Sandbox mode

Sandbox Mode is one of the game modes of Anno 1800. It can be played with 0-3 opponents (up to 4 players total), 0-2 pirates and 1-4 traders, and allows you to set different victory conditions, difficulty levels and characters. You may also select between less or more guidance, which lets you explore the game on your own or get help from tutorial messages.

Select your character

Starting a sandbox game requires choosing between a variety of playable portraits, a company logo, player name and a colour to differentiate you between your opponents. Additional portraits and logos can be purchased with Club Units as Club Rewards using the Uplay Launcher.

Difficulty settings

Anno 1800 features three preset difficulty settings ranging from Normal to Advanced to Expert.

Normal

• 75,000 of starting capital
• Large world and islands
• Abundant minerals
• High fertility
• Full construction refunds
• Free building relocation

Advanced

• 50,000 starting capital
• Average world and islands
• Average minerals
• Average fertility
• Half construction refunds
• Cost for building relocation

Expert

• 25,000 starting capital
• Small world and islands
• Few minerals
• Low fertility
• No construction refunds
• No building relocation

Customizing difficulty settings

Sandbox games can be customized to your liking. You can choose from a variety of settings such as characters you compete with, factions customization, world settings, features, starting and victory conditions.

Characters

You can select up to three NPCs that have different personalities and difficulties.

Faction Customization

Factions are NPCs that are either neutral or hostile and are grouped as pirates and traders. While both pirates' difficulty can be changed independently, you can only turn traders on or off (Sir Archibald Blake is the only trader that is always present in the game world and can't be turned off). Each NPC character will occupy one small island in the world: for the same seed and world settings the usable land space will be smaller, if one or more NPC characters are activated.

Pirates

• Anne Harlow
• Jean La Fortune

Traders

• Sir Archibald Blake (always present)
• Isabel Sarmento
• Eli Bleakworth
• Madame Kahina

World

You can alter different aspects of your game world, for example world size, island size and difficulty, and fertilities. DLC regions will always have the same amount of islands regardless of the settings, and in case of Enbesa and the Arctic there will also be the exact same island models, which can appear moved or rotated according to the seed number. Cape Trelawney always has 15 islands (Crown Falls included), the Arctic has 8 regular islands and 4 cliff islands, Enbesa always has 13 islands (Taborime included).

• Random Seed - a number which determines how the maps of all the regions will be created. Using the same seed number while keeping all of the other important settings the same allows to create exactly the same game world. It is possible to check the seed number of an already existing game, it is displayed on the left side of the menu that allows to select which savegame from a profile to load.
• Starting World Size
  • large - max. 22 islands in Old World, max. 14 islands in New World
  • medium - max. 16 islands in Old World, max. 12 islands in New World
  • small - max. 16 islands in Old World, max. 10 islands in New World
• Island Size - mainly large/mainly medium/mainly small
• Island Difficulty - normal/hard
• Fertility

  Note: Crown Falls always has 4 fertilities; Arctic: 1 fertility is always "Forest", and King Williams Island always has 5 fertilities, cliff islands have no fertilities.

  • plenty - Old World, Cape Trelawney, Enbesa: 4 fertilities; New World: 6 fertilities; Arctic: 5 fertilities (medium islands) and 4 fertilities (small islands)
  • medium - Old World, Cape Trelawney, Enbesa: 3 fertilities; New World: 5 fertilities; Arctic: 4 fertilities
  • sparse - Old World, Cape Trelawney, Enbesa: 2 fertilities; New World: 4 fertilities; Arctic: 4 fertilities (medium islands) and 3 fertilities (small islands)
• Mineral Deposits - plenty/medium/sparse
• Map Type - random/archipelago/atoll/island arc/corners/snowflake

Archipelago

Atoll

Corners

Island Arc

Snowflake

Features

Features tab allows you to balance the in-game mechanics

• Income - high/medium/low
• Inactive Upkeep - off/on
• Construction Cost Refunds - full/half/
• Building Relocation - on/off/fee
• Trading Post Restocks - common/normal/rare
• City Incidents - easy/medium/hard
• Quest Frequency - common/normal/

Starting Conditions

Select from four different settings which determine the beginning of the game:

• Starting Ships - none/flagship/trade fleet/war fleet
• Starting Harbour - off/standard/full
• Starting Capital - large/medium/small
• Revealed Map - off/on

Note: you have to start either with a ship, with a harbour or both. Starting Ships and Starting Harbour settings can't be both set to none.

Victory Conditions

In Anno 1800, sandbox games offer multiple victory conditions which have to be met to win a game. You don't necessarily have to set any conditions and play as long as you like. This also applies for multiplayer sessions.

• Conditions Required
• Monuments
• Investors
• Target Population
• Target Wealth
• Target Revenue
• Diplomatic

To check the victory conditions you chose for any savegame you will have to load it, quit to title and click "Start a new game". Every setting will be selected as you did in the savegame so you just have to go to the victory conditions settings.

You can also save and load all of your settings.