Anno Domini 1257 Companions

1. Anno Domini Warband Mod
2. Dominion Of The Sword

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AnnoDomini

Anno Domini (also known as AD) is a time period after Jesus's birth. Do you mean the Anno Domini 1257 mod? I've played tons of M&B but haven't really tried any mods yet, this one sounds interesting. I've played tons of M&B but haven't really tried any mods yet.

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A.D., or simply Anno, is a series of 4X city builder games, originaly by the Austrian studio Max Design and later by Related Designs/Ubisoft Blue Byte Mainz when the former went bankrupt. The series is focussed primarily on the colonisation and development of a variety of islands, but also has aspects of trade, technological progression, war and conquest. It consists of (in order of release):

• Anno 1602
• Anno 1503: The New World
  • Anno 1503: Treasures, Monsters & Pirates (expansion)
• Anno 1701
  • Anno 1701: The Sunken Dragon (expansion)
  • Anno 1701: Dawn of Discovery (Nintendo DS spin-off)
• Anno 1404 (known as Dawn of Discovery in North America)
  • Anno 1404: Venice (expansion)
• Anno 2070
  • Anno 2070: Deep Ocean (expansion)
• Anno 2205
• Anno 1800

Each game has a 'Continuous Mode' wherein you can play as long as you want, competing with A.I. players (or other humans over multiplayer) for territory and resources, and a number of scenarios, often-times with several arranged to form a storyline. Players begin with a ship (or in some scenarios, a warehouse on an island) and a negative income. You have to build houses to collect taxes, but then your peasants want fish, and then they want something to occupy them and so on.

Most of the games offer a way to trade with the AI, whether other Empires or civilian trade ships. Due to general scarcity of certain critical ressources until those can be produced, the latter has to be relied on to buy those ressources, though other ressources can be sold as well. Technology Levels ensure a progression from simple pioneers and settlers to citizens and even aristocrats, each with their own set of demands and power to pay taxes in return.

War is not the biggest factor, but it does happen, as AI players can be allies and trade-partners, or non-trade opponents and enemies to fight. In many scenarios across the various games, the human player will have to eventually defeat the AI players with weapons and conquer their islands to proceed, typically via sending ships to their islands and bombard the city walls, then unload soldiers. Alternatively, but more difficult, one can try settling on the enemy island(s) and produce soldiers there directly. Later titles introduced additional options for economic warfare, like buying up shares of the enemy's island until the whole place switches owners non-violently via hostile takeover.

This series of Video Games provides examples of:

