|
 Back when I was considering what became my Anno 2070 LP, this was actually the game I wanted to LP and show to goons. I chose not to, because I felt that 2070 was a much better introduction to the series. Anno 2205 is an Anno game with all that that entails, but it's very likely the most widely maligned entry in the entire series. Anno 2205 is a very experimental game by Anno standards, and departs from many standardized features of the series. Maps are hand-crafted and the same experience every time, not randomly generated. There are no AI competitors. Trade is partially abstracted, there is no shipbuilding. Combat is siloed off into separate maps. Far more information is made available to the player about resource generation and consumption. In general, many of these changes in 2205 were aimed at simplifying the series' core gameplay to make the game more accessible for newcomers. As I think I demonstrated at length in Anno 2070, this series takes a certain amount of pride in opacity. Make no mistake, Anno 2205 is a game with some deep-seated problems that this LP will get to, and it was abandoned by EA almost immediately after launch. Datamining has hinted at a much more ambitious vision for the game than what we got, but the game received almost no support after launch and the developers instead put their efforts into Anno 1800. A wise decision, many would argue. Perhaps, but as someone who still hasn't bought 1800 because I don't like the historical setting and, frankly, that game is just too goddamn much at this point, 2205 is the Anno game I keep coming back to again and again. And it must be acknowledged, many of the quality of life and convenience features in 2205 that were so sneered at have been brought over to 1800 and become widely accepted. For me, I need a palette cleanser for my creativity and video game experience, so let's get building. As for plans for this LP, Anno 2205 is fairly open-ended, but I intend to complete the story campaign and at least one sector project per region (folks who have played this game will know what that means). Beyond that, who knows? Note: I am playing with most of the DLC, but not the stock market DLC. Update 1: Esperanza Update 2: Getting On Board Update 3: Brushfire Update 4: The Nuclear Option Update 5: Modular Development Update 6: Land of the Midnight Sun Update 7: Research and Development Update 8: Razing the Steaks Update 9: Harvest Moon Update 10: Power Projection Update 11: Sufficiently Understood Magic Update 12: Apogee Update 13: The Quickening Update 14: Transport Route Inefficient. Cause: Missing Goods Update 15: Cleaning House Update 16: A Profitable Partnership Update 17: Custody Dispute (warning: ranting) Update 18: Shoot the Moon Update 19: Lost Ark Update 20: Ebb and Floe Update 21: Lunacy Update 22 & 23: Heart of Stone and Post-Script A selection of screenshots from the LP to date:      
Cythereal fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Apr 29, 2023 |
#
?
Dec 24, 2021 15:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 16:34 |
|
|
First Things First So, what all has happened in between 2070 and 2205? For one thing, SAAT and Global Trust are no more. After the FATHER Crisis (Anno 2070's story campaign) started a nuclear war, and widespread use of SAAT's experimental undersea geothermal plants lead to a succession of catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis, the nations of the world forcibly disbanded SAAT and outlawed AI research. As for Global Trust, soon after CEO Skylar Banes stepped down, the world hit peak oil - and soon after that, peak coal and peak natural gas, and then a series of stock market crises. Global Trust foundered and ultimately collapsed. Earth's demand for resources hasn't gone anywhere, though, and all eyes are now firmly focused on the moon and beyond as the future.  The greatest crisis facing the world today is energy generation. Earth's first attempt to settle the moon ended in disaster, but now the Global Union - roughly the governing body of the world, representing national governments and the confederation of megacorps known as the Big Five - has developed what promises to finally be an operational fusion reactor. The problem is the lack of Helium-3, and the Global Union has set its sights on lunar regolith as the most realistic source of He-3 in sufficient quantities to solve Earth's impending energy crisis. The first attempt to settle the moon, the ambitious Lunar Excavation Corporation, ended in mismanagement, unrest, and ultimately revolution. The new government of the lunar colony, the Orbital Watch, is holding onto power through a reign of terror. Neither national governments nor the standing members of the Big Five have shown any great interest to stir the hornets' nest despite the undeniable potential for immense profit.  This is where we come in. Goons, what ambitious young corporation or foundation or other NGO is going to pick up the gauntlet of reaching the moon again and solving the energy crisis before it can properly begin?  