
Technology Levels ensure a progression from simple pioneers and settlers to citizens and even aristocrats, each with their own set of demands and power to pay taxes in return.

Due to general scarcity of certain critical resources until those can be produced, the latter has to be relied on to buy those resources, though other resources can be sold as well. Most of the games offer a way to trade with the AI, whether other Empires or civilian trade ships. You have to build houses to collect taxes, but then your peasants want fish, and then they want something to occupy them and so on. Players begin with a ship (or in some scenarios, a warehouse on an island) and a negative income. players (or other humans over multiplayer) for territory and resources, and a number of scenarios, often-times with several arranged to form a storyline.

A.D., or simply Anno, is a series of 4X city builder games, originaly by the Austrian studio Max Design and later by Related Designs / Ubisoft Blue Byte Mainz when the former went bankrupt.
