Micromanagement galore

[Daonar]

Why there is no functionality to auto-balance island production and demand? Why can't we just get a heli view, assign that many ships to that many islands, define these goods as "tradeable" and these are non-tradeable - and have the captains and the crews to handle all the details, such as exact amount of bricks and beer to load there and unload here?

I mean, it's cool. It's beautiful. But we really can't enyoy THE GAME due to constant need to micro everything. And it gets worse with every island. And, due to resource diversity, you HAVE to build on more than one island, more than one region; there isn't an option to play tall.

This, plus game being VERY questionable UI-wise, kills the experience as soon as the wow effect fades after the first 7-10 hours of playtime.

As for the UI, I'm talking about scenarios like this: I need to check if I have enough Steel produced. OK, I will find the production building and check there - here's the number. But, it consumes Iron Ore. Do I have enough Iron Ore produced?

My expectations: an icon showing this status from within Steel production chain. Or at least being able to click on Iron Ore from there and see similar stats for Ore.
Reality: I have to close the Steel-related UI completely, find Iron Ore production building or a warehouse and pop similar UI for ore; good luck validating complex chains - it's simply not possible...

[Nenne.]

Or just check out production charts
Its all in there.

[banan1996.1996]

"Why there is no functionality to auto-balance island production and demand? Why can't we just get a heli view, assign that many ships to that many islands, define these goods as "tradeable" and these are non-tradeable - and have the captains and the crews to handle all the details, such as exact amount of bricks and beer to load there and unload here?"

Because one of the main aspects of the game and the entire series is resource management. If it was all done pretty much automatically then we would lose that aspect of the game, and it's a core part of the series. Simplified resource management was one of the things which caused Anno 2205 to be heavily criticised and many people consider it to be the worst Anno in the series. If you are looking for simplified resource management, I am afraid you picked the wrong game.

For making sure you produce enough, I recommend checking the statistics menu, you have almost everything in one menu, just gotta get familiar with it. There you can check how many tons per minute of goods are produced, consumed, and how many tons got delivered via trade routes in the recent past.
If you need some help with understanding the statistics menu, there is a wiki article about it: https://anno1800.fandom.com/wiki/Statistics
If you prefer a video, there are also some video guides on youtube, like this one: https://youtu.be/ABXsQvcKrXU

[Redmiles]

Go play another game then.
Anno always has been about this. I take it you're new to the series.

[Daonar]

Originally posted by Nenne.:

Or just check out production charts
Its all in there.

No it's NOT all there. These charts do not take trade into account - a major blocker.

"I recommend checking the statistics menu, you have almost everything in one menu"

This menu does not take trade, your own planned trade, into account. The game does not provide a way to balance that, sadly. We can only see per-island production vs. consumption, but not planned income from trade and planned loss from trade.

[banan1996.1996]

Trade routes and passive trading are included there. Open the storage tab, select an island, select a good and then on the right side you will have Trade Routes and Passive Trade tabs that show you the most recent history of the trade. Based on that history you can estimate if you transport enough tons of goods. The storage tab also includes data such as the Trend or Stock over time, which suggest whether the stock of the selected good is increasing, decreasing or stable.

If you want to compare production and consumption rates between several islands, you can select several islands on the left side while holding Ctrl. If you produce a good on one island and it's needed on another island, by selecting both those islands the production tab will tell you if the production matches the consumption. If you produce at least as much as you consume (and that production is stable), then only the trade routes would have to be adjusted, if you encounter supply problems with that good.

In some of the older games there were even no production and consumption statistics, you had to use just the numbers of goods in storage to figure out the proper balance. Anno 1800 generally provides you with the necessary information. However, it doesn't hold your hand and it won't tell you immediately if there's a problem and what that problem is, and how to fix it. That's the part of the resource management that the player has to figure out on their own. Learning how to use the statistics menu and many other menus can be the first step to good resource management.

[Daonar]

"show you the most recent history of the trade"

Thing is, I don't want to see recent history. I want to see PLANNED in/out amounts for every good, adjusted per the same unit of time that is used to display production/consumption values. Planned - as in my own configured active trade routes (surely I can't rely on passive trade for logistic planning).

And this information is absent from the UI, it's just not available to the player.

[Daonar]

Let me try to explain thy this is important. Every time your island expands, your logistics need to change. With 3 islands early game you probably have 1 trade route, maybe 2, and it's fine; few hours later it's 2-3 regions with 5-8 islands and potentially 10-15 trade routes.

Each needs to be verified and adjusted according to changed demands. And game provides no easy way to get the actual numbers; the closest we get is to "try to measure trade route travel times hop to hop, divide amount of goods turned over per unit of time and compare it with production/consumption".

It just snowballs like crazy essentially killing the game. Also there isn't a real pause, so you can't pause a game to fix your routes. You're saying somebody enjoys that? Well if you say so...

[banan1996.1996]

I understand that you are saying what you want to have in the game and why it is important. I know there are more players like you who would want to have that kind of information.

The problem with what you are requesting is that those tons/min values for trade routes would vary in time, depending on wind (if using sailing ships or airships), depending on storage issues, queues at piers etc. So either way that kind of data wouldn't be very reliable.

There are many people who enjoy the game for what it is, enjoy the resource management, enjoy its complexity etc. Of course, not everyone is going to enjoy those things in the same way, and it's fine, it's impossible to make it good for every potential player.

