Selecting the right map seed in (and its Venice expansion) is essential for players who want to build massive "megacities" with minimal logistical headaches. The best seeds typically offer a combination of extra-large islands, abundant resources, and proximity to neutral traders like Lord Richard Northburgh or Al Zahir. Top Recommended Map Seeds
Based on community consensus and the Anno 1404 Wiki, these are the most highly-rated seeds for a Continuous Game:
Seed 59766 (The "Giant" Map): Widely considered the best for massive builds. It features two enormous islands located directly between Northburgh and Al Zahir's ports.
Highlights: Main Oriental island has Dates, Spices, and Silk fertilities. Includes 2x Copper and 2x Reefs.
Seed 39950 (The "Central" Map): Known for having a massive island nearly at the dead center of the world.
Highlights: The main island has Cider and Hemp fertilities with 6 river spots. Nearby small islands provide 4x Iron and 3x Stone for easy early-game construction.
Seed 61376 (The "Resource" Map): Perfect for players focused on late-game population growth (Nobles and Patricians).
Highlights: Features 35 Brine deposits, the most recorded for a single map, allowing for massive meat and fur production chains.
Seed 12421 (History Edition): A popular choice for the History Edition, providing a huge world with the largest possible island types.
Seed 79661: Frequently cited as a "great" all-around map for balanced resource distribution. Critical Settings for Map Seeds
A seed number alone does not guarantee a perfect map; you must match the original generator settings to get the expected results: anno 1404 best map numbers
World Size: Always set to "Huge" for the seeds listed above.
Island Size: Must be set to "Large" to ensure the "giant" islands appear.
Fertility/Resources: Set these to "Abundant" or "Plenty" to maximize the mining and farming potential.
Island Type: Most top seeds are designed for the "Archipelago" or "Large Island Chain" map types. Key Features to Look For
💡 Pro-Tip: If you are hunting for your own "perfect" seed, prioritize these features:
River Slots: Look for islands with 5-6 river slots to support extensive leather and paper production.
Neutral Traders: Having Northburgh (Occident) and Al Zahir (Orient) close to each other reduces travel time for essential early-game trade.
Island Shape: Flat, open islands without internal mountains or "bullshit" rivers running through the middle are best for building high-density housing.
If you want to focus on a specific goal—like reaching 100,000 Nobles or achieving a certain achievement—let me know so I can tailor a seed recommendation for you.
The harbor bells had just finished tolling when Mateo stepped off the small ferry, the salt still glinting on his sleeves. The island’s name—Luca’s Rest—was one of those practical things scribbled on old charts, but every mapmaker who had ever visited it agreed on something else: the island liked numbers. Not just latitudes and longitudes, but the strange, local arithmetic of tides and towers, orchards and ore veins. If you listened long enough, the island would tell you where to build. Selecting the right map seed in (and its
Mateo carried a rolled map under his arm that smelled of ink and smoke. On its face, the cartographer’s hand had left notations in three inks: black for coastlines, green for resources, and a neat, almost clinical red where the mapmaker had written “Best Map Numbers.” The numbers themselves were not coordinates but a code—a set of choices that had made or broken settlements for decades.
“People come looking for fortunes,” said Old Ansel, the man who met Mateo at the dock. He wore a hat stitched with maps, a crown of pins marking ports he’d loved or lost. “They ask for the best map, the best numbers. But numbers won’t feed you.”
“They help you find what feeds you,” Mateo replied. He showed the rolled map. Ansel’s eyes narrowed over the red ink—seventeen, three, and nine, arranged like an incantation.
On Luca’s Rest the numbers were as much social currency as coin. The seventeenth cove housed fishermen who swore by a seam of shoals that returned silver both as fish and as a strange, flinty rock used to forge net-hooks. The third ridge bore orchards whose fruit would last through storms; the ninth dune hid a wellspring whose water never warmed in midsummer. Knowing which numbers to trust was survival. Misread the map and you might plant a vineyard on quicksand.
Mateo’s business was not the numbers themselves but the stories behind them. He was a scribe hired by a merchant family—la Rosa—to confirm the island’s claims before they sank investment into warehouses and mills. La Rosa’s interest was practical: grain stores, trade privileges, and the steady hum of export. But their map did not say why a number was good, only that it had been marked by a previous hand: a cautious margin note, “Trusted since the Year of the Storm.”
Ansel led Mateo along a ridge of scrub and stone. They passed a cluster of beehives buzzing around a weathered sign with a painted 9. “You see?” Ansel tapped the sign. “Nine here grants sweet harvests. Old Señora Maris swears it saved her son from fever. But she lost half her orchard when she expanded into seventeen—thought numbers stacked like coin would carry the luck over. Instead, seventeen took what seventeen always takes: drainage.”