What will our logo be? The second page is all references to other games, ignore it.  And where will our headquarters be? With all the maps hand-crafted, the map regions are pre-set. Each has only so much land to build on, so many sites for mining, and so many sites for exploiting coastal resources (no more expansive beachfronts in this game!). Each sector also has a unique sector project, a huge multi-stage project that will take much of the game to complete. I will definitely complete the sector project in our home sector over the course of the game. We can unlock the other sectors later in the game, but whether I'll acquire them and do their projects is a question for the future. All sectors also have randomly selected sector effects, but they're not kept from game generation to game generation, so ignore the ones shown here. Our options are: Walbruk Basin is the ideal choice for new players, it has the best balance of land area, mining sites, and coastal sites, and the sector project helps immensely with power generation - a very big deal in this game! Cape Ambar has the smallest building area and fewest mining sites, but the most coastal sites. The sector project gives a small but steady supply of a rare resource used for things later in the game, not enough to rely on but every little bit helps. Viridian Coves has lots of land to build and lots of mining sites, but the fewest coastal sites. The sector project is purely cosmetic and has no gameplay effect. Wildwater Bay is free DLC and has all the advantages of Viridian Coves with more coastal sites and a sector project that provides rare resources but better rare resources and in larger quantities. Madrigal Islands and Greentide Archipelago are also DLC, but intended to be challenge modes for those who want a bigger challenge or something to do later in the game, and their sector projects are only theoretically helpful. I will not be counting votes for either sector, anyone who does vote for them will be treated as LPer's choice. So goons, I need: Company/Foundation/NGO Name Logo Starting Sector
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2021 15:41
|
|
|
I was always curious about what they did to the series that far in the future. Now I'll get to find out! I'll vote for: Company/Foundation/NGO Name: Esperanza Logo: Top row, second from the right Starting Sector: Wildwater Bay In the hope that it all goes well 
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2021 16:03
|
|
|
Company/Foundation/NGO Name: Aurora Logo: Top row, second from the right Starting Sector: Walbruk Basin Considering the usual Anno cycle of future history, upbeat corporate names will probably be a bitter, bitter irony in the long run. I'll say more when the LP meanders over there.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2021 19:25
|
|
|
Anaxite posted:I was always curious about what they did to the series that far in the future. Now I'll get to find out! Gonna go with this. It's a shame it was abandoned. A futuristic setting sounds really cool.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2021 19:51
|
|
|
Company name: Global Dynamic Industries, a.k.a. G.D.I. Logo: Top row, second from right Starting Sector: I may be wrong, but I don't think the game outright says what happened (or didn't happen) to the Eden Initiative. As a side note the latest 1800 update actually included a scenario that's basically "The Founding of the Eden Initiative". ...It also brought a lot of bugs and the devs are on their own holiday break so I've been holding off on playing as I really don't want my LP save file to get corrupted. As an aside, from a pure "Numbers Go Up!" game, I feel 2205 is a better game. Don't let it's bad rap get to you: 2205 is still a very good game! If you want to make pretty cities, or to make the numbers/production chains do loving pirouettes (or be drowned under never ending DLCs) 1800 is better. Also, if you had to chose a DLC to skip out on, yeah the stock market is the one. Seraphic Neoman posted:Gonna go with this. I wouldn't say the game was out-and-out abandoned but it obviously didn't get the love that it needed. It still got the really cool space station and arctic tundra DLCs.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2021 19:57
|
|
|
Alkydere posted:I may be wrong, but I don't think the game outright says what happened (or didn't happen) to the Eden Initiative. I have my own idea, given circumstantial evidence, so I'm going to be playing a little loose with what lore and story there is in 2205. Complications posted:Considering the usual Anno cycle of future history, upbeat corporate names will probably be a bitter, bitter irony in the long run. I'll say more when the LP meanders over there. This game does have serious "Are we the baddies?" undertones, even with Cobra Commander running around (oh, we will get to him).
