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the ANNO 1404 (DAWN OF DISCOVERY) |OT|

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
farnham said:
just played the wii version and i have to say im stunned at how great the game is

i played the first anno on the PC and loved it back then but never went back to the series until now.. and the wii interface is just perfect for the game..
it cannot be emphasized enough how fucking overlooked this game is. not only is it way above the shovelware that it usually ends up shelved with (if ever gets to see the world outside of the discount bin, that is) in the stores, but it actually is a darn good entry in the settlers/anno series. if you have the slightest of interest in the genre, have a wii, and don't have this game, you can blame only yourself.
 
So, Anno 1404: Venice comes out this week. Hurray!

Here's the original press release:

Today Ubisoft announced Anno 1404 Venice, the add-on for Anno 1404, the acclaimed real-time strategy and simulation game released earlier this year. Anno 1404 Venice will combine the signature gameplay mechanics of Anno 1404 and the richness of the Venetian culture. In addition, gamers will now be able to play Anno 1404 with their friends thanks to the new online multiplayer mode. The add-on is due to release next February 2010 in EMEA territories.
“With Anno 1404 Venice we are proud to bring a whole new dimension to gamers by letting them experience new multiplayer challenges online with their friends” said John Parkes, marketing director EMEA at Ubisoft, “we're confident that this add-on will please fans of the series as well as newcomers to the franchise.”

Key Features of ANNO 1404 Venice:

The rich Anno 1404 environment gets complemented with a new Venetian setting offering new possibilities of interaction:
Build two new Venetian ship types: the small and big tradesman cog
Develop secret cabinets, infiltrate your enemies and sabotage their expansion
Take control over enemy cities thanks to your influence in the cities’ council board
Play Anno 1404 online in a multiplayer mode:
Choose to play versus or coop to defeat the AI by combining your techniques
Up to 8 players
New challenges and quests:
Up to 60 new items and 300 new quests with two new types: trading race and ship boarding
Discover and exploit a new type of island, the Volcano island
New scenarios to face new challenges with new achievements, medals and crests

And here's a picture:

anno-1404-venice_7.jpg


I'll try to remember to post some lovely high-res screengrabs when my copy arrives and I get back to my PC in a week or so...
 

BeeDog

Member
Seeing as the topic's been bumped, the official v1.2 patch was released some day ago, that has a nice changelist:

http://anno.uk.ubi.com/pc/downloads.php#patchs

An overview of the most important changes:

- The Golden Ship is now available after accomplishing all the Achievements (the corresponding affected Achievements have been corrected and can now be completed).
- The cooldown period between individual Quests for the Emperor and the Sultan has been reduced.
- Sultan Quests are now available even if players do not have Noblemen in their City.
- Players can no longer see the routes taken by opposing Transport ships.
- Buildings and fields may now be rotated by pressing the middle mouse button.
- Construction time for the Large Oriental Trading Ship has been doubled.
- Players can now also connect to the Gateway to the World under Windows 7.

Other changes:

- Savegames in user-content scenarios are no longer corrupted when a fellow player is vanquished in that scenario.
- In some cases uploads to the Gateway to the World failed. This bug has been fixed and uploads to the Gateway to the World should now be much more stable.
- Fixed a bug in mission 7 in which, under certain conditions, a black pearl necessary for completion of the mission was not given to the player.
- Fixed a bug which allowed the player to multiply the Goods on a Ship through skillful movement between the Ship's cargo slots.
- The title "World Traveler" is now correctly displayed in the title selection.
- Purchasing the second or third stage "Occidental Shipbuilding" Attainment sometimes led to all the Goods over 40 tons being thrown overboard by the Ships involved. This error has been corrected.
- Ships in the "Historic Battle" Quest can now shoot back!
- The cost in Gold shown in the Caravanserai delivery notification was displayed incorrectly. This error has been corrected.
- Envoys whose Needs are now all met and who pay very few Taxes are now "euphoric" instead of "angry".
- The Experts Customs goods Items are now somewhat more powerful.
- A number of small improvements have been made.
- Several spelling errors were corrected.

I find the Gateway... fix to be great, since I'm running Windows 7 (x64). :D
 

Ikuu

Had his dog run over by Blizzard's CEO
Anyone know if you can use the version from Gamersgate with a retail copy of the game?
 

Fitz

Member
Just got Venice up and running, seems like there is a lot of new content, no new campaign, however there are at least 6-10 scenarios which have their own cut-scenes similar to regular campaign missions. I haven't tried the whole espionage or city council features out yet.

