Hey Anno Community,

In this second DevBlog for “New World Rising” we will take a closer look at what we only briefly mentioned before: The expansion of the New World region and the new islands that are getting added.

While Anno games tend to give players relatively large freedoms to build as much and how they want, there are still a few limiting factors. One main factor, of course, is space. There are only so many islands in a region and the islands have only so many tiles.

While some of you have proven over the years, that one can squeeze many more people on those islands than we originally thought, eventually a ceiling is hit, and either space for residences or space for production runs out. Space management therefore also is a key challenge of the Anno games – even more so if you’re playing with opponents.

In Anno 1800, the New World itself also acted as a limiting factor to a certain degree, considering the goods that other regions, primarily the Old World, needed. Season 4’s focus on the New World therefore meant a) to provide engaging new mechanics and b) simultaneously offer additional ways to increase efficiency and save space (e.g. Hacienda farms or workforce commute via the Airship Platform).

A larger New World

New World Rising is adding an additional population tier as well as several new production chains, as we detailed in the previous blog, and the Lifestyle Needs may also require additional production capacities in this southern region. It accordingly made sense to take an additional step to address the above-mentioned space topic, a “simple” one, actually: Giving you more building space!

And that’s what we’re doing with this last DLC of Season 4: The New World region expands on its two northern borders, adding another strip of space for more islands. That’s an increase of about 30%, making the map now larger than the Old World. There are of course still some general limiting factors for map size, first and foremost it’s performance.

New islands to settle

To increase island variety, especially now that the New World is quite a bit bigger than before, our Level Art team also created several new islands that are getting added to the overall map pool for the region. You can expect 3 new small islands, 4 new medium islands and 3 new large islands.

By popular demand, we added additional riv… no, just kidding, we reduced the number of rivers on these new islands. Plus, we’re also adding riverless variants of the existing islands to the overall map pool.

In existing savegames, these new islands will be placed in the expanded area in the north, giving you fresh building challenges to face. The exact number of islands (5 to 7) depends on your chosen region size for your savegame. Therefore, some of the new islands you may only see if you start a new game.

When you start a new game, the islands will be randomly placed together with the already existing New World islands. There is one twist, though: While only owners of DLC 12 will profit from the expanded region, the new islands and riverless island variants will be added to the general map pool, and therefore be available for all players, regardless of which DLC you own.

Our process for creating islands has not changed drastically from what we described a looong time ago back in 2018 in a blog before Anno 1800’s release. We recommend checking out the mentioned DevBlog by our Level Artist Simon if you want some more insights in our processes.

Space for your New World capital

But wait, we talked about new islands, but haven’t mentioned Mānola yet! In addition to the new regular islands that we talked about in the previous section, New World Rising is also adding a larger landmass in the very North of the map. Similar to Crown Falls in Cape Trelawney, it offers you more building space on a single island as well as some unique details – but it also comes with its own monument! This monument gets its own section below, so, let’s first talk about the island itself.

First, the name: As you can see on the screenshot above, Mānola is an island with many waterfalls! The name then was inspired by the Manoa Falls on the Hawaiian island of Honolulu, an impressive 46m waterfall surrounded by rain forest. There were additional inspirations for some of the island’s geographical features, of course: We have long beaches framed by mountain peaks (inspired by Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and many, many waterfalls (inspired by the Iguazu Falls, Argentina/Brazil).

Considering this is the finale of Season 4, we wanted to give you a similar place to create your capital city as we did back in 2019 with Crown Falls – especially since the New World also is one of the regions that are part of the base game.

Aside from the waterfalls, you of course get plenty of building space on this island – making it a great candidate for your New World capital. While there’s a large mountain chain further inland, the area near the coast is split by a large river and slightly rises on several levels up to the mountain region. Several beaches provide space for your industry and harbour area, but also for the new beach module that we introduced in our previous DevBlog.

Several large rocks dot both the landmass itself as well as the coastal area, and a part of the island on the left is semi-detached from the mainland but can be connected via bridges. In addition to coasts and building space, Mānola offers multiple mine, clay and oil deposits to suit your needs.

Our Level Artists also added a few environmental details (and secrets?) as well as stories into this island, we heavily recommend taking the time to take a closer look yourselves.

Note, that this continental island is (in contrast to the other new islands) only available for owners of “New World Rising” with the expanded New World map.

Green Energy – The Dam

The monument you can construct on Mānola is a giant dam, that you might be familiar with when you played the “Eden Burning” scenario. Since the island has plenty of water(-falls), as you’ve seen, you can use this dam to harness the water’s energy to provide electricity to your people on the island.

First, you will have to construct the dam in multiple phases – as you’re used to from other monuments – which will require you to import some goods from the Old World, namely: concrete. Upon completion, the dam provides electricity on the island just like a Power Plant does – but without needing any input goods and with significantly higher range: all of Mānola profits from the electricity generated. No need for power plants and intricate railroad networks.

Additionally, there’s no pollution penalty, making the dam a decidedly more environmentally friendly solution. And it just looks really cool!

That’s it on the topic of New World expansion that’s part of “New World Rising” and the new islands that are getting added alongside it. Next week you can expect a DevBlog for DLC 12’s scenario: Pride and Peddlers – it’s gonna be all about trading!

Do you have any additional questions on the topic of islands and world creation? Leave them in the comments!

Development of Anno 1800 – Season 4 is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action within the framework of computer games funding.