I think continental landmasses need to become part of future of anno and be in the next base game as free to avoid said issue. I'm tired of relying on multiple tiny islands- give us a choice. It's not just your playstyle, there's a giant beauty building community that want their say too. If a session contained like a randomly generated crownfalls tier (with the option to turn it off for those who hate it) and provided other large islands for veterans, I think that'll be the closest to making everyone happy. It's alot to ask for but its genuinely the best compromise without pissing anyone off. And if someone is upset we have to accommodate for other playstyles, too bad? lol.
Yes you're kind of seeing exactly what I'm saying... If there were multiple variations of Crown Falls or even a region that had Crown falls-sized land masses, say maybe two of them with multiple variations that could be chosen from, It would at least make it not so repetitive
@@TakaRUclips Exactly! Also, for the other reasoning you mentioned: Alot of dlcs are designed/intended for best use in Crown Falls. We either need much bigger islands or landmasses in the next anno as a free feature (in my opinion at least)
I think this everything is on an island thing is getting old. I think they should use big landmasses, where you could build wherever you find something useful, and the ships on these lands replaced with caravans. I could imagine going back to ancient era (greco-roman, mesopotamian, egyptian style) and the map representing the mediterranean sea.
@@vodkavecz Caravans ? lol ! The game already has trains. So giving the opportunity to transport goods rather than only oil is the solution. At the begining of the game, horse wagons (as in early 1800'), that could be replaced with trains later in game. But we all agree, the landmasses are almost compulsory !
I think Anno has a lot of opportunity for creativity in the base game, and most of the problems in games like this arise from getting obsessed with min/maxing in all the wrong ways. Treat it like a role playing game, use your imagination, don't worry about efficiencies - just make it work and have fun telling a story. And if you get the the point where you feel like it is same-y hit save, log off, and play any of countless other amazing building games out there.
I think what we need, is an old world map with some island being twice the size of large islands. Would be a nice compromise between CF and OW island. Not to mention CF will make your game way way heavier and maybe crash due to how much thing are going on
I think we need a way to merge OW and CF maps. I don't like CF because I don't have the neutral players here, I don't like OW because CF is like mandatory at this point...
I think if it had a few variations like islands do it would be more interesting. Maybe they could patch in a feature that allowed you to choose the layout of Crown Falls. Sort of like how you can pick island layout, you'd be able to opt for differing layouts that effect the terrain and mineral locations
I like big landmasses, but I think they require some form of allowing multiple people to settle on them, maybe expanding the role of railroads and splitting it into "Districts" So you have to play with logistics on land and can't just have a mega factory landmass. If you bring in say Rum to the coastal district, you have to have a road then upgraded to railroad to get that rum to an inland district In addition I think big landmasses like that should have ground forces with multiple people settling on them like in Anno 1503,
I only managed to somewhat defeat the sameness of Crown Falls by using continental landmass to build multiple cities with different personalities, while focusing most space-consuming production on islands (unless they fit aesthetically between settlements). Honestly, I mostly have cosmetic packs and my beauty-building nature to thank for that, because it will always warm my heart to see a small town for Artisans with a theme park, rather than a sprawling skyline that looks like a celestial motherboard.
I'd be curious to see if they could redo Crown Falls, a la Wildwater Basin. It could've been more interesting if they 1) had the supplemental islands in the Crown Falls session be bigger and more resource-rich, 2) had Crown Falls have a randomized terrain and terrain (maybe a couple dozen variants), and 3) outright reduce the inherent resouce wealth of Crown Falls.
Totaly agree with you ! I usually don't go on Crownfalls and stay in my main first city. I like seeing it changing, from farming, industrialization and to becomue a true modern city. It's having an history, a hearth which I don't see on Crownfalls, where we're only talking of massive building. I try to focus on only one island pear world and I like it as it is ! My challenge is to keep them natural but trying to progress through DLC challenges. Crownfalls feels not interessant to me.
It's funny because it's probably why the Anno team never gave us an island this big before. The entire game was designed around smaller islands that forces you to think about your layouts. Even if Anno players love to create perfect layouts that optimise everything, most islands can't have such large perfectly planned neighborhoods, or not many of them. That's why large cities in Anno tend to look boring and flat (and why they gave us the high-rise DLC) : cities are kinda boring when too uniform. It's even a criticism of Paris : all Haussmannian buildings look the same, it feels repetitive. Paris doesn't look as boring from above because it's not tied to a grid system, so at least the streets make shapes and forms. I think one of the problem is the scaling of the game itself, compared to real life; you can't cram that many engineers and investors in such a small building, the palace is ridiculously big. So instead of having large palaces surrounded by even larger cities, you end up with a gigantic palace and a large city. I mean, it's logical from a gameplay standpoint so I get why the game is like that. But with all the DLCs it's weird. Also the scale of the highrise buildings is completely off.
I think this goes deeper than that though; the game is changing to become more and more of a city builder rather than an RTS/management game. For beauty building, you need the size to support variety. I honestly think the video is looking at this at the completely wrong angle, which I think becomes obvious by the time it brings up lack of building variety. So the problem isn't Crown Falls looking the same every game (I mean, that's true for *every* island because *no* island is procedurally generated, so even your standard large islands will eventually look the same), but that there isn't enough building variety within the vanilla experience. The only randomness you can have is a false one, because you can't anticipate exactly what set of islands you get per map seed unless you specifically look for that particular map seed. And therein lies my problem with Taka's complaints about CF tbh, because his perception of CF being the same is because his expectations are just that. He doesn't expect each new game to look the same because he can't anticipate how it will look like due to the way map seeds work, even if it's the same old islands we've seen a hundred times before, but he can do that with CF. Yet as he mentions, the core problem isn't CF but lack of variety. I agree that perhaps there is a problem with that we got DLC that seem to work better on CF, and I also feel that CF is so integral to most player's playstyle that it would make sense for them to release SP 1 as free eventually, also because it's quite small in size compared to the other SP. While yes, The Passage is a new region, it's also so self-contained that I don't see that being a big problem and could be shifted to become a scenario until the player completes it and they're asked to integrate it into the base game.
I'm actually proud to say my Crown Falls doesn't look like that LOL! And in a previous campaign game, I put my capitol on Bright Sands, and was very happy with it. But in that case, I wasn't trying to min/max everything. I just did what I wanted. I may not have been getting the most potential out of the Palace, but I wasn't hurting either.
I think there is a narrative point to be made regarding seat of power. The queen does mention that she wants crown falls to be the new capital. Narratively it is expected Crown Falls will have the palace. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to do whatever you want but I think it was intentionally designed that the palace is meant to be on Crown Falls.
I really enjoy your videos and Anno content. Although I have a different opinion about Crown Falls I absolutely see your points and it's very invigorating for a long time Annoholic like me. When I unlock Crown Falls that's when the whole excitement for Anno reaches it's peak point. So much land to settle, so much opportunity to do it better than last time. Even when I watch this video I immidiately want to start all over and rush to Cape Trelawny. 😀
that makes complete sense, and i think i’ll feel like that when i go to crown falls (i haven’t been yet) but i think it might be repetitive if you just copy a layout. i never use layouts anyway because my whole life is making a city look good, but i can see both sides of the argument from a noncrownfalls perspective.
I agree with what other have said here. I don't actually have crown falls but I've run into some of the issues raised. The game nudges you towards using lots of space, tree lined boulevards, train tracks through the cities, plazas and parks and that's only in the base game. And then nerfs you by having small islands to build on. Larger procedural generated islands, diagonal or bendy roads and buildings like the marketplace not needing a road link would solve some things i think. The rest would just be cosmetic things and buildings to get more personality. Idk if it would work in this game but terrain modding as well.
Reasonable critiques all. I guess I would hesitate to characterize it as a design "flaw" since it can be turned off. I'd say add more 'Crown Falls Size' islands in the other sessions. That would give us more options as to where to put our capitol. Love your videos, bro.
But turning off Crown Falls doesn't change the aspects of other DLCs that are clearly balanced and designed with CF space in mind... So you're kind of hindering yourself as well. That's why I consider it a flawed design.
I play the Anno series since 1602, it was one of the first game I ever bought as a kid, and it always had this problem: the key gameplay mechanic is to balance production between more islands to get a big city going on a large island, and I get it, and it's fun and interesting, but I always felt that the highest tier monuments and requirements were a bit too high, sometimes the player needs more gold than there is in the whole game to have enough aristocrats to build the cathedral in 1602, sometimes the player needs to have zero production buildings on the main island in 1404 to be able to build an imperial cathedral, and to defeat all the AI in game to get enough resources, and of course on a OW large island in 1800 there isn't nearly the space to properly set a city with a palace, a fair and a tower that would make logical sense, beside the cargo ships full of coffee and rum going back and forth from new world. I feel like a tweak in the density and population need, alongside bigger islands in the OW archipelago (maybe double) could get a long way. At one point I had to choose between developing Crownfalls or my original OW island because I knew there wasn't enough room and material in the NW for both. A bit of a shame really, and I was even playing alone having everything at my disposal
I just wish I had the time and the knowledge to get my islands half as nice as yours. For me this would be 100 hours minimum. It's times like this when I realize I'm not quite as intelligent as I think I am. Great channel, keep up the good work.
