Anno 1701, also sold as 1701 A.D., is a city-building strategy game developed by Related Designs and currently listed by Ubisoft on PC storefronts. The original release is tied to Related Designs and Sunflowers Interactive, while the modern History Edition is credited to Ubisoft Mainz and Ubisoft.
This beginner guide focuses on the colony economy: building a settlement, keeping people supplied, using taxes deliberately, and growing from pioneers toward higher population tiers. The opening is approachable, but the game becomes harder once more citizens, goods, trade routes, and emergencies compete for the same budget.
Essential Tips
1. Start With Tutorial or Continuous Play
Learn the economy before chasing a perfect island.
Anno 1701 has Tutorial, Scenarios, Continuous Play, Playground, and Multiplayer modes. Use the tutorial if you are new to the series, then move into Continuous Play when you want the main open-ended colony loop. Scenarios add goals and pressure, so they make more sense after you understand housing, roads, markets, taxes, and basic supply.
2. Treat Pioneers as a Foundation
The first tier teaches the whole game in a smaller form.
Your settlement begins with pioneers. They ask for few things compared with later citizens, but they still need a working settlement structure and a steady food supply. Do not rush past this phase so quickly that your island has no room for roads, markets, production buildings, and later upgrades.
3. Grow Only When Goods Can Support It
Higher citizens pay better, but they also ask for more.
Population advances through Pioneer, Settler, Citizen, Merchant, and Aristocrat tiers. Each step can improve tax income, but it also widens demand. Tobacco products, perfume, lamp oil, and other later goods can become economy traps if you upgrade houses before the supply base is ready.
4. Use Taxes as a Growth Lever
Taxes are not just a money slider.
Lower taxes encourage social advancement and happier residents. Higher taxes can increase income, but pushing too hard can reduce population or trigger unrest. A practical rhythm is to lower taxes when you want houses to advance, then raise them cautiously once the new tier is stable and supplied.
5. Control Upgrades Instead of Letting Growth Run Wild
Manual pacing keeps materials from vanishing at the wrong moment.
When many houses are ready to advance, upgrading all of them at once can drain building materials and create sudden demand for goods you are not producing yet. Upgrade in groups, watch stock levels, and pause before moving another block of houses into a new tier.
6. Avoid Blind Over-Production
Extra factories cost money even when warehouses look full.
More production is not automatically safer. Buildings and supply chains have running costs, and producing far beyond what the population consumes can waste gold. If a warehouse is overflowing with a good, stop expanding that chain until growth or trade gives the surplus a job.
7. Build Chains With Ratios in Mind
A balanced chain beats a crowded one.
Production chains work best when inputs and processors match. Cloth, bricks, and bread all involve connected buildings rather than one isolated structure. Use simple ratios as a planning habit: for example, cloth needs sheep farms feeding a weaver, bricks need clay feeding brick factories, and bread needs grain, mills, and a bakery.
8. Leave Space for Roads and Service Reach
A cramped town is expensive to fix later.
Early islands can look open, but later tiers add public buildings, production chains, storage, and transport needs. Keep road access readable, avoid trapping key buildings behind housing, and reserve room near production zones for expansions. Fast movement between producers, markets, warehouses, and ports keeps the economy smoother.
9. Use Trade Before War
Diplomacy and commerce are part of the toolkit.
Anno 1701 supports trade and diplomacy with other parties, including foreign cultures and computer rivals. When a needed good is hard to produce locally, trade can buy time while you expand to another island or restructure production. War exists, but land and sea combat should not be your first answer to every shortage.
10. Take Useful Free Trader Tasks
Optional tasks can solve short-term economy problems.
The Free Trader can offer assignments such as delivering goods or destroying ships. Do not accept every task automatically, but pay attention when the reward helps with a bottleneck. A well-timed task can support growth without forcing a risky tax spike or an oversized production build.
11. Prepare for Disasters and Disruptions
A profitable colony still needs slack.
