IAAM is an extensive mod for the game that can be found on the Project Anno Website. The mod adds many building items that are decorative, functional, or both. It also changes a lot of the gameplay in ways that are sometimes amazing and sometimes frustrating for those used to the old game. But if you are into building unique and interesting cities IAAM is the only mod that lets you do it.
It is recommended that you make a copy of your entire game file before installing IAAM. That way you can play both the original and the modded game (but not with the same savegames).
A Beginner’s Guide to IAMM for Anno 1404 Venice
This is by no means a complete guide, just some notes to get started playing.
You can’t use any other mods with IAMM, including the unofficial patch. However, you must use the 4GB Patch with IAMM. You can find the 4GB Patch Here. Otherwise, you will be restarting your game every 15-20 minutes once you have a decent-sized population. You will still experience the memory leak, but should be able to play longer before restarting.
Resources and Production Chains have been extensively modded in ways that are interesting but sometimes frustrating:
1. Needs for every class have been changed, so check what your population needs before planning what to build next.
2. Salt is added as a food need. Your peasants need salt before you get mines, so IAMM has added a salt farm to the harbor building menu. You have to build it on the coast and add 3 ugly farms in the water.
3. Wood and coal are also consumables, so plan to build lots of lumberjacks and import lots of coal once your population increases.
4. Pottery is another early need that can be difficult to figure out. You have to have enough nomads and Oriental building permissions to start making it. There are also 2 slightly different icons for pottery, so look closely for it in the build and trade menus.
5. Some items will now be desired by both the Orient and the Occident. Plan to way overproduce pottery and jewelry.
6. Jewelry requires both gold and pearls. Its easy to mass produce pearls, but plan on importing gold from all your southern islands to be able to make enough jewelry for everyone. Plan to make 1 island devoted to brocade, gold smelting, and jewelry making. Small resource-poor maps may not even have enough gold mines to get the nobles and envoys you need to build monuments.
A lot of the new buildings and decorative objects (including the harbor buildings) have to be unlocked through population growth and civilization level. I don’t know if you need to have unlocked the bonus content (like the small marketplaces) through achievements to access these buildings in IAMM. I use a downloaded profile that unlocked almost everything already (If you are interested, it can be found here thanks to Inn0s on Steam.
Build Menu has been substantially changed. There are now 2 build menus you can toggle between by clicking on the big oval above the tabs.
Lots of old and new buildings have versions of different sizes and shapes. Try hitting “c” while you are holding a decorative or other object to see if it changes. These allow for decoration but also for different parts of your city to look unique.
Some of your decorative buildings now have interesting properties. Small marketplaces and bazaars let you build houses in a small radius. Storage buildings have been added that act like mini warehouses. Decorative irrigation channels add fertility.
New farms have been added and some old ones have been changed. The field shapes, the required number of fields, and the space you have to place the fields have been altered. This is sometimes annoying, but together with the added fertility from the new irrigation system it makes for some novel uses of the noria exploit. With the small marketplaces, small bazaars, and new field sizes you can integrate farming and residences for unique city areas.
The Cathedral and Mosque monuments no long fulfill all your citizen needs. But differently sized and shaped churches and other buildings with larger influence areas have been added to allow for flexibility in city design.
I am pretty sure the tax formula has been tinkered with to give you more income in the early game. But you still can’t take too much time to decorate and plan your city. You are still going to have to have an efficient early game to unlock everything and get to the point where your trade income makes up for tax losses. But once you get Nobles you do not have to meet their needs to keep them happy. So you have more freedom to design before you expand your population.