Claim your own little piece of the world in this upcoming free-to-play strategy simulation game.

Rome wasn’t built in a day

While many of Anno Online’s systems gain in complexity as you get further into the game, many of the games systems are fairly easy to use and understand.

However, many of these systems take time. A lot of time in some cases.

While I don’t see this being an issue for the larger keep and castle-like cities, there were many points during the early game where there was almost too much down time while you were waiting for enough resources or a structure to become available. There were a couple of points during my gameplay where I decided that going down to the kitchen to grab some lunch would be a more effective use of my time, while I waited for my colonists to get the lumber I needed in order for me to move on to the next order of business.

Certain upgrades such as exploring new areas of your island (which allow you to expand further) can take a minimum of an hour in real time. Some may take an entire day. Some of these time sinks may not sit well with certain players who want to be able to stay actively engaged in building up their colony from the start. I am keeping in mind though, that this is still beta so the pacing is subject to change along with the amount of micro-managing at early stages of gameplay.

There are ways to speed up certain time sinks though, with a currency called “Rubies”. Unlike Gold or lumber (some of the standard in-game currency) Rubies function as real-money currency and can be purchased and spent on things such as speeding up exploration or research times, as well as upgrading or buying additional goods for your colony. While I haven’t spent a ton of time in the Ruby Item Shop I can say that, at a glimpse, the items for sale all look to be items of a purely cosmetic or convenience nature. The pricing on Rubies is yet to be available in beta. However, I do want to note that, from what I have experienced so far, you can also obtain Rubies by leveling up and completing specific tasks in-game.

Another design aspect which I’m sure has a lot to do with the reason for such long time sinks is that Anno Online is a persistent game. What do I mean by that? Well in short, your pioneers continue to go about their daily lives even while you’re away or offline, having a continued effect on your colony.

With this in mind, it means that maybe you get an upgrade that takes a full 24 hours to make. Even if you log off, this upgrade will still be going on, so during your next play session you may find that it was completed even with you not online. A pretty useful mechanic when you look at it like that.

There are some cons to this though, which again, go back to the strategic element of Anno Online.

If your colony has fallen into debt and has a poor economy when you log off, chances are it will be in even worse shape when you next log in. So it’s important to be sure to leave your colony in good standing before you let the pioneers take care of themselves for a while, or you might log in to find an angry group of pioneers up in arms about your decisions.

Page 3: Weaving It All Together ->