I broke down and bought Anno 2070. I was waiting for a Steam sale, and I was waiting for a low enough price to justify dealing with the UBIDRM, but I caved. Amazon had it for $35, and I really liked Anno 1404, and I'm winding down on Arkham City, and...well, I caved. It took all day to download, for some unknown reason. Amazon: You fail at digital distribution. So here it is finally downloaded. I should be getting to bed, but I want to fire it up for a second just to have a look. "The server is currently undergoing maintenance. Please try again later." Fuck you, UBI. Fuck you in the ear. Fuck you, and fuck me for buying something from you. Never again.
Ubi-DRM is utterly retarded but I too caved on Anno 2070. Atleast you can play the game in offline mode after you've connected to Ubisoft once unlike previous Ubi games that required you to be online permanently. Two steps back, one step forwards.
Funny. I caved two days ago and got the same message. I've never played the previous games, but the setting, the fact that I was lusting for a city builder and Toms review had me waiting for a sale... and then I caved. Played a bit last night, didn't really know what I was doing, but it sure does look pretty. Bought the Special Edition, that should also give me some ingame stuff... but I don't know where to find it.
Crap, I had no idea Anno 2070 had Ubi-DRM. Off my wishlist, then. Sorry, not interested in playing a single-player game that I can't play if your servers aren't available.
Not only that, but it has limited PC activation, and changing anything about your configuration, including changing out your video card, uses up one of those activations. This is working as intended and will not be changed, Ubi says. IMMEDIATE CORRECTION: The developers have changed this! So never mind!
The DRM and reports of the offline issues put me off it. Is this also the same if you buy it off steam? I've been hankering for a new city builder, are there any alternatives out at the moment that I might have missed?
The DRM is a hassle. It is down quite often. The game itself is pretty good though and a definite step up from the last Anno. At first look it just seems like a futuristic version of Anno 1404, but after a while a certain amount of improvements becomes apparent. It is a very well produced game and no other recent release comes close to it as a city builder.
Yes. The game itself is excellent and they even have an online tie-in that actually works well as an incentive to get you to be connected. But Ubisoft likes to beat you with the stick even when they're dangling the carrot.
I agree the online stuff was a nice touch and it's a great game with only a few niggles. The main problem being the crappy AI. It's not a big deal though as Anno 2070 is all about building. The DRM is atrocious though made worse by Ubisofts incompetence. It's not unusual for the servers to be down for an entire day for maintenance and it happens quite often. It even took them a week to replace their forum software, which is just sad.
Despite everything I caved. Am I still allowed to whine if the DRM servers are borked once it's finished downloading?
I hate to say it, but the DRM is unobtrusive. I feel it's watching me but not to the poin that it puts me in a bag and drops me in the canal. It lets me know in no uncertain terms that it can't call home and takes an ange to log on to begin with. The game itself is pretty good, at least in campaign mode. I dont like that I had to sign up with a name of "somethingnotinus" because I tried varitations of 'me' but ended up being exasperated. I paid £40 to get pissed off before I even started playing? at least batman only annoyed me for a tenner. I love the game though. I hate the company for the shitty DRM and forcing me to play with a nickname called "somethingnotinus". Nicknames were so much easier before AOL.
The game, DRM aside, is so close to being perfect. Just like the previous one, however, there are a few things that are horribly wrong. Missions are terrible. Just horrible. Every once in a while, one of the AI players comes trundling up and asks you to do some utterly pointless and tedious thing. "Hey, would you mind clicking this? k thx bye. Have some stuff in return!" "Please put three logs in a boat and sail it over to me." "Would you stare at your city streets for half an hour looking for a tiny glowing guy?" If only the missions integrated into the core game. Instead, they're distracting, time-wasting bullshit that just has no place. Terrible. The AI personalities are also horrible. They're tedious one-note caricatures, and I hate dealing with them. They aim for the archetypical grandeur of Alpha Centauri's leaders, but fall far, far short of the mark.
Ok, so it wont let me play because there's a new version available and I need to run an update. That's all well and good, but how do I update the damn thing? The uplay launcher thingy does its checking for updates and then only gives me an option to play the game.
