However, this makes the game difficulty "Easy". You could pick to have the building materials fully refund on demolition since this allows for lots of experimentation with farming and housing layouts. Land space is ultimately the limiting factor for your maximum population size in Anno 1404. It's also advisable to specifically pick one of the map numbers listed in the next section in order to have the most land to build upon. If your goal is to build the biggest cities possible, always play on a huge world with large islands. Tip: If you're trying for an achievement that requires a "Hard continuous game", make sure you customize your game with enough "hard" choices to make the game difficulty reach the "Hard" level. If you pick enough harder options, the game will be considered medium or hard. The game allots certain "difficulty points" for every option you pick. However, you can customize your own game the way you want and set goals you want to pursue. There are three pre-set modes available: Easy, Medium, and Hard. If you're trying for a specific achievement, it's in your interest to tailor the game settings to help you get that achievement. Note: There are quite a few achievements that can only be done in Continuous mode. Continuous mode can be considered the ultimate Anno 1404 experience since it allows total freedom to build your world how you want.
The Continuous game mode allows you to customize a plethora of options regarding map size, resources, natural disasters, other players, starting conditions, and winning conditions.