Only downer at the moment is that it seems you can't access the original campaign if you load Venice, a bit of a pain as I'm in the process of getting achievements from them, won't be a problem once I've finished that though.

Oh, and the music is nice, reminds me of The Godfather.
 

Ikuu

Had his dog run over by Blizzard's CEO
The first scenario is an introduction to sabotage, send your spy out to poison a well, start a revolt, burn some buildings down and a few others. Shame you have to load up the original game if you want to play the campaign from that.
 

clip

Member
Is there any way to play Venice without buy ANNO 1404 again? I've got the european retail version of 1404, but the steam and impulse versions say they require dawn of discovery, steam particularly notes requiring the steam version.
 

Doytch

Member
TheExodu5 said:
I think they're doing so now. The original game is down from the store.
Nah, they removed the OG version so that they could sell only the Gold edition and Venice standalone.
 

Ikuu

Had his dog run over by Blizzard's CEO
clip said:
Is there any way to play Venice without buy ANNO 1404 again? I've got the european retail version of 1404, but the steam and impulse versions say they require dawn of discovery, steam particularly notes requiring the steam version.
You can just buy the copy from GamersGate and it works fine.
 

Victrix

*beard*
Ikuu said:
You can just buy the copy from GamersGate and it works fine.

Does it work with Anno 1404 and Dawn of Discovery, or only one? I have the dvd version of Dawn of Discovery, and Steam explicitly says it only works with the Steam release of DoD
 

Gyoru

Member
Multiplayer is pretty smooth and lag free. You can even reload MP saves with different people filling in for anyone that's missing. There are 4 teams, but you can have up to 8 players with some playing coop on the same team. In terms of map configuration, you have all the single player map generation options at your disposal (corsair level, disasters, etc).
 

The Foul

Member
Enjoying Venice so far, espionage works ok. Looking forward to some Multiplayer co-op with my girlfriend. Looks like there's a bunch of new stuff to build, but seemingly no new production loops which is a shame. Still great fun.
 

naib

Member
I don't know how I missed this game. It was the PC screenshot thread that piqued my interest. If it plays anything like Caesar 3 I'll be one happy camper.

:D

I'm sure there's cheaper ways to get it, but Steam has me spoiled and getting lazier.
 

Ikuu

Had his dog run over by Blizzard's CEO
Victrix said:
Does it work with Anno 1404 and Dawn of Discovery, or only one? I have the dvd version of Dawn of Discovery, and Steam explicitly says it only works with the Steam release of DoD
I have a retail copy of Anno 1404 and the installer from GamersGate says 1404 Venice, I'd imagine it works with both. Send them an email and they'll let you know.
 

vocab

Member
Is there a new campaign in venice or is it just sandbox style? I really like the campaign style of Dawn of Discovery.
 

pix

Member
Does anyone have a good website resource that has tips on playing this game online or in endless mode? Like basic building strategies and where you should build certain buildings?
 

Fitz

Member
vocab said:
Is there a new campaign in venice or is it just sandbox style? I really like the campaign style of Dawn of Discovery.

There's no specific new campaign (in fact you can't even load the vanilla campaign), however they've added 15 new scenarios and each has it's own open/close story cut scenes just like the campaign as well as a specific story and plenty of achievements, so it's pretty much the same/better I think.
 
I started playing this game today, I directly jumped into the Scenario, having some hard times on how to do stuff.

1. How do you establish your base on another island? I take my ship down to a different island, I can't build either a marketplace or a warehouse. Am I do something wrong?

2. It is hard to get my resources building to work at 100%. I tried doing lot of different stuff but I guess the only thing you can do is space them out, am I right?

3. One last one, how do you turn the ascension rights off? The fucking peasants keep using my resources to upgrade their houses while I try to build other building and I keep running out of them. Selfish fucks :D

EDIT: I found the answer to the first question myself. You will have to take the necessary resources to build a warehouse with your ship and then you should be able to build it on the warehouse through the options in your ship.
 

The Foul

Member
sweetvar26 said:
1. How do you establish your base on another island? I take my ship down to a different island, I can't build either a marketplace or a warehouse. Am I do something wrong?

2. It is hard to get my resources building to work at 100%. I tried doing lot of different stuff but I guess the only thing you can do is space them out, am I right?

3. One last one, how do you turn the ascension rights off? The fucking peasants keep using my resources to upgrade their houses while I try to build other building and I keep running out of them. Selfish fucks :D

1: You need 2 Tools & 3 wood on board a ship to make a port on another island.
2: Check here, it tells you how many hemp farms you need for 1 weavers hut to be 100% & so forth.
3: Click your marketplace, then click the topmost icon with the scroll. Should put an X through it allowing you to manually ascend peeps when their tax level is Euphoric.
 

vocab

Member
Bump.

Quick question for anyone that has tried. Can you apply the crack to the steam version of the game both for DoD/Venice?
 

Sloegr

Member
Plaguefox said:
Apologies if this is old or known to the Anno / DOD fanatics out there, but I couldn't find anything online about it.

What the hell is that? It was basically a giant wooden puppet dancing around in one of my forests back when I played the game last year. I don't remember the circumstances surrounding its appearance, but it's only shown up that one time. I forgot all about it until Venice came out and I looked back over my old screenshots.

I dunno what it is, but a Google search led me to this video: Dancing Stickman :lol
 

Ferrio

Banned
Dear Ubisoft:

I really really wanna buy this game, but your shitty DRM keeps me from hitting the purchase button. I would of bought it at full price, and no even at steam super sale prices I don't wanna buy it. Please stop being evil, I wanna give you money.
 
It's only securom if I recall and the main game (Anno 1404/Dawn of Discovery) is without it already. Only the Venice Addon has Securom right now. They did not and won't use the Ubisoft Game Launcher for this game.
 

Ferrio

Banned
Caesar III said:
It's only securom if I recall and the main game (Anno 1404/Dawn of Discovery) is without it already. Only the Venice Addon has Securom right now. They did not and won't use the Ubisoft Game Launcher for this game.

Says it has 3 machine activation limit..
 

Ferrio

Banned
Caesar III said:
check back the pages in this thread, there was a patch in August which removed the securom protection from the main game.

Lies, no mention of that. A single page back and they're still talking about tages.
 
it's on this very page to be exact :lol

[post]17946453[/post]

Don't blame any publisher or developer for you inability to read or look for information, bro!
 

erpg

GAF parliamentarian
That's a shame about TAGES still being on. But I'm fine sticking to the Wii version for now. Excellent game.
 
Plaguefox said:
When I reinstalled it (on my new system this time) in preparation for my purchase of Venice, TAGES did prompt me and I did have to let it install in order to continue with the installation of Dawn of Discovery. I had another similar prompt when installing the Venice add-on.
if you install the game and then the patch you don't need to activate anything anywhere. Just do not start the game before patching. I cannot remember installing tages but if this is the case you can uninstall it using the tools on the tages website. IIRC you don't even need to enter the serial key for DoD itself. Only for the Addon Venice which has TAGES.
 
So I found this game on Wii and DS for $10 each and bought both. I just spent 3 hrs in the first few missions on my Wii. If the DS game is half as good I'd have to say its the best $20 I have ever spent on games.
 
Rocket Punch said:
So I found this game on Wii and DS for $10 each and bought both. I just spent 3 hrs in the first few missions on my Wii. If the DS game is half as good I'd have to say its the best $20 I have ever spent on games.

I played a lot of the Wii game.. I'm a huge Anno fan..

but I wish I could get it on PC (I don't have a PC) :(


With this and Civ 5 I'm seriously thinking of buying a PC just for them..
 

nli10

Member
I have the Treasure Chest + compass pack sitting on my desk un-played.

Was going to start this summer, but I was too busy to sit in front of a computer.


Guess I'll play it over Xmas maybe. Great to see the game still getting patches & support.
 

Papa

Banned
Bought this game during the Steam sale. Oh my god it's so good. Played for 12 hours straight yesterday. Went to bed at 3 am :|
 
I've always been kind of curious about Dawn of Discovery, I've seen this one copy sitting on the shelf of a brick n' mortar for over a year now but never curious enough to buy and give the game/series a shot. The announcement of Anno 2070, which looks unbelievably awesome, was the push to finally get me to buy Dawn of Discovery/Anno 1404 and holy shit is this game fun. I never imagined that a game based on resource gathering, city/economy building, managing and trading would be so engrossing but I've just wiled away three hours running a burgeoning rural community on an island and am helping some power mad cardinal gear up for a crusade. It really helps that Dawn of Discovery is an incredibly sedate and relaxing experience, which probably has to do with the fact that I'm playing the tutorial campaign which essentially is easy mode. Either way, what I have played thus far has been such a nice change of pace from the stuff I tend to usually play, Dawn of Discovery is almost zen-like.

And it's oh so pretty.
 
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