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2021 00:03
|
|
|
Anaxite posted:I was always curious about what they did to the series that far in the future. Now I'll get to find out! Let's hope together
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2021 00:55
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:This game does have serious "Are we the baddies?" undertones, even with Cobra Commander running around (oh, we will get to him). If given the option I'd have been materially supporting him. I completely sympathize with his group. Not exactly the reaction the devs probably intended to elicit from me but even the deliberately obnoxious writing for him didn't change what I was looking at WRT conditions in my own moon colonies.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2021 01:25
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:This game does have serious "Are we the baddies?" undertones, even with Cobra Commander running around (oh, we will get to him). There really is nothing else you can call the guy. He's straight up Cobra Commander sitting up on his moon base. Complications posted:If given the option I'd have been materially supporting him. I completely sympathize with his group. Not exactly the reaction the devs probably intended to elicit from me but even the deliberately obnoxious writing for him didn't change what I was looking at WRT conditions in my own moon colonies. Honestly I feel that while I respect many of his views, he's also gone too far in many ways for me to really support. You learn about some of the things he's done to take/keep power in the zone where the mission is to get more lunar workforce.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2021 01:31
|
|
|
Hurray, ground floor for a new Anno LP!  Loved your previous one, I will be following this.Gonna vote for Lunar Corporation for one of my favorite factions in another strategy game, and given the ultimate goal of this one. Top row, second from left. I'm gonna hold off voting for a starting island. Since those are apparently hand crafted, could we get a screenshot of each one? Just a rough overview would be really nice, I mainly care about making the prettiest cities on the prettiest islands, I know you're skilled enough to succeed with each map. If that's too much hassle, just treat this as a vote for your starting area of choice 
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2021 12:48
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:Since those are apparently hand crafted, could we get a screenshot of each one? Just a rough overview would be really nice, I mainly care about making the prettiest cities on the prettiest islands, I know you're skilled enough to succeed with each map. If that's too much hassle, just treat this as a vote for your starting area of choice Look to the minimaps in the bottom right:  Wildwater Bay, the current front-runner, consists of two medium islands and one small island, then a huge mainland area.  Walbruk Basin, current second place, consists of a medium island where you start, then three large islands and a small island that will be linked by bridges.  Viridian Coves, which no one loves at present, consists of one medium-large island, then two huge mainland areas.  Cape Ambar is equally unloved and consists of a series of small-to-large islands.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2021 01:58
|
|
|
Esperanza, first row, second from left, and Walbruck Basin.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2021 04:07
|
|
|
Thanks, Cythereal! Voting for Walbruck Basin then.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2021 09:08
|
|
|
When I played this I will admit I wasn't very critical of the Lunar Watch's presentation to the viewer, but I was also very mindful of the fact the world is a deeply scarred and delicate place in the future of Anno 2205. There's no more fresh water without desalination, 'organic' food is a luxury, large swathes of the Earth are no longer inhabitable due to climate change. It's all mentioned very much in passing by your contact in the LLP but it's a ghastly picture. Also there's the fact that you get a special in to the whole program due to your friend in it and this gives your little corporation so many concessions. So I might not have really thought about whether there was any kind of truth to what the Orbital Watch said in it's propaganda but I did think that the corporations weren't any better. They just had more power and more PR. Viridian Cove is great once you get to the mainland but boy do you feel the squeeze until you can actually finish that bridge!
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2021 09:57
|
|
|
I'll be looking to record the first proper update this afternoon, so last second voting time if anyone's got one. There are clear favorites for the name and logo, only real question barring a goon rush is Wildwater Bay versus Walbruk Basin.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2021 15:36
|
|
|
I don't like "future" Anno games because it is where it really shows that devs are Germans - I can't really say for 2205, but Anno 2070 main theme seemed to be "nuclear energy is BAD and if you even think about going atom you will regret it, you are going to stay with coal and YOU ARE GOING TO LIKE IT, HAVE I ALREADY MENTIONED THAT ATOM BAD BECAUSE CHERNOBYL FUKUSHIMA?". At least they can't fit their antinuclear beliefs into 15th or 19th century game.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2021 19:52
|
|
|