Anno Domini Warband Mod

• Action Bomb: Starting with 2070, ships blowing themselves up one way or another have become a recurring feature of naval warfare. 2070 and 1800 provide socketable items that enable an expensive Suicide Attack for massive damage while 2205 has explosive Attack Drones employed by the villains.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The central villain of the 2070 campaign is the Super AI F.A.T.H.E.R. going rogue after a computer virus corrupts it. After the campaign, however, the Techs repair F.A.T.H.E.R. and continue to use him without incident.
• Anachronism Stew: 1800 gets increasingly far from its stated time period as one advances through the tech tree, starting with steam trains (first prominent in the 1830s), which are used to transfer oil to power plants, to power shipyards that make ironclads (1850s) armed with dynamite-based weaponry (1860). The most powerful ship type is a steampunk rendition of a battleship.
• An Entrepreneur Is You: The goal of the game.
• Anti Poop-Socking: The game will show messages if you're playing deep into the night. 'How about a coffee?'
• The Ark: These serve as flagships in 2070. Specifically, they're mobile bases that serve as the major factions' centers of operations.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI can appear to not think at all; for example you just build a massive fleet, blocked the enemy habour, razed the whole island to the ground and after all that offer peace and trading, to which the AI promptly accepts without a care.
  • Subverted, in that few would be stupid enough to take such an offer after being burned to the ground. On the other hand, one may be desperate enough.
  • Vehicles in 2205 have horrible pathfinding and even worse combat AI. Your frontline warships operate on No Range Like Point-Blank Range despite being armed with torpedoes (which is incredibly annoying whenever a swarm of Bomb Drones shows up), and your whole fleet has apparently never been taught what a sea mine is and that one should stay away from them. They also don't move a millimeter from their position even when the ship right next to them is under attack, forcing you to issue attack orders on pretty much any single target you want destroyed. And don't even think about assigning target priorization; your ships mostly shoot whatever they they currently feel like shooting regardless of its actual threat level. Nothing like all your heavy hitters concentrating their fire on some harmless submarine while one of the abovementioned Bomb Drone swarms is rapidly closing in from another direction.
• Attack Drone: Employed by 2070's Viper (an anti-submarine warship), and a Socketed Equipment version can be installed in most other ships as well — though they're often inferior to the Viper's drone. Both kinds are quite handy though, since they can usually attack all targets such as aircraft, not just enemy ships.
  • Surveillance Drone: Of the submersible variety for collecting samples and retrieving objects from the sea floor, also installable in certain vehicles.
  • The Orbital Watch in 2205 employs swarms of unmanned Bomb Drones armed with powerful warheads for Suicide Attacks on your fleet. They're small and comparatively fragile, but their speed, numbers and sheer damage output make them more dangerous than most actual warships.
• 'Awesome McCool' Name: He may be his game's Big Bad, but 'Virgil Drake' is a pretty badass name regardless.
• Bad Boss:
  • In 2070, Thor Strindberg is more interested in going ahead with the 'Two Year Plan' than listening to his chief scientist say the hydroelectric dam will come crashing down if they try to install the new turbine and run it at full speed straight away instead of running tests. Guess what happens next.
  • Surprisingly averted by Virgil Drake of 2205. Destroying one of his Eradicator dreadnoughts (gigantic warships that essentially serve as boss battles) will often prompt him to say that 'the ship meant nothing, but the crew... for them, you will pay'.
• Bald of Evil: Virgil Drake, Big Bad of 2205, comes with a shiny plate as part of his Obviously Evil deluxe package.
• Bourgeois Bohemian: The Eden Initiative in Anno 2070 is an entire society of them. Lots of nature-lovers who at the same time benefit from and enjoy advanced technology, most of which is built with inefficient but sustainable methods. But strangely their drink of choice is tea rather than coffee.
  • Artisans in 1800. Befitting the real-life Arts and Crafts movement, these foppish middle-class citizens express a lifestyle filled with traditional revival and counter-cultural living. Mixed with the modernising innovations of the era.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • The Corporate HQ from 2205 is this game's sole monument, a ridiculously expensive building with incredibly high upkeep costs that covers all citizen tiers' logistics needs to a small degree, but doesn't do anything otherwise except look cool. It basically exists to show off how wealthy you are, with the achievement for building it aptly named 'Because I Can'.
  • Also from 2205, the Madrigal Islands sector project requires unbelievable amounts of resources for a reward that is pretty much useless (see the That One Sidequest entry on the YMMV page for details). Chances are you'll complete it once for the achievement and won't ever touch it again in subsequent campaigns.
• Christianity Is Catholic: Implied in dialogue and the style of occidental religious buildings. Justified in 1503, which takes place before the Reformation (and Orthodox nations never did much colonizing the Caribbean). It's even more justified in 1404, a time period in which Catholicism was at its zenith.
• Command & Conquer Economy: Nothing gets done without your consent. Certain things can be automated, but you're free to intervene at any time.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: There are times where you can finally have the resources needed to expand to your first oriental island while your AI opponent has already settled 2.
• Company Town: Your settlements in 1800 are this. Instead of paying taxes, income comes from your workers buying essentials from you.
• The Conspiracy: Many of the campaign modes centre around them, 1404 and 1800 in particular.
• Continuity Nod:
  • 1701 has Henrik Jorgensen, and 1404 has Leif Jorgensen. Their personalities and appearance are similar enough that one can assume that they are somehow related. 2070 continues with Tilda Jorgensen, who even notes that she comes from the lineage of the 'great explorer' Leif Jorgensen. 2205 then continues with Ville Jorgensen. In Anno 1800 Bente Jorgenson makes an appearance
  • One of the first major bonus missions in 2205 involves salvaging an 'ancient A.I.' that is recognizably an ARK from 2070. Other sector projects reveal that Global Trust has gone bankrupt in the intervening years, its assets and territory now controlled by the Big Five. The Eden Initiative pops up with the Tundra DLC installed; they set up the compromised seed vaults in the sector that you need to restore as part of the local project.
