Growing crops in Anno 1800 means finding the right place. You need fertile soil that will support that particular type of crop. In this guide, we show you how to find it.
It would be nice if you could grow everything you need in Anno 1800 on your starting island, but you can’t. You will see the message “Missing Fertility” when you try and grow something on your island, but it just can’t grow there. You will need to find a new island to take over, and you will more than likely need to do this to get some Hops to produce Beer for your workers. Finding the right island is actually much easier than you think.
How To Check An Islands Fertility
To check an islands fertility, you first need to actually find islands. Use your boat to travel around the seas, and find yourself a nice deserted island. Now, scroll over the island, and once it is on your screen, have a look above the map in the lower left-hand corner. You should be able to see two rows of icons.
That top row of icons, just below where it says Lyonabbaye and above the minimap in the picture above, tells you what crops can grow on this particular island. On this island, we can grow potatoes, wheat, red peppers, and grapes. Other islands will allow us to grow hops, so all we have to do is use our ship to search for uninhabited islands that can grow hops.
It is actually very easy when you know how to do it. The good part is that it makes checking the suitability of islands for expansion quick and painless, as it is all right there on the screen for us.
Even if an island isn’t deserted, and has an AI player settling on it, we can still check the fertility of this island in this way. This allows us to quickly identify characters who can sell us the things we need.