Anyway, what I was trying to convey in my replies is how you can handle the resource management with the information and tools that the game already has. It may take some time to learn and get used to it, especially if you haven't played any Anno before, but it is certainly doable.

[Daonar]

"would vary in time, depending on wind"

The same applies to e.g. production. Depending on supply of raw materials, final product's surplus might fluctuate. Additionally, in case where specific material is being consumed only by production chain, it's actual consumption might be dependent on availability of other materials used in the same production chain: Steel forge, if we have coal shortage then production would stop and Iron consumption would temporarily decrease until coal availability normalizes.

Yes the data related to production/consumption is displayed in the stats. How is that different from fluctuations in trade ship travel times based on wind/pier availability? No different.

[banan1996.1996]

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[Daonar]

I found similar topic here on steam forums, dated back in 2019 at game's release date. It turns out that previous version (2204) indid DID had proper management and planning tools, which have been removed with the release of 1800 for no reason.

How ironic. But taken that dev's ignored this for three years, it's obvious they don't care and this mandatory feature won't be returned into the game.

[banan1996.1996]

As I said in my first post here:

Originally posted by banan1996.1996:

Simplified resource management was one of the things which caused Anno 2205 to be heavily criticised and many people consider it to be the worst Anno in the series.

It's not the case of Anno 2205 having proper management and planning tools, it's the case of 2205 having completely different logistics and resource management. In 2205 if a resource was present in the region, it was available on every island of that region without the need to transport it between islands. In 1800, however, you need to transport goods between islands via ships and trade routes.
In 2205 transport between regions was also simplified, you decided to transport x tons per minute from one region to another, and that's what was happening, you didn't even have to build a ship to assign it there, you just decided about the amount and you just paid some maintenance costs to keep the route going. In 1800 you cannot decide to transport specifically x tons per minute, you need to transport x tons on a ship of your choice and that transport doesn't happen instantly, it takes real time based on ship's speed, the distance, amount of cargo etc.

In 1800 the series went back to more realistic and more complex resource management, after having significantly simplified resource management in 2205. And Anno 2205 was heavily criticised for being so simplified, especially by experienced players and fans of the series, while 1800 is generally praised for returning to the core of the series, for bringing back the original rules of the resource management (and other game systems).

While I understand all of this might not seem logical or reasonable to you, more complex resource management is something that majority of players actually want from Anno games, so by changing the resource management system between 2205 and 1800 the devs didn't actually ignore anything, they actually listened to what the majority of the playerbase wanted. Of course, some people might have preferred 2205 system, just like maybe you would, but it's impossible to satisfy everyone. Their decision to go back to the roots of the series instead of sticking to 2205's criticised systems seems to have been a good decision, based on the sales numbers of Anno 1800 and its reception.

[Daonar]

OK, however, providing PARTIAL information about resource in/outflows - this is the current implementation in Anno 1800 - makes no sense at all.

We see data from production/consumption, not from trade. Both numbers are not solid and fluctuate over time. Makes no sense. Either remove it all, or include all.

However, UI flaws are also "getting back to the series"?

I'm talking about a situation where you can't just click on a resource icon from anywhere and get to the detailed statistic screen related to that type of resource. The screen itself is available within the game (with the incompleteness flaws originally outlined), but is not easily accessible, getting to it requires many extra clicks.

[banan1996.1996]

I wouldn't call it partial information. You have information about how many tons arrived and departed and how many minutes ago it happened, you have information about production and consumption per minute, you have storage over time graphs, production over time graphs, information is there, current implementation makes sense to me.

You saying again that both numbers fluctuate over time doesn't give me any room for arguments. As I explained before, there are specific differences between production/consumption and trade, stating that there are no differences doesn't reinforce your point. I am afraid I am unable to explain it in a better way at the moment.

Lack of specific UI features, such as clicking on something to open a specific menu, is an entirely different topic. Of course UI isn't perfect, UI is such an area of games that usually always has room for improvements, suggestions for UI improvements pretty much never end.

You dislike that you don't have information presented in a specific way, that's fine, either accept this and learn to play the game as is, or write about it on ubisoft discussion forums to try to forward this as your feedback. Further discussions about what's not in the game won't get us anywhere. If you needed help with what's in the game, that's something I could take care of.

[Daonar]

"I wouldn't call it partial information"

But it is partial. Your stock depends on production, consumption, active trade (your own routes) and passive trade. Out of these 4 factors, first 3 are predictable: production, consumption, your own active trade. But, for some reason, statistics screen only takes 2 out of those 3 factors into account - production and consumption - ignoring active trade.

Therefore it's partial. And I don't see any logic in including one part of predictable data in the statistics screen and not including another.

As for the UI, of course there are multiple ways to look at it. However, in a game that is an in-depth economical, production and logistics sim, UI that is effective for getting answers about your core game mechanics is crucial. Forcing us to make a dozen extra clicks only to find statistics for Iron after seeing Steel production being low in the refinery is not good. Not just "not good"; it would be a minor thing in any other game - but in a game like this, it's a fundamental UI flaw, to a point I'd call it a bug.

It's as if for every time you need to turn your car you had to use a special key, putting it into a separate keyhole and turning it - instead of just steering a wheel. It's really THAT inconvenient.