I recently got back into anno 1800 and have been focusing on my large island in the old world from the main campaign and I have expanded to other smaller islands and dont have much on crown falls yet, I will move my pallas to Crown falls when I get there. Yes I want the biggest island, but yes I am enjoying the old world before i move over to cf. Thanks for shedding the light on how they focused the dlcs on cf.
lol your angst at the attractiveness rating for that one island gave me Hunger Game vibes with all the little sections providing everything so the center could look attractive. Just something that came to mind randomly by your commentary even if it had nothing to do with it.
Na, it's true. Not that controversial. I've tried to have a number of different takes on Crown Falls (from dispersed, English countrysides intermixed with villages throughout) through to large capitals of different styles, but the key locations I pick for certain landmarks are always similar. The Palace always goes in the same place, an the World's Fair is almost always at the top of a large central mall. And there's a reason for it. The bloody hill. These buildings are so large that the number of locations you can build them where they are not sloping up the hill (the palace in particular) is very limited. There are a couple of flat places, but if you do care about that kind of detail then you really don't have much choice on where to put the Palace. It's sort of got to go in that one place just where the large main area begins to snake up toward the falls and default oil wells. You touched on the other reason; space efficiency. There's no point revisiting your own observations about Seat of Power - it's accurate.
17:30 Having giga-islands is something that has been desired for beauty builders since 1602. So much so that the first and only expansion for 1602 added larger islands, and 1503 had them by default. None the less, those games were significantly less complicated. And I do agree with you saying that the huge islands need some variety.. I agree... but even on that note, I'd like to have some giant, but not static islands for the other regions as well.
I would not consider the islands added in 1602s later editions and 1503 to be what you call giga-islands by any stretch without mods. Crown Falls sized islands, or land masses rather, did not make an appearance until Wildwater Bay was added in 2205... It was considered the largest buildable space ever added to an Anno game at the time. But still... I'm fine with having big islands to build on! Just not the same one over and over again for years haha
I only have played 2 sessions in this game. As a perfectionist, I usually want to maximize the utility of everything. For example, I often build farm tiles alongside the cliff and gaps between buildings to fill up any irregulated space. The typical scenario is I build more than a dozen farm buildings circling around the Trade union and drag all the tiles to the coast or the edge of the cliff. So I end up being afraid to build things on Crown Fall. It's too big, I don't know where to start XD.
It would be fixable if your palace could cover several islands and tourist hotels would also accumulate across neighboring islands. You could then replace crown falls with a cluster of neighboring old world islands
Just started playing anno 1800 one year ago. Went through the main campaign and decided to buy al DLC and start a sandbox experience. Obviously crown falls is the place to build your megacity, but I honestly think it's well designed. Coming from a newer player i guess.
I think your point about the game being scaled towards Crown Falls is valid. It makes a lot of content irrelevant for the rest of the regions/islands and therefore make the game very repetitive. A solution would be to make some scaling elements relative to the island size. For example, an island like Crown Falls would need a 3 times larger zoo than on a regular large island to reach the same attractiveness. Or for stuff like restaurants have the amount of tourists required to run them be dynamic based on the total population of said island. With mechanics like that you could even make stuff like a very small touristic island which is just not possible now due to how much space it needs. It needs some finagling, but it should make the game more interesting. Obviously have the island be procedurally generated could be a possibility as well. The rest of the world should be relevant as well, Crown Falls shouldn't be required to enjoy all content of the game and mechanics such as logistics should remain important for the game (which is why stuff like Docklands also should by heavily nerfed if not completely removed from the game). Don't get me wrong, I still love the game and still play it a lot, but CFS does indeed weaken a lot of aspects that made previous Anno games great.
I like this vid, i've actually had Crown Falls DLC now for a few months, but still have not bothered to venture there yet, because I've been enjoying developing my other island. On this subject, the Tourist DLC, the fact that you need 10 hotels to move up the needs factor for tourists is a bit insane. The hotels take up a large amount of space, waiting for a mod to come out for that.
Would be nice if the palace requirements scaled with the island size you build it on. You could push for insanely high numbers on crown falls, but much more manageable (but still challening) ones on a normal island and, best of all, choose on a whim to change it by simply tearing it down and rebuilding on another island. Wouldn't be that hard to patch in either, a simple island tile amount to attractiveness formula would suffice instead of a hard value. Or an airshiphangar module which lets you connect attractivenes of different islands, that would be awesome, tourists could be flying from island to island, I would dig that. Buuuut I don't know if commercial flights were a thing around 1800 and you can't go and fix one dlc inside another, I guess, either... Another problem with Sunken Treasures that I have is that you can't get the diving bell without settling on CF first, even if the quest for getting it has nothing to do with CF at all. I avoided settling CF in my current game so neither I nor the NPCs settle there but I didn't realize until now it pretty much blocks your access to the rest of the dlc (aka the diving for which you don't really NEED CF) , which makes no sense to me.
economically speaking, all the connected dlc things totally make sense for Ubisoft, but I still agree, that this could shrink the experience of some players, that only want to buy few dlcs or even none at all.
I absolutely feel that. Whenever I start building at crown falls I lose interest. As long as I don't build there I can play forever. I just do settle there. I have accepted that I can't play everything to the max because of it.
IMHO though, there's a worse problem than the island of Crown Falls, and that's the Docklands DLC 😅 I love it personally because I cba to make all those productions and ship the wares to the next island. Basically ALL productions of the base game needs can be completely ignored in theory and just exchanged in the docklands. You can even have two neighboring docklands islands that basically 1) sustain themselves through clever use of the export tiers, and 2) get all the needs for entire islands settled. Like steam carriages on tier I to exchange everything on 1 island, and ship those wares to the second island to exchange some of it back to steam carriages (and ship those back to island 1 - to circumvent goods redundancy) and then the rest can be shipped to your island of choice... Crown Falls, for example 😛
I agree with you fully about Crown Falls, but there is another issue I see with Crown Falls as well and its something that has come up for me on multiple times. A lot time I play together with friends and its always a race to get Crown Falls island since it will give you have massive benefit and the others who dont have an island of that size are "struggling" to keep up. And if I'm honest I consider the Sunken Treasure DLC as a "cheat mode" or "Easy mode" for people who dont want to play Anno as an Anno game but more like a SimCity game. To fix some of the problems would be to have a random generated Cape area with the possibility of removing the huge island and have several larger ones.
Have multiple games/saves in 1800, and on each one I say I need to build here, but when I finally unlock it, I get over whelmed buy the size and the whole resettling, and just stick with the original OW maps. If the island was in the OW to start off with I might be more inclined to settle it.
I'm still new enough to the game that Crown Falls still feels like the first time I can BREATH. I didn't know I could go there so early though. I always go to engineers with just old world and the horrible aweful new world. Literally haven't built barely at all at crown falls but bet your ass I'm gonna go straight there next time I get on, and build my full capital there.
I agree with you . I hope they remove the range system for trade unions and other buildings that have range. I am forced to stack all same factories around them
@@cassiel6666 Imbalanced is an understatement, lol. I once had a Crown Falls with 30 City Halls, 30 Trade Unions, and 10 Harbormasters. Shit got absolutely wild.
@@TitaniumDragoonNeo i did not play anno since the release of Warhammer .i wanted to play a new Anno game soon but after this video, i think not .i will w8 the next DLC
I think the "Crown Falls Syndrome" stems from an inherent need in Anno players to max out efficiency and/or space. Even if you're not that much of an advanced player, it is quite enticing to go on the wiki and follow a pre-made layout someone else made so you can enjoy peak efficiency. It's one of the core principles of Anno even 😅I've done it in the past, I made a makeshift cookie cutter settlement in the old world, enough to get me to Crown Falls and then promptly forget about it^^ but I don't think I've ever built the same settlement twice? I see some of the CFS symptoms in my playthroughs though 🤣 There are elements that... let's call it streamline themselves over the course of playthroughs, like which area fits what purpose. I have my wheat farms in the top area (with the waterfall), my wood production on the eastern raised plateau, my palace somewhere in the upper middle of the island so its area reaches far (even onto the plateaus, since it follows the roads IIRC), my warehouse right where the queen's ship anchors and then the docklands main building just so it still has the main warehouse (and visitor pier) in its influence. But it has not progressed to the point where I can't tell my multiple Crown Falls apart.
Seat of Power and Tourism could both be scaled towards Island size. With the requirements in population size/attractiveness being relative to the size of the island rather than a fixed number. Its not like people would be much tempted to built the Palace on a tiny island just because the attractiveness hurdle would be super low; because you'd still be limited in building size in regards to how much benefits you can milk out if it even with the palace being max tier. And it makes a ton more sense for tourists to be "all covered" with just a few hotels on small islands; because "roleplay wise" a small island is quickly 'touristed' so they wouldn't stay long and you wouldn't need a lot of accommodations to satisfy all the visitors.