  • The Support Fleet ability in 2205 summons a small fleet of allied Seal-type submarines that look exactly like the dual-mode player ship/submarine from 2070.
• Cool Boat:
  • Several of the ship designs in 2070 fit this trope. Special mention goes to the Colossus and Keto's Anaconda.
  • 2205 lets the player control a whole fleet of them, from Chain Lightning-shooting Glass Cannons to the Macross Missile Massacre-dispensing command ship. The Orbital Watch counters with their own fleets spearheaded by giant Eradicator dreadnoughts.
• Cool, but Inefficient: The Greentide Archipelago sector project in 2205 unlocks Synthetics, a fifth citizen tier above even the formerly top-level Investors. Completing the project is no mean feat to begin with, and upgrading Investor residential complexes to Synthetic complexes requires three rare materials instead of standard construction materials, making Synths a significant investment both in time and resources. What you get are buildings that supply 5,000 workers each (twice the amount Investors offer), but don't generate any revenue whatsoever. Considering how Synths can only settle in temperate regions where manpower is by far the most abundant resource anyway, losing the Investors' massive income boost for more workers you won't need is impractical, to say the least. The only benefit the Synths' higher numbers might offer is a bump in your corporate level, but that doesn't do a whole lot overall, so sticking with the Investors remains the better choice regardless.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive:
  • 2070 has an entire faction of them. The tycoons of Global Trust primarily care about the bottom line and have several unique technologies that let them take advantage of not giving one flaming shit about the environment, like strip-mining coal anywhere instead of wasting one of your precious mining slots for a coal mine. Factory Farming and fertilizers mean they have to spend very little space on agriculture as well and their populace doesn't care about a negative eco-balance. This may come to bite them in the backside when the natural disasters start hitting...
  • Thor Strindberg is the worst of the lot though. More ecologically-minded members of Global Trust do have some fairly solid eco-balancing buildings available to them later on though, such as the Soil De-acidifier, which restores up to 90 points of eco-balance if it has no overlap with other De-acidifiers.
    • It's less ecologically-minded as 'we have to get rid of these penalties before they choke us to death.' Global Trust Ecobalance buildings can only restore ecobalance to 0, whereas Eden Initiative Ecobalance buildings can send it skyrocketing into positive numbers, which grants bonuses to agriculture and population opinion. Amusingly, this means that if you have a mix of both Trust and Initiative buildings, you can get away with using the Trust's compact, more efficient technology, and plonk down a few Ozone Creators to still have a positive ecobalance. Yana would probably have a heart attack if she saw one of her sky whales floating over an open pit coal mine, desperately counteracting its effects.
  • 2205 shows that Global Trust paid dearly for this culture in the long run. They're no longer a Mega-Corp, in fact they're long since defunct and held as an example of how not to conduct business.
• Cyberpunk: While cybertech is downplayed in Anno 2070 (besides AIs), Global Trust definitely has this kind of aesthetic.
• Damage Is Fire:
  • Played straight with ships, but not so much with buildings - where fire from riots, invasion, or disasters damages buildings.
  • Completely averted in 2205. Anything that can be damaged looks exactly the same until it explodes.
• Deflector Shields:
  • Crisis intervention missions in 2205 give you access to a range of support abilities for your ships, one of which utilizes energy shielding to make your fleet temporarily invulnerable. A fairly easy-to-acquire upgrade available through the Orbit DLC cuts the fuel cost of this ability in half, enabling you to No-Sell almost any damage coming your way.
  • Also in 2205, settling the Moon is only possible under the cover of shield domes that protect your buildings from the frequent meteorite impacts pummeling Luna's surface. The masts that project these shields have a small footprint while their domes cover a large area, so it's mostly an atmospheric condition for added flair that has little to no actual impact on gameplay.
• Double Unlock: Nested example in 2205. Opening up room for expansion first requires buying out another corporation's sector, which usually drains most or even all of your cash reserves. Once the sector is yours, you need to pay again to construct a warehouse on an island of your choosing. The first warehouse in each sectors is always comparatively cheap, but then the prices increase steadily for each subsequent one until eventually a simple warehouse costs more than what you paid for the entire sector it's in. Would be annoying enough if it was only about money, but warehouse construction also requires rare materials in increasingly insane quantities, which makes late-game expansion a real chore.
• Dual-World Gameplay: In Anno 2070 you can build submarines which allow you to explore and colonize the deep sea.
  • In 2205 you have to balance temperate, arctic, and lunar facilities together in harmony, with tundra assets thrown into the mix if the eponymous DLC is installed.
• Earth That Used to Be Better:
  • Rising ocean levels in 2070 have flooded the continents and devastated every previous world government, leaving only Mega Corps to manage the remaining habitable land. Though the ecosystem on virgin lands is still fertile, thrashing it through careless strip-mining and cheap factories will have harsh and immediate (on a climatological scale) consequences.
  • By the time of 2205, the world political stage has stabilized, but the majority of habitable zones are still choked with pollution, and fresh temperate regions are at a premium. Meanwhile, the ice caps have been returned to a healthy state, thanks to the dogged efforts of a corp of hard-nosed scientists who are staunchly unforgiving of any unauthorized development. The overall situation has become bad enough that building settlements on the moon, despite the tremendous expense, starts to look reasonable.
• Easy Logistics:
  • Naval combat consists almost entirely of two ships pulling up beside each other and trading shots until one has sunk.
  • Otherwise averted. Logistics is the game's primary challenge, getting goods produced at point A to be processed at point B so they can be distributed at point C, if not more steps than that! Juggling all of these so that nothing bottlenecks, the flow of goods is efficient and reliable, and the total amount of income exceeds the total amount of maintenance paid is where most of the game difficulty lies.
• Empty Quiver: The first world event in 2070, aptly named 'Atomic Terror', deals with a pirate group called the Neo Skullz seizing a number of warheads and threatening to launch them at populated areas because their leader wants to watch the world burn.
