f13.net forums - Anno 1404: Dawn of Discovery

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July 21, 2025, 04:37:13 PM

we're back, baby

I find myself hating nobles.

You want what now??? ACK!

I'm pretty annoyed with part 6 of the campaign atm. It's not that it's difficult, it's that the method it has of teaching you the ropes is to do something unexpected so that you will pretty much need to restart the level to counter it.

Set up your army in the north but move 1 unit to the south? Hey, look the entire landing force is in the south, you really should have set up everything there initially.

Build a supply house? Hey, look there's not enough stone, you really should have built an extra quarry at the beginning of the mission.

Build supplies for the army? Whoops your nobles have been drinking all the beer, you should have built extra breweries first thing.

Make some war machines? What there's no wood? Yep, should have built more loggers at the beginning of the scenario also.

Hey look, you're out of cash after all that building and there is no one to trade with so you should have built up your tax base earlier...

It's the poorest design of all the campaign levels, but that makes sense as it's explaining the poorest element of the game. Land combat is very silly in this game and I wish they didn't have it. I would have preferred to keep all things on the waves.

If you're engaged in land combat in Continuous Mode, then you're doing it wrong. You can dominate with a strong enough fleet.

I like how they went with a slower paced, strategy-focused combat model though. But in execution, a good player can take down an AI opponent before they get within striking distance via a strong navy.

Yeah, that Campaign level has one too many side objectives.

Bought this last night. Walked into EB Gamestop and the doofus working there asked if he could help me before he saw it was me. I gave my normal "I highly doubt it, I'm a pc gamer" answer. He actually apologized and said "That rack is all we have". "I know, and it's fucking pathetic" They of course don't have Anno 1404, but I had to try since I still have that $10 or whatever worth of console tradeins that's been sitting on a card for over a year, since they never have anything I actually want to buy. I go next door to walmart and buy Anno 1404, and hey there's Sacred 2 for $20. Fucking EB Gamestop.

Only had time to run the first part of the campaign, last one I played was the second in the series, so there's some nice upgrades. Actually seeing the little green line(s) that tell you a structure is connected to a road is such a nice change.

My only gripe is the text is tiny and tough to read from across the room. Game looks great, though. No, I have one other gripe. Give me a fucking chance to lay a road out before you start with the "NO RAODS? HOW ARE TEH PEAZENTS GOING TO..." Blah.

Quote from: Sky on August 06, 2009, 08:18:39 AM

My only gripe is the text is tiny and tough to read from across the room.

The grid system could be improved with thicker lines every 5 spaces or something to help line things up and break apart the mass of squares.

I think I'm overplaying the campaign. I'm in the second or third part where you have to start up the shipyard, you go by the lady's island after she sails off for the crusade and start a quest to stabilize her island. I went into full on stabilization mode and finished her island, my island and the monastery island and got them all up to a very profitable setup before finishing the part...and still somehow missed three quests!

It was a good lesson because it doesn't unlock all the stuff you can do, so I was struggling with limited resources/goods to make a profit before I finally figured out how to properly set taxation Ohhhhh, I see.

I had a pretty solid economy going by selling to the friendly lord dude, but was always -300 or so in the hole. Bumped the tax lever and blam, a thousand in the green with happy citizens! Life got much easier after that.

Documentation, do they just expect you to buy the Prima guide or something? Quite a bit to figure out by trial and error.

I figured stuff out by reading threads and trial and error. To find quests, you have to click on EVERYTHING. Random buildings that you own, that they own, even if there isn't an arrow. One quest is launched from you clicking on their church. That kind of thing. It's dumb.

If you're in the hole, you either don't have a high enough population or they aren't being satisfied.

Not having a high enough population is just when you've got more auxiliary structures than your population can support - too many extra harbors or small warehouses or ships. The solution to this is to (obviously) build more housing (and the proper infrastructure/goods)

A good indicator of issues like this is when costs get out of hand when you leave auto-ascension on and they bump themselves up to the next level before you have any infrastructure/goods ready for them - you get less cash than you did having a fully satisfied lesser house in it's place, and you have twice as many people living in the same housing square, making it worse - they're eating twice your resources and bitching at you for it.

