What's your opinion about the English demo?

[SirDanielBlack]

Just for commentary and talk about the demo.
A compareson between the german and English version will be nice to.

[Rugster]

:)

Excellent, i actually, went back and installed 1602 and 1503 and was like ARGHH omg, this looks hidious did i really used to like this...

but the new 1701 looks very very nice, the sea, the waves breaking ashore, the pirate ships and the firefights between ships. The animals roaming about, my son sits on my knee shouting "Look a Gorilla!!, Look a Tiger!!" So i guess we'll both be hooked.

The general gameplay seems abit easier on the economy this time around, don't need as many plantations per head of population and the little quest/missions from the free trader is nice, the ai offering alliances and making the odd remark when you do something like complete a mission or when they buy goods from you.. it's all a nice improvement. The queen even sent me some money when i was poor which helped alot. Would be nice to have a ship to ship transfer, although, dumping it overboard and picking it up with the other ship is as easy...could get nasty in a multiplayer game.

At one point i had about 5 seconds left on a mission the reward for which was 8 cannon and my tobacco was on 2 ships, 10 on one 2 on other and the mission needs 12 units, so dump 2 in water collect it with other ship and got my 8 cannons... which gave me 2 explorer ships to kill pirates with.

Haven't tried multiplayer game.

Ai movement is much better, or at least seems to be, no more 10 men trying to fit through tiny gaps.. or at least i couldn't get them to try. They marched everywhere in thier little formations. The new market area (community area which upgrades) that acts as market for food etc is much better than putting down those little stalls which took ages to locate afterwards and the fact that villagers can get a supply of water to put fires out without the need of the fire service, who always seems to get there too late.. (or i can't build a road network)

Quibbles...

Ship warfare is still the old standoff and fire, can't fire whilst moving which would be great.

Heres a piccy of my town centre, all settings at max, scratch what i was about to say, i see that the statue changes colour depending on how happy my people are. (tax rate setting)

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/7534/10222006060559jm2.jpg[/URL]

[Dobber]

And i found an odd bug with auto trade not dropping off cargo, forcing me to catch ships when they returned to manually offload cargo.


Did you set the route up correctly? When you select the city for the good to be dropped off at, you do have to select the correct action for the ship, in other words, did you select the unload arrow or the load arrow, or even not tell it what to do?

[City Builder]

It's a nice demo. The game seems to have been tweaked to be a bit easier in some respects and makes doing some simple tasks in the game much less tedius. For example in 1602 I often had difficulties putting down the road where it would actually attach to a building so sometimes I would end up surrounding the building with a road before I found the side that the game would consider the front of the building. In 1701, the game highlights the squares that are acceptable to attach the road to the building.

I attempted multiplayer in the demo but both the join and host game buttons are grayed out so I assume that multiplayer has been disabled in the demo. I found a configurable keybinding for the hotkeys as the PrtScrn seems to be bound to snapshots however after pressing it about 45 times to take some snapshots, I did not locate where they would have been stored on my hard drive, they may actually be somewhere, but I did not locate them in the installation folder nor in the mydocumets or my documents my picuters folders. perhaps they are saved somewhere else or disabled in the demo, I dont really know.

See more of my initial thoughts here: http://www.citybuildergames.com/index.php/topic,118.0.html

[Dobber]

For example in 1602 I often had difficulties putting down the road where it would actually attach to a building so sometimes I would end up surrounding the building with a road before I found the side that the game would consider the front of the building. In 1701, the game highlights the squares that are acceptable to attach the road to the building.


If I am not mistaken, it does not matter where the road touches the building in 1701.
Come to think of it, 1602 didn't care where you connected to the building either.
But 1503 did care and was kind of persnickety about it, some buildings in 1503 had only 2 spots that were acceptible.

See more of my initial thoughts here: http://www.citybuildergames.com/index.php/topic,118.0.html

I followed your link and read your summation there, and you have a lot of misinformation in it. I think you probably should have come here and found out about a few things before completing your write-up there.

Screenshots are taken by pressing the "Print Screen" key and are saved into a folder named screnshots in the 1701 directory.
You can enter postcard view by pressing the "scroll lock" key that may give you a little more zoom.

