Seat of Power lets the player choose which policies will influence the settlements in the vicinity of a palace. In 2020 season 2 includes a further three DLC packs. While in Botanica cities can be beautified to attract more tourists, The Passage allows the player to sail the Northwest Passage on the way to the Arctic Circle. The Anno 1800 season 1 pass for paid-for downloadable content (DLC) includes the three DLC packs Sunken Treasure, Botanica and The Passage. Once planning is done and the necessary resources are gathered, each blueprint building can be built with a single click. If a player has insufficient resources the blueprint building can be placed on the city map for later construction. It helps the player by allowing them to plan out their city with silhouetted blueprint buildings, without immediately spending valuable resources on actually constructing them. The blueprint mode of Anno 1800 is one of the new additions to the series. Tourists contribute to the city's income and will flock to natural land, local festivities, and various decorative ornaments, but dislike pollution, local unrest, and noisy or smelly industry.

With every factory the city's attractiveness rating falls and the rating of the area around an emerging industrial zone is also affected. The attractiveness rating of Anno 1800 grapples with the impact of industrialization on the population. Anno 1800 integrates into a classic city-building game randomly generated maps and trade routes, artificial intelligence (AI) opponents that build on the same map as the player, and a military. Like Anno 2205, the game features multisession gameplay, though unlike its predecessor, combat and city-building sessions are not separated. The game also features a story campaign, a sandbox mode, and multiplayer mode. Unlike its colonial 18th century predecessor Anno 1701, the game has a blueprint feature that helps the player to plan out the city.

A parallel New World city exists, which produces products that laborers in the Old World want to purchase, thus trade routes need to be established. The core gameplay of Anno 1800 takes place in the Old World, where the needs of the citizens, workers and artisans are central to the management of production and supply chains. While it is set in the context of colonial trade, the featured architecture is Victorian Era and the economic engine is factory labor. Like other Anno games, Anno 1800 is a city-building and strategy game. Anno 1800 takes place in the 19th century at the dawn of the Industrial Age.

Anno 1800 tourism