The game can throw disasters and disruptions at a settlement, including storms, earthquakes, volcanic events, plague, rats, pirates, and hostile rivals. Keep money, goods, and transport capacity in reserve. A colony running at the edge of bankruptcy has no room to recover when production breaks.
12. Keep History Edition Differences Separate
Modern convenience does not rewrite the old economy.
The History Edition adds current-PC support and modern presentation features, while the core Anno 1701 loop remains colony growth, production chains, trade, diplomacy, and battles. When reading older advice, separate economy fundamentals from edition-specific notes about multiplayer, account requirements, resolution, or window settings.
Plan Growth Around Population Tiers
| Tier | Beginner Focus | Watch For |
|---|---|---|
| Pioneer | Food, basic services, road layout | Expanding too fast before income stabilizes |
| Settler | More building materials and wider supply | Upgrading houses before new chains are ready |
| Citizen | Stronger economy planning | Letting multiple goods run short together |
| Merchant | Better income potential | Building expensive chains without demand |
| Aristocrat | Mature city management | Assuming high-tier residents are pure profit |
The safest beginner pattern is staged growth. Build enough housing to generate income, satisfy the current tier, then upgrade a limited group. After that, wait until the new needs are supplied and the balance is positive before repeating the process.
Keep Production Profitable
Production should answer a real need: current consumption, near-future upgrades, trade, or task rewards. If it does none of those, it may be a drain. Use warehouses and markets as feedback. Empty stocks mean the chain needs attention. Full stocks with a falling balance mean you may have built too much.
Think in chains instead of single buildings. A bakery does not help without the grain and mill support behind it. A brick setup needs clay and enough brick factories to use it. A weaver needs wool. When a good is short, inspect the whole chain before placing another final building.
Roads and distance matter because production is only useful when goods move reliably. Place connected producers close enough to storage and transport points, and do not make carts travel through a messy town center when a cleaner production district would do the job.
Trade, Tasks, and Trouble
Anno 1701 is not only a building puzzle. Other powers, foreign cultures, the Free Trader, pirates, disasters, and rivals all affect the economy. Use peaceful tools first: trade for missing goods, complete tasks that fit your stockpile, and keep diplomacy stable while your settlement is still fragile.
Lodge activities, sabotage, espionage, land battles, and sea battles can matter later, but they also cost attention and resources. Build an economy that can survive trouble before starting trouble yourself. A strong settlement can choose when to fight; a weak one often fights because it has already run out of better options.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Skipping the tutorial immediately - The economy has enough moving parts that learning the basics first saves time later.
- Upgrading every house at once - Sudden tier jumps can drain materials and create new demand faster than production can answer.
- Raising taxes until residents leave - More tax is useful only while the population stays stable enough to pay it.
- Building factories for full warehouses - Surplus goods still cost money if the chain is not serving growth, trade, or tasks.
- Ignoring production inputs - A final building cannot work efficiently without the farms, mines, or processors behind it.
- Crowding roads and markets - Poor layout makes transport and later expansion harder.
- Treating trade as optional - Trading can cover shortages while you prepare a permanent supply.
- Accepting every task blindly - A reward is not worth breaking a fragile supply chain.
- Starting wars before the economy is stable - Combat drains resources that an early colony often needs for growth.
- Mixing edition advice carelessly - Keep core economy tips separate from History Edition account, display, and multiplayer notes.
Summary
| Category | Top Tip |
|---|---|
| First mode | Learn with Tutorial, then use Continuous Play for the main colony loop |
| Growth | Advance houses in controlled groups |
| Taxes | Lower for advancement, raise cautiously after supply stabilizes |
| Production | Build chains to meet real demand, not just to fill warehouses |
| Layout | Leave room for roads, storage, services, and later chains |
| Trade | Use diplomacy and trade to bridge shortages |
| Tasks | Take Free Trader assignments when the reward fits your economy |
| Trouble | Keep reserves for disasters, pirates, rivals, and disease |
| Edition scope | Separate old economy fundamentals from modern History Edition features |
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6 checked for this guideEvery factual claim in this guide was checked against at least two independent sources before publication. These are the references used for Anno 1701.
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