Created 2023-05-07 by gamebuster, updated 2023-05-19, draft
This guide provides step-by-step instructions to get a new save to 15K inhabitants and 15K profit at 2 hours (in-game). Specifically, at a bit over 2 hours, you should have:
Let's get to it!
This guide consists of steps, each containing a general guide and a checklist. The checklist generally follows the order of which you should build the buildings, but be sure to check the guide on specifics on the order of things.
This guide requires rapid placement of buildings. Being comfortable with blueprinting, move and copy will be very helpful.
We're fighting the clock, because of the newspaper. For this guide, the newspaper is essential. You need 8000 inhabitants in 60 minutes in-game, before we publish the second newspaper. You can check the in-game time by hovering your profile picture, at the top-left of your screen.
This guide is tested at regular speed, but playing at half speed will give you some room to breathe.
Warehouses are not included in the build orders. You're responsible for an appropriate amount of warehouses. I like to use 1 warehouse per 4 production buildings.
Because timber is an important resource early game, avoid wasting it. Don't build any more warehouses than you need and do not upgrade them.
This guide is tested without DLC enabled, but should work with DLC enabled as long as you do not use any of the DLC features.
Specifically, silos are very powerful, but building them too early will cost you valuable bricks and money. I recommend not building them until after you've completed this guide.
This guide assumes Sandbox, on default Normal settings (the easiest option). If you want to make it even easier, you can enable "explored map", remove AI players, remove the pirate and use "trade fleet" as starting boat.
Make sure you do start with an island AND at least one boat. Both your starter island and boat will contain timber, essential to get started quickly. The default normal setting will make you start with a flagship and an island, both containing timber.
Start with building the marketplace and as much houses you can build leaving 10 timber in storage. Don't forget about the 50 wood in your boat, use it to build houses. The 10 steel in your boat will be used to build a trading post on a second island. Don't spend it on anything else! You can store the steel and cannons on your island to not slow down your boat while it's exploring.
Build 4 lumberjack and 4 sawmill near the small trading post. Use the 10 timber to build a small warehouse and build another 4 lumberjack and 4 sawmill. Plant trees in the lumberjack area to make sure the lumberjacks can get to work right away.
Repeat building the small trading post + 4 lumberjack + 4 sawmill 3 times, for a total of 3 small trading post, 16 lumberjack and 16 sawmill.
Pause sawmills if you lack workforce. They require 10 workforce each. Timing is crucial here. Start them as soon as your workforce increases.
Use your boat to explore for new island. You can queue multiple waypoints by SHIFT+CLICK on the map multiple times. Check the area around your island for viable islands containing hops, wheat and/or potatoes. Make sure to end up back at your island.
Providing for the farmer's needs increases the amount of farmers will live in your houses, and will increase your income. The potatoes are essential for income, because we'll consume a lot of money expanding our city.
When you're building these farmer's needs, be sure to pause any buildings at the end of the production chain (framework knitter or schnap distillery) as long as you're low on workforce. Unpause them immediately when your workforce increases again.
The pub increases happiness and income. Build the firestation in your town to cover the whole town. I like to build my marketplace, firestation and pub next to each other.
We'll be expanding our town to have a second marketplace. Building the houses in this step should be done in a direction with plenty of space for a second marketplace and plenty of houses.
First, build 40 houses. Then you build the rest of the list, and you finish with the remaining 80 houses for a total of 120 houses. Don't forget to pause buildings when you're low on workforce.
Like before, placing the timber should be done in this order: a small trading post, 4 lumberjack and 4 sawmill. Repeat this 3 times.
Find a second island with wheat and potatoes, close to starter island, with plenty of space. Load 50 timber and 8 steel (you started with 10 steel on your starter-boat) on your boat and find a new island. If you don't have hops on your starter island, your second island needs to have hops.
From this point forward, build orders will be shown per island. You're supposed to build on both island in parallel, building until you're out of resources and swapping to the other island. Be sure to swap often so you don't overflow on any resource, especially timber.
If you're stuck waiting for timber on one island while the other island is overflowing with timber, either transfer timber using the boat, or continue with the next step for the island with overflow.
Follow the steps of the boat in order of the letters: First step A (at Main), then step B at Second, then step C at Main, etc.
Be sure your island has Potatoes, Wheat and Hops fertility. If your main island has hops, you don't need hops on your second island. If your desired island is missing some fertility, see below.
Easy to deal with. Schnapps are an essential source of income on both islands. Produce the Schnapps on your main island, and transfer them using a Trade Route. Be sure to set a minimum stock of 40 on your main island. Whenever the guide tells you to build schnapps or potatoes on second, you build them on main.
A pain to deal with. Flour, Bread and Beer are all required consumer goods, and they all require Wheat, and you'll need a lot of it.
To make it work, whenever the guide tells you to build wheat farms, you build them on Main. While it is doable to produce all wheat on a single island, you'll really have to pull out your tetris skills to make it fit.
If you're going to be producing beer on second, I recommend transporting Wheat to Second using a Trade Route, and continue processing it to Flour, Bread and Beer there.
If you're going to produce beer on main... good luck.
This is fine, as long as Main has Hops. Produce Hops on Main, produce Beer on Second. This way, you can spread the space requirement for beer production: Hops on Main, Wheat (for Malt) on Second.
Use a trade route to transport Hops from Main to Second, and use that same trade route (in another slot) to transport Beer from Second to Main.
Don't forget to set a minimum stock of 40 for Beer on Second.
Again, continue both Main and Second islands in parallel. Don't neglect either island, they're both crucial to reach your goal.
We'll be building a lot of houses on Main. Don't wait for Timber, swap to Second when you're out of Timber. I recommend using blueprints to build the houses and upgrade them to real buildings whenever you have some timber.
Press C and drag to copy an area of buildings, press V to toggle to blueprint-mode. Press U to select the upgrade-tool, and hold SHIFT while using the upgrade-tool to upgrade all buildings of that type.
Use your boat to bring Timber and any spare Wood to Second. The Timber is to allow you to build faster on Second. The Wood is to allow the Sawmills to get started on Second. If you don't have any Wood, it's fine.
Don't forget to plant trees around Lumberjack if they don't start right away. Pause sawmills if your workforce becomes negative, and unpause them immediately once your workforce is 10 or more.
On Main, we'll be upgrading houses. To get clay production started as soon as possible, we'll be building clay pits and brick factories while upgrading houses.
For each clay deposit, we'll be upgrading 10 houses before building a clay pit and two brick factories (and a small warehouse). If Main has less than 4 clay deposits, upgrade until you have 40 worker residences.
On Second, we'll be providing the first Consumer Goods for farmers. Pause Schnapp Distilleries if you lack workforce, and unpause them immediately when you have 50 or more workforce.
The number in parenthesis is the total amount of buildings you should have of that type after having completed that step. By upgrading Farmer Residence, you'll actually reduce the amount of farmer residence, hence the 280 farmer residence you have will be decreased by 10 to 270.
Note that the counts shown in the checklists are per island. Both Main and Second have their own total number of buildings.
This guide will always seperately mention building houses (placing farmer residence) and upgrading houses (upgrading an existing residence to the next population tier)
This is a conditional step. If your game doesn't meet the condition, you do nothing, mark the step as completed and continue to the next step.
We'll continue to build a lot of stuff in parallel. Don't get distracted! Around the 30 minute mark, you'll be prompted about the newspaper.
When the newspaper is announced, use up to 2 of the best available Austerity propaganda. You'll likely only have the -10% needs consumption, which is perfectly fine.
Because we're only early in the game, we need every penny. Use the remaining slots to increase income (Consumerism propaganda) and optionally use it to increase happiness (Hypnosis) if there was nothing positive written in your newspaper.
Note that influence points are only used as long as the newspaper is active. At the end of the newspaper, your invested influence points are released and you can reuse them in the next newspaper.
This guide requires the use of propagenda. Propaganda is a very powerful tool in Anno 1800. It's basically a cheat code, at the cost of riots and influence.
Austerity, a type of propaganda that lowers need consumption of your population is especially powerful. By combining the -30% and -20% austerity propaganda, you'll get 50% need consumption reduction. Additionally, you'll get a 15% bonus because you spent more than 150 influence on the newspaper.
With the bonus, you'll get 57% reduced needs: your population will survive on only 43% of consumer needs! Compared to not using this propaganda, anything related to consumer needs production, from potato to beer, you will:
You'll have a lot more space and a lot lower costs. With the space and workforce saved, you can build and upgrade more houses for more income and inhabitants, for even more profit and influence.
Once you have access to 20% and 30% reduction, I don't think it's worth it to use the 3rd slot on an additional 10% reduction. I think the 3rd propaganda you should use is Consumerism if you need more money, and Hypnosis otherwise.
Later in your game, you'll start to get an increasing amount riots. You can never completely get rid of them, but you can reduce them, or make them less annoying. Some suggestions to try after completing the guide:
The final sprint until the magic 8,000 inhabitants mark. It is important to get 8,000 inhabitants at 60:00, so we can use both the 2nd and 3rd level of Austerity propaganda.
To get to 8,000 inhabitants:
If you don't have 8,000 inhabitants when the newspaper hits around 60:00, you might as well load an autosave and try again.
On both islands, we'll be building and upgrading houses to cover the workforce needed for the new production buildings. Avoid negative workforce, build or upgrade houses to keep your workforce positive.
To build the slaughterhouse, flour mills and bakeries, need 40 bricks per island. Bring bricks from the island with the greater brick-production to the island with the lesser brick production.