Esperanza  Begin transmission. Signal is good. Begin recording. My name is Chihiro van de Velde, Global Trust liaison to Esperanza Corporation. As a condition of the Lunar Licensing Program, I will closely monitor Esperanza's corporate operations and progress towards the Program's goals. As necessary, I may also act in an advisory capacity to Esperanza's corporate leadership as a representative of you, the Global Union's Corporate Advisory Board. This arrangement is one of many conditions attached to the Global Union's allocation of Walbruk Basin to Esperanza as a base of development towards the Lunar Licensing Program. Ordinarily one of the Little Twelve would not receive a grant of this scale, even in light of Esperanza's history as the world leaders in aerospace technology, but the demands of the Lunar Licensing Program and Esperanza's existing expertise, have lead to this unorthodox choice by the Union's Corporate Oversight Council. (I'll mostly be using the easiest difficult mode, with two exceptions)  (Namely, I'm turning on Calamities and Enemy Invasions, which should mix things up occasionally)   Esperanza already has a standing space program of repute, but their primary space launch facility is at a latitude unsuitable for the demands of the Lunar Licensing Program. The Union's first directive for the corporation is simple: establish a sustainable base of operations within Walbruk Basin capable of mounting a space elevator to Atlas Station.    Sector: Walbruk Basin. This region was owned by Lei Sheng Electricity on remit from local national governments until the Lunar Revolution forced Lei Sheng to cede many of its undeveloped territories to Global Union to hold in trust for future use. Lei Sheng's loss will very likely prove to be Esperanza's gain. (Welcome to Anno 2205! With the maps in this game being hand-crafted, if you start in Walbruk Basin, you will always start in this specific location. At the top of the screen you can see our current balance, income, and current stock of building materials. At the bottom of the screen are one familiar icon and two new ones. Besides power generation, you can also see available workforce on this island and the island's logistics capacity, an abstraction of the area's infrastructure for shipping goods. Buildings don't manually haul goods around anymore, that's all automated in this game and 100% efficient provided you have the logistics! The game is also firmly story driven, holding your hand throughout the process of building your empire.)  (This game is really pretty! Expect a lot more glamour shots than I took in 2070!)  (The construction menu is very straightforward in this game)  As expected, Esperanza has elected to build permanent local housing for Program operations. (Meet Steve, our basic tier of worker. His needs are very similar to Scruffy and Cheddar before him, but they're also rather telling about how badly off the world is in 2205: water is one of his needs, and not met by default. The community need is a thing of the past here, warehouses have officially replaced city centers.)  I have confirmed that Esperanza's first production chain is underway. For those who have never seen how a modern city is made, you may be surprised to learn that sunflowers literally provide the foundation for towering skylines. Well. Not directly, but this humble sunflower farm is one of the most important facilities Esperanza could be building right now. Sunflowers, you see, are the premiere source of bioresin for discerning governments and corporations, which can then be processed on-site into biopolymer. Industrial strength biopolymer is not only stronger than the concrete and wood of past ages of industry, not only is it more flexible, it is also renewable, biodegradable, and extremely weather-resistant. To think that a little over a century ago biopolymers were only used in advanced electronics. Now, even farm equipment can be made from the stuff. I was twenty-two years old when I first ate organically grown food instead of synthwheat and biopork products grown in laboratories. Esperanza, I am pleased to report, agrees with the Union that providing legitimately grown rice and other renewables does wonders for worker morale. Synthwheat may feed the world, but a project like the Lunar Licensing Program will demand highly motivated specialists and good food is one way to make yourself an attractive employer. (Meet the single most beloved and hated innovation of Anno 2205: what I call the God Window. With the click of a button, you can see the net surplus or deficit of every good available. Mouse over any good and you can see an exact breakdown of production, consumption, and how much you have in storage. There are no spin-up times, no production cycles, no consumption rates. Anno 2205 tells you immediately everything you need to know, and grog rage at this window was unbelievable. Then it got added to 1800 eventually because everyone realized that it's really goddamn handy information to have!) Aren't SmartAssistants with modern predictive algorithms and just-in-time infrastructure wonderful things? Construction of housing and other essentials is proceeding apace. (We've finished the first quest step and unlocked Steve's need for water. This outline on a cliff indicates a suitable coastal site for building. Coastal sites are now limited just like mining sites, and the game uses these outlines to show coastal slots.)  Desalinization plants - something of a luxury, but preferable to rationing for a group with the money and hardware to build their own. (We're growing!)  Alert. Unidentified seaplane sighted in Walbruk basin, broadcasting a Lei Sheng identification code. Seaplane is Kirin model, one of Esperanza's own designs. Interesting...(A short update, I know, but I think this is a good place to stop for the moment. See y'all next time!)
