ANNO 1602 - Gamehints - Tips for Starting Out

The start: Start your ANNO 1602 experience by playing the tutorials. It's the best way to learn your way around the ANNO 1602 menu.

Play ANNO 1602 in continuous play, normal mode for a few days before you start playing the scenarios. It's a lot more fun this way.

Order tools from the free traders as soon as you've built a warehouse on your island, as you're otherwise going to run out of them soon. All orders are placed in the buying menu. Recommendation: a max of 50 tons, and the price should be in the yellow ranvge.

Choose your island relatively quickly. If you explore all the islands first, your "opponent" will already be in full production before you even start.

Conclude peace treaties and trade agreements with your opponents right at the start of the game. This can be done using the diplomacy menu.

Keep an eye on your business' and workshops´ workloads. Any building operating with a workload of less than 75% is working inefficiently. For example, it takes flour from two windmills to keep a baker working at 100% efficiency. In turn, it takes two grain fields to keep each windmill going. In order to keep everyone working at 100% efficiency you need: 4 grain fields, 2 windmills, and 1 baker.

Build enough housing for your pioneers right at the start. Taxes are going to be your biggest source of income.

The most important buildings at the start of the game are the warehouse (obviously), housing, forester's huts, and hunting lodges.

Build as many forester's huts as you want. Who knows, maybe you can sell wood to the free traders and your opponents right from the start.

Hunting lodges are a better source of food than fisherman's huts at the start of the game. The deer won't die off as long as there's still enough forest on hand.

Make sure you have enough market wagons on hand to transport your wares. The number of market wagons you have depends upon the number of market places you have built.

Don't build any houses at all on some of your islands. Instead, just use them as supply or production islands. This way you only have to build taverns, schools, public baths, etc. on your main island. This saves you money!