Why Complexity is Fun: The 25-Year Evolution of Anno

The DNA of a Strategy Giant

Today we are going to learn about the interesting history of Anno, one of the most popular and long-lasting strategy games in gaming. It’s a great story!

This particular series started as a passion project by a small Austrian studio, and now, 25 years later, it’s basically a global Ubisoft AAA flagship. And because it refuses to change its core DNA. It may well be around for another 25 years to come. It’s like a case study in staying true to your beliefs.

The basic ideas that Max Design came up with in 1998 with Anno 1602 are still mostly the same. Let me explain what I am talking about for people who haven’t played? First and foremost, we’re talking about a game where you build an economic engine. This isn’t about taking over by force. The whole problem is, well, it’s about logistics. Colonising islands and making it hard to manage resources. And making these huge, sprawling trade networks for the navy. That’s the way it is. And I think the best part is that the world is set up to make things this complicated for you. In Anno, you can’t just stay inside.

The Feedback Loop: Why Complexity is Fun

The world is made in such a way that it is impossible to be self-sufficient. You might start on an island where you can grow grain and mine iron. But it won’t have something very important. All the time. Your higher-tier citizens will start asking for spices, cocoa, and tobacco, but it will never have the fertility to grow them. So you have to go out on the water right away.

You have to find faraway colonies and set up complicated supply chains. That big, interconnected network you make is what makes the game hard and, most importantly, fun. I love that inner struggle. You start with simple pioneers who only want clothes and fish. Not too hard. And your success, which makes them happy enough to become settlers, is what will cause you pain in the future. It’s the best feedback loop.

You do well. You open up new taxes and new production power. But all of a sudden, your people want, I don’t know, spices, lamps, and spectacles. And you’ve just made your logistics ten times more complicated. In a way, you are punished for doing well with more and more complicated logistics. But that hard part is what keeps the dedicated audience coming back.

That chase means you’re never really at peace. You’re always trying to make things better, always looking for the next level. And this is why the series is so deeply rooted in the German-speaking market. It’s an Aufbau-Strategiespiel. A game about building things. It’s a type of game that really focuses on long-term economic growth instead of blowing things up. And it has the Wusel factor, which is an important aesthetic part. I like that there is a word in German for it. It’s just right. It’s nice to see a lot of little people walking around and doing things in your busy city. So it makes running the business fun. You stop keeping track of spreadsheets and start watching your civilisation work.

The “Rule of Nine” Tradition

Right. Before we get into the history, I need to tell you the most important piece of trivia that connects all of the mainline titles. The four digits of the year in any Anno title always add up to nine. It’s true for every one of them. One, six, zero, and two make nine. One, four, zero, and four make nine. Even the science fiction ones stick to it. This great little convention tells the audience that the formula underneath is still the same.

Generation 1: The Surprise Success of Anno 1602

Anyway, let’s break down the start. The first generation. It all began in 1998 with Anno 1602, which was made by a small team of four people at Max Design in Schladming, Austria. Right away, they made it clear that economics came first. They called one of the most important new ideas “progressive artificial intelligence.” The people who didn’t like AI weren’t just trying to kill you with armies. No. They changed the challenge based on how quickly you were settling in and trading.

It started a race for the best islands and resources, which was, to be honest, a huge change for the time. And in terms of business, it was a huge hit. In 1998, it was the best-selling PC game in Germany. It also got a lot of attention because it was bringing in customers from outside the usual group. Including a lot of female customers, which really helped make the whole genre more appealing.

Anno 1503: Shifting from Tyranny to Trade

That success meant there would be a sequel. In 2002, Anno 1503 came out. This is a classic sequel. More of everything, and bigger. Maps are bigger, there are new biomes, and there are new items like whale blubber and salt. But it gave the series its basic economic dogma in a mechanical way. This is the most important change in mechanics. And to make this clear for you. How did you mostly make money in 1602? Mostly through direct taxes. You could just tax your citizens whether they were happy or not, you know, like a typical management game.

But 1503 changed that in a big way. Selling goods to your people was now the main way you made money. So, 1602 is just the tyranny of taxes. 1503 made you more than just a king; it made you a merchant. You could no longer just tax your peasants into misery and stay alive. To make money, you had to deal with the logistical puzzle. The logistics turned into the engine that made money. That connection is clear: your economic success depends on how happy your citizens are and how complicated your supply chain is. That became the only thing that all the Anno games that came after it were based on. Which is just a great and needed turn.

Sadly, 1503 had a very controversial launch, even though it was another bestseller. A big mistake. It was shipped without the promised multiplayer mode, which was later cancelled. For years, it has been a source of frustration. And that brings us to a crisis point for the franchise and a tech leap that needs to happen.

Generation 2: The Ubisoft Era and the Masterpiece of 1404

That’s right. Generation 2. That little Austrian studio, Max Design, just wasn’t ready for the industry’s quick and very costly move to full 3D. But it was necessary for business. Completely practical. Sunflowers, the publisher, hired a German company to take over the designs. This made it possible to make Anno 1701 on a full 3D engine. And this was a huge job. It cost 10 million euros. At the time, it was the most expensive game ever made in Germany. But it was absolutely necessary for the franchise to stay alive. And this change in technology quickly led to a business purchase in 2007.

