Finished the campaign - Some tips

[Jeff]

I am really enjoying this game. I thought I would pass along some thoughts because maybe others are struggling with the same thing I am. Or maybe it was just me.

1) Make more work clothes and sell them, it gives you decent money in the early game and you have plenty of land to make the clothes.

2) There is a blueprint mode. When using the panel where you click on a building to build, etc. in the bottom right of that panel is a blueprint button (It is tiny and I played four hours without knowing it was there). Voila, you can lay out your entire city and it places ghost buildings down for you. After you leave blueprint mode, the entire ghost city is there for you to see and you can click on the upgrade button to build any of the ghost buildings at your leisure. (Can also build many at a time). It is so genius and perfect. I love love love blueprint mode!

3) When looking at a building tree, pay attention to production times. For example, the bread tree. The grain takes 1 minute, but the mill takes only 30 seconds but the bread takes 1 minute. So just use simple ratio math here. You need 2 grain farms, one mill, and 2 bread factories to keep everything as efficient as possible. When you are looking at the trees, they tell you this information so you can figure out exactly how many you need to make.

4) This game is missing a calculator. If I have 1000 workers, I want to know how much bread I need, etc. But there are some online you can google if you are interested.

5) In the campaign, when you get to a spot where you need to build a courthouse (or justice house I think it was called), take your time and make sure you build plenty of ships. I don't want to spoil it, but the game goes better if you have warships ready and waiting. Ten of them, minimum. I only had 2 at the time. I still beat the campaign, so don't fret about it, but I do wish I had known.

6) The expeditions are not mandatory unless a quest says so. You don't have to go. Some resources help you with specific things. Be sure to select the best kind of resources. I did not confirm this, but if you take upgraded resources, they confer a bigger success bonus than others. For example, chopped wood helps with crafting, but so do sails. Sails give a bigger bonus.

7) Population control is key. Every pop type has a list of demands. They initially only want the basic demands. They won't want the higher demands unless/until you grow the population! So if you have an island where you just want them to farm and mine resources, you don't need elaborate bread factories, etc. there. Just build enough to run your island and stop. They will be content without ever having bread. It is only when you keep growing the population on that island when they will demand it and become unhappy.

8) Luxury resources are good for minimizing riots, especially if you let your newspaper tell the truth. But you don't need them. So if you can't make schnapps on one island because potatoes don't grow there, don't waste your time transporting schnapps to the island unless you really want to.

9) There is a tourist harbor. You get a modest amount of coin from that. Same with buying portions of AI islands. The AI will sometimes buy it back, though. You do not need either to stay profitable.

10) Understand that profit is determined by needs being met for your people (via taxes). I'm using hypothetical numbers here, so please don't hold me to the numbers but let's say an artisan gives you 10 coin per population. just click on a building and you can see the list of needs and whether or not they are being met. If you hover over the different needs, it will tell you two things. A) How much your pop will grow B) How much your tax revenue grows. So by fulfilling demands, that one building will contain more population. It will also provide more revenue for you via taxes.

So to take this further, if you build hogs and sausage to satisfy the worker demand for sausages, you will see your income go red for a period because the industry is draining your economy with maintenance costs. But you will then see it go back into the green as the industry starts producing and needs get met. The profit from your workers massively outweighs the maintenance cost of the industry.

Key notes here: If you overproduce goods, the extra maintenance costs will eat up your profits.
2nd Note: Sometimes you will see your income fluctuating between negative and positive. More times than not, this is due to population being dissatisfied and leaving...but after they leave, you have less mouths to feed and then you start to satisfy those who remain...then the population grows but it grows too much and then they start to not have enough and leave. It flows back and forth like this. If you can identify which industry is not quite making enough of a good, you can cause your profits to turn positive and stay positive.

11) The campaign ended abruptly. I was given an island and a mission to get 500 engineers and then poof, it just ends and I didn't even realize it. Just saying this so folks will know.

12) Trade routes was how I used to move resources in old anno games. Not this one. Use charters instead. Trade routes will frustrate you and get wonky. Bear in mind that if/when you get oil, there is a third resource transport type.

13) Oil. This one was frustrating at first.
A) Build a oil field. Make sure it's range includes as many oil resources as possible.
B) Next, click on the oil field and it will let you plop down oil drills at every oil field within its range.
C) Next, build a oil harbor.
D) You don't need oil storage right away, it only helps improve your storage; The harbor has some storage it provides
E) You must use railroads and it must connect in one contiguous line from the oil field all the way to the oil harbor. It can cross roads, but it cannot use the same space as roads.
F) The oil industry requires a lot of cement so make sure you have adequate cement factory in place
G) The oil harbor will send a train automatically to your oil fields and collect oil.
H) If you ahve multiple oil fields, you can re-use track, but bear in mind the trains will halt if another train is occupying a portion of track. It will continue once the train moves on.
I) You MUST have steamships to transport your oil
J) You MUST have a oil harbor at the location you want to transport your oil to
K) You cannot build steamships unless you have electricity
L) You cannot have electricity unless you have oil.
M) So if you didn't catch the sequence of logic there, it is possible for one island to have oil, and another island needs it but you cannot transport it there until you build steam ships. This means the island with the oil MUST get cement, glass, etc. to make a steam ship harbor. Then and only then can you freely transport oil to other islands.