• Endless Game: A staple of the series. Rumor has it there is also a campaign and scenarios.
• Enemy Mine: A good way to earn positive influence with Strindberg, who normally hates your guts, is to go beat up on a certain doctor.
• Evil Chancellor:
  • Completely averted in 1404, Grand Vizier Al Zahir is an honourable, caring, almost grandfatherly figure to everyone around him, and is not only loyal to the Sultan but also deeply grateful for his appointment as the Grand Vizier.
  • Played straight with Cardinal Lucius who orders the Crusade during the unfortunate sickness of the Emperor.
• False Camera Effects: In 2070 when you zoom into the underwater view the screen is briefly filled with bubbles, as if you had dropped a camera underwater. When you zoom back out, water droplets stream down the screen.
• Flaunting Your Fleets: You, of course. You need a powerful navy in order to win the games, no exceptions. In fact, the pirate faction leader in 2070 will compliment you if you build a large enough fleet.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Dr. Howard Young, boss of the Arctic Custodians in 2205, is hilariously unpopular among his contemporaries despite leading the most important environmental protection agency on the planet. Ville Jorgensen, the arctic trader, outright tells you to ignore him, the Tundra trader sometimes bites your head off when you load her sector because she thought you were Young, and the rest of the NPCs makes no effort to hide their dislike of the man, either. Some even apologize to your for his actions despite no responsibilities on their part. He's also in the running for the title of 2205's least popular NPC among the players, mainly because he constantly gives you shit over pretty much anything while being utterly incompetent at his own job.
• Gimmick Level: Settling the Arctic and the Moon in 2205 imposes some unique building restrictions on the player that have little precedence in previous games^note . Arctic residences require heat as an additional resource, something that is supplied by production facilities in a limited radius around them, which radically changes the way you can set up your settlements. Lunar construction can only be done under the cover of Deflector Shields, but these have large diameters and therefore, ironically, give you much more leeway than the Arctic does. Both examples fall short of qualifying as an Unexpected Gameplay Change because the general rules for setting up a viable sector economy remain the same regardless.
• Global Currency: Gold, which is, of course, Truth in Television. By 2070, the world will have switched to Credits.
• Global Warming: In 2070 the polar ice caps have melted and the world's climate has been altered, hence many locations that were once barren are now fertile. Developing these locations is where you come in.
• Green Aesop: 2070 has elements of this.
  • The Eden Initiative is all about this. Global Trust doesn't care much about pollution, but they can end up paying dearly for it when a nuclear reactor goes boom.
• Guide Dang It!: The Expedition feature in 1800 doesn't tell you a whole lot about how it works even with extended tooltips enabled. New players will find themselves particularly stumped by the question of what goods they need to load on their ship in order to satisfy the various category requirements for hunting, medicine, force and so on. For instance, bringing along some tons of coal to improve your chances during hunting forays isn't exactly a logical correlation.
• Hot Sub-on-Sub Action: 2070 introduced submarines into the gameplay.
• Impoverished Patrician: Karl Leonard von Malching in 1800, whose family had lost all their land and titles by the time he was a teenager. A non-sympathetic example as he treats pretty much every non-aristocrat around him like dirt and rightfully his to boss around.
• Infinite Supplies:
  • Any resource that comes out of the ground can be refilled with a substantial payment of gold.
  • Not so much in the first two games, where stone and gold were always infinite, and iron had to be mined with an upgraded mine to get everything, which, depending on the map, could be finite or infinite.
  • 2070 mostly has finite supplies of ore, coal, oil and sand (and lobster, for some reason), but certain items that can be built by the tech faction or bought from AI players can refill the supplies for a hefty sum. Underwater plateaus have infinite supplies for everything but oil.
  • In 2205 even traditionally non-renewable resources like metals can be mined indefinitely.
  • 1800 continued this trend as well.
• Luck-Based Mission: Expeditions in 1800 are entirely this. You can improve your chances of success by bringing along a well-chosen assortment of goods and items, but even then you only have a (higher, but still fallible) probability to succeed in the random events that pop up several times per expedition. If your ship finally makes it to its destination, or achieves its goal, you're faced with another dice roll to determine how many, and exactly which, rewards you receive.
• Magic Realism: The games are usually more or less realistic, at least until you defeat a native culture in war, upon which that culture will curse you with a strangely supernatural parting gift, like sudden droughts, locust epidemics, pestilence or tempests (worst case scenario in 1602 at least would be a gold mine collapsing, which in some cases will dive the mission straight into Unwinnable by Design territory). It's never touched upon how it's possible, just that it happens invariably.
  • One mission in 1701 involves you helping Mc Crane to retrieve an Artifact of Doom from a volcanic island, despite protests from the natives. But as soon as you remove the treasure, the island erupts in flames and earthquakes, and for the rest of the mission, you must help the native tribal leader prepare an appropriate sacrifice to Appease the Volcano God.
• Mega-Corp:
  • The Tycoons from 2070. If you choose to side with them you play as a subsidiary of Global Trust, the world's largest energy supplier.
  • Every player controls one in 2205, and contends against others in the global council. Meanwhile, Global Trust has gone bankrupt in the interim between 2070 and 2205.
• Money for Nothing: The late game can easily turn into this.
• Must Have Caffeine: The basic beverage for S.A.A.T. employees in 2070 is 'Functional Drink', which is made of equal parts coffee and sugar.
  • Engineers and Investors in 1800 require it as a non-luxury drink of choice. If a chart made by a Reddit user is anything to go by, coffee is more significant to their diet than any kind of solid food.