Ubisoft bought Sunflowers, which included the Anno brand. And the strategy behind it is what makes it so interesting. Ubisoft already owned Blue Byte, the company that made The Settlers. So they already had one of the biggest names in the field. There was one titan, and Anno was the other. Ubisoft completely cornered the profitable German strategy market by buying Anno. They made sure they had a planned duopoly. Getting the market and, more importantly, the talent.

Which led to the game that many fans still say is the best in the series, Anno 1404. 1404 took that old formula and made it even better. It also brought in the series’ most important new feature, the symbiotic Occident-Orient Multiculture System. To move your main European-style city forward, you had to build a separate working Oriental settlement. You weren’t just adding a new biome. You were adding a whole new society that was necessary for your first one to work.

So you needed the East to send you important things. Like the spices, carpets, and quartz that your high-class Western population needed. You, the player, had to keep track of two different population trees and two different production chains. These important naval trade routes that you made connected them all. That design, which depended on each other, became the direct model for modern Anno.

The Futurist Detour and the “Sin” of Simplification

After reaching that high point, the franchise chose to take a risk. We call it the Futurist Detour. In 2011, Anno 2070 moved ahead in time and focused on a world in the near future that was dealing with climate change. It got rid of the Occident-Orient system and put ecos against tycoons instead. It also added an eco-balance mechanic that made pollution hurt productivity.

But the main point was very strong. 2070 showed that the core Anno loop didn’t depend on the setting at all. It was just a great new look for the 1404 sci-fi formula. But it made you think about logistics in the same way.

However, the real lesson came four years later with Anno 2205. This one had a huge amount of technical ambition. It was running more than one map at the same time. You could switch between Earth, the Arctic, and the Moon right away. A technical success. But when it comes to design, it did what die-hard fans call Anno’s biggest sin: logistical abstraction. They took away all the ships and trade routes between those big maps.

A simple balance spreadsheet was used to figure out production all over the world. For a core Anno player, this is like taking the engine out of a race car. You took away the one thing they really need to run. There was a huge and immediate backlash. Critics basically said that if I’m not in charge of my fleet of ships, it’s not Anno anymore. So the simplification showed that the complexity was the whole point. It was the most important thing for player happiness. I think that failure had to happen so that the developers could see what the audience really wanted.

Generation 3: The Industrial Mastery of Anno 1800

That brings us to Generation 3, the time of mastery, which is all about Ubisoft Mainz. In 2019, Anno 1800 was the best answer. A successful mix. It went back to the Industrial Revolution, skilfully combining the 1404 symbiotic blueprint with the 2205 multi-session tech. And most importantly they brought back the trade routes. They fixed them up completely. But the workforce system was the most important mechanical advancement of 1800.

This made things a lot more complicated. In every other Anno, when peasants became citizens, they just disappeared from your workforce count. 1800 made all levels of the population permanent and made them responsible for running the economy. The pig farm doesn’t have any of your high-tech engineers. You need to keep all of the tiers—farmers, workers, and artisans—going at the same time because your factories still need a certain number of workers to run.

It makes you build settlements that are unique. You have polluted islands where people work, clean cities where people live, and islands where people farm. It was a huge increase in complexity and a direct, confident doubling down on what the audience wanted. The game Anno 1800 sold the fastest in the history of the franchise. In its first week, it sold four times as many copies as 2205. And it didn’t stop there. It turned into a living platform. It got four full years of content after it came out, adding huge new sessions and making it one of the most content-rich city builders ever made.

The Horizon: Anno 117 and the Move to Console

Now we look to the horizon with Anno 117. Pax Romana will happen in 2025. This feels like the franchise’s full AAA graduation. A simultaneous launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox on the same day. That’s a big change in how many people can reach the market.

The story takes place in the Roman Empire in 117 AD. But the change is horizontal. This is the choice for governance. You begin as a Roman governor and pick a province. The calm heart of Latium or the rough Celtic land of Albion. In that province, you have a main choice. Do you Romanise the people who live there, or do you keep their Celtic culture?

That choice is based on mechanics, not just how the story looks. The needs and wants of the different cultures are very different. You have to make completely different production chains, though. And pick branching progression paths based on how you run things. It’s a very advanced use of a faction system that makes you choose between moral and economic options that affect logistics. We are also seeing land-based fighting come back.

Conclusion: The Lesson of Logistics

It’s a great story that spans the last 25 years. If you look at the big picture, Anno’s history shows that complexity, when it’s built around a good puzzle, is more rewarding than making things easier.

It’s the series where getting ahead always makes things harder. And that’s why the players love it. Max Design came up with the loop. The 1404 blueprint came from related designs that improved it. And Ubisoft Mainz just got better and better at it.

As I finish this in-depth look, it’s important to remember that Anno’s story also has a kind of subtle warning about how hard it is to apply this level of complexity to other models. We’re talking about the free-to-play games that come after the main game. Like Anno Online or Build an Empire. In that translation, the core loop just doesn’t work well because free-to-play monetisation often tries to make things scarce to get you to spend money. Which goes against the basic idea behind Anno. The goal of Anno is for players to build complex systems to get around the game’s built-in scarcity. When you try to make money off of that challenge, you ruin the fun of solving the puzzle yourself.

This brings up an important question for you to think about as Anno 117 gets ready to come out on consoles. Can a game that has this much deep, complicated logistics really do well in the global AAA market, which is often simpler, without losing the economic depth that made it famous?

Something to ponder as you begin to plan your trade routes across the Roman Sea.