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2021 22:36
|
|
|
Woo! Walbruk Basin! One moment, I have to get something out first real quck: Oceans/Hydro Electric Dams don't work that way! Okay, done. This is still probably one of, if not the easiest maps to start on and if our hostess is doing a quick-ish run through compared to a "complete all the map projects" run the most helpful of the four selected for the LP. I'm going to do my best to avoid talking about mechanics until they're introduced. So far we've seen workforce. This new mechanic alone is probably one of the best changes in the series and I'm so glad they carried it forward to 1800 and will likely carry it forward beyond. No more "Oh these production buildings on population-free islands just work. No explanation of how needed or provided." Also 2205 does a lot better job than 2070 at showing how trashed the Anno-world got. Also it avoids the nuclear issue by...just side-stepping it and never mentioning smashing atomz apart. I feel the devs heard a lot of justifiable frustration at how bad 2070's nuclear reactors were both mechanics and lore wise. Alkydere fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Dec 27, 2021 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 13:50
|
|
|
Alkydere posted:I feel the devs heard a lot of justifiable frustration at how bad 2070's nuclear reactors were both mechanics and lore wise. Quite so. The devs were frustrated with how players wound up approaching Anno 2070 in general, in some ways. 2070 was envisioned as a game of risk management and drawbacks - nuclear and geothermal go boom, coal pollutes, wind and solar is expensive, etc. The Tycoons especially were supposed to exist in a state of unstable equilibrium where they make huge amounts of money but something is always on fire. That most players wound up stacking island upgrades and ark slots to reduce or completely eliminate the drawbacks of their chosen power supply and ecobalance and whatnot was absolutely not what Blue Byte expected. According to one interview, 2205 is in large part a reaction to that. Players in 2070 demonstrated that they like feeling safe, not putting up with major drawbacks, and focusing on looking pretty. So fine, here's a game all about that. Then 2205 had lots of controversies of its own, calamities and invasions got added in DLC, and then we got 1800.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 14:21
|
|
|
Kind of interesting they still stick to the port building as your central signature building. Even after moving away from "age of sail" and colonial empire themes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 15:20
|
|
|
I'm not much of an anno player but I read the focus on ports as part of a grand thesis that Anno has about how cities are made above and beyond the specific colonial era, that cities are built around their connections to disparate areas (and in this game, the friggin moon).Cythereal posted:
Genuinely funny that they didn't predict that. Humans are quite risk averse, even at the expense of long-term expected outcomes (e.g. most people, when put in charge of farming, make farms that are diversified rather than focusing on the most labor or land efficient crops). The only city builders I can think of where players take on risky builds normally are the survival city builders, and even then Frostpunk is the only one where I know people who simply accept risks as a valuable strategy as opposed to a purely negative to be sanded off as much as possible.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 16:52
|
|
|
Downsides that randomly can be crippling if you're unlucky isn't particularly fun to deal with.Cythereal posted:grog rage 
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 17:12
|
|
|
OutofSight posted:Kind of interesting they still stick to the port building as your central signature building. Even after moving away from "age of sail" and colonial empire themes. Sea travel is still the number one way to haul cargo in real life, for a lot of very good reasons. There is no faster way to haul huge amounts of cargo than on a boat, and it's been known since ancient times. Ease of transportation and travel is one of the biggest reasons why cities have, since we started building them at all, most cities are built on rivers, on the coast, or both. It took until the advent of the railroad to make overland transportation of cargo not horribly slow and inefficient, and air travel is expensive and not suitable for transportation of large bulk cargo. The new central building in Anno 2205, which we don't have up and running yet, is after all the space port. In the world of Anno 2205, the working class like Steve consider water and organic food to be luxuries, but starting in the next tier of citizens we'll see that the technology and lifestyle of the privileged in this world is going some pretty wild places. As it happens, we'll also be going places besides the moon... (images taken from my primary save):  
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 17:17
|
|
|
"This is a beautiful, unspoiled paradise. Let's start by immediately paving it over." Gotta love city building games.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 19:04
|
|
|
It makes sense. Not much out there prettier than freshly laid asphalt, mining detritus and booze factories, after all.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 19:38
|
|
|
Yeah, that last pic looks like some of the worst Tycoon excesses from 2070 
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 19:57
|
|
|
If it's any consolation we won't be going there for a while. The Tundra is a DLC sector, and while it has game-breaking rewards, it also takes a big investment to get there. We aren't even producing fish and stimulants yet, much less the unholy amounts that sector's residents consume.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2021 20:20
|
|
|
Someone asked me on discord about something I probably should have clarified in the first update: for fans of previous Anno games, it's not your imagination - I did not place any fields for the sunflower or rice farms! 2205 has something like fields, but they're framed as enhancing the production of the building rather than being an integral part of the building's core output. You also don't unlock the ability to use them until a short way into the game, so I'll go over that system when it becomes available. As it is, a sunflower farm produces exactly 10 bioresin per tick and a biopolymer factory consumes exactly 10 bioresin per tick. There's a lot of ways to mess with formulas like this later on, but Anno 2205 makes this information immediately discernable in the game rather than making you go to a wiki to look up production rates and chain efficiency.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 18:41