• Nerf: 1800 nerfed emergency services and defence buildings by giving them a lengthy 'training period' upon construction or relocation, probably to counter the common player tactic of planting these buildings only when necessary to save on upkeep. If you do this now, half the neighborhood will be burned down / infected / rioting by the time your fire station / hospital / police station gets going, and hostile ships will annihilate your coastal buildings before your defence turrets even have a chance to return fire. The civilian examples are also much heavier on micromanagement: they provide additional forces if your average citizen happiness is high enough, but these have to be dispatched manually in case of an emergency instead of rushing out on their own. The ability to activate these reinforcements also has a cooldown itself, although disasters normally happen with enough time between them to make this a non-issue at least.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: In Anno 2070, Leon Moreau is a computer player character affiliated with the Eden Initiative who prioritizes maintaining perfect ecobalance on all islands, and fiercely opposes anyone harvesting and using large quantities of oil. The computer player character Vadim Sokow is his Arch-Enemy for his focus on the fossil fuel trade, and Leon will attack any of Vadim's oil tankers every chance he gets. Destroyed oil tankers release oil spills, drastically reducing the ecobalance of any island the tide carries them into. Way to protect the environment, Leon.
• Nintendo Hard: The games in general get increasingly complicated and difficult the further you play. It's one thing to set up a small village, another to turn it into a thriving country without crashing it into the ground.
• Nuke 'em:
  • 2070 includes nuclear weapons. A World Event involves a group of pirates getting a hold of a bunch of them and threatening to blow everyone to hell. It's also a big part of the campaign. The second chapter ends with finding out that the Super AI mentioned above has been stealing, among other things, the materials needed for nukes. The third chapter deals with the aftermath, with the area heavily impacted by radiation.
  • Subverted in 2205. Using the Missile Barrage ability in crisis intervention missions has the AI announce 'nuclear missile launched', but what actually happens is a normal ballistic artillery strike pounding the target area for a few seconds. Nothing nuclear about it at all.
• Ocean Punk: 2070 contains elements of it.
• One Nation Under Copyright: The Global Trust in 2070 is effectively this, having been forged from various corporations and taken the place of many national governments that went under during the upheavals.
• Palette Swap: The Tundra DLC to 2205 reuses a great many assets from the arctic and temperate regions, with most buildings being recolored copies hailing from one or the other.
• Pirate: They're a bane in 1701, 2070 and 1800, and have a habit of harassing trade ships if you don't play along with their protection racket. It's possible, however, to get on their good side if you yourself are particularly nasty. 1800 dialled this down a bit by making the pirates offer you the same bog-standard quests that any other faction doles out, so keeping them pacified is more a matter of patience until your navy is strong enough to wipe them off the map. Most games that feature pirates also let you disable them completely from the start if you don't feel like putting up with them.
• Play Every Day: 2070 has daily quests which can be undertaken for the faction of the player's choice, earning 50 career points with that faction. There are also periodic elections which grant career points for anyone who votes. These constitute the main ways to earn career advancement in the game.
• Plunder: Enemy ships drop all of their cargo (in later games) when destroyed, so of course this is in full force. AI ships can also drop special items that can be 'sold' to other AIs in exchange for research/tech 'licenses' as well.
• Plot-Triggering Death: In 1800, the death of the their father back in the Old World is what triggers the Non-Entity General's return there, which in turn kicks off the campaign.
• Prequel: 1503 and 1404, naturally.
• The Professor: Ibn al Hakim in 1404.
  • Absent-Minded Professor: Izmir in 1404, Salman Devi in 2070.
• Propaganda Machine: In 1800, your local newspaper will publish issues that have various effects on your island's population. These effects are generally tied to events that have happened since the last publication date, and can be either positive or negative, depending on how those events were handled (i.e. a fire that was quickly put down with an efficient fire response with minimal damage will be positive, while a sluggish fire response that allowed several buildings to burn down will have a negative impact.) The player can, by spending influence, 'convince' the publisher to edit those articles before publication, replacing them with something more 'optimistic' or at least distracting.
• Real Is Brown: In 2070, this can happen when the eco-balance level in your island drops at 25 negative and lower. This turns the land and coast around it to turn darker and browner, getting progressively worse as the number goes down. At around 200 negative and lower, your island can turn into a desolate looking wasteland. If your eco-balance is far below acceptable levels, you run the risk of creating a tornado in your map, and there's no way to curb it when it appears. This happens as a result of putting too many buildings that pollute the environment, especially coal plants and resource mines, or having oil spills. However, certain modules can be either bought from your neighbors or researched at your Academy to help curb pollution and maintaining the eco-balance on your islands. Additionally, there are certain buildings that serve the same purpose that modules do at the expense of increased costs and power consumption.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The Emperor and Sultan - as well as their advisors, are like this in 1404.
  • Rufus Thorne sort-of takes this role in 2070 despite his potentially ominous name, recognizing that Strindberg is almost entirely at fault for the dam catastrophe and commending the player's role in containing the situation and helping control the other disasters that strike shortly after. He's not too happy if you side with the Eden Initiative, but he doesn't make any blatant threats like Strindberg. Indeed, his main complaint about you using wind power is its inefficiency. While Strindberg is panicking and raving on about all the money he is going to loose, Thorne directs you to rescue trapped workers, straight out saying they are more valuable than recovering goods and facilities. Thus, his main character trait appears to be a fairly positive form of pragmatism, causing him to value competenct and efficient subordinates greatly.
    • All the faction leaders in general. They don't like each other, but will work together at the drop of a hat if there's an outside threat they consider significant.
• Recycled In Space: 2205 has you colonizing and mining the Moon.
• Red Herring: The introduction video for 2070 has EVE say twice, in her Machine Monotone, 'You can trust me, implicitly'. Despite setting off every Speculative Fictionred flag in the book, she's telling the truth: she's as stalwart as any of the right-hand man characters in other games.
• Refining Resources: A major component of the series.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction; More like instant construction. Inverted with Monuments, which can take hours to complete.