14) If your happiness is high enough, the buildings like fire/police/hospital will have volunteer units. You have to manually click on them and you can release them to help with disasters. The volunteer units are just as effective as the regular unit. I did encounter bugs from time to time where a hospital was giving me fire info and I couldn't send volunteers as it was all bugged out. This happens if you try to resolve a disaster while in blueprint mode. Don't click on those buildings while in blueprint mode.

15) There are fantastic items in this game, but they are very expensive. Your best bet is to get them via expeditions. Which are time consuming and also troublesome. You don't ever "need" them but they help.

16) Zoos just help your island to be attractive. You don't need them near your population, put it somewhere far away and you are fine. (The attractiveness helps increase your profit from tourism)

17) The most important item you need from the new world to help your population needs is cotton. I'm not saying the other items aren't good to have. But Cotton is a prime item for fur coats and you can't get engineers without fur coats.

18) Charters work for transporting goods between old and new world

19) Don't be afraid to have an island do nothing but make wood and bricks and set up charters to send them elsewhere. I had one island I called "Potato island" and all it did was make thousands of schnapps and then I chartered it to my other islands. It probably wasn't necessary because it is a luxury good, but the Irish loved me.

20) Conquering someone's island requires you to destroy all of their guns and invade their port with your navy. Every now and then you may sail past the pirate lady's island and she will take pot shots at you and your ship might fire back. You might get a message about how you must continue your invasion soon or it will be lost. Ignore it...that "invasion" was your ship firing back at something.

Speaking of which, I made a navy of 15 frigate ships and tried to invade that pirate island. I failed. She sunk them all. And then she was angry and produced about 6-8 gunboats and harassed my trade ships, etc. I should have waited for ship of the line or steamships. I don't think the campaign is designed for you to kick her butt.

21) Qing likes it when you publish the truth in the newspapers. The other lady likes it when you use propaganda.

I'm sure there are more things to offer. But that is all I can think of for now. I hope you ENJOY the game as much as I have so far!!

[Siruss]

This is a lot of great information.
If I may make one suggestion to add that I did not see, but I think is game-changing. That is the commuter harbor. It's so huge to merge your workforce between all your islands. It also is necessary to maximize profit on your "main" island with the higher tier populations. Then you can def use another island not only for what they produce, but for the lower tier workforce. It lets you get rid of the low tier stuff to make room on your main island, or just ship it. Really helps to utilize various resources on other islands sine you don't need to build up the higher tier population to get what you need.
Great advice though!

[Stabby McStabStab]

I just finished the campaign as well but never moved past Artisans. I never got oil or electricity up and running but I plan to do a sandbox game so I can start from scratch and learn from the mistakes I made in my campaign playthrough.

[neutrino]

Originally posted by Jeff:

11) The campaign ended abruptly. I was given an island and a mission to get 500 engineers and then poof, it just ends and I didn't even realize it. Just saying this so folks will know.

Not sure why so many people keep saying this. Not only does the story end at a logical point, but the game throws up a full-screen overlay stating "Campaign End." Then and only then do you get the last quest from Sister to get some engineers, and that's just to let the player know that now sandbox mode has begun.

[CaPY]

I don't play campaing in anno games. Though I think 2070 and earlier had good ones. But I never play campaign in anno. Same as scenarios in cities skylines or simcity. Just let me build.

[archonsod]

Nice. Few observations of my own -

Originally posted by Jeff:

6) The expeditions are not mandatory unless a quest says so. You don't have to go. Some resources help you with specific things. Be sure to select the best kind of resources. I did not confirm this, but if you take upgraded resources, they confer a bigger success bonus than others. For example, chopped wood helps with crafting, but so do sails. Sails give a bigger bonus.

It tells you on the provisioning screen for the expedition what benefit a given cargo will give (usually per 50t). You want to match your bonuses to the skills the captain thinks may be necessary (it'll tick these off if you load a good which provides the requisite bonus). Rations are the only exception; it seems every expedition will permit you to use rations to reduce morale loss after each event, so they're always useful (though again, the better the food the bigger the bonus). Note things will be pre-ticked on the provisioning screen if the ship has bonuses from crew or items.
One thing to note before taking an expedition is that it's possible to gain items or resources from certain events, which requires you have space on the ship to take them. Usually you'll be able to choose what to take and what to discard. If you intend to have a ship solely for expeditions it's useful to keep a small supply of surplus ship items just to let you specialise the loadout towards the required skills so it's easier to keep one hold space free (or ditch cargo in the middle of the adventure).