|
|
|
Getting On Board Craft identified: Lei Sheng Electricity corporate registration, broadcasting high-level access codes. Holocall confirms: May Tian, Chief Operations Officer for Lei Sheng Electricity.(This is the start of Walbruk Basin's sector project! Each project involves working with a particular faction and is intended to stretch across most of the game. We're starting this now, but we won't be finishing this anytime soon!)   Begin exposition: The Big Five. Lexicon: You should know this already. Specific topic: Lei Sheng Electricity.But, orders are orders, so here goes. The Big Five are the five largest megacorporations in the world, recognized by the Global Union as sovereign entities and granted seats on the Union’s Board of Governance. Each of the Big Five possesses immense wealth, territorial holdings, and in most cases a considerable space program and military forces. Lei Sheng Electricity was the first of what became known at first as the Big Four and dates back to the mid-twenty first century. Unlike their great rivals of the time, the late and unlamented Global Trust, Lei Sheng invested primarily in renewable energy, partnering with the Eden Initiative and SAAT in the development of wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal power. This gamble paid off handsomely when the Fossil Fuel Crisis of 2087 erupted and Global Trust collapsed, catapulting Lei Sheng Electricity to the pinnacle of private economic and political power. In recent decades, though, Lei Sheng’s fortunes have begun to fade. A number of experimental power generation projects, including the dam complex at Walbruk Basin, failed to deliver on expectations, and the Orbital Watch revolution nationalized Lei Sheng’s primary solar power complex. Lei Sheng has been slow to join the Second Wave in general, with a smaller space program even than many of the Little Twelve. Lei Sheng is still a corporate titan by any measure, but that the Lunar Licensing Program and hope of fusion power for Earth has begun without official Lei Sheng environment has many whispering that the energy giant’s best days are behind it. Christ, listen to me. Thank you, SmartAssistant uplink, for that wikipedia article. SmartAss. In any event, I have been informed that Esperanza has accepted Lei Sheng's offer. Rebuilding these dams will take quite a lot of effort, but the rewards - both in terms of electrical power generation and the political value of a working partnership with Lei Sheng - have merit.   (Each sector has a command vehicle that's your all-purpose go here and do stuff tool. No need to build it, one size fits all and the command vehicle can't be destroyed. This first quest is just picking up the debris around May's seaplane.)   (Click on May's seaplane once you're done. On a personal note, I love 2205's use of seaplanes and sailboats as the main personnel transports, seaplanes especially are very rare in fictional media and I like how they fit into 2205's sleek, environmentally friendly vision of the future.)   Esperanza's settlement does not quite meet the needs of a dam complex like this yet, but I have it on good authority that Esperanza was planning to grow anyway. By the by, a late happy holidays to all! (We've grown enough, including adding another rice farm, to unlock Steve's final need - information. If you read my Anno 2070 LP, you may be looking for an influence radius on the infodrome. There is none. These types of buildings in 2205 work by providing a set amount of the 'resource need', in this case information, and it is shared only on this specific island. I could plant the infodrome anywhere on this island to provide information to this specific island as long as it has a road connection.)  Part library, part school, part high-speed internet hub. Thank God that high-speed internet is considered a public utility nowadays, eh? (Steve's ready to ascend! In another change from 2070, houses in 2205 no longer ascend automatically and there's now a dedicated ascension button on the bottom of the screen. I'm not going to do this quite yet, however.)  (In case anyone was wondering what that globe icon on the top left of the screen means, I thought I should show y'all the global management screen. Right now there's nothing for us to do here: you can see Walbruk Basin lit up, indicating that we own it. The other temperate sectors and the tundra are all visible, but we don't have the resources to expand there and won't anytime soon. At the top you can see the marker for our space station we'll be building eventually, but we haven't unlocked that yet. And on the right, we haven't unlocked most of the functions here yet. Clicking Beaumont's face will remind you about the story and quest objectives. The bottom icon was for a tie-in phone game that nobody played and is now fully abandoned by Ubisoft, but gives you a one-time bonus of advanced resources when you click on it.)  (In the meantime I've hit the 300 workforce target for the sector project, nothing to do now but wait.)    (I adore how this game looks. It's clean, bright, and has a richly saturated color palette that really sells that this is a fundamentally optimistic future despite all the problems.)   (Oh and there's this creep hanging around. Each region has a single NPC trader, and in the temperate zone it's Nic Papadakis, a sleazy technically-legal trader who's greasier than the stromboli I had for dinner last night. He sells a decent variety of goods that expands as you unlock new resources, but what traders in this game will buy from you changes hourly to keep you from using them as a constant source of money. Right now he's buying bioresin, which we are not producing a surplus of.) Papadakis Enterprises. Often investigated, never convicted. That's not a joke, he put that in a banner at the top of his website.  Global Trust, still loving things up more than a century after they went out of business.(This is a very basic hot-and-cold minigame.)  Current operations in Walbruk Basin are nowhere near enough to justify this project to Lei Sheng's finance department, so for now the dam project has been shelved. An unfortunate setback for Esperanza's ambitions.(For now. There are ways to cheese this, but I'm going to let this step play out organically. Sector projects are meant to grow along with your development, quest steps will only get more demanding from here.)  (Until then, citizen promotion works just like it has in the past.)   (Just like Billy Bob and his hat before her, Erica's arrival heralds the beginning of a huge expansion of our options and demands. We'll see to that another day.)  
