Anno 117

Clippings / what I’ve been playing: Civ VII: Test of Time, more Terra Invicta & Anno 117, Chinatown Detective Agency, and more

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First off, a big piece of news: my novella is out! Francois He and the River of Spices is my fantasy tribute to historical adventure fiction, set in a world of gunpowder, motor cars, and magitech war machines. It currently has a 4-star rating on Goodreads and is available in paperback and eBook.

You can check out the novella on your Amazon site of choice (US, UK, Canada, Australia, and all others). For Kindle Unlimited members, you can read this included in your subscription.

Gaming update below:

A MAGITECH FANTASY NOVELLA

Francois He is a war hero who never wants to pick up a gun again. Civilian life, building marvels with the power of Fog, suits him fine.

So when the distant republic of Platinea offers him a job, Francois jumps at it. Introduce Fog technology, collect his fees, and enjoy the seafood. Easiest money he’ll make in his life.

But he’s barely digested dinner when rebels storm the capital. And the desperate Platineans draft the most seasoned commander they can find: him.

From the grimy docks of the capital to a command barge on the River of Spices, from the salons of the palace to a war camp in the highlands, Francois must turn a mob into an army, deploy Fog on a budget, and outwit a charismatic warlord who really, really loves his job.

FOR FANS OF GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER’S FLASHMAN, LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD’S VORKOSIGAN, AND DJANGO WEXLER

New releases

In non-strategy news, 007: First Light, a James Bond game from the developers of the Hitman series, is out to excellent reviews (Metacritic 87, Opencritic 88). I’ve never played a Hitman game, but I am very interested in the IP on this one…

Notable updates

The new Triumphs system in Civ VII.

Civilization VII, one of my favourite games of last year despite its rough edges, received a major update (“Test of Time”). This overhauls the UI, allows players to stay as one Civ for the entire game (with new syncretism mechanics), and reworks the victory conditions and the legacy paths (mini-goals in each era).

I’m halfway through a new game and am enjoying it quite a bit — I’ve kept switching Civs, but the more freeform era goals (“Triumphs”) are a better fit for my play style than the rigid legacy paths (for example, playing as the diplomatically-focused Himiko, I usually beeline “befriend X city-states” or “form Y alliances” – see screenshot above), and the new UI is cleaner and better suited to PC screens.

What I’ve been playing: Terra Invicta, Anno 117, board games, and more

Striking back against the alien fleet in Earth orbit.

I resumed my Terra Invicta 1.0 campaign (from back in January), in which, knock on wood, I think I’m finally turning the corner on a vicious, Sisyphean struggle. This is my fault: I am playing the game’s hardest faction, the Academy — idealists who start off hoping to coexist with the aliens, and realise that peace must be negotiated at the point of a gun instead —  on Veteran (hard) difficulty. And I am very, very rusty after not having played in nearly 18 months.

The results feel like the Dwarf Fortress “FUN” meme: digital blood and tears have flowed aplenty, I’ve been repeatedly blasted out of the Inner Planets and had to take multiple frustration-induced breaks from the game, and on several occasions I’ve been tempted to restart or reload to decades earlier. But when I finally managed to fuel my war machine with the resources of Fortress Pluto and win a heroic victory in Earth orbit against a larger alien fleet — which I hope will take some of the pressure off my beleaguered armies on Earth — there are few sweeter tastes in gaming. This would make an amazing science fiction story…

Anno 117: apocalyptic volcanic ash, and the refreshing rain afterwards.

Meanwhile, I played enough of the new Anno 117 DLC to settle the vast new island it adds to the game — and see the newly added volcano in action. It is spectacular. Following the quest line triggered the volcano’s first eruption, sparking fires across the province, increasing the risk of disease, and decreasing farm productivity (due to its ash cloud). At one point, an unscripted inferno broke out in my main city, starting a minigame where I sent in the legions to rescue citizens from their houses. After the crisis comes renewal: volcanic ash gives a bonus to soil fertility, while the eruption leaves valuable obsidian behind.

Continuing my digital board game adventures, in April I dusted off Through the Ages on Steam. This takes the theme of a historical 4X game (start at the dawn of history, gather resources, research new techs, and play until the Space Age) and compresses it into a short, engaging, but very tough Eurogame: don’t ask how long I had to play before I could beat the “Easy” computer player… I also picked up the digital adaptations of Everdell and the “Uprising” expansion for Dune: Imperium.

Some of the cases in Chinatown Detective Agency take you far afield.

I poked at Chinatown Detective Agency, a cyberpunk game that piqued my interest as one of the very few titles set in Southeast Asia. The pixel art is gorgeous; unfortunately, the gameplay is mixed. The central conceit is interesting: a puzzle/adventure game where you have to Google for clues, or take out a pen and paper to solve memory puzzles. The execution is often aggravating: did it really add anything to make the player book flights in-game? Or to be unable to save anywhere during the first few cases? (And the beta patch that added save-anywhere was never finished, leaving debug logs all over my screen.)

Finally, I completed Pokopia — a worthy and very charming successor to Dragon Quest Builders 2 — and my first run of the “Empires of the Indus” Old World DLC. For now I have parked Machiavelli the Prince, as I found it less interesting once I reached the far edges of the map (China and Japan) and started repeating the same trade routes.

Clippings: Shadow Empire DLC, upcoming Anno 117 DLC, more releases

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In a case of “when it rains, it pours”, this has been an abundant period for strategy game and DLC releases.