As of now my goal or challenge for every game has been to get as many islands full of investors as possible. Of course its awesome to have this gigantic mega city on Crown Falls but I'll focus on the old world too and try to get as much covered as possible. Agree with you on the repetitiveness tho.
What annoyes me when looking how some people on YT play Anno is that they always rush to CF and then forget about their other islands. I started a new game after the latest release, have about 70k inh now. But on CF I have a nice litte village near the lake and the rest is still empty as I wait for inspiration. On a former CF I made a big palace with 72 modules and the rest of the lower grounds are french garden, english landscape and huntingground. A small village where the servants live and some stables.
I envy you sometimes. How you have the time to do all your videos and take time to master this beautiful game. I really love this game its the best Anno one I ever played. My only issue is its to complex for me. To many things to consider and do. Many times tight spaces,hard to organise,too many resources... Lately im busy and even when I have free time and I try to play this game it just makes me even more tired..
It's a tedious, neverending, and extremely time consuming game. Most of it relies on the dopamine draw of constantly and prescriptively fixing supply/demand issues, and working towards the next little upgrade out of a hundred little neverending upgrades. In reality it's not even very complicated when you finally get to know the basics. Then it just becomes tedious, with addicting yet shallow rewards.
@@LetoDK timing is literally one big downside of the game. It takes too long especially between sessions. I used to play with big maps and eventually found out it’s none sense. Middle size is big enough to manage and still I found it too big sometimes. However, the game speed is quite realistic. If it was faster than this, it would look so weird to be honest. The main problem is gaming style. We usually want to go with the shortcuts like paying for items, waiting for ships to build, moving up on tiers, make cities bigger, nicer… and keep the balance still in black. It’s impossible. We rush a lot, and basically not playing it as it supposed to. Reaching investors and building monuments, palaces for example. We don’t have to actually. If you’re stuck on artisan level you’re not gonna end. You’ll still have a strength to take over islands from hard npcs. But we don’t, two ship of the line is a lot stronger and cheaper to maintain than a battle cruiser for example. Afraid of royal taxes and stop building more workers, farmers is another mistake I made in the past. I was trying to increase my population in multiple islands at the same time and it was terrible. Being confused which island was the one producing one good to another made my game play super annoying. Every persons game play is different. You don’t have to play with all dlcs at the same time! If I wanted to play with 3 sessions and all dlcs on in one game, I wouldn’t play at all. I tried to play all in once and found it literally horrible, annoying, one easy way to ruin your well-being! Just focus on the taste you like, make it simple that’s it. You can pick hard or easy npcs or none. And the new dlcs? They’re literally meaningless, at least for me 😒
Hey Taka. Glad to see you brother! I happen to agree with your thoughts on this. I built the Crown Falls template and now kinda bored with it. Would love if we had a random map option for Crown Falls. Cheers!
For your metrics! 👍 And for something different - some actual commentary. First let me state that I love (really love) Anno games with 1800 being my favorite as the Victorian era is a favorite for me in movies-books-games, etc. But from the first game Islands and the insane amount of population levels one must reach to really get the game flowing has been a sticking point for me personally., Having to cover every square inch of an Island with houses and industry is so opposite to the way I like to build, i.e. leaving untouched wilderness/animal swatches. That I have forever wished for continental land masses in the game. Crown Falls to an extent achieved this to a point. And i have to agree with Taka and the points he brought up concerning how all cities on crown falls tend to just look the same. I will go even farther and say most screen shots I see of "large" cities in the game strike me this way. Again agreeing with him that we have way-way too few building skins, yes we have some amazing skins out there, but most come from mods with which I tend to shy from. Out of the box the base game should have had many more skins for pretty much everything. Unless a player gets into beauty building - which I do, as many that come here do, cookie cutter is an understatement! I also feel that if massive amounts of population were going to be such a requirement in an island building game, the dev's really should have given us ways to greatly alter the pop cap to all housing structures. This is somewhat entertained with the "life style" needs function of the last DLC. I have just "always" thought that if you are going to have to build on islands most of which are not really large when you throw in mountains and rivers and so on, the game really lack in this area. Just my personal thoughts over the span of the Anno series. As 1800 is defiantly in the twilight of its run I keep hoping for some last hurrah to shine through, we can always dream.
im glad my main save and biggest island build is on a large island in old world with global 250k population. i once tried to migrate to crown falls but abandoned it and now use it as an auxiliary production island but its not my main production island or even top 3. I always thought i would need it for mega production but the game kept adding better items and more DLC that allowed me to keep budling by basically not using the whole region of cape trellawny. i never even enjoyed the hi micro crafting items from old nate either and basically dont do that anymore at all.
Now I am a completely new to anno 1800 but I feel like a lot of these issues could have been sidesteped by adapting the DLC to the old world. For example having a central tourist pier and then having basicaly a commuter pier or them. It makes sense, that they would want to visit other islands while on their vacation. You could even specialise island to cater to different requirements of tourists. Same thing for the seat of power. Have a central govermental building, but the ability to build departments on different islands to give them specialisation. You could still keep the ablity to do it all at one island for the crown falls, but split it up to different islands in the old world.
I think its perfect the way it is. I just played straight 10 hours (dont ask me, my OSD kicked in) once I got crown falls I was amazed on how effing huge it is. I personally think those islands are not meant to have “Seat of Power” fully utilized. Im having so much fuck, its addicting. Not gonna lie.. those pirates are stressing me TF out..
I remember my first sandbox game, I was wowed by Crown Falls at first for all it has to offer, but eventually became disillusioned by how much of a crutch it felt like. Now any games I play, I just avoid it altogether. Crown Falls is nice, and I'm glad it's in the game, but it's not for me.
No, I have a different kind of syndrome: My syndrome is based on the seed # 220781. I also tend to keep these two ladies around: Bente Jorgensen and Anne Harlow. SPOILER ALERT: Yes, Bente is an opponent, but she's a helpful one! Seriously, that woman would just throw money at me sometimes "out of the kindness of her heart"! Wait, there's more: you might just let her occupy as many islands as she wants to. Why? Because then you can buy her shares one at a time and you might just buy all five of them per island. She won't be upset with you, unless you buy the island itself. Now that will upset her quite a bit and you have just lost the source of income in the form of that island. Therefore, unless you want to get rid of Bente, DO NOT buy her islands entirely. Last, but not least, even if you own all of Bente's shares, she will still offer you quests sometimes! What a beautiful partnership that is, huh? Now, as for Anne Harlow: why in the world would you want to have a hostile pirate around? First of all, if you attack her ships, nobody minds that, but herself. Also, many of her ships carry cannons you can collect after you sunk them, which is way easier than building all the facilities necessary for cannon production... She will keep offering me the ceasefire, which I will "kindly" decline each and every time... The bottom line is: nobody says I will be bored out of my mind, if I play on the same map over and over again, but if anyone does say so, I couldn't care less about that. Mind your own business, will ya?
I hope they make a remake of anno 1602. I’ve got some good memories with that game back in the day. And hopefully they keep it simple. The new anno series are too big for me. It just takes too much time. The latest anno I really enjoyed is anno 1701.
Repeatevness of Crown Falls is felt only if you are 1) using guides for what ever reasons and then this people do not have this problem from the begining, kek 2) if you play a lot of Anno and I think as a developer you should not balance something about the category this small - we don't have any statistics I believe, but as for other games this is from 1% to 0.1% playerbase, so for fullprise game developer doesn't have any reason to give this try-hard category any priority. This big land mass is just fail-safe approach for casual gameplay and easy opportunity to try all content in the game and it does its job well As for experiencing full content on the smaller island - I believe all you say is right but if you see this as something bad, I see this as good design - you should not, as try hard player, have easy access to full Palace or Iron tower, it should come in some cost. If you want focus on tourists - do this, but this would cost you space for palace on this island, if you want have smaller all-in island, you would have mediocre everything, just choose your priorities
Crown falls has always been the point I lost interest in the game. I would build up the Old World, New World, Enbesa (I love Enbesa except the stupid irrigation system) and even the Artic, leaving Cape Trelawny the last. Whenever it comes to that, I will lost interest in the city. This is the reason I play the campaign a lot. I like Bright Sands. It is just the right size for a metropolis.
I never really thought how other player's towns look like really. I am all about efficiency so my cities don't even look pretty. My goals are more like get every set to zoo, museum, botanic garden and have top skycrapers always supplied and constantly research/world fare. You can say my town is boring and ugly but I only have that much time in life and I guess it works for many other folks who don't have Anno as part of their living.
It does seem like CF is trying to make one size fit all. I don't know if we've seen the final DLC or Season Pass yet, but I would like either an in-game or sand box like (and ideally in-game) mode(s) where the player has more control over modifying the terrain as the game progresses, such as leveling/lowering/raising land levels a square /squares at a time or add/taking away water. Or where the terrain has more impact beyond the specialty lands of Enbessa and Arctic and the fertilities, such moving closer to water or higher/lower terrain impacting residences or factories positively or negatively. These could be progressive in game leveling up adjustments like City Skylines or the Civilization franchise and possibly done with the Special Discoveries with the Scholars.