In general, I block ascension rights and manually upgrade houses to citizen and then keep them there. Citizens are a great balance of annoyance and profit. If you want, you can easily game the system by creating goods and a trade route solely to sell them - Carpets, Rope, War machines all sell very well and a few factories churning out goods that go straight to the NPCs will pay for quite a lot of tax shortfall.

I have never messed with tax rates, but it occurs to me that I can tax citizens as "happy" and they will never advance to the next level (you need euphoric to jump to the next level). This is better than denying ascension rights because all houses will upgrade until they are citizens and then stop. I will have to try this.

I should come up with a list of things you should know or that will save you time.... here's a few off the top of my head.

All trade routes should go from Supply->Main Island->NPC so that any overflow will be automatically sold off.

Oriental boats are cheaper and better than Occidental counterparts. They're harder to make (shipyards require mosiacs, the orient glass equivalent). Switch to an all orient fleet when you can to keep costs low. Small = 3 cargo, 2 item slots and only cost 10 upkeep. Use the smalls.

In later games (where you are having to deal with nobleman) having a 'production' island separate from your population island is an absolute must, both for construction space and management reasons. With everything separate, it prevents storehouses from filling up and production to stop, since all your routes end with the NPC, any overspill gets sold directly for profit.

Once you're stabilized and ready to expand to new islands (this should be when you are looking at the orient) you should create a trade route called resupply which pulls tools, wood, stone from your construction island and dumps them at every island you own. You might want to have stop 4 or 5 to go back to your construction island for more goods. It takes a bit but eventually you'll have wood/tools/stone at all your islands which is perfect for when you want to start up bread/beer/whatever, you don't have to send a ship. It's also good when you need to expand any given good due to population, you don't have to send a ship. It makes life MUCH MUCH easier. Do this. Eventually send them to all your orient islands, too.

Don't worry about filling every square centimeter of your island out to the edge. This means don't build on the edge and try and squeeze stuff, build in the center and move outward. This saves a lot of time and rebuilding, the game moves faster when you can just plop down stuff instead of having to fiddle, sell, re-place and wedge stuff in. Thou shalt use the pictures linked in the steam page for designs. I use the wood, carpet, bread (two farm in center, bakery and mill on edges, not what's shown), and perfume designs myself. I use my own design for the rest and generally don't bother with roads to the intermediate steps.

Selling to the NPCs with one of your trade routes or manually piloted ship nets 1/4 of the price of them coming and buying it through a local sell order. Fill your local sell orders up, you'll need to upgrade your storehouse to get all 8 slots.

You can buy honor through the diplomacy menu with a 5-10m cooldown (success percentage gets higher until it hits 100%). Buy it from both the vizer and northborough.

Once you have an oriental trade fleet, you should have enough honor to upgrade them. Use the uprgades icon on the lower right to increase their speed/cargo. It REALLY helps.

Quote from: bhodi on August 11, 2009, 11:14:11 AM

If you want, you can easily game the system by creating goods and a trade route solely to sell them - Carpets, Rope, War machines all sell very well and a few factories churning out goods that go straight to the NPCs will pay for quite a lot of tax shortfall.

I have never messed with tax rates, but it occurs to me that I can tax citizens as "happy" and they will never advance to the next level (you need euphoric to jump to the next level). This is better than denying ascension rights because all houses will upgrade until they are citizens and then stop. I will have to try this.

Exactly what I did. I had a trade route set up selling cloth and rope from my massive hemp plantation, which made ends meet for a while until I inherited the bigger island and everyone started upgrading. I was blocking ascension until i figured out the tax hike thing and was able to bump up taxes on the citizens, which at this phase of the campaign can't ascend any higher anyway.

I'm starting to do the same thing with the next part of the campaign, need to focus on objectives and stop going full colonist. I'm on chapter 4 now after I finally decided to stop colonizing in chapter 3 and actually end it. But instead of running through the objectives, I see stone and iron deposits, so I build a nice setup to get a bunch of stone for roads and a tool supply line fully built. I've finished maybe three quests in and I've already got a full harbor with four storage buildings, population center of three marketplaces/churches wide, and a dedicated agricultural area that's a quarter of the island, stone roads connecting it all. Woops.