Multiplayer is not disabled, it is very much a part of the Demo and can be played through Gamespy. Your firewall quite possibly is what is keeping you out.

[City Builder]

I wrote it up as first impressions and it's an ongoing list. For example I did find that there is a hotkey binding to the PrtScrn button, however I still havnt seen any of the saved snapshots after pressing the PrtScrn button about 45 times.

The rest of what I wrote up is as I saw it on a first impression as if I had never played the game prior and what I experienced while playing it the first time, hence it is a first impression report of the demo in my opinion.

I'd be glad to hear what it is that I have mistaken so that I can try it in the game and change the report, however most of my report is on what I personally experienced and not supposed to be based on fact and there is very little fact listed if any at all, so Im not sure how it could be filled with misinformation. In fact my initial impressions are quite favorable, so I hope that you dont consider that I find the game to be favorable the misinformation.

When playing the demo and the tutorial, it tells you to connect the buildings to a road, one one of the buildings it only highlighted 2 sides of the building, now that could be because the tutorial was telling me the best place to put the road, or it could be that those two sides are the only ones that will connect the road to the building. it doesnt really matter at this point because as mentioned I find it easier to connect the roads to the buidlings in 1702 than I did in either 1503 or 1602

Edit: After reconfiguring the hotkey for the snapshots, even though I reconfigured it to use the same key, the PRINT OR PrtScrn key, now the game has created a screenshots folder in the main installation folder, so I stand corrected on that, and perhaps it was not available in the tutorial or needed to be activated some how, because I pressed my Print screen keyboard button no less than 45 times and no screenshots were placed, however after going into the keybindings and resetting it to the same key it was already set to, then I now have one screenshot of the keybindings screen which would indicate that either it was disabled in the tutorial or I had to set it to the same key it was already set on to make it function for me.

[Dobber]

@City Builder the misinformation lies in:

The demo has a couple limitations... 1 90 minutes of play (which as mentioned may mean 90 mintues in total, or 90 minutes each time we start the game), and multiplayer being disabled,.........

the multiplayer is not disabled.
--
I didn't setup the unload, the trade route sets it up automatically, surely i dont need to set it up twice?

Actually you must click the unload button on the destination warehouse in the trade route menu. And to make sure I am correctly telling you this, I went back into the game and played through the tutorial to get to the part that tells how to set up trade routes and it says to click the unload button to assign the product as being unloaded at the destination warehouse, so I would say that is your problem with the trade routes.

[Rugster]

@City Builder the misinformation lies in:






Actually you must click the unload button on the destination warehouse in the trade route menu. And to make sure I am correctly telling you this, I went back into the game and played through the tutorial to get to the part that tells how to set up trade routes and it says to click the unload button to assign the product as being unloaded at the destination warehouse, so I would say that is your problem with the trade routes.

Cheers i was about to try it when the game finished hehe... had almost 1000 people in it. I'll probably give it a shot with the release version, its abit annoying playing a 90min demo and not knowing how long the games been running for.

[LadyH]

about the trade routes

http://www.anno1701.com/launch/index.php?lg=en&l1=wirtschaft&l2=handelsrouten

look at the first screenshot for better understanding
green slot background = load in
red slot background = unload

http://images.sunflowers.de/anno1701/screenshots/handelsrouten_001.jpg
in Karheim they load in 25 t weapons
in Darlingen they unload weapons but 15 t will stay in the ship
if you want to unload all just turn the red regulator down to zero

:cheers:

[City Builder]

@City Builder the misinformation lies in:



the multiplayer is not disabled.
--


When I start up the demo and choose the multiplayer the two first button options after seeing the multiplayer lobby say that they are disabled in the demo, I'd have to recheck to see what they are however they appear to be something like create game server, or join game or maybe create game, something like that.

EDIT Okay I see now that there has to be a game in the list of games then I have to click on one of them for the join game to light up. it's just the button underneath the join game that says disabled in the demo and that button is create game so I wonder how people are creating games that I can supposedly join.
Double Edit Okay never mind it seems that I can choose the option like load map and that will put me in control of a game for multiplayer. Strange I sat there for a couple minutes and had like 2 or 3 people join and then leave immediately. I guess they were just testing it as well.