a mosque of sultanas

Normally when it gets to the middle of the week I play anno in the evenings. I've reigned in the anno playing so that it's not all pervasive, but I still play it a lot. I've also been quite good this time at sticking with the same map, rather than starting a completely new one and therefore effectively wasting all the dozens of hours I'd invested in the old one.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I'm on the verge of hitting two of the big milestones. Last night I completed the Sultan's Mosque building on one of my islands. The sultan's mosque is a great big building that takes a heck of a lot of resources to complete. On the good side it does allow you to build a lot of houses in its influence area and not have to worry about the extra stuff that your citizens (in this case, the nomads and envoys) need.

I've also very nearly finished my first Imperial Cathedral. It's basically the equivalent of the Mosque for the Occident (west) and does a similar job, ticking all the building requirements for your western citizens (peasant, citizens, patricians and nobles). It's resource requirements are even more onerous than the mosque, which is why I completed the Mosque first.

If I play tonight (I may wait until the weekend) I should finish the Cathedral as well - I'm that close. It's then my plan to build more of both, though I'll have to build up the resources required again. The ones that are the most difficult are glass and mosaics, as they have the most complicated (and space consuming) production chains and seem to be slower too.

One thing that did surprise me when I finished the Mosque was the introduction of the Sultan as a new NPC. Normally you have the Corsairs and then a representative NPC each for the Occident and the Orient. Those Corsairs you have to befriend, but the other two are always your friend. Their respective bosses are the Sultan and the Emperor, and it seems you unlock them as direct NPCs by building the Mosque and Cathedral.

Unfortunately (or should that be fortunately?) t appears the expansion for anno is due sometime in February, which is basically in a few weeks. I'd kinda hoped I was going to finish this map before the expansion hit, giving me some time to not play Anno and catch up on other stuff. My fear now is that it'll hit and I'll be tempted away and not finish this map.