I think this shows the biggest and most hidden problem anno1800 has: Its insane mindset to create more or less a multimillion megacity flaoting in the sea. I truely wish the next anno goes WAAAAAAY back in the series and let us create more down to earth and downtuned cities. Not 4000 houses, but 400. And then much more varieties for those houses to create districts.
I think that Anno's island concept is outdated compared to the DLC they provided us. It's natural for all of us that if we want to min-max the DLC stuf, we need a HUGE space. Which is in conflit with the Anno's classical islands concept.
I would never throw shade at you. We’ve only just started to play this game on PS5 and your videos have been a boon to our success. I really hope this game gets the popularity it deserves so that non r/pcmasterrace people can have the DLCs and appreciate it fully, as well.
Its not a perfect game, but it is pretty good . And they went back to their roots, this age around like 1400-1800 is where Anno shines. And if they are smart next Anno will also be this setup but maybe more variety of building models , and also colours if every citizen tier had just 2 different colours on roofs it would be big visual difference. Or if they all had red roof on top starting from like artisans that would be even better than this. Blue and green roofs all over the place make models look the same even though they arent... Game visualy looks best when you just unlock artisans their houses are very well done. Enginers and Investor buildings not so good, they need more models of those buildinugs like more diffetent shapes and more roof colours in future to make it better visualy. But in the end this is their first time doing realistic tall buildings for citizens like engineers and investors so they did good job for first time , they did houses great like peasant worker artisans though. Artisans faze of game is my favourite visualy.
I would say that the problem started in Anno1400 - but I disagree about what the problem is :) Going back to Anno 1602, it was a game about a group of settlers venturing into the unknown to build a home there. It makes very much sense. If you do really well, you get to aristocrat residences and even a cathedral which puts that settlement on the level of an European city. Nice! In Anno1400, you settled in two types of islands: one of them is fashioned after Europe and one after the middle East. You get a little empire going which is a problem because both regions have plenty of land - so it does feel weird that you are scrounging for space. This brings me to Anno 1800. If you have settlements in Europe, Afrika, Southern America, and even the freaking Antarktis, why would you build your capital on an Island that is only a few square miles big? Where do all those people in the scyscrapers work? When Anno 1602 gave you the option of growing into a proper city, it made sense. But combining London, New York and France on the territory of the Isle of Wight is just silly. Crown Falls is necessary for the magnitude Anno took.
Honestly Crown Falls should be an alternative start, feels like I rush the early resident types to get to Crown Falls, and abandon the "normal" old world for it.
I agree! Though I do think most DLC make the game bit unbalanced. I really hate to have New World islands being full of and only Coffee or orchids, because you need so damn much, to provide all the needs. And if you want to find the right specialists all the time, you can make it bit easier. Your tourists opinion is the perfect example. 15 hotels plus all restaurants etc. Its just a bit too much..For me it feels like you need too much of everything to get everything unlocked and fully benefit and indeed it does not make sense to build it on any other Island than CF as you do not benefit enough.
I'm waiting for the last expac this year as hopefully we can build a big city in the NW. SO over Crown Falls too. I'm having a break from Anno as the airships aren't a big deal for me (/yawn) and the lack of decent, usable ornaments left me cold. I agree wif ya Taka.
Well I do hate to break it to you but the developers have already told us that we are not getting islands of the size of Crown Falls in the new world. As far as I know they will just be standard large size islands but they may not have rivers on them which will add to the buildable space available.
I feel less like that but I agree with you. my playstyle is different, I dont start another game too much and I dont use any layout shared on internet but I create and use my own layouts and improve them overtime, I destroy my island cities partly for place improvements and with that cities evolve. I still dont like many aspects; the attraction requirement of palace, storage limits dependance of shores lenght, inadequate tourist hotels despite their huge sizes, ships low cargo capacities cant keep up with population forcing you to have hundreds of them, dockyards hauling capacity also cant keep up with population and as you import more, more time takes hauling which means more consumption and requires more import. anno1800s scaleability not works well enough
We need more new different islands in the OW and in the NW. I sometimes just turn off the crown falls dlc, and also the tourism one, and botanica .. I like the other ones (probably forgot one that I usually turn off)
I got so bored by Crown Falls, its one never ending grind after another never ending grind. As I'm somewhat of a completionist it got terribly tedious putting together all the requirements to build 75 level 5 skyscrapers just to build one damn tower I didn't really even want in the first place (and which resulted in my promptly demolishing most of them immediately afterwards) and without the mod which adds better designed smaller stores, restaurants and hotels (Rockefella's Dream I think it is) those DLC which gain the most benefit from CF would have had me tearing my hair out for huge boring hotels taking up far too much space and housing nowhere near enough people.and massive, city block sized, department stores only selling one good at a time. Design choices that I simply don't understand. Come to the conclusion I am perfectly content just building small cities on smaller islands around one maybe two hub areas with lots of parks and gardens, something I would actually enjoy living in myself rather than huge sprawling urban skyscraper nightmares that I would shy away from in real life. Maybe a landmass somewhere in between in size, not as big as Crown Falls but larger than the ones in Old World. Next playthrough a few of the DLC's are not going to be in my load order. More is not necessarily better - at least for me. I understand my playstyle is not everyone's and at least being able to remove them gives some choice, but in my opinion it would be far better to see more choice enabled WITH those DLC. It would be nice to have a couple of small boutique style hotels near a beach in the New World without using a mod for example. Tourists wanting a 'get away' rather than a shopping trip. A wildlife park instead of a zoo, horrible thing that zoo, tiny enclosures for massive animals - yuck - but very Victorian so not complaining - well not much anyway lol
Solution is easy - ALL the big industry in the Crown Fall and build cities on the islands (and near the CF lake). Repetitiveness will still be there, though... Edit: Just as I typed the comment, 3:55 happened XD
I like your content and videos, but couldn't help but chuckle at the "repetitive and boring" complaining about how Crown Falls can be "repetitive and boring". Hmmmm.... 1 made it 14 minutes into the video but had to stop there. I think I can figure out what will be said in the last six minutes. (I'm not hating on you, just nudging a friend.)
okay but about the models, the different styles of houses beauty pack adds a ton of variety for them, which makes the cities way more beautiful than without.
I would like to start in CF, but it has no villan, traders except Nate. Then raid old world and destroy the competition. Lately I start games without sunken treasures. I don't think this will get addressed - fixed though. We still cant trade oil, like we could in 2070, cant steal ships / cargo either like we could in 2070. Funny as that was a somewhat common practice in the 1800's.
I like crown falls as a non alternate large island space is a premium if it got variabled island layout like seeded islands do that would destroy large city builds I like having a large static island that won't get river screwed as old world seeds do easier to plan with least 1 preset island vs seeded ones to make things we like to work
I just started a new game like one and half month ago, and I just skip sunken treasure DLC in my DLC section just because as u say it looks repetitive and yes its boring to do the same as u do previously. I have an OW island where I have a decent population with all monuments as well as Palace with prestige level 5 and I am happy with that.
Because the islands are the same, I regretted restarting the game for season 2/3. I wished the islands in each region were different...The artic and Embasa have the same problems..
Yes those two regions definitely do suffer from the problem as well since the islands are always the same but they've just might be in different locations slightly... Although the difference with those two regions is that they are not the focus of the game and not where you are spending the vast majority of your playtime.
I’ve never looked at it this way, but crown falls is a blessing and a curse in one package. I mostly build the same layouts on cf and thinking about it it all comes down to the layout. I stopped playing anno 1800 a few months back but this video does not help getting me back into the game xD. I think I’ll just wait for a new anno game and skip all the dlc coming
I think continental landmasses need to become part of future of anno and be in the next base game as free to avoid said issue. I'm tired of relying on multiple tiny islands- give us a choice. It's not just your playstyle, there's a giant beauty building community that want their say too. If a session contained like a randomly generated crownfalls tier (with the option to turn it off for those who hate it) and provided other large islands for veterans, I think that'll be the closest to making everyone happy. It's alot to ask for but its genuinely the best compromise without pissing anyone off. And if someone is upset we have to accommodate for other playstyles, too bad? lol.
Yes you're kind of seeing exactly what I'm saying... If there were multiple variations of Crown Falls or even a region that had Crown falls-sized land masses, say maybe two of them with multiple variations that could be chosen from, It would at least make it not so repetitive
@@TakaRUclips Exactly! Also, for the other reasoning you mentioned: Alot of dlcs are designed/intended for best use in Crown Falls. We either need much bigger islands or landmasses in the next anno as a free feature (in my opinion at least)
@@TakaRUclips Yep,
I think this everything is on an island thing is getting old. I think they should use big landmasses, where you could build wherever you find something useful, and the ships on these lands replaced with caravans. I could imagine going back to ancient era (greco-roman, mesopotamian, egyptian style) and the map representing the mediterranean sea.
@@vodkavecz Caravans ? lol ! The game already has trains. So giving the opportunity to transport goods rather than only oil is the solution. At the begining of the game, horse wagons (as in early 1800'), that could be replaced with trains later in game.
But we all agree, the landmasses are almost compulsory !