9) There is a tourist harbor. You get a modest amount of coin from that.

Income is dependent on the island's 'beauty' rating. It'll also offer up free items (in the form of crew/staff) from time to time, so it's a good way of getting bonuses for your union hall style building, or just more cash via selling them to the AI.

10) Understand that profit is determined by needs being met for your people (via taxes).

That's also what the 'luxury' goods help with - a quick and dirty rule is that fulfilling needs will increase the population number, while fulfilling a luxury will increase the amount of tax each one is willing to pay.

12) Trade routes was how I used to move resources in old anno games. Not this one. Use charters instead.

It depends (I've never had a route go wonky?). Chartering gets the AI to do the shipping, but naturally they don't do it for free. Using your own trade route is free (minus the upkeep cost of the ship) but requires the ship. Generally speaking it's cheaper to run your own trade route if you can fill the ship's hold - if you only need one extra good transporting though it's often cheaper to use a charter than run a half empty ship.

[neutrino]

Originally posted by CPY:

I don't play campaing in anno games. Though I think 2070 and earlier had good ones. But I never play campaign in anno. Same as scenarios in cities skylines or simcity. Just let me build.

So why troll this thread then?

[Jeff]

Originally posted by archonsod:

Nice. Few observations of my own -

Originally posted by Jeff:

6) The expeditions are not mandatory unless a quest says so. You don't have to go. Some resources help you with specific things. Be sure to select the best kind of resources. I did not confirm this, but if you take upgraded resources, they confer a bigger success bonus than others. For example, chopped wood helps with crafting, but so do sails. Sails give a bigger bonus.

It tells you on the provisioning screen for the expedition what benefit a given cargo will give (usually per 50t). You want to match your bonuses to the skills the captain thinks may be necessary (it'll tick these off if you load a good which provides the requisite bonus). Rations are the only exception; it seems every expedition will permit you to use rations to reduce morale loss after each event, so they're always useful (though again, the better the food the bigger the bonus). Note things will be pre-ticked on the provisioning screen if the ship has bonuses from crew or items.
One thing to note before taking an expedition is that it's possible to gain items or resources from certain events, which requires you have space on the ship to take them. Usually you'll be able to choose what to take and what to discard. If you intend to have a ship solely for expeditions it's useful to keep a small supply of surplus ship items just to let you specialise the loadout towards the required skills so it's easier to keep one hold space free (or ditch cargo in the middle of the adventure).

9) There is a tourist harbor. You get a modest amount of coin from that.

Income is dependent on the island's 'beauty' rating. It'll also offer up free items (in the form of crew/staff) from time to time, so it's a good way of getting bonuses for your union hall style building, or just more cash via selling them to the AI.

10) Understand that profit is determined by needs being met for your people (via taxes).

That's also what the 'luxury' goods help with - a quick and dirty rule is that fulfilling needs will increase the population number, while fulfilling a luxury will increase the amount of tax each one is willing to pay.

12) Trade routes was how I used to move resources in old anno games. Not this one. Use charters instead.

It depends (I've never had a route go wonky?). Chartering gets the AI to do the shipping, but naturally they don't do it for free. Using your own trade route is free (minus the upkeep cost of the ship) but requires the ship. Generally speaking it's cheaper to run your own trade route if you can fill the ship's hold - if you only need one extra good transporting though it's often cheaper to use a charter than run a half empty ship.

Regarding the trade routes being wonky.

I want to send work clothes to an island and then bring back the ingredients for goulash (peppers and beef). I set up a clipper to do that.

At first, it works great, but eventually the island doesn't need work clothes anymore, so the clipper keeps taking more pants, filling up 1, 2, 3, and eventually 4 of its slots with pants even though I only ever wanted one slot to be filled with pants. It gets to teh point where it is going back and forth carrying nothing but pants and no longer brings back the beef and peppers.

The trade routes have to be set up overly simplified. In previous anno games, I used to be able to do complex trading between islands to ensure every island had what it needed.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Jeff: add a third stop at a neutral trader harbor (bleakworth, kahina, fopguy) to sell off your excess goods. Also, set the clothes to be passively sold past like 50.


i suggest just buildin the work clothes fabs at the island though, production and trading are complicated enough without trading baseline available-everywhere goods.

[Jetserf]

Does anyone know how to build a news stand? It's apparently a worker building.

nevermind. I had to change the building sorting and then I found it under park ornaments. It's not under the other sort setting though.

[UbiCosmos]

Wow, this is a lot of really wonderful and helpful information OP. Thank you for compiling all of it together and sharing it here!