Anno Online

by Aethyna Feb 16, 2015 | 1 Votes | 1 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

Genres:

Simulation , Strategy , MMO

Graphics:

Labels:

Empire Building , Building , Historical Setting , Player vs Player (PvP) , Naval Battles , Ships , Medieval Age

Platforms:

Publishers:

Ubisoft Set sail on a journey that will lead you to your own kingdom in a brilliant game where you can build your own island state, and defend it with your navy. Trade with other players, or be the hardest negotiator around. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Gameplay Community Graphics/Sound Conclusion

Summary

Be a pioneer and colonize new lands in the era of discovery in Anno Online! This game provides plenty of features that dutifully follow the Anno game formula. There are workyards to provide you with resources, marketplaces to distribute your resources among your citizens, warehouses to store your goods and many other functional buildings. Roads are needed to link these buildings together and if you ran out of space, you can explore your island to uncover more land! Not to forget, there are also massive sea battles that are popular in the PC version of Anno as well as competitive trading with other players. If games like The Settlers or Travian are kind of your thing, then Anno Online is definitely a game that you should check out!

Gameplay

You’ll be brought straight to your new-found island after you signed up. The tutorial then kicks in, guiding you through chapters of quests to introduce you to the intricacy of the game. Besides the tutorial quests, there are also other types of quests that will reward you with more gold and resources once they are completed. There are petition quests whereby your people came to you with a request and it is up to you to decide to help them or not, but bear in mind that you will earn some rewards for helping! There are also encounter quests that involve the combative aspect of the game, which will be explained later in this review, as well as trader quests that will require you to supply a certain amount of a specific resource to be traded for gold.

Similarly to the PC game of Anno, any residences you build will need to be supplied by a marketplace as well as connecting roads. The marketplace has an area of influence whereby you can build your houses. Oh and, thankfully, these buildings are instantly built upon placement. Every residence will provide you with only 2 pioneers, but you can boost up that number by placing attractions nearby. Attractions, such as wells, carpenter’s workshop and barber, have their own areas of influence and you must ensure that your dwellings are within the zone in order to obtain the bonus pioneers.

Residences can also be upgraded to house vassals instead of pioneers after you’ve fulfilled the more basic needs of your people, such as food and clothes, as well as obtained enough ascension rights for the upgrade. There are many types of citizenry in this game, with pioneers being at the bottom and imperials at the top. Each new grade of citizens will have different and more advanced needs that will need to be fulfilled in order for you to proceed to the next grade. Upgrades can be rather costly, particularly considering that ascension rights can only be bought from the cash shop, but once you get your first house upgrade done (it’s completed instantly), you will unlock a whole new range of buildings!

So, as aforementioned, the basic needs of your people come first and you definitely cannot maintain or even ‘upgrade’ a population that has an empty stomach. Thus, it is vital to get your first food-producing building set up – the fisherman’s hut, as fast as possible! Once you get that done, your population will then have a staple diet of fish to sustain them.

You will probably have used up the free resources given and will need some more. Build lumberjack’s huts to start collecting wood. As you progress in the game, the resources that you will need to manage will gradually get more complicated, for example, you will need to mine for stone and iron later on.

Furthermore, there are other workyards in Anon Online, such as sheep farm, which produces wool that the spinner in spinner’s hut can sew into warm clothes for your people. Goat farms function to provide your population with milk while wheat farms will produce wheat that can be turned into bread after going through the mill.

There are also warehouses that you will need to store your goods as well as distribution centers to help you collect the resources from the workyards and send them to the marketplace more quickly. Distribution centers have areas of influence so you will need to place them in such a way that they can cover as many workyards as possible. As you play, more and more of such buildings will be unlocked and your society of people will become gradually more advanced! Eventually, you will be allowed to build naval engineers and construct ships at your shipyard to colonize new islands and set up trade routes.

