If you can’t afford a holiday right now, just wander around Anno 1800

As much as I hate Ubisoft, I have to admit that they also deliver some quality. Their game is atmospheric and for someone who enjoys period, historical and strategy games, they do make it more enjoyable that you’re not just building around the area.

One of the features that is quite underrated in anno 1800 that others might find really enjoyable is the first person view. You can l explore all the islands you own which have their own characteristics. You can see the bluest ocean that you’ve ever seen, waterfalls, fields, honestly, pretty much any great view that you can think of without ever paying any fees.

You can also see sunrise and sunset if you want through a feature of time in the game. So, that’s why, if you can’t afford a holiday on these sunny days, just wander around Anno 1800. These are some of my screenshots and places I have wandered.

Unfortunately, I haven’t screenshot a lot of The New World because I got too busy trying to understand the islands and the situation. But once I get the hang of it, I’ll do it.

Anno 1800 has easter eggs.

After about 70 hours of play time and a bit of wandering, Anno 1800 has easter eggs. To activate the easter egg, you have to wander around the city and you can find side quests from the people who live in your city/town/villages. I found quite a bit through wandering and that helped me unlock some type of fire crackers ability.If you spot someone standing with stars above their head, that is the in-game easter egg.

I am not sure about the other easter eggs but from that, I also learned how to build better, just so we can wander properly. The thing is whenever you’re building a house, don’t forget to build roads around them. That way, when you wander you can even go to the nook and cranny of the areas.

When you play anno 1800, the real world makes a lot more sense….

I don’t play games just for entertainment. Honestly, I carefully pick my games to help me think, reflect, and sometimes give me ideas to understand our reality. A lot of older generations think that gaming is a waste of time but there can be many lessons that we can indirectly get through it.

Anno 1800 in a macro term, mimics the actual world we live in. I mean, in essence, it’s society's progression from agricultural to late stage capitalism. You have to win trade wars, wars, and even negotiate your way. When you’re at war, the news will follow and people might be wary. They can even leave your city or riot. These days we heard about all these, trade wars, upcoming wars, and how things are affecting our lives. So, through playing this, you can get the gist of everything.

In this game, when you don’t have a trade agreement, it might impact the supply of certain goods in your country especially when naturally yours don’t produce it. When people lack, let's say, basic necessities, they become unhappy. When they become unhappy, they can leave the island and worse, riot.

And then you realize you’re just a nobody in this whole big ass system….

It’s not like you can do anything about it. You can be reactive about what’s happening and decisions made by the upper echelons in the society but in the end, you’ll have to survive on your own. When you ignore the news and continue working, that’s more productive than you know, being reactive and rioting doesn't help.

Though, there’s some luck involved in this game like you know, when I decided to upgrade a farmhouse to a worker’s house or the upper-middle class house.

I find it interesting that in this game, we can downgrade a house and their necessities would change as well. There’s a phrase I like in the game before publishing the news.

“ I feel it reflects the time”

So, usually before even going to the print, we have to check the news and when the person said it, that could be an indicator that your news will have some type of disaster tied to it. The news will tell you that it could also increase the chance of people rioting or you can even manipulate the news by asking people to increase their spending or simply bring distraction.

At this point, if you’re aware of all this, you might really understand about 80%-90% of how the world works and how it actually plays out. So, the question will be something like “ If I know all this, how can I make it to my advantage?”

That being said, the more I play this game, the more I think about, I should go on a vacation that has this kind of view, or more strategy on winning the game and also what kind of skills I would need to unlock certain things in life, think of it like in-game tree skills.

And not just the in-game easter egg that you’ll unlock but those social commentary I talk about and indirect skills you can learn are also part of the “easter egg” of this game. See you in my next anno 😄