Alternatively, but more difficult, one can try settling on the enemy island(s) and produce soldiers there directly. In many scenarios across the various games, the human player will have to eventually defeat the AI players with weapons and conquer their islands to proceed, typically via sending ships to their islands and bombard the city walls, then unload soldiers. War is not the biggest factor, but it does happen, as AI players can be allies and trade-partners, or non-trade opponents and enemies to fight.

Technology Levels ensure a progression from simple pioneers and settlers to citizens and even aristocrats, each with their own set of demands and power to pay taxes in return. Due to general scarcity of certain critical resources until those can be produced, the latter has to be relied on to buy those resources, though other resources can be sold as well. Most of the games offer a way to trade with the AI, whether other Empires or civilian trade ships. You have to build houses to collect taxes, but then your peasants want fish, and then they want something to occupy them and so on. Players begin with a ship (or in some scenarios, a warehouse on an island) and a negative income. players (or other humans over multiplayer) for territory and resources, and a number of scenarios, often-times with several arranged to form a storyline.

Anno 2070: Deep Ocean (expansion, released in 2012)Įach game has a 'Continuous Mode' wherein you can play as long as you want, competing with A.I.Anno 1404: Venice (expansion, released in 2010).Anno 1404 (released in 2009), known as Dawn of Discovery in North America.Anno 1701: Dawn of Discovery (Nintendo DS spin-off, released in 2007).Anno 1701: The Sunken Dragon (expansion, released in 2007).Anno 1503: Treasures, Monsters & Pirates (expansion, released in 2003).Anno 1503: The New World (released in 2002).The series is focused primarily on the colonisation and development of a variety of islands, but also has aspects of trade, technological progression, war and conquest.

A.D., or simply Anno, is a series of 4X city builder games, originaly by the Austrian studio Max Design and later by Related Designs / Ubisoft Blue Byte Mainz when the former went bankrupt.

Anno 1404 large trading ship