Cythereal fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Dec 29, 2021 |
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2021 17:12
|
|
|
Wait the entire basin is already dammed and the base is sitting on the reservoir formed by it? That's like 95% of the work you need for a hydro project!
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2021 17:22
|
|
|
This game really does look great. I'm honestly rather sick of the relentless wave of GRIMDARK in nearly all media for the last few years, so I appreciate Anno 2205's optics. Why is there always a "time remaining" line in your mission objectives for the dam expansion? At first I thought you had like 5... hours? to get to 500 energy demand, but a time limit for your sector defining mega project doesn't seem right, especially with your comment about not cheesing it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2021 17:26
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:Why is there always a "time remaining" line in your mission objectives for the dam expansion? At first I thought you had like 5... hours? to get to 500 energy demand, but a time limit for your sector defining mega project doesn't seem right, especially with your comment about not cheesing it. It's the time remaining for a couple of steps. I needed to, for example, maintain 300 workforce surplus for 5 minutes and not dip below that (by, say, building factories - in practice I alt-tabbed). Likewise right now, the current step wants me to be using 500 units of power for 5 minutes to complete that step. Which we will, just Steve's tier doesn't use much electricity. Erica is another matter.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2021 17:30
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:(We've grown enough, including adding another rice farm, to unlock Steve's final need - information. If you read my Anno 2070 LP, you may be looking for an influence radius on the infodrome. There is none. These types of buildings in 2205 work by providing a set amount of the 'resource need', in this case information, and it is shared only on this specific island. I could plant the infodrome anywhere on this island to provide information to this specific island as long as it has a road connection.) Okay, so this is kind of true. Any building for a numbered need will help on the island where it's built. However, if you build the relevant numbered need building within a set radius the places it services will consume the minimum amount of that numbered service. If you build it at a distance away, the served areas will consume more, and you'll need more of these buildings. You can see the optimum served radius splash out along roads when you plop down a building like this. Try this out by changing the distance between industry buildings and transport hubs, for instance.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2021 19:36
|
|
|
kw0134 posted:Wait the entire basin is already dammed and the base is sitting on the reservoir formed by it? That's like 95% of the work you need for a hydro project! I'm guessing there's a reason such as "turbines hosed, spillway hosed, so no draining the lake easily and no changing the turbines easily either" with possibly some structural complications waiting in the wings. But yeah, it's most of the project already done. The funniest part of the update is still: quote:The bottom icon was for a tie-in phone game that nobody played and is now fully abandoned by EA, but gives you a one-time bonus of advanced resources when you click on it.) (However Blue Byte is, IIRC, owned by The Devil Ubisoft, a different devil than The Devil EA.)
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2021 20:57
|
|
|
Brushfire (Just a note on where we're at with the campaign)  As expected, Esperanza's operations in Walbruk Basin have lead to more sophisticated construction than standard structure kits can provide. Local production of labor robots requires two primary mineral resources, cobalt and feldspar, the latter used in the fabrication of nano-ceramics. Mining surveys have been completed on time. All required mineral resources are in abundance.(Just like the coastal sites, these outlines show mining sites. If you've read the other Anno LPs you may be wondering if this island has the needed fertilities for everything we're doing, and the answer is that Anno 2205 completely dispenses with fertilities and limited mineral resources. If I had to guess, I'd say that this decision was made because of the absence of expanding NPC rivals which in turn stemmed from the hand-crafted nature of the maps. Without any urgent pressure to expand via competition, resource scarcities like that would feel distinctly artificial. 2205 has its own organic processes for making you want to expand, but how that plays out is a bit different from other Anno games.)  (One of my favorite little things, mines are more than just holes in the ground now!)  Unsurprisingly, the feldspar quarry over-stressed the basic solar power grid of Esperanza's operations. Wind power remains the classic answer to such things, and has changed little in the past century and a half.(Take note of the red power indicator at the bottom of the screen! Wind turbines work exactly how they did in 2070, and are just as obnoxious. I got lucky with Walbruk Basin's sector trait this game: Trade Winds, improving the output of all wind turbines by 50%. Electrical power is the limiting factor in the temperate region early on, so this helps a lot. Once the dams come online and we reach the moon, though, this may change.)  