How many playable factions are there?

[TeddY]

So I saw in a video of Anno 1800 that thre is a Chinese female character. This led to me wondering are there other factions in the game that is playable? It would be very interesting to play as a Chinese faction with a reimagining of traditional Chinese architeture with industrial revolution features/add on.

[GrumpyOldMan]

There are no factions. You can choose a Chinese Avatar but you'll still have the same architecture, western on the northern islands and south american on the southern islands, since the architecture is defined by the region you settle not by your own (avatar) cultural background.

[TeddY]

Well, that sucks. but thanks!

[Buntkreuz]

maybe they have a go and provide a full overhaul of architecture in later DLCs.
In my eyes the attempt in 1404 was just halfassed, but the basic idea of having different civilizations you could play as was generally a good one.
I wouldl ike to see alternative civs to play as later, that mostly vary in their look (different shipskins and building skins) but also in a few production chains (meaning instead of potatoes and making schnapps of it, they harvest rice and make alcohol from that, the twist could be that rice is also used as a secondary food source to vary gameplay a bit).

Basically they could have an Anno with several "factions" to play as. I would dislike though if you again had to play with them even if you dont want to and if they again would be as halfassed as the orient in 1404.
We will see where this goes. They kinda had a good way of doing that in Anno 1701.
There you had the choice whether you want to build a northern or southern settlment.
They could easily do that again.

[TeddY]

Yea that sounds really good, like I don't need a faction to be entirely unqiue in playstyle, just being unique visually would go a long way in Anno.

[Warlord]

In Anno the different visuals are based on location and this game will be no different. The only time there were actual separate factions was 2070 but then there wasn’t separate visuals depending on environment until deep sea expansion was released. In 2205 depending on environment visuals changes indicated different “factions” with their own unique buildings/requirements. In 1800 there will be something similar since different zones exist.