Anno 1404: Dawn of Discovery

[schild]

Seems Steam might have released it a week early in America. Managed to purchase it while it still said Buy Now instead of Pre-Purchase. Is installing instead of Pre-loading!

Will let you know if it comes unlocked. Here's to hoping.

[schild]

Yup! Released early.

[NiX]

Ouch on their part. Yay for you!

[Engels]

Why ouch?

This one looks like a good one. Took the plunge too.

[NiX]

I thought they fucked up and released it early on steam by mistake, but the store page says the 23.

[AutomaticZen]

Been meaning to get into the series.  Should I start with this one, or one of the older ones?

[schild]

This one is just as in depth if not more so than the prior ones and they've done a good job of streamlining things. I was decent at the previous ones and jumped into a hard game in this one, may have been a mistake. Gonna drop down to easy to get a grasp on the resource flow (they added a good deal, saw about 30-60% more stuff in lots of places.

[Xuri]

Been meaning to get into the series.  Should I start with this one, or one of the older ones?

Start with the Wii-version 

[schild]

Yay runtime Error!

Also, a Liam Neeson-alike (or IS it Liam Neeson narrating?) telling me "You've been playing 2 hours, perhaps I should take a break" is a little hilarious.

[Le0]

This is going to be released 26june at 50euros price in Europe.
I presume I can safely buy it with no regret?

[schild]

1. It should already be out. At least on Steam.
2. I just played 4 hours straight and wouldn't have known if Liam hadn't started telling me.

In fact, I'm about to go in and start a new game. No run time error will stop me. But hay, now I know the build order better.

Anno needs to be converted into an MMOG. :( NOW.

also: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16839.msg664903#msg664903

Edit: Decided to play a couple small world games without any opponents just to get all my shit in order. There's a lot going on here.

[Yoru]

Hmm, I may have to pick this one up. I toyed with the demos of the previous ones but never actually got around to purchasing them.

They're new-world-colonization 4X games, right?

[schild]

Hmm, I may have to pick this one up. I toyed with the demos of the previous ones but never actually got around to purchasing them.

They're new-world-colonization 4X games, right?

Basically, except compared to space games the GUIs don't suck, the progress makes sense, and they actually provide a decent amount of fun. I'd say they're halfway inbetween a 4x game and Pirates! Particularly when you get to the late game. Also, the huge worlds are HUGE.

[Sky]

Do they still have the native populations you can trade with or crush? Maybe this release will push down the gold version of the last one so I can afford it!

Still, I wish someone would do a quality remake of Seven Cities of Gold. There were some cool little bits like getting notifications on discovering geological formations. And the increasing drums when the locals started getting pissed off.

[Yegolev]

Always naysaying!

[Yegolev]

Once I figured out it was called "Dawn of Discovery", I bought it and it is currently downloading.  Because, you know, I have so much free time.

Also, thanks to schild for playing this at 0830 Central time so that I was able to see what Steam called it.

[schild]

I'm playing no such thing!

[Yegolev]

This has to be one of the worst manuals ever.  It's less informative than my Demon's Souls manual, and that is in Chinese.

Also: I need to get a nun from my church to the warehouse and I have absolutely no idea how to do this.

[schild]

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Actually, those are easy and I didn't figure it out until the campaign explained it. Zoom in on your church, you'll see someone walking around with a subtle outline, just click on them! Fucking obscure shit, man! Seriously though, I hate things like that in games, but once the game told me how to do it, I was like (wow, easy quests). All of the "deliver x to warehouse" quests are like that.

[Yegolev]

She was not anywhere near the church, but now I know what to look for: blue outline.

[schild]

She was not anywhere near the church, but now I know what to look for: blue outline.

Bingo.

[Musashi]

You compared this game to Pirates!.  There's no numpad dancing?  Say there's no numpad dancing.  What are the quests like?

[schild]

You compared this game to Pirates!.  There's no numpad dancing?  Say there's no numpad dancing.  What are the quests like?

The comparison to Pirates! is a pretty piss-poor comparison. Of course there's no numpad dancing. The quests are simple delivery things. It's mostly a civ-builder of sorts somewhere halfway inbetween a 4x and simcity.

[Sjofn]

I'll have to check this out, sounds like! It's going to eat my head, isn't it. :(

[Trouble]

It's like a city builder where you need to build multiple cities at once that send shit to each other.

[Yegolev]

It reminds me of Tropico a good bit, except much more complex.  My first town is a pretty sad example of resource management.  I just figured out how to work the trade routes!  And I sent seven tons of hemp to a sultan!

[Trouble]

Ran into an annoying bug which basically killed a campaign game I was doing. After loading my saved game I could no longer build Oriental Markets, the option to build them was just grayed out like I didn't have the prerequisites to build them even though I did. All buildings need to be in the sphere of influence of a market so therefore I was unable to access most of the resources on any of the Oriental islands, basically making it impossible for me to advance. Laaaaame. This seems to have far more depth than Anno 1701, as I have yet to even get to the 4th level of building. The amount of shit you need to get to level 4 is like the same as what you needed to cap out in 1701.

[Yegolev]

I don't want to hear that it has bugs.  I'm pretty sure I'm not getting any iron ore delivered from the mine due to supply chain bottlenecks, but now I'm going to be wondering if it is a bug.  It's probably that I need to ramp up coal production but I don't know why ore isn't stored in the warehouse like everything else, so it's possibly a bug?  Does ore go straight to the smelter?

[Dtrain]

Ore goes to the warehouse just like everything else.

To refine iron (do they call it steel? I forget,) you will need:
-Coal
-Ore
-A smelter

If you have all 3, then most likely one of those 3 vital pieces is not covered by a market building (which extends the range of your carts.) You can build outside the range of your carts, but the buildings will be useless because they can't receive goods to process or ship out finished goods.

This game reminds me of operations management. And that's somehow a good thing.

[LK]

I'm worried when the combat comes in because I'm having such a great time with city management.

Shit, maybe I should get SimCity games now that I'm old enough to appreciate them.

[Yegolev]

You can build outside the range of your carts, but the buildings will be useless because they can't receive goods to process or ship out finished goods.

Clearly I'm confusing the thing that extends your construction area with the thing that your carts are tied to.

[LK]

What's weird is how you can build something that produces fields right on the edge of a construction area but not fields outside that construction area.

Making efficient use of space will be interesting. I'm already seeing how things can get quite packed.

[Dtrain]

You can build outside the range of your carts, but the buildings will be useless because they can't receive goods to process or ship out finished goods.

Clearly I'm confusing the thing that extends your construction area with the thing that your carts are tied to.

No, they're the same thing. The game is just special sometimes and lets you do what you shouldn't be able to do.

Cover your resources with a small market building, and it should start working.

And if that doesn't do it:
-You have an iron mine on the resource, right? (not a stone quarry?)
-You have a road to the mine itself, with green dashes showing on the mine?

Other than that, all I can say is "congratulations on finding an amazing bug."

[Yegolev]

My iron mine is on the hairy edge of my construction zone.  I will try building another market center or whatever and move the fringe one out a bit more.  I hate destroying my pristine forest.

[Dtrain]

Shnikies, I think I figured it out whilst messing about last night.

Processing buildings have an area of influence, just like the market building. If the market building is outside the processing building's area of influence, the crafter is not able to get raw resources.

So I'd recommend building your processing stuff immediately around warehouses and market buildings, while you put your raw material harvesters on the outer edges of the market building influence. Just be careful because your resources can't be outside the market building's influence either (this constantly screws up my charcoal burners.)