
  
  Coal Power Plant: 1 excavator or .5 coal mine
  Fuel Rod Factory: 1 uranium mine or 1/6th black smoker uranium mine
  Nuclear Power Plant: 1 fuel rod factory
  
  *2 manganese harvesting stations will give you an output of ~1.34 per tick, so you will have .34 left over. Because of this, for 2 pharmaceutical factories you will only need 3 manganese harvesting stations rather than 4.
  

RoboJoe fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Oct 5, 2012

• The setting has changed from discovering the New World to exploring the Orient (the Middle East) and colonizing islands there to trade and forge diplomatic relations with the Orientals.
  
  
• Differing from previous games the Occidental (European) civilization progression is Peasants > Citizens > Patricians > Noblemen.
  
  
• Diplomacy with the Orient will lead you to build Oriental structures on islands to gain resources that you cannot access with your standard Occidental buildings.
  
  
  
• The oriental buildings have a separate two tier population which start at Nomads and upgrade to Envoys. These require different food and resources to your Occidental population and will allow you to create/mine resources the Occident needs.
  
  
• The Venice Expansion adds the Venetian NPC faction who will offer you more and different quests and resources/items.
  
  

• Campaign: Standard campaign mode with focused objectives following a storyline, showing you different aspects of the game. This is very much a tutorial teaching you the game.
  
  
• Scenarios: There are a variety of scenarios with specific objectives which are far more involved than the Campaign mission, you usually have a few objectives such as a Build a Cathedral and settle 5000 Noblemen which can take you quite a long time and are very involved in building up your entire civilization across multiple islands. The Venice Expansion adds more scenarios with typically a stronger mission based objective than the base game Scenarios.
  
  
• Continuous Mode: This is typically most players main mode of play for the game. There are no major objectives except for which you decide on yourself and there is no end to this mode until you quit. You can set up a variety of settings such as the number of AI players, the size of the map, whether there are natural disasters or not, how abundant resources are, the size of the islands, and more! You can basically make the game as easy as hard as you like in this mode.
  

I’ve just bought Anno 1404/Dawn Dawn of Discovery and I’m so confused

• Warehouses
  All warehouses on an island are connected by some 15th century magic and will share the resources on the island across each other so you don’t have to connect all the warehouses together by road or even to the warehouse on the coastline you start with.
  
  If you want a resource you must build a warehouse in range and connect it to the resource gathering or production building so it can be collected by a cart sent out by the warehouse to pick up resources and return them to the Warehouses so they can go into use for yourself to build things or for your population to use themselves either to upgrade their houses or use as one of their needs.
  
  Every resource must be picked up by a cart from a Warehouse to go into your stockpile, however there is an exception in that some resources needed by a production building can be collected directly by the building that needs it.
  For example you could build a Wheat Farm next to a Mill and the Mill will directly take the Wheat to turn it into Flour. If you have a Bakery next to the Mill then the Bakery will collect the Flour and turn it into Bread. However you will need the Bakery connected by a road to a Warehouse so that the Bread can be picked up and put into your stockpile to be used.
  
  
  
• Mines
  When a mine is low or empty of resources you can click the button on a mine to regenerate its resource. This costs you some gold but allow you to continually use the mine. You can also shift-left click this to regenerate all the resources of this type on the island.
  
  
  
  
• Norias
  Norias provide a fertile area to allow you to make farms on southern (Oriental) islands. They have a finite resource that must be replenished by clicking the button on the Noria when it is low or empty of water. You can also shift-left click this to replenish all Norias on the island.
  
  
  
  There is also a “Noria Exploit” that allows you to stack multiple Norias in a small area to increase productivity in a small area (even on northern (Occidental) which can save on space and the number of farms. This link will explain it better and in more detail than I can:
  http://anno1404.wikia.com/wiki/Noria_exploit
  
  
  
• Honour
  
  While most typical resources such as wood or tools can be bought with gold there is a secondary resource called Honour which is used to buy items, gifts for the Orient (called Prestige) or Attainments (more on this later). You get Honour by doing a great variety of things through a game, such as upgrading a city to a new city level or trading with an NPC multiple times.
  
  
• Attainments
  
  If you press F10 or click the Attainments button in the bottom right you will open the attainment menu which is basically a selection of perks which can affect your empire in various ways depending on which NPCs you have and which ones you purchase, you can purchase all of these with Honour. Examples of Attainments would be gaining access to different resources from an NPC that you can buy with gold, giving you access to a larger trading or war fleet, the amount of water in a Noria, and many others. Depending on the scenario or campaign mission you may be offered different attainments than other times.
  
  
• Socketable Items
  
  I’ve mentioned previously that you can buy items from NPCs or receive them as quest rewards. These can be socketed into a ship or Warehouse on an island to give additional benefits. Some items are powerful and have to be used which gives a bonus for a certain amount of time which then deactivates and has a cooldown timer until it can be used again.
  
  On a ship you simply right-click it while it is in the ship and it moves to one of the slots on the right. If it is a passive bonus it will be permanently active on that ship until you remove it, or you must left-click to activate it for an active item. If you wish to remove it then right-click the item and it will go into the ships cargo holds.
  
  To use an island item you must first trade it from a ship to a Warehouse on the island you wish to apply the bonus to and if you have no items socketed already then it will automatically be placed in an empty socket on the island. If these are already used b items then to change them you open up the Strong Room tab on the Warehouse and right-click one of the ones at the top you do not want, then left-click the item you want to use in the Strong Room tab.
  
  

RoboJoe fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Aug 19, 2012

Madcosby fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Jun 9, 2011

RoboJoe fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Jun 11, 2011

Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Jun 11, 2011

Poil fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jun 11, 2011

RoboJoe fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jun 11, 2011

RoboJoe fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jun 11, 2011