I take a different approach for Anno 1404. Victory conditions don’t really fit in a sandbox to me. No victory conditions except personal satisfaction. Often with pirates off as they get totally annoying in late game. Unlike you I usually ignore the Campaign and play Sandbox only. How were the stand alone scenarios, worth playing? What options do you like in the sandbox games, especially concerning the victory conditions? It’s weird, but in 4x games like Civ I love the sandbox games and almost always skip the scenarios, but in a game like Dawn of Discovery I tend to play the campaign and then skip the sandbox. I don’t think I would have liked the voice acting when I was a teen. I’m not sure what age group they were trying to appeal to, but it didn’t seem like adult was it. I found the story and voice acting to be painful. Only 2 out of the 8 really put any time pressure on the player which is good when you’re trying to learn. So from a tutorial aspect it is worth playing.

From what I gathered that is the area where the baker can go to get his inputs without help from a market delivery guy.

There are things that it could explain better (unless I just missed them) - like explaining the service area around a building like the bakery. The campaign does a good job at introducing the production chain in controlled bits, along with some of the mechanics. I just finished the campaign for Dawn of Discovery on hard.

Anno 1404 tutorials