History YMMV / AnnoDomini

* AuthorsSavingThrow: ''2205'' was widely panned on release for being dry, predictable, and completely lacking in character. After a few fixes, some of the promised DLC packs being released, and the release of extra features like Veteran difficulty, crises in your operating regions and a few extra maps, reception of the game gradually grew from "dumbed down to oblivion" to "at least moderately enjoyable."

* UnintenionalUncannyValley: The NPC's in ''2205'' are highly detailed, but move like puppets, don't lip-synch with their dialog, and don't emote, giving a disconcerting impression.

* UncannyValley: The NPC's in ''2205'' are highly detailed, but move like puppets, don't lip-synch with their dialog, and don't emote, giving a disconcerting impression.

** Hugo Mercier being a Communist.[[note]]A lot of the practical points of Mercia's philosophy echo more than a few popular aspects of Communism (specifically Marxism-Leninism). Such as a rejection of "bourgois" habits, the disdain for organised religion, a narrative of popular revolution. With the abundant use of "people's red" as the cherry on top. Mercier even started out as a student protester.[[/note]]

* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped: Engineers, the fourth of five citizen tiers in ''1800'', are predominantly female, but clicking on an engineer residence sometimes gets you a complaint along the line of "I must work twice as hard for half the recognition just because I'm a woman". While gender inequality certainly was much more pronounced at the advent of the 19th century than it is today, it's still very much a problem more than two centuries later, especially in the professional world.

** As unappealing as it sounds to build a polluting oil-fired power station in the middle of a densely populated city, that was what the first power stations were until the 1890s.
** Electric vehicles saw considerable popularity in the late 19th century (if you had the money). In fact until an oil boom in the early 20th century sent oil prices through the floor, it was considered more practical to power a car on electricity than petroleum.
** Airships were more than just a novelty. There was some serious interest in using them for cross-continental travel in the second half of the 19th century. Later models even featured electric motors for propulsion.

* DarthWiki/MostAnnoyingSound: ''"The festival has ended, your city has grown ugly."'' ''"A sickness has come over"''

* MostAnnoyingSound: ''"The festival has ended, your city has grown ugly."'' ''"A sickness has come over"''

* UncannyValley: The NPC's in ''2205'' are highly detailed, but move like puppets, don't lip-synch with their dialog, and don't emote, giving a disconcerting impression.

* BreatherLevel: The seventh mission of the campaign in the 1404. After fighting for your life repelling Cardinal Lucius' attacks on your island you get a peaceful mission focused on building up an oriental town and going around doing quests.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Battlecrusiers in ''1800''. Being steamships These modern-looking dreadnoughts aren't affected by the direction of the wind, they also have a lot of health, you even get an achievement for building your first one. At release however, a lone battlecruiser could be outmatched by a pair of ships of the line, which by that point in the game almost replace the cheaper frigate. Coupled with requiring generous quantities of two of the more complex production chains as well as electricity (requiring oil) and a steamship drydock operated by tier 4 citizens to build, many players chose to stick with having fleets of sailships well into the endgame. Patch 2 gave them a considerable buff in health and firepower but they remain very expensive to build.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: Building tooltips in ''2205'' showed exactly which amount of which resource was consumed to produce how much of another resource, and almost all production steps worked in even multiples (e.g. 2x A --> 1x B). It also displayed the exact values of production and consumption, making it easy to gauge your economy at a glance. ''1800'' ditched this very convenient system for some obscure reason and went with showing each building's production time per unit instead, which is noticeably less convenient. Worse, however, is the return to the old "trend system" for the warehouses where you aren't given absolute numbers, only an indicator of whether your inventory has been filling up or emptying recently. This not only works with a ''significant'' time delay, making it very hard to gauge how much of an effect your recent economic expansions had until 10-20 minutes later. It also triggers when you manually remove goods from the warehouse for any reason, so simply loading a ship for an expedition will throw the respective indicators into chaos. All in all, ''1800'''s economic interface is a significant step back from the convenience of ''2205'''s. Couple this with ''1800'''s massively increased complexity and the game can get frustrating before you're even halfway through the tech tree.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: Building tooltips in ''2205'' showed exactly which amount of which resource was consumed to produce how much of another resource, and almost all production steps worked in even multiples (e.g. 2x A --> 1x B). It also displayed the exact values of production and consumption, making it easy to gauge your economy at a glance. ''1800'' ditched this very convenient system for some obscure reason and went back to not showing ''anything'' except the involved resources. Most production chains still seem to operate on the even multiples system, but now the player is left alone with figuring out how many farms that produce resource A are required to fully supply the refinery that turns A into B. Couple this with ''1800'''s massively increased complexity and the game gets frustrating before you're even halfway through the tech tree.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: Building tooltips in ''2205'' showed exactly which amount of which resource was consumed to produce how much of another resource, and almost all production steps worked in even multiples (e.g. 2x A --> 1x B). ''1800'' ditched this very convenient system for some obscure reason and went back to not showing ''anything'' except the involved resources. Most production chains still seem to operate on the even multiples system, but now the player is left alone with figuring out how many farms that produce resource A are required to fully supply the refinery that turns A into B. Couple this with ''1800'''s massively increased complexity and the game gets frustrating before you're even halfway through the tech tree.