Mateo listened, cataloguing anomalies on his own map: red ink in tiny circles; faint smudges where hands had tried to wipe away earlier annotations. There were stories smeared into the paper. He began to suspect that the numbers were less a map and more a conversation, the island’s memory recorded by those who’d earned or squandered its favors.
They reached the seventeenth cove at midday. The inlet was sheltered, with a small creek that fed a brackish lagoon. Fishermen filed salt into barrels while children stacked stones into miniature forts. A bright buoy bobbed where the channel narrowed; its paint was flaking but someone had tied a ribbon to it—blue, the color of safe passages. On the headland, three stone markers stood like silent sentinels. Each bore a shallow carving: a boat, an ear of wheat, a sun partially eclipsed by cloud. Someone had scrawled a fourth symbol later, small and almost ashamed—an hourglass cut into the rock.
“A place that gives also remembers debts,” Ansel said. “Seventeen gives fish but takes drainage. Tradeoffs. Best map numbers are about balances, not guarantees.”
That afternoon they visited the third ridge, a terrace of terraces where vines clung to dry soil and small stone walls held back the sea’s breath. The soil here clung like memory to old roots. The vineyards were not wealthy, but the grapes were honest—thick, tourniquet-sweet. A widow named Inez presided over the terrace, her hands always stained purple. The "Al Zahir Squeeze": Seed 101
“You’ll want numbers,” she said, filling a cup with wine and handing it to Mateo. “But listen to the land first. The third ridge listens to rain. We plant by its shy clocks, not by the red ink.” She pointed to a corner of Mateo’s map where someone had penciled a tiny star beside the number three. “Some people think a star blesses a field. It blesses nothing. It’s the hands that bless it—those who tend when the rains are late, those who know when to tie the vines.”
By dusk Mateo’s map had new margins—notes in his own hand, decisions made and doubts scribed. He liked things precise; numbers soothed him the way uniform stitches soothe a wound. But Luca’s Rest was teaching him tolerance for mess. The best map numbers were not immutable constants but convergences of human choices and weather and the slow tooth of geology.
On the second day, a storm came. It announced itself with wind that tried to peel the roofs off the warehouses and rain that made the gulls look like dark smudges against the sky. The island’s numbers became urgent then. The ninth well’s water rose hairline clear and cool, and the fishermen at seventeen stacked their loads and worked faster than ever. Men who had been proud of their numbers now found themselves huddled together, trading rations and stories the way sailors exchange knots—quick and precise.
After the storm, the islanders gathered to assess damage. A newly built granary at the mouth of a little bay had collapsed; somebody had confounded seventeen’s drainage with the bay’s secret undertow. Mateo watched la Rosa’s representative frown over the ruin. Investments were about certainties and balance sheets, not beehives and hourglasses. But even the representative could not help placing a small wooden cross near the ninth well. It was superstition, Mateo thought, or perhaps an admission that people will always need anchors.
The next morning Mateo climbed to the island’s highest point, where an old stone tower leaned as if tired of watching. From there he spread his map upon a flat rock and traced the red numbers with a careful finger. Seventeen, three, nine. He wrote “context” beside each, then underlined it with a hand that wanted to be sure.
In the end, the “best map numbers” were not a secret handed down by a single oracle. They were a living ledger made by countless small decisions: where a widow planted her vines, where a fisherman set his net, where a mason left an hourglass carved into the stone. Each number held a ledger of favors and penalties—years of small kindnesses and one great oversight that could topple a harvest.
Mateo returned to the city with his map and new inscriptions. His employers expected a verdict—green for go, red for stop. He gave them neither. Instead, he presented a ledger: the numbers, their likely yields, the risks attached to each choice, and a small, hand-drawn note at the bottom: “Best when you leave room for mercy.”
La Rosa accepted it with the wary patience of merchants. They built a small warehouse by the third ridge, enough to store grain but not so large as to tempt the island’s old grudges. They invested in drains and hired beekeepers. They put a ribbon on the seventeenth’s buoy and sent a mason to re-carve the hourglass deeper into the headland rock—not to tempt fate but to remember tradeoffs.
Years later, when children on Luca’s Rest learned to read maps, their teacher taught a curious lesson: numbers do not belong only to ink. They belong to stories. If you read a map and find a red “9” scribbled in the corner, ask the nearest elder why it’s there. They may tell you about a well that never warms, or about a boat that came in heavy with fish. They may tell you about the time a storm took half a warehouse and left a ribbon on a buoy. In their answers you will discover the living arithmetic of the island.
Mateo’s final note on the map—faded now from much folding—was small and neat: “Best numbers: those you understand.” He would later add, for himself alone: “And always leave room for mercy.”
This is arguably the most famous seed in the game’s history. It is often called "The Perfect Start."