The cobalt mine - the first one, at any rate - has also come online in good order. And with the feldspar quarry and cobalt mine operational, a robotics factory can begin production of construction robots.(Construct-o-bots take the place of tools, wood, and concrete from 2070. They're also much simpler to produce: one of each mine supplies one factory. Production chains in general are simpler in 2205 than in other entries in the series, though we'll later have ways of making things more complex if desired.)  Fresh fruit juice and vitamin factories: the makings of a whole variety of health drinks that have almost identical ingredients. The patents are all owned by Saayman International in the end, and keeping them locally available does wonders for morale and personal health. Many megacorps frown on it as an unnecessary luxury, but Esperanza appears to be rather more far-sighted.(Fruit orchard on the near side of the desalinization plant, vitamin factory on the far side.)  (Oh, wait, vitamin factories need two orchards! In yet another example of 2205's focus on user friendliness, simply mousing over the structure will tell you exactly how much it's producing, and if it's producing more or less than 100% output then exactly what factors cause the under-or-over-production.)  (Building the second orchard, however, dropped our logistics supply into the negatives, decreasing all production on the island. Farms, mines, and factories cost more logistics the further they are away from the warehouse, and you get more by building transportation centers.)  (This logistics cost based on distance also applies to transportation hubs. By building this depot right next to the quarry and robotics factory, two logistics-hungry buildings far from the harbor, I decrease their raw need for logistics in addition to increasing the total supply of logistics! This is a trick to bear in mind for the rest of the LP, I will be doing this whenever feasible. Transportation centers themselves seem to be truck depots, supplying and maintaining your fleet of cargo vehicles.)  (Also, we're making progress towards the sector project. Steve didn't use much power, but Erica sure does, and our needs are only going to increase. We'll satisfy May's demand soon enough.)  (I've also unlocked tidal power! With the relatively low output of wind turbines, and their exclusion zones, you're probably going to need these sooner or later. They're expensive for this point in the game, but they produce six times the power of a wind turbine! The big drawback is that tidal power stations take up a coastal slot, which can be in very high demand in the temperate sector. Thanks to the Trade Winds sector effect I don't need tidal power right now, though, and I elect to not build one yet.)  (By the way, I couldn't expand yet even if I wanted to. Besides the hefty credits cost, expansion wants a truckload of graphene. We don't yet have the ability to get graphene, much less a stockpile of it, so we're still stuck on our starting island for now.)  (Also available now, housing complexes! These are just bigger housing blocks, and are exactly as efficient in terms of population and space as regular houses. They're just here to look a little different, and they cost more to build and upgrade because they house more people per building.)  (Oh dear! See that blue icon above these housing complexes? These people don't have high-speed internet! Time for another infodrome!)  (Keep an eye on the god window when expanding! More rice, more water, more vitamin drinks!)  (And fixing all of that put our power and logistics in the red! This, in my experience, is the core Anno 2205 gameplay loop: building and upgrading some houses, seeing goods shortfalls, expanding production to see to that, expanding power and logistics to fix that, which usually leads to a workforce shortage which means building and upgrading houses...)  PRIORITY ALERT: DISTRESS SIGNAL FROM GLOBAL UNION TRANSPORT FLEET EN ROUTE TO WALBRUK BASIN  PRIORITY ALERT: INCOMING TRANSMISSION, LUNAR ORIGIN       Chihiro, are you still online? I have a neurolink to the Global Trust intranet, ma'am. Do you know how Esperanza intends to respond? Corporate security vessels are already en route to the sector. They have designated this Operation Prycomber Barricade and are requesting rules of engagement from Global Union. I just got off the holocom with the Security Council. Tell Esperanza's fleet that lethal force has been authorized.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2022 04:00
|
|
|
As we shall soon see, nuclear reactors, bad. Tactical nukes? Totally a-ok!
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2022 07:24
|
|
|
'Corporate security vessels' is one hell of a phrase.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2022 07:34
|
|
|
Oh dear, an independence movement on the moon. That might get inconvenient. Open pit mining the feldspar feels slightly weird, what with the eco-balance focus that the Anno 2205 world seems to have.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2022 08:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 16:34 |
|
|
Torrannor posted:Oh dear, an independence movement on the moon. That might get inconvenient. I feel the open-pit mining is more because it lets the game show off later upgrades to the mine a lot easier. And yes one thing I feel the game did was make the balance reflect the power squeeze incredibly well. You're dealing with a global energy crisis and until you get power infrastructure set up on the moon none of your terrestrial zones ever quite feel like they have enough power. Also, hooray, it's time to meet Commander Cobra!
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2022 09:01
|
|