Resources are, of course, very important in this game. You will need to check the net production rate of your workyards as well as the net gold earned for any signs of a deficit. How? Well, you can check the status of your resources on the top right corner of the screen, while for your financial status; you will need to check the left top area.

Although resources are important, your town can survive without it, as long as you have food. However it is even more important to ensure that your settlement is earning a profit. This is because all your workyards require an upkeep fee each to maintain. Without money, your buildings will fail to work and it’ll affect the amount of resources you produce!

So how can you solve this? It’s easy really, you just need to build enough residences to supply you with the gold, in the form of taxes that you need! You can also trade with fellow players after you reached the appropriate level to set up trading routes too. It is pretty common to have a deficit financially at first, thus, the game provide you with a free +50 gold subsidy to help you out. Nonetheless, you will soon need to get on your own two feet and stop relying on the subsidy!

Running out of space? Well, you can expand your land by revealing a new part of the island for a price, of course! There will be criteria that you will have to meet – you will have to have the necessary number and type of citizens, the resources as well as the money required in order to reveal. The revealing process will take quite some time though.

Sea combat is one of the unique aspects of Anon Online although it can be pretty dull at times. During the tutorial, you will have experienced ship battles before you could even build your first ship! Combat is simple – there is a cycle whereby which type of ship is good against the other type is stated very clearly on the top right corner of your combat screen. Brigs are deals more damage if they are pitted against caravels while caravels are good against galleys. Galleys, in turn, have the advantage against brigs.

To attack, you just need to sail your ships into the indicated positions and arrange them according to the rule mentioned above so that your ships will have the upper hand. Then, press the ‘attack’ button and you’re good to go! Some battles may have more than 1 round and you’re allowed to re-arrange your ships’ positions in between rounds. Anon Online even provides a special feature, called ‘Dominance’, which functions like an oracle of sorts, that will help you predict the outcome of the battle – whether it is favorable to you or not. It is pretty useful in the game.

The pace of the gameplay in Anno Online can be pretty slow and you may hit multiple pay-or-wait walls. However, since it is an empire-building game and that it is designed to be played at most an hour or two per day, this is excusable. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You will definitely need plenty of patience to grow your settlement into a mighty trade empire!

Community

The social aspect of this game is limited to the chat channel, trading and guilds. The chat channel is filled with players who are friendly and always willing to lend a hand to a newcomer. However, in order to interact with the community besides chat, you will need to unlock the shipyard. With it, you gain the ability to build and use ships and you can then set up trade routes and guilds with other players. However, due to the game’s pace, it may take you quite awhile before you can get your own ships.

Graphics/Sound

The graphics in Anno Online are superb! The details are exquisite, especially for the buildings and the ships, and the colors are all so vibrant! There are also cure animated people walking around in the streets or pulling carts too! The music in this game, on the other hand, is mostly pleasant and soft, and has quite a variety. The sound is mainly consisted of inspirational tunes, filled with the occasional choir singing. However, for the battle music, it is a bit more upbeat and adrenaline-inducing to get that war-like feeling on!

Conclusion

In summary, Anno Online is a pretty solid empire-building game that is slowly-paced and has plenty of pay-or-wait walls, so don’t get over-frustrated if you cannot just rush through everything. There is a very comprehensive tutorial to guide you through the game. There are also plenty of details in your empire that you will have to iron out as well as fulfilling all the needs of your people in order to allow your settlement to develop. Not to mention, the easy-to-learn sea battles added a sizeable amount of entertainment value to the game, despite having really simplistic combat mechanism. You can even trade with other players for resources or for gold! In other words, Anno Online manages to bring the sophistication and beauty of the Anno game franchise straight to your browser for free! So, head on over to try it out now!

New Game Added: Anno Online

by Aethyna Feb 16, 2015

Set sail on a journey that will lead you to your own kingdom in a brilliant game where you can build your own island state, and defend it with your navy. Trade with other players, or be the hardest negotiator around.