• Schmuck Bait: In 2205 crisis intervention missions, quite a few of the destructible resource deposits along the coastlines are guarded by hidden ships (mostly submarines) that surface when your ships get close.
• Scunthorpe Problem: 'Essex' is a banned city name in 1800. Some of the games own default ship names, such as 'Puff Adder' can actually trigger its profanity filter. All this in a single player game
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: 2205 is significantly more forgiving than any other title that came before. Even the most advanced production chains are easy to set up and balance, naval combat only happens on separate maps that don't affect your territory at all^note , natural resources are infinite, citizens never riot, natural disasters don't exist^note , and there's no meaningful competition with AI players whatsoever. It's just you, your exceedingly well-behaved settlers, and vast stretches of beautiful nature just waiting to share their wealth with you.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Contrasting the above, the next title, 1800, went back to the vastly more complex gameplay of earlier entries like 1503 or 1404, making it considerably more challenging than 2205. Even setting up nothing but a running economy has become a real effort, and that's without factoring in rival AI players or pirates. That the economic interfaces have been dumbed down significantly in terms of easy accessibility doesn't help the matter.
• Settling the Frontier: The entire point of the games is that there are these islands full of resources that need a colonizing. 2205 changes the setting from the ocean to the moon.
• Shout-Out: 2070 has shoutouts to practically everything in its achievement names. Add them here if you must.
  • In 1503, your ship's commanders will occasionally reply to your orders with 'Captain! My Captain!', echoing the famous Walt Whitman poem. Debatable whether it's also Anachronism Stew.
  • In 1404, wanna-be minstrel Leif Jorgensen will hum a hilarious 're-imagining' of the famous Reichston poem by the real-life German minstrel Walther von der Vogelweide.
  'I sat upon a stone, and was stretching my legs.
  Then I raised my arm, and suddenly I felt... warm!' ^note
  • One of the Tycoon buildings in 2070 is called the Ministry of Truth.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: The games' campaigns lean toward the idealistic side of the scale, ending with peaceful coexistence of all parties. The Sunken Dragon campaign is an exception, as both Grace Bonnet is probably dead although no body was found, and Diego del Torro is captured by Madame Nadasky.
  • 2205 is also generally optimistic. Earth in general is enough of a disaster area that lunar colonization is considered tenable, but the ice caps are kept frozen with technology, organic food is still available, and all technology has been refined to the point that even mining no longer harms the remaining environment.
• Socketed Equipment:
  • 2070 has Vehicle Upgrades, Island Upgrades, and Ark Upgrades. Most vehicles hold at least one upgrade slot, some as many as three. Whilst they're mostly used for 'permanent' effects (increased speed, firepower, shields, etc.), these slots are also used for consumables like the Boarding Party or even Detonators. Islands can have three upgrades that can work on only that island. Ark Upgrades have an influence on the entire map and come in three tiers, but three of your slots are locked until you reach certain Career levels in each faction.
  • After 2205 offered nothing of the sort, 1800 went back to it in full force. Now there are socketed upgrades for ships, harbor buildings, inland production buildings, animal enclosures for the zoo, and more. Most of these have limited range though, making them much less powerful than the Island or Ark Upgrades from 2070 were.
• Solar Punk: The Eden Initiative in Anno 2070 is basically this in a nutshell
• Space Elevator: One of the tasks in Anno 2205 is to build such a device in order to facilitate transportation of goods between your earthbound sectors and the Moon. Each sector must be equipped with a separate one if you plan on making full use of their capabilities.
• Speaking Simlish: Most of the soundtrack, especially in 1404.
• Stone Wall: Combining this with Damage-Sponge Boss to some extent, Orbital Watch Eradicator dreadnoughts in 2205 have ludicrously high health but deal surprisingly low damage for something of that size and with so many weapons. It's compounded by their inability to fire their numerous missile batteries at more than a single target at once. Goading them into attacking one of your heavily armored torpedo cruisers is basically the 'you win' button in any encounter with them, assuming you got rid of any other Watch fleets in the area beforehand.
• Terrorists Without a Cause:
  • Among the enemy factions in 2070, most of whom are just opportunistic pirates, there are groups like the Neo Skullz, who steal nuclear warheads and threaten cities with them, apparently just because they like spreading mayhem.
  • The Orbital Watch from 2205 often comes across like this. The only motivation they divulge about why they're so hellbent on destroying you is that they claim the Moon belongs to the First Wave (AKA themselves), and that the Second Wave (AKA you) has no business being there. They never care to mention what exactly their beef is with you or Earth in general, though, but then the Orbital Watch as a whole is a trash-talking Plot Hole to begin with, so it's kind of fitting (in a weird way) that their cause remains just as unclear as everything else about them.
• Theme Naming: All titles consist of 'Anno' followed by a year, of which the sum is always 9 (1602, 1503, 1701, 1404, 2070, 2205 and 1800).
• Too Dumb to Live: In the campaign of 2070, you help the tech faction come into possession of what is described as an intelligent virus. So far, it sunk the prototype of the city-ship arks and may have been responsible for several minor near-disasters. So... let's plug it into F.A.T.H.E.R., the A.I. that rules the tech faction and administrates its city. What's the worst that could happen? Hint: You spend the rest of the campaign finding out.
  • It gets worse. First of all, C.O.R.E. is on an island. Why in God's name does F.A.T.H.E.R. need a complete Ark to house his systems, complete with engines? He's been built into the harbor for crying out loud! Second, why does F.A.T.H.E.R. have complete control over C.O.R.E.'s systems? The airborne drones are perhaps understandable, but you'd think that the shore batteries would need some kind of manual intervention to fire, or at least have an entirely-mechanical analog safety mechanism that could be thrown to prevent F.A.T.H.E.R. from shooting up the city in the event he turned into an insane artificial intelligence. Thirdly, who in their right mind would equip an AI, which is intended to be a fixed installation, not only with an entire ARK capable of carrying him out to sea from a cold start, ripping its way through the seawall to do so, but with the facilities to then create entirely automated armed sailing ships. Is F.A.T.H.E.R. commanding some kind of insane faction of humans who are manning his ships that we never hear about, or are they really that dumb that they either build their ships completely automated, or provided F.A.T.H.E.R. with humanoid drones capable of operating the equipment, performing maintenance and refueling etcetera? It's never explained.