I just checked out the Steam thread pics, nice! But I've already started the field layout minigame, it's part of the fun making something that's both useful and aesthetically pleasing. The list earlier in this thread (which I should reread now!) with the requirements for supply chains should be useful, I've just been winging it by how much extra resources end up in the warehouse.

I've got to master setting trade route levels and that sell order thingy. In chapter 3 I was just dumping everything the ship could hold on the NPC.

This game is fun, the polish level and tweaks have really delivered on the promise of the early games.

I'm digging this. Is there an easy way to deal with the trade routes? That is something I typically don't have patience for.

Quote from: ghost on August 11, 2009, 01:48:20 PM

I'm digging this. Is there an easy way to deal with the trade routes? That is something I typically don't have patience for.

Not really, though you're a bit vague to be sure. Most of the game is sort of based around it.

Hmm. Can't seem to call up the strategy window (f6 iirc) to set up trade routes in chapter 4. I'm glad in a way that I massively overdid my island before contacting the orient, learning their construction layout required a couple tear-downs (and the island shape sucks), and when they want me to make patricians all I have to do is bump the tax rate. But I've got a massive population on my main island that wants spice from my orient isle (which I way overproduced because it started slow) and now bread from my occident production isle. If I have to run them manually, I'm going to rush the end of the chapter, it's a pita.

Quote from: bhodi on August 12, 2009, 06:24:24 AM

Quote from: ghost on August 11, 2009, 01:48:20 PM

I'm digging this. Is there an easy way to deal with the trade routes? That is something I typically don't have patience for.

Not really, though you're a bit vague to be sure. Most of the game is sort of based around it.

I'm good with resources and all that and I understand the flow of one resource into a product. I just hate micromanaging the process of having the ships take things from place to place. Maybe it's easier than it seems and just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

Little star icon on the bottom right tool bar.

Trade route planner. Pick ports, pick goods to drop off or pick up, pick ships, go. Fully automated.

Quote from: Murgos on August 12, 2009, 09:22:06 AM

Little star icon on the bottom right tool bar.

Trade route planner. Pick ports, pick goods to drop off or pick up, pick ships, go. Fully automated.

Ahh. Nice. I really should play the tutorial, it seems.

I've heard rumors that the draconian (and undocumented except on a read.me file), installation restrictions (install 3 times only, or 3 PCs only, or something similar) were removed in patch 1.1. But I can find nothing from Ubisoft that confirms such.

Can anyone confirm or deny this rumor?

Also, is it possible to play this without an internet connection?

You know what I like? People who use the search button.

Quote from: Yoru on January 10, 2010, 05:12:57 PM

You know what I like? People who use the search button.

Yeah me too. Musta been having a bad spelling day, because I really did search! I blame it on the drugs. I'm just not sure if it's the ones now, the ones back in the 70's, or something inbetween though.

I stopped on Part 6 of the campaign because I found it annoying and very unlike the rest of the game in its appeal. I should get back into it.

I can't believe it took me half a year to figure how to transfer a profile between systems.

I'm picking this up again since I can't get XBox Live at work.

Just picked this up. It's awesome. Played till 3 this morning, that hasn't happened in forever.

One question. I'm on the campaign mission where we're rescuing children and delivering them to the bald pedophile... the Sultan dude says he gave me a letter for the mine manager... where the heck is it??? Anyone remember? The mine manager just tells me to fuck off and I can't find it anywhere.

Quote from: grebo on February 14, 2010, 10:29:42 AM

If you can't find letters, make sure to check all your warehouses to see if they things stored in inventory. Often, letters and the like don't go to your ships directly.

Oh, of course, it was on my autopilot trading route ship...

Took me forever to think to look there... but I guess it makes sense.

So, they just released an expansion for this.

Is has multi-player apparently.

Also schild just bought it on Steam.

Thats about all I know.

Oh fuck.

Also? Released with as little fanfare as possible, it seems.

Funny, I never thought about this game, "Wow the one thing that would make it ultimate is multiplayer!"

It was a lot of fun, but I wouldn't want to try to complete a game in a sitting.