(Which, for the sake clarity, I should state that I did not.) Underlying all activity on your part are the demands and production values of various buildings - obviously different for different factions - the balancing of which will keep you engaged. Fighting pirates, for example, is something that all factions can get involved in - crucial if you are playing a multiplayer game. This system also spawns various missions, which you can get involved in for rewards. During sandbox games (and the freeform sandbox 'continuous mode', plus single scenario missions are very much the heart of things here) offers a bunch of diplomatic options, and how these are managed by you and the other factions can have direct effect on factional economies. Instead this eco stuff plays into the 'world' state you find yourself in. It should, I feel, have gone somewhere, or said something, about either possible ethos. I feel like the game is leaping in at the deep end of contemporary issues and then just treading water. The structure of the game is much the same no matter which side you choose, it's just that the cities you build will be a little different. Peculiarly, given its hot-topic setting and polar factions, there is almost no real difference between choosing the dirty industrialists over the eco dudes, and no palpable reward for being 'green' over eating the planet, aside from the specific bonuses that each has inherent to it. These give you the option of building underwater, which is certainly a new frontier for the game, although really quite similar to building on the surface. These act a median between the two sides, and are unlocked once you've tackled the large chunk of the game. There's a third way, too, with the SAAT, who are like a super-techno faction who built themselves a new life under the sea. Actually they're called The Eden Initiative and The Global Trust, but you get the idea. There are two main factions: Eco dudes and smoke-belchers. Unlike 1404, however, it's all gone a bit techno-futurist, and your activities are conducted from an 'Ark', a giant submersible which can be used a generalised mobile base and trading platform. It feels extraordinarily similar to its immediate predecessor, Anno 1404, with your time split between city building and resource tinkering (which you do most of the time) with a bit of pootling about controlling a ship to perform various errands on the side. Not an afterthought as such, but certainly at the bottom of the list.Īll this is true of Anno 2070, which blasts out of the traditional historical setting to create a game set in the future, and against a backdrop of global climate disaster. There is some capacity to make war with your little navy, but it's all but relegated to occasional missions and the most tenuous end-game situations. Trading, with merchants, and with other factions, is essential. The collection of resources cannot, as in most RTS games, be done in isolation, either. 'Levelling up' neighbourhoods (a sort of formalised gentrification) is essential to accessing the higher tiers of the tree. The limits to this are what makes the challenge of them interesting.Īnno works like so: Building relies on a meticulous tech tree in which technologies are only unlocked if the right kinds of people live in your settlements. Essentially they are about building towns and reaping resources, with a hint of high-seas naval activity. That is to say they are uncommon within the general landscape of games, but nonetheless unexotic as experiences. The Anno games exhibit a formula that is unusual without ever being weird. I've been wading through its depths for the past week or so and I am now able to tell you Wot I Think. Blue Byte and Related Designs recently finished their latest trading and building game, Anno 2070 - this time set in later part of the current century, in a world where climate politics underlie the tale of commercial striving - and released it onto the wild seas of the internet.

Anno 2070 game support