Regarding the DLC for non steam versions, is there a way to buy it without going through the in game menu? Each time I've tried it so far, I've had troubles with it loading up.
I got this on sale from Origin this weekend - less than $19 for the Collector's Edition (whatever that means). I originally figured that I wouldn't get it until it was $10 (anti-DRM stance), but I had a weak moment and I really enjoyed what I played of Dawn of Discovery. So I spent a bit of free time this weekend giving it a go and this really is a top notch game (at least through the first 5 missions or so). Even if the players are nothing more than charactertures, the story is interesting enough. I like the revamped interface, which shows the chains that you need to build. It's fairly complex, but not punishing. The option to build industry/eco/lab and above/below the ocean gives you a ton of options. So far, I'm loving this one.
Love the Anno series but no way I'm buying this while it still has that DRM. Need to draw the line somewhere.
I hate the DRM and, frankly, bought it in a moment of weakness (I was going to wait until it was under $10). I think the game is great, but I can understand anyone who tells UBI to fuck off because of their DRM scheme.
EA and Blizzard use similar schemes so you won't be playing many big releases on the PC these days if you want to boycott that scheme.
Fortunately EA and Blizzard aren't releasing many games that appeal to me. It's the always on internet bullshit that I find objectionable. Requiring an initial check is fine provided they can run their servers worth a damn. The irrecoverable three installs and you no longer own our product is also the height of fuckwittery.
so for you guys who still have this problem i have a solution that worked for me. I simply disconnected my internet and started the game. i then selected play offline. when i came in to the game there was no issues at all. i startet a game in offline mode and reconnected the internet connection. It then told me to update the program so i exited the game and started it from the desktop icon. Then it actually started uppdating the game. After that everything was back to normal and everything is working perfectly. Hope this will resolve all of you other peoples problems who have similar issues. Azkalan!
And now the expansion is out. I hadn't heard anything about the expansion for months and then it gets dumped out on a Thursday night? Doesn't bode well. Or maybe it's just Ubi being Ubi.
Sounds like Ubi being Ubi , the Anno dev's have been on the ball for far too long to toss a crap product out all of a sudden.
So I bought this today as part of the Steam sale and so far its a lot like Anno 1404. But anyway, like that game I find myself being asked to do things in the campaign missions and having no idea how to do them. For example, I'm told I need to build a distillery, so I did. And now it looks like I need to build some hops fields, Great, except that's not an option on my build menu. Its not there and the game is just toodling along waiting for me to build them. I have no idea if I'm missing something, supposed to make a logical leap, or if there is a bug where some trigger isn't firing. Any ideas? Or should I just start over on the mission, which IIRC happned a lot in 1404 when I ran into this because it was a bug of some kind.
It's been awhile since I played 2070, but if I remember right. If you are looking at the build menu where it shows you the production tree of what materials go to what building to produce the item, if you click on the hops it should allow you to build the field to make them.
you build hop field by clicking the fence icon when you have the main building selected. It's pretty much like 1404 in that any buildings that need fields, farms, or general produce land will require a second step in building the appropriate land after you placed the initial building.
I have to say that this Uplay is BS. I now have two recent Ubi titles. FarCry3 only launches from within Uplay. Anno2070 only launches from within Steam, but then goes into Uplay. But it doesn't show up on my games list if I just launch Uplay. What a convoluted pile of crap.
no worries, I have never been able to get Anno 2070 nor Settlers 7 to work with the main Uplay client, they seem to only want to launch their own stand alone Uplay client.
Does this still have the Tages 3-machine limit DRM? Uplay doesn't bother me, but Tages still puts stuff into no-buy territory for me. Edit: The Steam forums indicate that yes, Tages is still part of the game. Lame :(
I played for about 30 minutes and the tiny font size on my monitor literally gave me a headache. Even setting it to the lowest resolution doesn't help much. And according to the internet, there's no way to make it bigger. The game may be physically unplayable for me unless I get a bigger monitor. I've never had this issue in a game before.
