Patches

Introduction

The most recent versions of Anno 1404 as of April 2011 are version 1.3 for the original game and version 2.1 for the Venice expansion. Anno 1404 had three patches released for it, versions 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3. Venice was released as version 2.05 and only had one final patch released for it, version 2.1.

The European and some of the digitally distributed "Gold" versions of Anno 1404 (Dawn of Discovery) are sometimes listed as version 3.1, which includes both the 1.3 and 2.1 patches.

A Gold Edition patch 3.1 was released December 2010. It combines the version 1.3 Anno 1404 and 2.1 Venice patch and is only usable for Gold Editions.

The Venice patch 2.1 was released December 2010.

The Anno 1404 patch 1.3 was released December 2010.

The Anno 1404 patch 1.2 was released February 2010.

The Anno 1404 patch 1.1 was released October 2009.

Retail Version

All versions purchased as physical copies have had the version 1.3 and 2.1 patches released and can be patched.

Impulse Version

Verisons purchased on the digital distribution site Impulse include the latest patches.

Steam Version

As of April 2011, the Steam version, Dawn of Discovery, still isn't patched to the latest 1.3 and 2.1 versions, but rather uses version 1.2 of the original game and version 2.05 of the Venice expansion. Despite countless attempts to get Ubisoft the patch the Steam version, it appears it may never be patched. Moreover, the game is currently unavailable for purchase on Steam in North America as of March 2011, for unknown reasons.

It is possible, however, do manually download the Venice 2.1 patch and manually install the files, as described on the Steam forums here.

Direct2Drive North American Version

As of April 2011, the Direct2Drive Gold and Venice versions are listed as version 2, indicating they do not contain the final 1.3 Anno 1404 and 2.1 Venice patches.

Gold Edition Patch 3.1 Changelog

Version 3.1 is simply a combination of Anno 1404 patch 1.3 and Venice patch 2.1. See the changelogs below for those patches.

Venice Patch 2.1 Changelog

This changelog is taken directly from the Ubisoft forums:

The most important changes in overview:

• A bug in the save routine could prevent games from being saved correctly on some systems or system configurations. Related Designs would like to thank the community at this point for their outstanding support, without which we could never have repaired this error. In particular, we would like to thank "Matt McCorman" for his active support, as well as all the users from the community who voluntarily contributed both their PC's and their time. We were finally able to localize and correct the error. As a result, no more faulty saves should be generated.
• A warning is generated when the physical memory (RAM) has reached a critical fill or defragmentation status. The instructions in the text message should be followed. If the message appears frequently, lowering the texture and object quality in the game options can often lead to a significant improvement.

Further changes:

• Until now, players were able to avoid having to pay for the extension of the Corsair Pact by proposing fraternization. This option was removed, so now the player must now either pay, or deal with the consequences.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the launch of user-scenario savegames on other computers.
• Selecting a portrait exclusive to the ANNO 1404 - Venice AddOn could lead to errors when playing ANNO 1404. This bug has been corrected.
• Effective immediately, Lord Richard Northburgh now offers more suitable items once all human players have achieved the highest level of prestige in the orient.

Achievements:

• The probability of receiving the items "Excellent Hanseatic League Master Builder" or "Imperial Cathedral Master Builder" has been increased.
• The "Shouldn't we be going to war soon" achievement is now correctly unlocked once players have played 10 hours of a multi-player game.
• The "Actions speak louder than words" achievement is now correctly unlocked once players have played 3 hours of a multi-player game without chatting. This makes it possible to attain the "A shut mouth catches no flies" achievement.
• The "I work best under pressure" achievement is now correctly unlocked as soon as the "Incognito" scenario is completed with a travel time of 30 minutes (or more).
• The "I could turn myself in" achievement is now correctly unlocked as soon as the player has achieved a bounty of 80,000 gold coins (or more) in the "Scourge of the Seas" scenario. This makes it possible to attain the "Like a proper Corsair" and "I'm the best" achievements.
• The "Master detective" achievement is now correctly unlocked as soon as the player has completed the "In the trap" and "Unknown cargo" quests. This makes it possible to also attain the "I'm the best" achievement.
• The "Urgent business II" quest is no longer withdrawn as soon as it's posted. This allows the quest chain to be completed properly, making it possible to attain the "Masquerade", "New challenges" and "Well done" achievements.
• The "The disloyal Assistant III" quest didn't spawn any blockade ships. This prevented completion of the quest chain, preventing players from attaining the "Everything has it's price" achievement. This bug has been corrected.
• Hekata was not offering the "The fourth sister (I-III)" quest chain. This prevented completion of the quest chain, preventing players from attaining the "The might of the three" achievement. This bug has been corrected.
• Marie d'Artois was not offering the "Journey into the past (I-IV)" quest chain. This prevented completion of the quest chain, preventing players from attaining the "You all owe me a favor" achievement. This bug has been corrected.

