Full Offline - Including ARC features

[CE-Proof]

Greetings!

I've always been fond of the Anno series and own quite a few of the older ones.
Ever since 2070 came out, I had a sceptic eye on it.

For years I've been thinking about buying the game due to its amazing gameplay, however I've always decided against it.

1. On the one hand due to the inhumane DRM, which would use up one of your limited installations every time you change your PC's hardware. I have an external sound-card. I really don't want to contact support every 3 days because I plug and unplug my sound card a lot.
   
2. On the other hand due to the lack of true offline.

Anno has always been my traveling game. Leave the house for a few days or weeks, or riding in a train, I would have my laptop with some Anno game on it.
Naturally, I can NOT be connected to the internet all that time.

So after extensive and futile research on the topic I would like to address you long-time Anno 2070 players:

Has some kind of mod been released yet that would allow for offline play with all the functionally?
A real, true and full offline mod?

I know it can be played offline with a limited Ark, but that is not what I am looking for.
My laptop is for offline use only, and I will play this game on the road a lot.
This is what kept me from buying the game before, I really hope the community found a way after all these years.

Cheers!

[Dragonrubi]

1. As I know for the DRM there is not a limited installations, I have changed PC sometimes always installed Anno 2070 and never had a problem with it.

2. I think there are a couple of buffs that you will lose playing offline, but nothing really game breaking, you can play fully offline.

The only annoyance is if you don’t have an Ubisoft account, you must create one, and also you need to install manually the ubi launcher or uplay from ubisoft webpage because the one that comes with this game in Steam is old and will crash. Other than that if you really enjoy this kind of game is great and these small annoyances shouldn’t stop you to get it.

[General Chaøs™]

The main real problem with the offline mode is not having access to the Ark's warehouse. Since researching things in the Academy takes ages ingame. Without the Ark's warehouse you cannot transfer hard to research stuff like the Geothermal power plant bringing it from your completed map to a fresh new one.

As far as the buffs you can activate in the ark, they act like the buffs you can have in your warehouses. If you use the ark in online mode, but ur net goes down or you play while in offline mode that can hurt your colonies. Since you might of made your colonies focused around the buffs you were getting from the ark.

A workaround when it comes to the ark buffs for me is I use only the vehicle buffs in the ark. This way if I lose my net while I was playing or for a long period of time the worse case is my transport ships move a bit slower, cost a bit more maintenance wise, or have slightly lower cargo capacity.

If you play your Anno2070 in this manner then the Ark Warehouse and buffs not being active in offline play will seem trivial. None of the other Anno's had such a feature and I played them just fine. I played Anno2070 offline for a week since my net went down and thoroughly enjoyed my game still.

Of course the Ark warehouse and it's upgrades should be allowed offline,but despite their terrible decision the game itself is more than worth playing. I enjoy it as much as Anno1404 (my fav Anno).

[CE-Proof]

Thank you for your comments!

Originally posted by dragonrubi:

1. As I know for the DRM there is not a limited installations, I have changed PC sometimes always installed Anno 2070 and never had a problem with it.

Well, it's a fact. Just take a look at the steam store page. It's 12/24/2017 and I just checked: Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: TAGES™
3 machine activation limit
I am glad that you hadn't had any problems so far, good for you!

Originally posted by General Chaøs™:

The main real problem with the offline mode is not having access to the Ark's warehouse.

I have thoroughly researched about the unavailability of the Ark in offline mode.
A colleague of mine played the game quite a lot a few years back. From what I saw and what we talked about I can say this for certain:
I am confident that I will miss the Ark functionality too much.

Offline without Ark is not an option to me.

Now, I don't want to start a discussion on how things weren't well made or how they are supposed to be.

Instead, back to topic:
I have read about quite a lot of mods and even cracks.

All I was thinking is: If there are cracks that do really invasive changes to the game, maybe some harmless offline mod would have been invented as well?

[Dragonrubi]

Originally posted by CE-Proof:

Thank you for your comments!

Originally posted by dragonrubi:

1. As I know for the DRM there is not a limited installations, I have changed PC sometimes always installed Anno 2070 and never had a problem with it.

Well, it's a fact. Just take a look at the steam store page. It's 12/24/2017 and I just checked: Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: TAGES™
3 machine activation limit
I am glad that you hadn't had any problems so far, good for you!

Perhaps I am wrong but there are a lot of things offdate (like the Uplay version that you should install manually :P) but i remember reading in other post that the install limit is not anymore, like i told i had reinstalled it several times and never had a problem a warning or had to do anything, the game is linked to your Uplay account..

[Eternal Wait]

Yeah I remember feeling hopeless about the ark online thingy after loading my saved game (100+ hours) to find that my islands are suffering energy shortage because the ark offered +30% to nuclear and playing offline I no longer had that. I got so mad that I closed the game and modded it by adding 30% to the nuclear power and problem solved xD

So just figure out what are the most important effects you gain from the ark and just add them to the base game and forget about the ark.

[CE-Proof]

Originally posted by Eternal Wait:

Yeah I remember feeling hopeless about the ark online thingy after loading my saved game (100+ hours) to find that my islands are suffering energy shortage because the ark offered +30% to nuclear and playing offline I no longer had that. I got so mad that I closed the game and modded it by adding 30% to the nuclear power and problem solved xD

So just figure out what are the most important effects you gain from the ark and just add them to the base game and forget about the ark.

A very nice way to get around the problem! I'll definitely keep it in mind, thanks for that!