I think Anno has a lot of opportunity for creativity in the base game, and most of the problems in games like this arise from getting obsessed with min/maxing in all the wrong ways. Treat it like a role playing game, use your imagination, don't worry about efficiencies - just make it work and have fun telling a story. And if you get the the point where you feel like it is same-y hit save, log off, and play any of countless other amazing building games out there.
I think what we need, is an old world map with some island being twice the size of large islands. Would be a nice compromise between CF and OW island. Not to mention CF will make your game way way heavier and maybe crash due to how much thing are going on
I think we need a way to merge OW and CF maps. I don't like CF because I don't have the neutral players here, I don't like OW because CF is like mandatory at this point...
I just made it to crown falls so I’m not bored of it yet. 😂
Haha hey I get that!! When you're new to something it's not going to be boring yet!
I think if it had a few variations like islands do it would be more interesting. Maybe they could patch in a feature that allowed you to choose the layout of Crown Falls. Sort of like how you can pick island layout, you'd be able to opt for differing layouts that effect the terrain and mineral locations
I like big landmasses, but I think they require some form of allowing multiple people to settle on them, maybe expanding the role of railroads and splitting it into "Districts" So you have to play with logistics on land and can't just have a mega factory landmass. If you bring in say Rum to the coastal district, you have to have a road then upgraded to railroad to get that rum to an inland district
In addition I think big landmasses like that should have ground forces with multiple people settling on them like in Anno 1503,
I only managed to somewhat defeat the sameness of Crown Falls by using continental landmass to build multiple cities with different personalities, while focusing most space-consuming production on islands (unless they fit aesthetically between settlements). Honestly, I mostly have cosmetic packs and my beauty-building nature to thank for that, because it will always warm my heart to see a small town for Artisans with a theme park, rather than a sprawling skyline that looks like a celestial motherboard.
I'd be curious to see if they could redo Crown Falls, a la Wildwater Basin. It could've been more interesting if they 1) had the supplemental islands in the Crown Falls session be bigger and more resource-rich, 2) had Crown Falls have a randomized terrain and terrain (maybe a couple dozen variants), and 3) outright reduce the inherent resouce wealth of Crown Falls.
Totaly agree with you ! I usually don't go on Crownfalls and stay in my main first city. I like seeing it changing, from farming, industrialization and to becomue a true modern city. It's having an history, a hearth which I don't see on Crownfalls, where we're only talking of massive building. I try to focus on only one island pear world and I like it as it is ! My challenge is to keep them natural but trying to progress through DLC challenges. Crownfalls feels not interessant to me.
It's funny because it's probably why the Anno team never gave us an island this big before. The entire game was designed around smaller islands that forces you to think about your layouts. Even if Anno players love to create perfect layouts that optimise everything, most islands can't have such large perfectly planned neighborhoods, or not many of them. That's why large cities in Anno tend to look boring and flat (and why they gave us the high-rise DLC) : cities are kinda boring when too uniform. It's even a criticism of Paris : all Haussmannian buildings look the same, it feels repetitive. Paris doesn't look as boring from above because it's not tied to a grid system, so at least the streets make shapes and forms.
I think one of the problem is the scaling of the game itself, compared to real life; you can't cram that many engineers and investors in such a small building, the palace is ridiculously big. So instead of having large palaces surrounded by even larger cities, you end up with a gigantic palace and a large city. I mean, it's logical from a gameplay standpoint so I get why the game is like that. But with all the DLCs it's weird. Also the scale of the highrise buildings is completely off.
I think this goes deeper than that though; the game is changing to become more and more of a city builder rather than an RTS/management game. For beauty building, you need the size to support variety. I honestly think the video is looking at this at the completely wrong angle, which I think becomes obvious by the time it brings up lack of building variety. So the problem isn't Crown Falls looking the same every game (I mean, that's true for *every* island because *no* island is procedurally generated, so even your standard large islands will eventually look the same), but that there isn't enough building variety within the vanilla experience. The only randomness you can have is a false one, because you can't anticipate exactly what set of islands you get per map seed unless you specifically look for that particular map seed. And therein lies my problem with Taka's complaints about CF tbh, because his perception of CF being the same is because his expectations are just that. He doesn't expect each new game to look the same because he can't anticipate how it will look like due to the way map seeds work, even if it's the same old islands we've seen a hundred times before, but he can do that with CF. Yet as he mentions, the core problem isn't CF but lack of variety.
I agree that perhaps there is a problem with that we got DLC that seem to work better on CF, and I also feel that CF is so integral to most player's playstyle that it would make sense for them to release SP 1 as free eventually, also because it's quite small in size compared to the other SP. While yes, The Passage is a new region, it's also so self-contained that I don't see that being a big problem and could be shifted to become a scenario until the player completes it and they're asked to integrate it into the base game.
I'm actually proud to say my Crown Falls doesn't look like that LOL! And in a previous campaign game, I put my capitol on Bright Sands, and was very happy with it. But in that case, I wasn't trying to min/max everything. I just did what I wanted. I may not have been getting the most potential out of the Palace, but I wasn't hurting either.
I think there is a narrative point to be made regarding seat of power. The queen does mention that she wants crown falls to be the new capital. Narratively it is expected Crown Falls will have the palace. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to do whatever you want but I think it was intentionally designed that the palace is meant to be on Crown Falls.
I really enjoy your videos and Anno content. Although I have a different opinion about Crown Falls I absolutely see your points and it's very invigorating for a long time Annoholic like me.
When I unlock Crown Falls that's when the whole excitement for Anno reaches it's peak point. So much land to settle, so much opportunity to do it better than last time. Even when I watch this video I immidiately want to start all over and rush to Cape Trelawny. 😀
that makes complete sense, and i think i’ll feel like that when i go to crown falls (i haven’t been yet) but i think it might be repetitive if you just copy a layout. i never use layouts anyway because my whole life is making a city look good, but i can see both sides of the argument from a noncrownfalls perspective.
I agree with what other have said here. I don't actually have crown falls but I've run into some of the issues raised. The game nudges you towards using lots of space, tree lined boulevards, train tracks through the cities, plazas and parks and that's only in the base game. And then nerfs you by having small islands to build on. Larger procedural generated islands, diagonal or bendy roads and buildings like the marketplace not needing a road link would solve some things i think. The rest would just be cosmetic things and buildings to get more personality. Idk if it would work in this game but terrain modding as well.
Reasonable critiques all. I guess I would hesitate to characterize it as a design "flaw" since it can be turned off. I'd say add more 'Crown Falls Size' islands in the other sessions. That would give us more options as to where to put our capitol.
Love your videos, bro.
But turning off Crown Falls doesn't change the aspects of other DLCs that are clearly balanced and designed with CF space in mind... So you're kind of hindering yourself as well. That's why I consider it a flawed design.
So glad to see you again. Been missing you
I play the Anno series since 1602, it was one of the first game I ever bought as a kid, and it always had this problem: the key gameplay mechanic is to balance production between more islands to get a big city going on a large island, and I get it, and it's fun and interesting, but I always felt that the highest tier monuments and requirements were a bit too high, sometimes the player needs more gold than there is in the whole game to have enough aristocrats to build the cathedral in 1602, sometimes the player needs to have zero production buildings on the main island in 1404 to be able to build an imperial cathedral, and to defeat all the AI in game to get enough resources, and of course on a OW large island in 1800 there isn't nearly the space to properly set a city with a palace, a fair and a tower that would make logical sense, beside the cargo ships full of coffee and rum going back and forth from new world.
I feel like a tweak in the density and population need, alongside bigger islands in the OW archipelago (maybe double) could get a long way.
At one point I had to choose between developing Crownfalls or my original OW island because I knew there wasn't enough room and material in the NW for both. A bit of a shame really, and I was even playing alone having everything at my disposal
I just wish I had the time and the knowledge to get my islands half as nice as yours. For me this would be 100 hours minimum. It's times like this when I realize I'm not quite as intelligent as I think I am. Great channel, keep up the good work.
I recently got back into anno 1800 and have been focusing on my large island in the old world from the main campaign and I have expanded to other smaller islands and dont have much on crown falls yet, I will move my pallas to Crown falls when I get there. Yes I want the biggest island, but yes I am enjoying the old world before i move over to cf. Thanks for shedding the light on how they focused the dlcs on cf.
Sorry late to the party. I just got this DLC. I plan on just using Crown falls as my Giant farm island to support my cities in the "old world".
lol your angst at the attractiveness rating for that one island gave me Hunger Game vibes with all the little sections providing everything so the center could look attractive. Just something that came to mind randomly by your commentary even if it had nothing to do with it.
Na, it's true. Not that controversial. I've tried to have a number of different takes on Crown Falls (from dispersed, English countrysides intermixed with villages throughout) through to large capitals of different styles, but the key locations I pick for certain landmarks are always similar. The Palace always goes in the same place, an the World's Fair is almost always at the top of a large central mall.
And there's a reason for it.
The bloody hill.
These buildings are so large that the number of locations you can build them where they are not sloping up the hill (the palace in particular) is very limited. There are a couple of flat places, but if you do care about that kind of detail then you really don't have much choice on where to put the Palace. It's sort of got to go in that one place just where the large main area begins to snake up toward the falls and default oil wells.