Patch 1.3 Changelog

This changelog is taken directly from the Ubisoft forums:

The most important changes in overview: - A bug in the save routine could prevent games from being saved correctly on some systems or system configurations. Related Designs would like to thank the community at this pointfor their outstanding support, without which we could never have repaired this error. In particular, we would like to thank "Matt McCorman" for his active support, as well as all the users from the community who voluntarily contributed both their PC's and their time. We were finally able to localize and correct the error. As a result, no more faulty saves should be generated.

- A warning is generated when the physical memory (RAM) has reached a critical fill or defragmentation status. The instructions in the text message should be followed. If the message appears frequently, lowering the texture and object quality in the game options can often lead to a significant improvement.

Further changes: - Until now, players were able to avoid having to pay for the extension of the Corsair Pact by proposing fraternization. This option was removed, so now the player must now either pay, or deal with the consequences. - The probability of receiving the items "Excellent Hanseatic League Master Builder" or "Imperial Cathedral Master Builder" has been increased. - If a hidden mission is not detected, no messages stating that the mission failed will be generated. - Fixed a bug that prevented the launch of user-scenario savegames on other computers. - Selecting a portrait exclusive to the ANNO 1404 - Venice AddOn could lead to errors when playing ANNO 1404. This bug has been corrected.

Achievements: - The "The disloyal Assistant III" quest didn't spawn any blockade ships. This prevented completion of the quest chain, preventing players from attaining the "Everything has it's price" achievement. This bug has been corrected. - Hekata was not offering the "The fourth sister (I-III)" quest chain. This prevented completion of the quest chain, preventing players from attaining the "The might of the three" achievement. This bug has been corrected. - Marie d'Artois was not offering the "Journey into the past (I-IV)" quest chain. This prevented completion of the quest chain, preventing players from attaining the "You all owe me a favor" achievement. This bug has been corrected.

Patch 1.2 Changelog

An overview of the most important changes: - The Golden Ship is now available after accomplishing all the Achievements (the corresponding affected Achievements have been corrected and can now be completed). - The cooldown period between individual Quests for the Emperor and the Sultan has been reduced. - Sultan Quests are now available even if players do not have Noblemen in their City. - Players can no longer see the routes taken by opposing Transport ships. - Buildings and fields may now be rotated by pressing the middle mouse button. - Construction time for the Large Oriental Trading Ship has been doubled. - Players can now also connect to the Gateway to the World under Windows 7.

Other changes: - Savegames in user-content scenarios are no longer corrupted when a fellow player is vanquished in that scenario. - In some cases uploads to the Gateway to the World failed. This bug has been fixed and uploads to the Gateway to the World should now be much more stable. - Fixed a bug in mission 7 in which, under certain conditions, a black pearl necessary for completion of the mission was not given to the player. - Fixed a bug which allowed the player to multiply the Goods on a Ship through skillful movement between the Ship's cargo slots. - The title "World Traveler" is now correctly displayed in the title selection. - Purchasing the second or third stage "Occidental Shipbuilding" Attainment sometimes led to all the Goods over 40 tons being thrown overboard by the Ships involved. This error has been corrected. - Ships in the "Historic Battle" Quest can now shoot back! - The cost in Gold shown in the Caravanserai delivery notification was displayed incorrectly. This error has been corrected. - Envoys whose Needs are now all met and who pay very few Taxes are now "euphoric" instead of "angry". - The Experts Customs goods Items are now somewhat more powerful. - A number of small improvements have been made. - Several spelling errors were corrected.

Patch 1.1 Changelog

The most important changes: - A crash while saving a game could result in the online profile being lost. This error has been fixed. - The use of special characters within the Windows user name, profile name or savegame name caused several errors (eg invalid savegames or crashes). This error has been fixed. - Memory errors could lead to invalid savegames under specific hardware configurations. This error has been fixed. - Ships which have destroyed a target now wait at that spot for new orders rather than returning to their starting point. - The AI was unable to settle some islands. This error has been fixed. - A function was implemented allowing the items offered at all three ports to be changed. The player now has the opportunity have the Items on offer changed upon payment of a fee in gold. - Military influence areas and firing radii were visually improved to further simplify use of the military. - Norias no longer worked properly after buying the "Mystery of the nomads' achievement. This error has been fixed. - The "Scroll through Ships" and "Scroll through Warehouses" buttons were moved to a more prominent position above the minimap. - The achievements "We have no time to lose" and "The Emirate" have been adjusted. The Imperial Cathedral must now be built in 7 hrs and the Sultan's Mosque in 5 hrs (previously 8 hrs and 6 hrs). In return, the condition requiring the people's satisfaction level to be "adequately satisfied" or better was removed.

