Game Overview

Anno is an indirect control "city builder" type game, where the player's goal is to build a series of islands up to satisfy intermediate goals of population types and amounts, building upgrades, and resource production targets.

There is a sort of story that the player follows as well, with remote (off-island) NPCs that reveal plot points in the form of game objectives.

There is also a notional MMO element, that is not available to players in the early game.  through at least city level 10, the only MMO aspects are the ability to friend others and see when they are in-game, and a fairly active chat system.

This game is very fun, if you like fiddling with intricately connected systems of area of effect, chains of production, and balancing constrained resources against competing development objectives.

This game is not fun if you like building armies, attacking other players, and taking or destroying their stuff.

This game is very fun if you like carefully placing things in relation to one another to maximize efficiency ( in terms of time, anyway ).

This game is not fun if waiting for an hour for production to make enough materials to satisfy an intermediate goal, feels to you like watching paint dry.

Indirect control means the player works to establish an environment where things happen, but the player does not make those things happen.  The player does not control the population, only the means of population (houses, goods and services), and the player does not control production, only the means of production (buildings, roadways, transportation e.g. carts).  everything is interdependent in the game.

Each level of population such as pioneers or vassals have increasingly complex demands that must be met to keep them happy, and paying taxes.  Taxes in turn provide the money necessary to pay maintenance on the many kinds of service and production buildings available to meet those ever more complex demands.

That is Anno, at a high-altitude overview anyway.  I'll be adding pages for the different kinds of resources that must be balanced to have a successful, growing empire.