I like this game but I feel like game can have too much content. When you can ignore about half of the game without any consequences I think there's something wrong with your game. At the end of the day it's subjective but I liked the scenario driven gameplay with 1404 where you had different challenges to accomplish. 1800 feels purposeless at times by comparison. There's no real challenge to city building with anno game design. You mustly wait for resources to pile up and build production chains. While satisfying it's not enough to be engaging just by itself.