General: - It was possible to delete savegames and screenshots in the "Gateway to the World" from within the game. This function is not planned. Effective immediately, savegames and screenshots can now only be deleted locally. If you want to delete savegames and / or screenshots online this must be done directly in the "Gateway to the World". - Old games from an online profile could be loaded even without successful login to the "Gateway to the World". This function is not planned. Savegames from an online profile can now only be loaded once login to "Gateway to the World" was successful. - In some cases, when creating an online profile identical ID's were given to different profiles. This could lead to a new online profile overwriting another one. This error has been fixed. - Some special circumstances occasionally resulted in performance downturns. Errors causing this problem have been fixed. - An error causing some interface elements to react to external input (eg, volume control on the keyboard, connecting a Logitech USB headset) has been fixed. - In rare cases the "Fog of War" was not displayed correctly after saving / loading a game. This error has been fixed. - In some menus the confirmation button was within the text box. This error has been fixed. - The info bar for quests / messages has been shifted slightly upwards, so that more orders can be displayed when the bar is expanded. - Some interface elements were still visible in Pause mode. This error has been fixed. - There were rare cases of ships sailing through islands. This error has been fixed. - Pigs and cows are now shown the right size on the farthest zoom level. - Some messages were not properly / fully communicated. This error has been fixed. - There were various minor bug fixes. (Incorrectly positioned cooldown displays, tool tips, typos, incompletely displayed text, etc.) - It is no longer possible to use online profiles or create new ones with modified versions [MODs] of the game. - Some interface graphics (confirmation buttons and sliders) were replaced. - The current status of a ship is now also displayed in a tool tip in the ship selection drop-down menu in the strategy map.

Continuous play/Scenarios: - In some cases, quest rewards were not properly transferred to the players. This error has been fixed. - The Carpenter was still able to repair buildings during battle. This was not planned. Buildings currently involved in combat you can no longer be repaired. - Assignments requiring the player to pay gold can now only be accepted if the player's balance allows it. - In rare cases, a few menu items (for example, the menu of a production building) were not displayed correctly. This error has been fixed. - In rare cases, there was a significant delay before the caravel was given to the player after the delivery of the first gift for Al Zahir. This error has been fixed. - The player could still purchase ships from Hassan ben Sahid even after their ship limit had been reached. This was not planned and has been fixed. - In rare cases, the Trebuchet also took damage when bombarding a building. This error has been fixed. - In rare cases, some Market buildings did not send out Market carts to pickup goods. This error has been fixed. - The effectiveness of ranged combat units (especially against military buildings) has been slightly increased. - The effectiveness of naval bombardment against land units has been slightly reduced. - The Emperor's Quest "Nurturing the Alliance" has been simplified. Instead of 75 contracts only 40 contracts must now be completed. - The base chance of a ship on an expedition being successful has been reduced. - In some cases where several ships were ordered in one shipyard, the ship limit points spent on them were not refunded if the shipyard was destroyed before the ships were completed. This error has been fixed. - In rare cases, transport ships were unable to build castles. This error has been fixed. - The maintenance costs for Military buildings and Castles are now correctly booked correctly under "Military" instead of under "Buildings". - The effect of the attainment "Binding handshake" at level 3 has been corrected. Before it had the same effect as at level 1. - In rare cases, ships that were part of an assignment appeared inside an island. This error has been fixed. - The Corsairs no longer sink ships required for quests. - Items which the reduce building / vessel maintenance costs no longer reduce those costs to a negative level.

Artificial Intelligence - In some cases the AI was able to build within the player's influence area. This error has been fixed. - In rare cases the AI was able to demolish roads within foreign influence areas. This error has been fixed. - The use of a trade route allowed more goods to be bought from AI players than they had put up for sale. This error has been fixed. - In some cases AI transport ships just stood still when attacked. This error has been fixed. - Ship AI has been improved. AI ships (especially in larger ship formations) now behave more intelligently when under fire. - Military AI target selection has been improved. - In rare cases the AI was able to withdraw its units even though they were in combat. This error has been fixed. - In some cases the proceeds from the sale of "favorite articles" to the AI players were not calculated correctly. The AI players now pay the corresponding (higher) price. - The AI can no longer build a castle when the corresponding transport ship is in combat. - The AI no longer puts "0 t" of an Item up for sale. - The AI now builds its walls more efficiently, making it more difficult to capture an enemy AI settlement. - The AI now also builds Carpenters at Patrician level (and higher). This improves the AI's cityscape, especially at higher levels of civilization. - In rare cases active trading did not function properly at AI Harbors. This error has been fixed.

Campaign: - In rare cases the game crashed when loading mission 6 or 8. This error has been fixed. - In rare cases, the game crashed at the end of mission 8. This error has been fixed. - Under some special circumstances, no gift was given to the player in Mission 4. This error has been fixed. - In rare cases, players were unable to obtain the Black Pearl in Mission 7. This error has been fixed. - In some cases the attack in the side quest "Preservation of knowledge" in Mission 5 did not start correctly. This error has been fixed. - The quest "Glassworks" in Mission 5 was not completed if all the necessary manufactories were built before the start of the quest. This error has been fixed.

Achievements/Medals: - In some cases the achievement "Man the battlements!" was awarded under false premises. This error has been fixed. - In some cases the achievement "The road map in your head" was awarded under false premises. This error has been fixed. - The achievement "Turn the hose on!" did not always unlock properly. This error has been fixed. - In some cases the medal "Order of the Treasurer" was awarded under false premises. This error has been fixed. - The requirement for the achievement "Who is this Robin?!" has been lowered. Now only 50 Bandit camps are needed. - The requirement for the achievement "Eureka!" has been lowered. Now only 75 attainments are required. - The counters in the tool tips for some successes have been corrected and now show the actual values required.