"Hello in the Orient! We have best coffe and jewells, and the most beautifull womens". So the sheik would say.
First thing when entering Anno which you will notice is the breath taking graphics. It's absolutly amasing. Maybe you say "all the anno's were good looking". But now, with the Oriental cities, the game look stunning. The arrabic islands are floating in crystal clear waters. Now, just looking at the south water, I want to visit Turkey or Egypt. The coralls where you will pick pearls looks very nice, and the overwall quantity of color gives this game a great athmosphere.
In Anno you have to build an empire, starting with just a ship with tools, wood and food. As I said before, I played a few months ago, so I can tell: this 1404 version have everything I didn't liked at Anno 1602. It's not just a thing, it's just small things which gives this game great value.
As expected, in this game the economic chain is more complex and, if you want, in open play you can almost totaly ignore military part, which anyway is a lot simplified. A big change is the way houses evolve. Now it's imposibile to have all the houses at the greatest level of evolution. For each level, you must have some procent of lower level houses. I think this is a good decision, although some might dislike.
But the biggest change is the Orient. Now, for evolving your cities, you must have a lot o colonies. Some of these are placed in south, and all the buildings are oriental type. The ideea is that, as a big city, you MUST have at least one BIG oriental collony, with other types of people living in it, with other needs.
In open play, I liked very much develping my empire, and, for maximum level for my houses, I had to have other 3-4 colonies (almost all of them were just for a few products: paper (needed a river), meat and lethar (not enoutgh place on main island), grain for bread and beer (my island was not fertile for that), etc. Plus, I had 3 colonies too. One is the biggest one, and other 2 was for clay and other raw materials which was not present on first colony island). The trading between main city and colonies must be intense. So, you can't have level 3 houses until you give your people spices.
The game is almost perfect. Here are a few things which don't make him perfect: BIG loading times, BIG saving times. the campaign is too heavy, and I stoped playing it when I had to defend don't know what city. I don't say it's not okay, but I like playing Anno just for relaxing, and watch time missions are not my type for sure.
If you want to find out more, play the game. If you're a city building player, you'll enjoy a lot this game. I know I did, and I will play it a little more, Set on sail!