  • Strindberg, again. First he breaks the dam, and when he rejoins you later, he wants to beat you to the punch of building up a strong fleet... only to focus exclusively on ships that are helpless against submarines. Guess what happens to his fleet... and then he seems to go downright rogue, only to be easily captured.
    • In continuous games, he's also the only AI reckless enough about his ecobalance to cause tornadoes.
    • on the Virus front, to be Fair, until that point, Both your ark's EVE unit and F.A.T.H.E.R had recognised, and fought off, the Virus's attempts to gain access to their systems, and giving how disturbingly SMART it was acting (likely containing an AI component itself), they were trying to lock down its source on the assumption that there may be OTHER events caused by similar attacks.
• Torches and Pitchforks:
  • In the third installment, the population can go nuts for three reasons;
    • Either when being roused by a revolutionary,
    • When the taxes get too high,
    • Or when your tiny island(s) run out of vital resources, such as clothing, basic nutrition, alcohol, tobacco, or chocolates.
    • Then they will get out their torches, pitchforks and placards (with nothing written on them) and rampage through your towns, to lapidate statues of yourself, and to burn down all buildings they encounter, including vital public institutions, firms, and their own houses. While the Fire Brigade never intervenes. After the crisis is settled, they start revolting, because vital public institutions, firms, and their own houses(!) are amiss all of a sudden. It should be noted, that the higher your population is in the public order, the more they are prone to revolt. While Citizens, Merchants and Aristocrats are the most aggressive, the Pioneers and Settlers are almost always content.
  • In Anno 1503, a mob might sometimes attempt to topple your reign. However, they can be beaten down by your soldiers.
  • Meanwhile in 2070, the pitchforks and torches are replaced with protest signs, as citizens may make demands in the form of an Ultimatum mission. Failure to comply results in fairly peaceful rioting compared to earlier games — you're not going to see anything burning down except the amount of money in your wallet, since you're also losing any tax income... and you're looking at dealing with mass emigration due to unhappiness.
    • Most of them can also be avoided entirely fairly easily if you know what triggers them. For instance, citizens may complain about a lack of electricity even if you have a surplus. But keep it above 50 or so and they'll never complain. Same with ecobalance for ecos, and income for tycoons.
  • 2205 does away with this mechanic completely. Each citizen class provides a specific amount of income and manpower for each of its needs that you fulfil. Make them happy and both values increase accordingly. Fail to meet their demands and they drop back to their 'specific need unfulfilled' level, but that's about it. The only way to lose all income and manpower is to not supply anything, which mostly happens if residences have no traffic connection, not enough heat in the Arctic, or incomplete Deflector Shields coverage on the Moon. Riots simply don't happen anymore no matter how miffed your population might be; they just leave for greener pastures.
• Transhuman: The Tech faction in 2070 appears to be heading in this direction. Lower tier tech populations are unmodified humans, but in the Deep Ocean expansion as they go up into the Genius population class, their material goods needs begin to encompass things like neuroimplants, immune system enhancing drugs, and bionic exoskeletons which preempt or satisfy physical demands of the body. One Genius quote says that thanks to 'neuro-optimization', he requires 68% less sleep than normal.
  • This continues in 2205, although interestingly it hasn't progressed any further. Cyber-eye implants are universally needed for anyone in advanced fields, but instead of replacing body parts, high-ranking scientists and executives wear cuputerized Intelli-clothing.
• Wandering Minstrel: Leif Jorgensen is a wannabe bard, but his singing is terrible.
• We Buy Anything: In later games, the AI will buy anything and everything you sell, regardless of cost or usefulness. In the first installment, however, it will buy only whatever it needs (which may be nothing at all).
  • However, the standard selling price often reflects usefulness. In 2070, you can easily sell sand en masse to AI players (it's also one of the few goods every AI that visits your Warehouses will buy) but it's not going to make you a lot of money.
  • Averted in 2205. The sector trading posts have ever-changing combinations of goods they're willing to buy, so while they technically do buy anything from you, you can't just hawk any surplus stores in your warehouse whenever you feel like it. The upside is that they often pay exceedingly well for things that can be produced en masse fairly cheaply, which makes it very easy to refill your cash reserves after expensive investments, like sector acquisitions or lunar expansions.
  • NPCs in 1800 are back to buying anything you sell, although the four neutral ones have additional, regularly changing sets of goods they specifically request and for which they pay a premium if you sell them directly at their warehouse.
• We Have Reserves: In 2205, Virgil Drake will often boast about this when you destroy Orbital Watch buildings (but not ships). Seeing how it only takes a few minutes for a new Crisis Intervention mission to spawn after you completed the last, there's weight to his claims.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: The Orbital Watch from 2205 is ostensibly a violent lunar nationalist movement that wants to keep the Moon free of outside interference. The only problem is that there's no water on the Moon, so in order to maintain Anno's focus on naval warfare, any real battles against the Watch take place on Earth, and their fleets and bases are both highly advanced and absolutely massive in size. It's never mentioned where all this materiel is coming from, especially in light of how suddenly the guys appeared on Earth's radar. One ominous video manifesto out of the blue, and suddenly Earth is being overrun by an endless supply of high-tech warships operating out of enormous, heavily fortified harbor bases.
• A Winner Is You: Missions that aren't part of a campaign end instantly when you meet all the objectives, giving a statement of your victory and a screen totaling your points. It can be very abrupt and disconcerting if you've spent many hours in the mission.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: In addition to basic things like wood, stone, and tools, in the later games, later structures require more advanced building materials with extensive production chains.