You touched on the other reason; space efficiency. There's no point revisiting your own observations about Seat of Power - it's accurate.
17:30
Having giga-islands is something that has been desired for beauty builders since 1602. So much so that the first and only expansion for 1602 added larger islands, and 1503 had them by default.
None the less, those games were significantly less complicated. And I do agree with you saying that the huge islands need some variety.. I agree... but even on that note, I'd like to have some giant, but not static islands for the other regions as well.
I would not consider the islands added in 1602s later editions and 1503 to be what you call giga-islands by any stretch without mods. Crown Falls sized islands, or land masses rather, did not make an appearance until Wildwater Bay was added in 2205... It was considered the largest buildable space ever added to an Anno game at the time.
But still... I'm fine with having big islands to build on! Just not the same one over and over again for years haha
no criticism, you are just completely right with it. I would sell the whole Season Pass 4 for just some new big islands instead.
I only have played 2 sessions in this game. As a perfectionist, I usually want to maximize the utility of everything. For example, I often build farm tiles alongside the cliff and gaps between buildings to fill up any irregulated space. The typical scenario is I build more than a dozen farm buildings circling around the Trade union and drag all the tiles to the coast or the edge of the cliff.
So I end up being afraid to build things on Crown Fall. It's too big, I don't know where to start XD.
It would be fixable if your palace could cover several islands and tourist hotels would also accumulate across neighboring islands. You could then replace crown falls with a cluster of neighboring old world islands
This seems like the easiest fix for me.
Just started playing anno 1800 one year ago. Went through the main campaign and decided to buy al DLC and start a sandbox experience. Obviously crown falls is the place to build your megacity, but I honestly think it's well designed. Coming from a newer player i guess.
I think your point about the game being scaled towards Crown Falls is valid. It makes a lot of content irrelevant for the rest of the regions/islands and therefore make the game very repetitive. A solution would be to make some scaling elements relative to the island size. For example, an island like Crown Falls would need a 3 times larger zoo than on a regular large island to reach the same attractiveness. Or for stuff like restaurants have the amount of tourists required to run them be dynamic based on the total population of said island. With mechanics like that you could even make stuff like a very small touristic island which is just not possible now due to how much space it needs. It needs some finagling, but it should make the game more interesting. Obviously have the island be procedurally generated could be a possibility as well. The rest of the world should be relevant as well, Crown Falls shouldn't be required to enjoy all content of the game and mechanics such as logistics should remain important for the game (which is why stuff like Docklands also should by heavily nerfed if not completely removed from the game). Don't get me wrong, I still love the game and still play it a lot, but CFS does indeed weaken a lot of aspects that made previous Anno games great.
I like this vid, i've actually had Crown Falls DLC now for a few months, but still have not bothered to venture there yet, because I've been enjoying developing my other island. On this subject, the Tourist DLC, the fact that you need 10 hotels to move up the needs factor for tourists is a bit insane. The hotels take up a large amount of space, waiting for a mod to come out for that.
There is one already and it's great!
@@TakaRUclips Could you please share the name of the mod you're referring to!
Maybe an Old World map option for 'Large Island' which would be an island in the middle (close to crown fall size) and smaller islands around it.
And no uneven terrain
Would be nice if the palace requirements scaled with the island size you build it on. You could push for insanely high numbers on crown falls, but much more manageable (but still challening) ones on a normal island and, best of all, choose on a whim to change it by simply tearing it down and rebuilding on another island. Wouldn't be that hard to patch in either, a simple island tile amount to attractiveness formula would suffice instead of a hard value.
Or an airshiphangar module which lets you connect attractivenes of different islands, that would be awesome, tourists could be flying from island to island, I would dig that. Buuuut I don't know if commercial flights were a thing around 1800 and you can't go and fix one dlc inside another, I guess, either...
Another problem with Sunken Treasures that I have is that you can't get the diving bell without settling on CF first, even if the quest for getting it has nothing to do with CF at all. I avoided settling CF in my current game so neither I nor the NPCs settle there but I didn't realize until now it pretty much blocks your access to the rest of the dlc (aka the diving for which you don't really NEED CF) , which makes no sense to me.
economically speaking, all the connected dlc things totally make sense for Ubisoft, but I still agree, that this could shrink the experience of some players, that only want to buy few dlcs or even none at all.
I absolutely feel that. Whenever I start building at crown falls I lose interest. As long as I don't build there I can play forever. I just do settle there. I have accepted that I can't play everything to the max because of it.
IMHO though, there's a worse problem than the island of Crown Falls, and that's the Docklands DLC 😅 I love it personally because I cba to make all those productions and ship the wares to the next island. Basically ALL productions of the base game needs can be completely ignored in theory and just exchanged in the docklands. You can even have two neighboring docklands islands that basically 1) sustain themselves through clever use of the export tiers, and 2) get all the needs for entire islands settled. Like steam carriages on tier I to exchange everything on 1 island, and ship those wares to the second island to exchange some of it back to steam carriages (and ship those back to island 1 - to circumvent goods redundancy) and then the rest can be shipped to your island of choice... Crown Falls, for example 😛
Oh I'll be talking Docklands don't worry lol
I agree with you fully about Crown Falls, but there is another issue I see with Crown Falls as well and its something that has come up for me on multiple times. A lot time I play together with friends and its always a race to get Crown Falls island since it will give you have massive benefit and the others who dont have an island of that size are "struggling" to keep up. And if I'm honest I consider the Sunken Treasure DLC as a "cheat mode" or "Easy mode" for people who dont want to play Anno as an Anno game but more like a SimCity game. To fix some of the problems would be to have a random generated Cape area with the possibility of removing the huge island and have several larger ones.
Have multiple games/saves in 1800, and on each one I say I need to build here, but when I finally unlock it, I get over whelmed buy the size and the whole resettling, and just stick with the original OW maps. If the island was in the OW to start off with I might be more inclined to settle it.
I'm still new enough to the game that Crown Falls still feels like the first time I can BREATH. I didn't know I could go there so early though. I always go to engineers with just old world and the horrible aweful new world. Literally haven't built barely at all at crown falls but bet your ass I'm gonna go straight there next time I get on, and build my full capital there.
I agree with you . I hope they remove the range system for trade unions and other buildings that have range. I am forced to stack all same factories around them
@@cassiel6666 Imbalanced is an understatement, lol. I once had a Crown Falls with 30 City Halls, 30 Trade Unions, and 10 Harbormasters. Shit got absolutely wild.
@@TitaniumDragoonNeo i did not play anno since the release of Warhammer .i wanted to play a new Anno game soon but after this video, i think not .i will w8 the next DLC
I think the "Crown Falls Syndrome" stems from an inherent need in Anno players to max out efficiency and/or space. Even if you're not that much of an advanced player, it is quite enticing to go on the wiki and follow a pre-made layout someone else made so you can enjoy peak efficiency. It's one of the core principles of Anno even 😅I've done it in the past, I made a makeshift cookie cutter settlement in the old world, enough to get me to Crown Falls and then promptly forget about it^^ but I don't think I've ever built the same settlement twice? I see some of the CFS symptoms in my playthroughs though 🤣 There are elements that... let's call it streamline themselves over the course of playthroughs, like which area fits what purpose. I have my wheat farms in the top area (with the waterfall), my wood production on the eastern raised plateau, my palace somewhere in the upper middle of the island so its area reaches far (even onto the plateaus, since it follows the roads IIRC), my warehouse right where the queen's ship anchors and then the docklands main building just so it still has the main warehouse (and visitor pier) in its influence. But it has not progressed to the point where I can't tell my multiple Crown Falls apart.
Seat of Power and Tourism could both be scaled towards Island size. With the requirements in population size/attractiveness being relative to the size of the island rather than a fixed number.
Its not like people would be much tempted to built the Palace on a tiny island just because the attractiveness hurdle would be super low; because you'd still be limited in building size in regards to how much benefits you can milk out if it even with the palace being max tier. And it makes a ton more sense for tourists to be "all covered" with just a few hotels on small islands; because "roleplay wise" a small island is quickly 'touristed' so they wouldn't stay long and you wouldn't need a lot of accommodations to satisfy all the visitors.
As of now my goal or challenge for every game has been to get as many islands full of investors as possible. Of course its awesome to have this gigantic mega city on Crown Falls but I'll focus on the old world too and try to get as much covered as possible. Agree with you on the repetitiveness tho.
What annoyes me when looking how some people on YT play Anno is that they always rush to CF and then forget about their other islands. I started a new game after the latest release, have about 70k inh now. But on CF I have a nice litte village near the lake and the rest is still empty as I wait for inspiration. On a former CF I made a big palace with 72 modules and the rest of the lower grounds are french garden, english landscape and huntingground. A small village where the servants live and some stables.
I envy you sometimes. How you have the time to do all your videos and take time to master this beautiful game. I really love this game its the best Anno one I ever played.
My only issue is its to complex for me. To many things to consider and do. Many times tight spaces,hard to organise,too many resources... Lately im busy and even when I have free time and I try to play this game it just makes me even more tired..
It's a tedious, neverending, and extremely time consuming game. Most of it relies on the dopamine draw of constantly and prescriptively fixing supply/demand issues, and working towards the next little upgrade out of a hundred little neverending upgrades.
In reality it's not even very complicated when you finally get to know the basics. Then it just becomes tedious, with addicting yet shallow rewards.
@@LetoDK timing is literally one big downside of the game. It takes too long especially between sessions. I used to play with big maps and eventually found out it’s none sense. Middle size is big enough to manage and still I found it too big sometimes. However, the game speed is quite realistic. If it was faster than this, it would look so weird to be honest. The main problem is gaming style. We usually want to go with the shortcuts like paying for items, waiting for ships to build, moving up on tiers, make cities bigger, nicer… and keep the balance still in black. It’s impossible. We rush a lot, and basically not playing it as it supposed to.
Reaching investors and building monuments, palaces for example. We don’t have to actually. If you’re stuck on artisan level you’re not gonna end. You’ll still have a strength to take over islands from hard npcs. But we don’t, two ship of the line is a lot stronger and cheaper to maintain than a battle cruiser for example. Afraid of royal taxes and stop building more workers, farmers is another mistake I made in the past. I was trying to increase my population in multiple islands at the same time and it was terrible. Being confused which island was the one producing one good to another made my game play super annoying.
Every persons game play is different. You don’t have to play with all dlcs at the same time! If I wanted to play with 3 sessions and all dlcs on in one game, I wouldn’t play at all. I tried to play all in once and found it literally horrible, annoying, one easy way to ruin your well-being!
Just focus on the taste you like, make it simple that’s it. You can pick hard or easy npcs or none. And the new dlcs? They’re literally meaningless, at least for me 😒
Hey Taka. Glad to see you brother! I happen to agree with your thoughts on this. I built the Crown Falls template and now kinda bored with it. Would love if we had a random map option for Crown Falls. Cheers!
My Crownfalls Name is Bromwell Farms. Only Farms, Tractor and Trains, and it looks and fells very relaxing beautiful!
Build just for fun and Art. =)
For your metrics! 👍
And for something different - some actual commentary.
First let me state that I love (really love) Anno games with 1800 being my favorite as the Victorian era is a favorite for me in movies-books-games, etc.
But from the first game Islands and the insane amount of population levels one must reach to really get the game flowing has been a sticking point for me personally., Having to cover every square inch of an Island with houses and industry is so opposite to the way I like to build, i.e. leaving untouched wilderness/animal swatches. That I have forever wished for continental land masses in the game.
Crown Falls to an extent achieved this to a point. And i have to agree with Taka and the points he brought up concerning how all cities on crown falls tend to just look the same. I will go even farther and say most screen shots I see of "large" cities in the game strike me this way. Again agreeing with him that we have way-way too few building skins, yes we have some amazing skins out there, but most come from mods with which I tend to shy from. Out of the box the base game should have had many more skins for pretty much everything. Unless a player gets into beauty building - which I do, as many that come here do, cookie cutter is an understatement!
I also feel that if massive amounts of population were going to be such a requirement in an island building game, the dev's really should have given us ways to greatly alter the pop cap to all housing structures. This is somewhat entertained with the "life style" needs function of the last DLC. I have just "always" thought that if you are going to have to build on islands most of which are not really large when you throw in mountains and rivers and so on, the game really lack in this area. Just my personal thoughts over the span of the Anno series. As 1800 is defiantly in the twilight of its run I keep hoping for some last hurrah to shine through, we can always dream.
im glad my main save and biggest island build is on a large island in old world with global 250k population. i once tried to migrate to crown falls but abandoned it and now use it as an auxiliary production island but its not my main production island or even top 3. I always thought i would need it for mega production but the game kept adding better items and more DLC that allowed me to keep budling by basically not using the whole region of cape trellawny. i never even enjoyed the hi micro crafting items from old nate either and basically dont do that anymore at all.
Now I am a completely new to anno 1800 but I feel like a lot of these issues could have been sidesteped by adapting the DLC to the old world. For example having a central tourist pier and then having basicaly a commuter pier or them. It makes sense, that they would want to visit other islands while on their vacation. You could even specialise island to cater to different requirements of tourists. Same thing for the seat of power. Have a central govermental building, but the ability to build departments on different islands to give them specialisation. You could still keep the ablity to do it all at one island for the crown falls, but split it up to different islands in the old world.
im not new to anno, but as a gamer with heart im new too anno. i can understand your thoughts
I agree, also having only one Crown Falls in Multiplayer kinda sucks...
I think its perfect the way it is. I just played straight 10 hours (dont ask me, my OSD kicked in) once I got crown falls I was amazed on how effing huge it is. I personally think those islands are not meant to have “Seat of Power” fully utilized. Im having so much fuck, its addicting. Not gonna lie.. those pirates are stressing me TF out..
I remember my first sandbox game, I was wowed by Crown Falls at first for all it has to offer, but eventually became disillusioned by how much of a crutch it felt like. Now any games I play, I just avoid it altogether. Crown Falls is nice, and I'm glad it's in the game, but it's not for me.
No, I have a different kind of syndrome:
My syndrome is based on the seed # 220781. I also tend to keep these two ladies around: Bente Jorgensen and Anne Harlow.
SPOILER ALERT:
Yes, Bente is an opponent, but she's a helpful one! Seriously, that woman would just throw money at me sometimes "out of the kindness of her heart"!
Wait, there's more: you might just let her occupy as many islands as she wants to. Why? Because then you can buy her shares one at a time and you might just buy all five of them per island. She won't be upset with you, unless you buy the island itself. Now that will upset her quite a bit and you have just lost the source of income in the form of that island. Therefore, unless you want to get rid of Bente, DO NOT buy her islands entirely.
Last, but not least, even if you own all of Bente's shares, she will still offer you quests sometimes! What a beautiful partnership that is, huh?
Now, as for Anne Harlow: why in the world would you want to have a hostile pirate around? First of all, if you attack her ships, nobody minds that, but herself. Also, many of her ships carry cannons you can collect after you sunk them, which is way easier than building all the facilities necessary for cannon production... She will keep offering me the ceasefire, which I will "kindly" decline each and every time...
The bottom line is: nobody says I will be bored out of my mind, if I play on the same map over and over again, but if anyone does say so, I couldn't care less about that.
Mind your own business, will ya?
I hope they make a remake of anno 1602. I’ve got some good memories with that game back in the day. And hopefully they keep it simple. The new anno series are too big for me.
It just takes too much time.
The latest anno I really enjoyed is anno 1701.
Repeatevness of Crown Falls is felt only if you are 1) using guides for what ever reasons and then this people do not have this problem from the begining, kek 2) if you play a lot of Anno and I think as a developer you should not balance something about the category this small - we don't have any statistics I believe, but as for other games this is from 1% to 0.1% playerbase, so for fullprise game developer doesn't have any reason to give this try-hard category any priority. This big land mass is just fail-safe approach for casual gameplay and easy opportunity to try all content in the game and it does its job well
As for experiencing full content on the smaller island - I believe all you say is right but if you see this as something bad, I see this as good design - you should not, as try hard player, have easy access to full Palace or Iron tower, it should come in some cost. If you want focus on tourists - do this, but this would cost you space for palace on this island, if you want have smaller all-in island, you would have mediocre everything, just choose your priorities
Crown falls has always been the point I lost interest in the game. I would build up the Old World, New World, Enbesa (I love Enbesa except the stupid irrigation system) and even the Artic, leaving Cape Trelawny the last. Whenever it comes to that, I will lost interest in the city.
This is the reason I play the campaign a lot. I like Bright Sands. It is just the right size for a metropolis.
I never really thought how other player's towns look like really. I am all about efficiency so my cities don't even look pretty. My goals are more like get every set to zoo, museum, botanic garden and have top skycrapers always supplied and constantly research/world fare. You can say my town is boring and ugly but I only have that much time in life and I guess it works for many other folks who don't have Anno as part of their living.
It does seem like CF is trying to make one size fit all. I don't know if we've seen the final DLC or Season Pass yet, but I would like either an in-game or sand box like (and ideally in-game) mode(s) where the player has more control over modifying the terrain as the game progresses, such as leveling/lowering/raising land levels a square /squares at a time or add/taking away water. Or where the terrain has more impact beyond the specialty lands of Enbessa and Arctic and the fertilities, such moving closer to water or higher/lower terrain impacting residences or factories positively or negatively. These could be progressive in game leveling up adjustments like City Skylines or the Civilization franchise and possibly done with the Special Discoveries with the Scholars.
I think this shows the biggest and most hidden problem anno1800 has: Its insane mindset to create more or less a multimillion megacity flaoting in the sea. I truely wish the next anno goes WAAAAAAY back in the series and let us create more down to earth and downtuned cities. Not 4000 houses, but 400. And then much more varieties for those houses to create districts.
Very constructive criticism. I agree with you.
Procedurally generated would be awesome! Good idea.
Couldn’t agree more. Every time I try and build on it, I think it looks the same to the last!
Anno needs an option to turn off the continental land masses and changing the scaling alongside with it.
Oh dear... I've completely ignored that island. I guess I need to try it so I can get Crown Falls syndrome.
Lol.. Good to hear I am not alone. I wish they added more random elements. Why not different versions of "crown falls"
I think that Anno's island concept is outdated compared to the DLC they provided us. It's natural for all of us that if we want to min-max the DLC stuf, we need a HUGE space. Which is in conflit with the Anno's classical islands concept.
I would never throw shade at you. We’ve only just started to play this game on PS5 and your videos have been a boon to our success. I really hope this game gets the popularity it deserves so that non r/pcmasterrace people can have the DLCs and appreciate it fully, as well.
Its not a perfect game, but it is pretty good . And they went back to their roots, this age around like 1400-1800 is where Anno shines. And if they are smart next Anno will also be this setup but maybe more variety of building models , and also colours if every citizen tier had just 2 different colours on roofs it would be big visual difference. Or if they all had red roof on top starting from like artisans that would be even better than this. Blue and green roofs all over the place make models look the same even though they arent... Game visualy looks best when you just unlock artisans their houses are very well done. Enginers and Investor buildings not so good, they need more models of those buildinugs like more diffetent shapes and more roof colours in future to make it better visualy. But in the end this is their first time doing realistic tall buildings for citizens like engineers and investors so they did good job for first time , they did houses great like peasant worker artisans though. Artisans faze of game is my favourite visualy.
I would say that the problem started in Anno1400 - but I disagree about what the problem is :)
Going back to Anno 1602, it was a game about a group of settlers venturing into the unknown to build a home there. It makes very much sense. If you do really well, you get to aristocrat residences and even a cathedral which puts that settlement on the level of an European city. Nice!
In Anno1400, you settled in two types of islands: one of them is fashioned after Europe and one after the middle East. You get a little empire going which is a problem because both regions have plenty of land - so it does feel weird that you are scrounging for space.
This brings me to Anno 1800. If you have settlements in Europe, Afrika, Southern America, and even the freaking Antarktis, why would you build your capital on an Island that is only a few square miles big? Where do all those people in the scyscrapers work? When Anno 1602 gave you the option of growing into a proper city, it made sense. But combining London, New York and France on the territory of the Isle of Wight is just silly. Crown Falls is necessary for the magnitude Anno took.
Honestly Crown Falls should be an alternative start, feels like I rush the early resident types to get to Crown Falls, and abandon the "normal" old world for it.
I agree! Though I do think most DLC make the game bit unbalanced. I really hate to have New World islands being full of and only Coffee or orchids, because you need so damn much, to provide all the needs. And if you want to find the right specialists all the time, you can make it bit easier. Your tourists opinion is the perfect example. 15 hotels plus all restaurants etc. Its just a bit too much..For me it feels like you need too much of everything to get everything unlocked and fully benefit and indeed it does not make sense to build it on any other Island than CF as you do not benefit enough.
I would love to see a contemporary anno for example ANno 2020
I'm waiting for the last expac this year as hopefully we can build a big city in the NW. SO over Crown Falls too. I'm having a break from Anno as the airships aren't a big deal for me (/yawn) and the lack of decent, usable ornaments left me cold. I agree wif ya Taka.
Well I do hate to break it to you but the developers have already told us that we are not getting islands of the size of Crown Falls in the new world. As far as I know they will just be standard large size islands but they may not have rivers on them which will add to the buildable space available.
I would like curved and diagonal roads but we can't have nice things 🤬. I would love a new world crown falls size island though.
I feel less like that but I agree with you. my playstyle is different, I dont start another game too much and I dont use any layout shared on internet but I create and use my own layouts and improve them overtime, I destroy my island cities partly for place improvements and with that cities evolve. I still dont like many aspects; the attraction requirement of palace, storage limits dependance of shores lenght, inadequate tourist hotels despite their huge sizes, ships low cargo capacities cant keep up with population forcing you to have hundreds of them, dockyards hauling capacity also cant keep up with population and as you import more, more time takes hauling which means more consumption and requires more import. anno1800s scaleability not works well enough
Great video. As with the others you have done, it gives me ideas on how to improve my game...and not rely on one island. :)
Madman here 👋
You recognize that picture lol
@@TakaRUclips of course.. I also remember how much you hated it. 😜
And I still do HAHA
We need more new different islands in the OW and in the NW. I sometimes just turn off the crown falls dlc, and also the tourism one, and botanica .. I like the other ones (probably forgot one that I usually turn off)
Very cool video, well done.
Dude, tbh I didn't know about this exact layout but...... my Ctown Falls just looks like this! Damn..... haha
I got so bored by Crown Falls, its one never ending grind after another never ending grind. As I'm somewhat of a completionist it got terribly tedious putting together all the requirements to build 75 level 5 skyscrapers just to build one damn tower I didn't really even want in the first place (and which resulted in my promptly demolishing most of them immediately afterwards) and without the mod which adds better designed smaller stores, restaurants and hotels (Rockefella's Dream I think it is) those DLC which gain the most benefit from CF would have had me tearing my hair out for huge boring hotels taking up far too much space and housing nowhere near enough people.and massive, city block sized, department stores only selling one good at a time. Design choices that I simply don't understand.
Come to the conclusion I am perfectly content just building small cities on smaller islands around one maybe two hub areas with lots of parks and gardens, something I would actually enjoy living in myself rather than huge sprawling urban skyscraper nightmares that I would shy away from in real life. Maybe a landmass somewhere in between in size, not as big as Crown Falls but larger than the ones in Old World. Next playthrough a few of the DLC's are not going to be in my load order. More is not necessarily better - at least for me. I understand my playstyle is not everyone's and at least being able to remove them gives some choice, but in my opinion it would be far better to see more choice enabled WITH those DLC. It would be nice to have a couple of small boutique style hotels near a beach in the New World without using a mod for example. Tourists wanting a 'get away' rather than a shopping trip. A wildlife park instead of a zoo, horrible thing that zoo, tiny enclosures for massive animals - yuck - but very Victorian so not complaining - well not much anyway lol
Solution is easy - ALL the big industry in the Crown Fall and build cities on the islands (and near the CF lake). Repetitiveness will still be there, though...
Edit: Just as I typed the comment, 3:55 happened XD
Haven't unlocked it yet but I have 5k beauty on bright sands and still rising.
The other problem to me is that I always have to go through the same (now boring) questline until I get to CF...
I like your content and videos, but couldn't help but chuckle at the "repetitive and boring" complaining about how Crown Falls can be "repetitive and boring". Hmmmm.... 1 made it 14 minutes into the video but had to stop there. I think I can figure out what will be said in the last six minutes. (I'm not hating on you, just nudging a friend.)
okay but about the models, the different styles of houses beauty pack adds a ton of variety for them, which makes the cities way more beautiful than without.
I would like to start in CF, but it has no villan, traders except Nate. Then raid old world and destroy the competition. Lately I start games without sunken treasures. I don't think this will get addressed - fixed though. We still cant trade oil, like we could in 2070, cant steal ships / cargo either like we could in 2070. Funny as that was a somewhat common practice in the 1800's.
I like crown falls as a non alternate large island space is a premium if it got variabled island layout like seeded islands do that would destroy large city builds
I like having a large static island that won't get river screwed as old world seeds do easier to plan with least 1 preset island vs seeded ones to make things we like to work
Counter argument is that people would find a seed(s) with no rivers and just use those like they do now.. So nothing would really change.
Great video, thank you
I always play without this DLC. I love the procedural generation, the exploration in Anno. Crown Falls is taking this away.
I just started a new game like one and half month ago, and I just skip sunken treasure DLC in my DLC section just because as u say it looks repetitive and yes its boring to do the same as u do previously. I have an OW island where I have a decent population with all monuments as well as Palace with prestige level 5 and I am happy with that.
An other problem is in multiplayer with friends in collaborative instead of competitive: there is only one CF :/
100% agreee, this is why Sunken Treasures is arguably my least favourite dlc.
“Crown Falls cities all look the same”!?
REEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!
But yeah, there’s only so much you can do with Crown Falls
My cf syndrome is making THE SAME LAYOUT on cf EVEEEERRRRRY TIME
Because the islands are the same, I regretted restarting the game for season 2/3. I wished the islands in each region were different...The artic and Embasa have the same problems..
Yes those two regions definitely do suffer from the problem as well since the islands are always the same but they've just might be in different locations slightly... Although the difference with those two regions is that they are not the focus of the game and not where you are spending the vast majority of your playtime.
I’ve never looked at it this way, but crown falls is a blessing and a curse in one package. I mostly build the same layouts on cf and thinking about it it all comes down to the layout. I stopped playing anno 1800 a few months back but this video does not help getting me back into the game xD. I think I’ll just wait for a new anno game and skip all the dlc coming
I am frustrated to find myself becoming the chief trader at the Dockland :)
Well it would be nice if there where a view different types of crown falls islands
you mean if I put palace in the old world I will not be able to put it on crown falls???
No... You can only have 1 palace. Local departments allow you specialize other islands but only with a single policy.