You know what's worse than getting Covid? Getting the flu, then Covid, and then Covid again all within an eight month period. 😩 I'm sick of being sick.
I was all set to start up a bunch of gaming series and make my first ever gaming videos when sickness struck, I was bed-bound, I lost my voice, and now I have a lingering cough amidst waves of fatigue and exhaustion. Horrible, horrible timing really. There was a lot I wanted to get done once July hit and now, once again, I can barely walk from bedroom to bathroom without wheezing and spluttering.
Alas. So I'm postponing my endeavours and playing through a bunch of Anno 1800 instead.
I've never played any of the Anno games before and the main reason I picked this one up was because it was on special during the Summer Sale and it allows multiplayer, and my partner already owns it so we could play together.
After playing it with him for a while, I decided I enjoyed it so much that I'd get a few DLCs for it too and start up a single player game for when he was busy with Final Fantasy XVI or at work. 😅
I decided to start a game where you sail around and settle an island of your choosing. I was looking for an island which could grow potatoes, grain and hops and have a decent amount of iron and clay, but I didn't find one and the NPCs were settling islands and this one was decent enough.
No where near the best, but decent enough with one clay deposit, one iron deposit, and at least I could grow potatoes, grain and capsicums.
After settling and sailing around the world, I discovered that there was only one island which had what I wanted and an NPC had settled it pretty much as soon as the game started haha. Obviously I'm going to have to declare war on him at some point. 😜
I'm liking Anno because it's quite peaceful and I can just focus on city building a lot of the time, but that doesn't mean I won't stoop to war if I have to.
I haven't really looked at any layouts or anything, but I like to start out with my market in the centre and then I can arrange the houses around it. As I progress I keep expanding the centre area to include more markets, pubs, fire stations, the occasional school and church and whatnot, and generally all houses are in range of these necessities.
Everything else is a bit haphazard, but it gets the job done.
Unfortunately, before I had the chance to build my first fire station, a peasant started a fire in their home which quickly spread to neighbouring homes.
Luckily I was able to build a fire station in time and the houses were saved.
And luckily since the houses were saved, the newspaper didn't have anything bad to say about my governance and I was able to publish the editorial honourably without propaganda.
Which Princess Qing approved of and thus cemented our burgeoning friendship.
I'm happy to be her friend and we soon formed an Alliance. And in doing so earned the respect of Lady Beryl. I won't be allying with Willy though, not until I eventually lay claim to his island, haha.
In the meantime, though, I'm building up my own island. Making sure all the people have delicious schnaps, I have my one clay pit and one iron mine going and am slowly getting materials to make bakeries and sausage factories to feed the more refined tastes of my workers.
Unfortunately I won't be able to make my own beer thanks to not having hops on this island, but at least I have capsicums which means I can make my own canned food in the future on this island.
What I'd really like to do next is make sure my people have all their needs and then focus on building up my shipyard and fleet. Then I can take on Ol' Willy Wibblesock and liberate the best island on this map from his grimy cockney clutches.
That's next on my agenda. 😈
Although I did just discover that you can buy out your competitors too... I'll see how that works. I'm not really a war-mongering type, I like to do things peacefully.
We'll see how it goes!
All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, 