Shadow Empire has just received its newest DLC, “Republica”. This expands on the game’s political system with nine government types (including one that sounds delightfully science-fictional, an ostensible democracy run by a computer, and one that gives noble families their own feudal militias) and a “Virtus” system that measures the health of the body politic. I have picked it up but have yet to play it — I look forward to seeing how these mechanics work, especially with my usual cuddly post-apocalyptic democracies.

Later in the month (23 April) Anno 117’s first content DLC, “Prophecies of Ash”, will come out. This will add a new, vast island, which the devs promise will be the largest in series history (and larger than Anno 1800’s Crown Falls and Manola — UPDATE: confirmed larger, following the 1.6.1 patch). It will also add new, optional volcano mechanics, with more details to come. I usually jump back into Anno games after about a year or so of DLC, so I might either use this to revisit the game or wait until more of the season 1 DLC is out.

In other strategy game release news:

  • Field of Glory: Kingdoms (a medieval 4X/GSG) has received its newest expansion, “Burghers and Bombards”. I will probably skip this one — when I played the Kingdoms grand campaign as Venice, I really liked the early game but found that the game mechanics did not scale well to larger realms (and my empire wasn’t that large, not that much bigger than modern Italy).
  • Xenonauts 2 is now out of early access. I had originally looked forward to the first game, but it left me with decidedly mixed feelings. I did enjoy the brief time I spent with a Xenonauts 2 preview build provided by the publishers several years ago, so I think the question is the extent to which this improves on my biggest complaint with the first game, the repetitive combat.

I’m still slowly playing the new releases I mentioned two weeks ago: Old World‘s new expansion (“Empires of the Indus”), and Machiavelli the Prince, alongside my ongoing Pokopia playthrough.

Old World is easy to sum up (it’s still fantastic), although I suspect I’m only scratching the surface of the new content. Playing the Maurya feels interesting and thematic (Ashoka, their starting king, is an absolute powerhouse in early expansion), but the surprise star might be the new map types. Playing on a Wetlands map feels very different: there are marshes and chokepoints everywhere, limiting buildable space, and the tribes also seem to survive for longer (does the difficult terrain inhibit the computer players’ expansion?).

A ship laden with spices prepares to sail from India to Europe in HDI’s Machiavelli the Prince.

So far I would characterise Machiavelli as medium-weight: it’s not super-long (the game defaults to a 100 turn length), is far more compact than its stablemate Emperor of the Fading Suns, and has a simple core gameplay loop: buy low, sell high. The fun, for me, comes in exploring the farthest corners of the world to discover new ports. The further the port, the better the opportunities. (Other game mechanics exist such as warfare and Venetian politics; playing on normal, I haven’t had to engage with them.)

A final note is that free advance reader copies of my upcoming fantasy novella will still be available through the end of April: more info here, and signup here if you’re interested!

Anno 117: Demo Impressions

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This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Anno Series

After playing the Anno 117 demo, I feel confident enough to buy the full game the day it comes out. It feels like an Anno game, in its mechanics and its charm, with some tweaks and innovations on top. And with 350+ hours in Anno 1800, that’s exactly what I wanted to see.

The core game mechanics are easy to summarise and will be familiar to anyone who’s played Anno 1800. Arrive at a deserted island. Set up a production chain for timber. Start building houses. Set up production chains to feed and clothe the residents. Upgrade the houses to tier 2. Set up new, more complicated production chains to meet the tier 2 residents’ demands, and so on.

The challenge, and the fun, are in the details. New goods might require building cities on new islands to produce; some buildings require specific terrain, such as forest, coastline, or marshes; and more buildings require more workers, who in turn require more goods, which require more buildings to produce.

Cool, misty, marshy Albion in the Anno 117 demo.

One area where I do see a lot of complaining online is the interface. I agree that it’s harder to find information — although some of this is almost certainly because 117 is new whereas I have plenty of experience in 1800. For example, in the following screenshot, just how many people is this house giving me, versus the maximum if I provided all necessary goods? In 1800 it would have been obvious, in 117 it’s less so — I can only see the current number.

Tier 2 houses in the Anno 117 demo – left, Plebeians (Latium); right, Mercators (Romano-Celtic in Albion).

The demo offers a choice of two regions. Latium is warm and sunny, while the real stand-out is Albion, the game’s version of Roman Britain — a setting I don’t think I’ve seen before in a city-builder. Both are beautiful, but if I had to give the nod to one, it would be Albion, with its cool misty palette, its marshlands — complete with little wooden walkways to connect buildings — and its choice of two upgrade paths for its residents, Celtic or Romanised Celtic (with the latter wanting imported goods from Latium fairly early on, at Tier 2).

Left: Tarragon, one of the computer players, comments on my budding city in Latium. Right: The Emperor – who vaguely resembles Sean Bean – is happy to see me Romanising the inhabitants of Albion.

The NPCs are the charming, engaging, and often quirky sorts I expect from an Anno game. Some are more serious than others. On the one hand, there are a softly-spoken retired veteran tilling his fields, and the daughter of a Serican (Chinese) silk merchant; on the other hand, there’s a parody of the buff athlete archetype who could have stepped out of Asterix. Special shout-out to the NPCs in Albion, such as the Boudica-inspired tribal queen, the friendly tribal chief, and a legionary commander far from home, who contribute to that region’s unique flavour.

Albion is a beautiful place.

Overall, the demo did its job, which was to let me see whether I would enjoy the game. Based on this, I’m confident that I will. Roll on the release date in November!

Further reading

The dev blogs offer a wealth of information on specific gameplay mechanics.