Anno Domini 1257 is a total conversion mod for Mount&Blade: Warband set in 13th century Europe, Middle east and North Africa during the Crusades and Mongol Invasions. The game starts in March 1257AD, and is historically accurate to that point. From there, the player shapes the world with his/her actions, with the ability to let the Crusades or Mongols succeed at invading all of Asia and Europe.

FeaturesEdit

• Huge map consisting of all of Europe and parts of the Middle East and North Africa, featuring 42 factions.
• Hundreds of new historical, region based troops.
• More than a thousand new items, armors, weapons, all historically accurate for XIII century.
• Buildable castles with ability to improve its fortifications to three levels.
• Manor system with the ability to build custom settlements (buildings that you build appear in the scene!).
• Realistic engaging combat system with taunts, formations, improved horse archer skirmishing scripts and other features.
• Custom battle scenes, realistically depicting each region of Europe from barren desserts, palm filled oasis, european swamps, open steppe battlefields, mediterranean plains, snowy gorges, frozen lakes, thick german forests.
• Weather system, including desert storms, blizzards, rain storms.
• Play as one of your soldiers after your death, with the auxiliary player feature (can be turned off in the mod options in the Camp menu).
• Crusading system: Join a crusade or start one yourself!
• Join a crusader order as sergeant or a knight!
• New optional lance recruitment system, aiming to emulate medieval feudal recruitment system.
• New Companion system improved and remade with an easy interface for recruiting.
• New improved Tournament system with 1vs1 jousting tournaments and team based tournaments, which offer more gold than vanilla warband.
• Sea battles and sea travel. Speed while travelling in sea vary based on the weather.
• Custom region based scenes for castles, towns and villages. And many unique historically based reconstructions of real places!
• Diplomacy Mod has been integrated.
• Freelancer Mod has been integrated. Join a king's or lord's army as a soldier for weekly wages. Be loyal and earn promotions and new equipment based on your rank.
• Many other minor and major features!

FactionsEdit

These are all of the 42 in game factions (as of version 1.03)

Dominion Of The Sword

External linksEdit

GalleryEdit

Some screenshots of the map:

Some screenshots of the game: