Is Anno like Simcity meets Empire Earth & Civilization?

[♦Pieramyd]

I like addicting city builder games like Sim City 4, and I also like strategy games like Age of Empires and Civilization or Alpha Centauri.
Is Anno anything like those games? How does Anno play? Is it a 4X or a 4 door ford ♥♥♥♥♥?

[StalwartSoul]

Anno plays more like Sim City. You find lands to settle and build your colony. For your city to advance you will need to keep your population happy and find resources that will satisfy them. With level 1 citizens, you have the basics - food, drink, etc. And it gets more complicated from there. You need to keep settling new lands to keep up with your population, either because the place is getting too crowded or you need the next resource in the production line.

It has a lot micromanaging. You'll need to make sure that your city is running top notch in terms of production. The production line needs to be built in a certain way to maximize the natural resources and speed up the entire process. Population needs and wants are not generated from one source. The more "advanced" the product the longer the production chain.

There is little to no battles in Anno. I never enjoyed them as I felt they were primitive in a way.

[blonded]

Unlike Sim City 2015 you could expand your territories and do whatever you wanted with them. In one of my game sessions for 2070 I managed to build up a metropolis after my first city got too big for its island. I decided to construct about 10 nuclear silos and nuke my old city using all 10 warheads.

No one really cared, or died from what I could see, and the island was still useable because ♥♥♥♥ physics and radiation. All I got was an island with a big ugly clearing.

[Metatron]

Originally posted by Cheesicle:

Unlike Sim City 2015 you could expand your territories and do whatever you wanted with them. In one of my game sessions for 2070 I managed to build up a metropolis after my first city got too big for its island. I decided to construct about 10 nuclear silos and nuke my old city using all 10 warheads.

No one really cared, or died from what I could see, and the island was still useable because ♥♥♥♥ physics and radiation. All I got was an island with a big ugly clearing.

The ecology system doesn't get f.cked after nuclear bombing? I remember it always gave a big minus to the ecology

[Pugmonk]

I find it plays more like settlers. You need to farm/mine resources to keep your citizens happy then as you expand your citizens become greedy little buggers and demand more and more complex items to stay happy and keep your population growing. With most of the higher quality resources being only avaliable on some islands so you need to expand and set up some trade networks which can get crazy out of hand.

In short
Not turn based
High focus on resource managment and production
Lots of trading between self and other to maintain production lines.

[Bad Whippet]

It's not so much a Simcity because you don't have much in way of residential design and such (all residentials are identical buildings), but it is a much deeper game. It definitely emphasises building a successful settlement where money and the environment must be managed, but it also contains strategy elements like resource gathering, researching, trading and expansion that you will find in games like Age Of Empires. You also can opt to deal with competing factions and pirates, or instead play a pure building game instead.

I came to it late after it sat in my library for years (I was put off by the fetch-and-carry tutorials in campaign mode - so ignore those and keep in mind that it IS a city-builder at heart).

[Razor Karu]

You have people. They want things. If you get them things, they pay you more on taxes.

IF you want the better people paying higher taxes, you set up production chains, shipping routes, and token defenses for those routes.

Keep doing this and fine tuning the system until you're an economic force to be reckoned with in the region. Then you can do as you please.

[blonded]

Originally posted by Metatron:

Originally posted by Cheesicle:

Unlike Sim City 2015 you could expand your territories and do whatever you wanted with them. In one of my game sessions for 2070 I managed to build up a metropolis after my first city got too big for its island. I decided to construct about 10 nuclear silos and nuke my old city using all 10 warheads.

No one really cared, or died from what I could see, and the island was still useable because ♥♥♥♥ physics and radiation. All I got was an island with a big ugly clearing.

The ecology system doesn't get f.cked after nuclear bombing? I remember it always gave a big minus to the ecology

I can't recall, sorry about that. The only time I remember when nuclear warheads caused a blow to the ecobalance was during the campaign mission against F.A.T.H.E.R. Now THAT was annoying as heck. Maybe launching nuke at islands does affect the ecobalance and I wasn't look.