* ThatOneSidequest: The Madrigal Islands sector project in ''2205'' is just plain insane. Stage 1 includes maintaining a population of 50,000 Executives in a sector with barely any useful building space. Stage 2 requires maintaining an energy surplus of ''200,000''. For comparison: lunar fusion reactors, by far the most powerful energy sources in the game, produce ~17,500 power when fully upgraded, which is enough to supply ''an entire sector populated by 250,000 people''. They're also the second-most expensive building in the game in terms of both cash and construction materials, and you'll need at least 12 of them to meet the demand, so their combined upkeep ''will'' bankrupt all but the wealthiest players. Finally, Stage 3 demands a surplus of 200 lunar Bio Enhancers; even the largest city never consumes more than 20-25 units of this resource, and the whole project is merely about reactivating an abandoned spaceport. Well, and if you manage to get all of this done somehow, you get... three additional world market trade routes, which is arguably the most superfluous game mechanic to begin with. [[SarcasmMode Yay...]]

* ThatOneSidequest: The Madrigal Islands sector project in ''2205'' is just plain insane. Stage 1 includes maintaining a population of 50,000 Executives in a sector with barely any useful building space. Stage 2 requires maintaining an energy surplus of ''200,000''. For comparison: lunar fusion reactors, by far the most powerful energy sources in the game, produce ~17,500 power when fully upgraded, which is enough to supply ''an entire sector populated by 250,000 people''. They're also the second-most expensive building in the game in terms of both cash and construction materials, and you'll need 10-15 of them to meet the demands, so their combined upkeep ''will'' bankrupt all but the wealthiest players. Finally, Stage 3 demands a surplus of 200 lunar Bio Enhancers; even the largest city never consumes more than 20-25 units of this resource, and the whole project is merely about reactivating an abandoned spaceport. Well, and if you manage to get all of this done somehow, you get... three additional world market trade routes, which is arguably the most superfluous game mechanic to begin with. [[SarcasmMode Yay...]]

* CrowningMomentOfFunny: In 1404, if you agree to the very first pact that the corsair Hassan Ben Sahid offers you, [[spoiler:he says something along the lines of "Your money is in good hands with me", takes your money and starts a war against you]]. And then the CrowningMusicOfAwesome, Red Corsair, starts playing. Depending on the corsair's skill level that you can set up pre-game, this can be anything from a CrowningMomentOfFunny to a crowning moment of OhCrap.

* UncannyValley: The NPCs in ''2205'' are highly detailed, but move like puppets, don't lip-synch with their dialog, and don't emote, giving a disconcerting impression.

* CrowningMomentOfFunny - In 1404, if you agree to the very first pact that the corsair Hassan Ben Sahid offers you, [[spoiler:he says something along the lines of "Your money is in good hands with me", takes your money and starts a war against you]]. And then the CrowningMusicOfAwesome, Red Corsair, starts playing. Depending on the corsair's skill level that you can set up pre-game, this can be anything from a CrowningMomentOfFunny to a crowning moment of OhCrap.