Your early-game mentor, Sir Richard Northborough, is the Emperor's cousin and fanatical about bloody cathedrals.

It seems slightly trite to complain that winning is simply a matter of building things in the right places when assessing a game like Anno, but it's hard to see what a more accomplished combat system would have taken away from the game. Ships pull alongside and pound each other with broadsides, troops march off and swarm over enemy installations or units, but it's really just a matter of numbers and hit-points, with no room for tactics. It's clear that this isn't a game about warfare, even though the campaign storyline revolves around just that, and this is reflected in the relative shallowness of the system. Sadly, when it does come to naval confrontation, and indeed combat in general, 1404 rather lets itself down. Without regular trade, settlements will struggle to flourish and your coffers will rapidly deplete. Goods must be physically shipped to islands if they're to be used there, meaning that trading vessels and the military vessels that protect them, soon become vitally important. There's an immediacy with which your actions are carried out - actions you can observe - that removes a great deal of the obscurification and behind-the-scenes spreadsheet manipulation that usually pervade resource-management. Handy alerts will pop up to let you know when a warehouse is full or a well has dried up, but on the whole the game's pacing allows you to focus your attentions on what you're actually trying to achieve, without all the plate-spinning of many similar titles.Ĭontrol also feels pleasantly direct. This sense of being totally in control without having to concern yourself overly with the minutiae of day-to-day management is one of Anno's real strengths - once things are set up, they generally continue to work pretty well without supervision. This takes a lot of the graft out economic management, whilst maintaining a pleasantly observable front-of-curtain trade mechanism, letting you watch your caravel pootle between islands, laden with spices and cloths, without worrying too much about exactly what they're doing. All trade routes can be automated, too, with waypoints and loading/unloading schedules set up with an easy and precise interface on the map screen. Once you've got a harbour and dock, you can add to your initially available flagship with a flock of trade and military vessels, populate other islands and trade or battle with other factions.

Anno 1404 best ships