I confess: I bought a new PC game in a weak moment a few days ago. It's called Anno 1602 and boasts with being the best-selling game in Germany ever, so I guess some of you might know it. In case you want to tell me it's not new, I can only tell you it is by far the newest game I own!

Anyway, to make matters even worse, I can't get into that game. I played through the tutorial and read the manual, but none helped me with my problem.
It is like this: I built up my city similar to the computer-controlled players. Now my citizens are demanding for alcohol (those bastards!), so I wanted to produce some. As I understood it, there are two ways for this (in case I'm using the 'wrong' names for the buildings now, keep in mind that I'm using the original German version, so these are 'my' translations): a wine plantation (directly producing alcohol) or a sugar plantation (in combination with some building producing rum).
Unfortunately, none of these crops want to grow! The fields go dead immediately after I plant them. Yes, I have built a fitting house in the middle and it is connected to the road system.
The same problem occurs with Tobacco, but not with grain or spice.

Anyone willing / able to help me there?

ok, just downloaded the demo-version 'cause it's been a while since I played it last. Anyway, Are you sure your island can support vines/canes/tobacco? Every Island can support grain but spice/cane/vine/tobacco are only supported up to a certain amount per island.., You can see this by when you arrive at your island, clicking the eye to the right and then when that's done, hover your cursor over the Island... In the bottom bar you can see what's supported and what's not... Hope this is of any help...

Yes, I saw this row. I've never seen an island which specifically says it supports wine or sugar (it's always giving values for spice, cacao and one other thing I don't remember at the moment), so I assumed the ones which aren't mentioned are supported per se..... could this be?

I've only played the demo so this could be changed in the latter versions but on my Island it says: Tobacco: 100% - Vines: 100% - Sugar Cane: 50%... And if I try to grow spice, it immediatly goes fallow so it isn't supported I guess... Better get yourself another Island for the booze

Grmbl.... I can as well start over again - none of my three islands supports sugar or wine Maybe I'll just stick to Settlers 2, that seems to be better anyway.

I dunno, I like Anno 1602 a lot better than settlers 2 (or any other for that matter)... And I believe you don't need the alcohol to progress, if you give them sigars and spices isn't that enough?

As I said before: I have the same problem with tobacco, so no cigars either! I don't know if they really need alcohol, I just saw they all demand for it - no matter in which stage the people are.

You can always import it from your competitors...

Ha! My 'competitors' don't grow anything apart from food, still their cities always grow larger (and quicker) than mine That is one thing I especially dislike about the game: the AI is cheating so obviously.

That's one thing that bugs me too a lot in most games... When the pc obviously is cheatng in his own advantage... It really takes the fun out of all but the best balanced games...

Absolutely. In most of these 'global strategy' games, the computer players have an army ready before you have even built up your basic support system on higher difficulty levels! Extremely annoying, especially since I like playing defensively better - but I'm forced to waste my time on building up military instead.

On the comparison to Settlers again, I found Anno 1602 pretty uninteresting so far. The economy system is mostly one-dimensional and linear (produce this, produce that, production chains are almost always just one level 'deep', hardly any goods can be used for different things,.....). In addition, it's lacking the cute touch of the Settlers.

I don't know, it's probably just me but I like the graphics of 1602 better then those of settlers... Not really for the people or animations but just because of the buildings... You are right however about the simplicity of the economical system. I however don't think this is a bad thing since this way, you keep the game simple and entertaining even for the most inexperienced user... Of course, the other side of the coin is that more experienced players will find it dull and uninteresting so an ideal situation would be a game which is fully customisable (but since I vagualy remember going into this in another thread, I won't go into it here)... So my final judgement over 1602 is that it's an intertaining game with more then adequate graphics (can't judge sound because of lack of speakers on my current comp ) and a fairly intuitive, straightforward interface. The game will keep you interested for a while but don't expect too much in terms of depth and strategic thinking...

I can easily agree with most of that. Sure, the graphics are ok, the buildings look good - but it's all a bit too 'cold' for my taste. If it wasn't at least a bit fun, I wouldn't have played it for longer than half an hour and then this thread wouldn't exist The sound is awful by the way: extremely boring music and from time to time, a really bad voice suddenly comes up telling you completely uninportant stuff like "your enemy has built a ship" - in a way which makes you jump from the chair because of the sudden shock! The reason why I consider dropping the game is that it's just too similar to Settler, only inferior (in my opinion). I can't think of one single component which the Settlers doesn't offer or which is worse there. So Anno 1602 is completely obsolete to me.

Edited by Mr Creosote at 18:09 on October, 12th 2002

Doesn't apply to me... I'd love to be able to play a strategy game like Anno 1602 but I just can't, because I'm a total control freak in this genre and after about five minutes of playing I get the feeling I'm already in way over my head...

All I'm saying is that I don't think any of these games are "for the inexperienced user"... I tried Anno 1602 once, gave up about fifteen minutes later after losing two houses in a fire if I remember correctly and then never played it again...

All these games do is make me feel either neurotic or dumb...

http://www.epinions.com/game-review-72A6-2AABBFD9-39982D44-prod5

I agree with most of the analysis, but not with some parts of the conclusion. I don't have the slightest problem with 'smaller' zoom levels (1024x768).As I said before, I consider Anno 1602 way too easy, way too unchallenging.

And on the 'regulated growth', I never saw people leaving, decreasing their technology state (you know what I mean....) or anything - so I leaving the demands unfulfilled doesn't hurt! I might be wrong there because I haven't played the game that much. So far, I can't see that 'unique and new concept' in this game though.

My regulating growth, I meant not allowing the people to build more advanced houses. But wait till you have several colonies, and producing basically everything, and one of the other fractions decides to invade you. In such a case, Settlers II is a breeze .

Since I absolutely hate war stuff in such games, I doubt I'll play that far

And by the way, if you want some more in-depth tips, I've uploaded my old strategy page here:
http://21ct.goodolddays.net/1602.html

Thanks, will have a look at it before I run it next time.