Don't build silos, we can't afford to spend bricks or money on silos.
I recommend upgerading your harbours to increase the storage capacity of your islands. Because this requires bricks, only upgrade your Small Trading Post after you've completed the sausages and bread production chains.
If your second island lacks grain fertility, build the Grain Farm and Flour Mill on Main and transport Flour to Second using a Trade Route. Ensure there's a minimum stock of 40 Flour on Main. Produce the Bread locally on each island.
When the newspaper is announced, you have 5 minutes left to reach the 8,000 inhabitants and set your propaganda. If you're not yet at 8,000 inhabitants, build Farmer Residence on both islands. It doesn't need to be pretty; you can even destroy them later. Just make sure you hit 8,000!
When you reach 8,000 and you can configure the newspaper, use Austerity -30%, Austerity -20% and Consumerism +15%. All consumer goods needs are now reduced to 43% (see CTRL+Q) and you should have about 5,000$ profit.
We're just getting started!
Let's start building some sails so you can build ships, essential to set up trade routes. We'll be building cannons later in this guide.
Steel is very important, but it is also very expensive. We'll stick with one steel production chain per island for now. On each island, build an iron mine, 2 charcoal kiln, 2 furnace, 3 steelworks and a firestation covering the furnace, steelworks and iron mine.
Upgrade houses to cover any workforce needs.
Tax income is your only source of income, building more houses will result in more income. To make space, Destroy Sawmill and Lumberjack, leaving 12 Sawmill and Lumberjack on Main and 8 Sawmill and Lumberjack on Second.
Both your workers and farmers would like some soap. For farmers, you will have to enable it as a lifestyle need. Additionally, providing Soap, your inhabitants have something to drop in prison when they're caught rioting in your lovely town, by the Police Station you'll be building.
You can sell excess soap to Eli Bleakworth at Wormways Prison island for a much higher price than normal: 384$/t. Some like to overproduce soap with the sole purpose of selling it.
Per minute, one Soap Factory produces 2 Soap worth 768$. The total upkeep is 210$, leaving you with 558$ profit.
This guide recommends against overproducing soap for the purpose of selling it. Even though it appears to be free money, it requires time to set up and eats up valuable space on your island.
To increase the effective range of service buildings, you can use brick roads. Only use the minimum amount of brick roads required, because brick is still a limited resource.
Note that School and Church doesn't need to cover Farmer Residence, only Worker Residence.
You should now have at least 10K profit.
Using CTRL+Q, make sure all consumer goods are producing an excess, but no more than double. Also keep an eye on flour, since it is consumed by farmers, even though it is not listed at consumer goods. The remaining production chains should produce exactly as much to match the demand, or slightly more.
On either island, or spread across both islands, build a total of 8 Grain Farm, 4 Malthouse, 12 Hop Farms and 8 Breweries. You'll need 60 bricks and 48 steel for this.
Given 5,600 workers (280 residences) on Main and 4,400 workers on Second (220 residences), Beer's profit is as follows:
14×(280+220)14×280×−40%+14×220×−36%Now, if the supply is interrupted in any way, you suddenly lose 4,324$ to 7,000$ income (depending on royal taxes). It is very important to keep the supply stable, so be sure to check on it, especially if you notice your income to fluctuate often.
If you use a boat to transfer beer to the other island, don't forget to set a minimum stock level. I like to use 40.
For each population tier on each island that has more than 1000 inhabitants, you will pay Royal Taxes. The more inhabitants you have, the higher percentage of taxes you will be paying.
Spreading your population across multiple islands and multiple population tiers is the only way to minimize Royal Taxes. I recommend reading about it on the Anno 1800 Wiki when you have some spare time!
Once both island have a steady supply of beer, start upgrading worker residences to artisan residences. Use your boat to transfer steel and bricks as needed. Upgrading to artisan houses is an easy source of income.
Be careful not to become overwhelmed. Make sure your farmers and workers are perfectly happy! You don't need to satisfy the artisan's needs right away: Even without providing any new need, the income per residence goes from 56$ to 96$.
Upgrading to 100 artisan residences will net you a nice addition of 4000$ income. Additionally, by reducing the amount of workers, your Royal Taxes will be decreased by approx. 2,000$, resulting in 6,000$ total profit, just by upgrading 100 houses!
At the 2-hour mark, you should have:
For your next newspaper, which will come about 5 minutes after the 2-hour mark, replace the +15% income propaganda with happiness or riot chance reduction to reduce the riots, or just disable incident music and ignore them. Be sure to have all towns and islands covered by police stations.
Now immediately explore new regions using expeditions. While you wait for the expeditions, start producing glass for hospitals, increase your iron production, grab a 3rd island (build another 400 houses, following the guide for the second island again) and upgrade more houses.