Hey Anno Community,

As you might have seen already, a new Deep Dive trailer is out! In this video, we’re giving you a detailed overview of the game and its features. Not just that, but starting today previews of Anno 117: Pax Romana are also out – so make sure to check out what your trusted gaming website or Anno creator says about the game. In the meantime, you can check out the trailer here:

Additionally, in the following trailer you get a closer look at the amphitheater monument and its functionality.

Twitch Drops

Twitch Drops alert! From 16th to 23rd October, you can receive an Anno 117: Pax Romana Twitch Drop, the Northern Colours Ship Skin. To earn it, you will need to watch 2 cumulative hours of livestream on Twitch. Anyone can stream the game and activate drops for their channel – so make sure to check out your favourite Anno Twitch streamer!

The only thing you need to do is to first link your Ubisoft account to your Twitch account and then watch the streamers during the event for the mentioned time to receive your loot.

After receiving a drop, you need to claim it via the Twitch inventory. You can find more information on Twitch Drops in general in this official FAQ.

Upcoming Livestream with the Narrative team

One last bit of news for today: we are planning a live stream for next week, with the Narrative Team. This time, the livestream will focus on campaign mode and its story, together with the interesting characters you will meet along the way in Anno 117: Pax Romana. So, make sure to clear out your calendars for Thursday 23rd October, 5:00 PM CEST!

We hope to see you there. 🙂

Happy Tuesday Anno Community, we have another round of news for you to start the week.

Let’s get started with a little gift:

Fan Kit

We’ve put together a little bundle with artworks, screenshots and the Anno logo for you to download. In this Fan Kit you can find:

• They Anno 117: Pax Romana key art as wallpaper in different formats for PC and mobile
• Three other artworks (Latium, Albion, Romanization) in various formats
• A collection of 17 high-res screenshots
• Four Wallpapers with the Anno logo
• Six GIFs to use on your social media or chat platform of choice
• The Anno 117: Pax Romana logo in 2D and 3D
• The Anno symbol in 2D and 3D

You can download the full bundle by following the link below, it’s roughly 300mb in size.

Fan Kit Download

Steam Next Fest and end of the demo

Anno 117: Pax Romana joins the Steam Next Fest  this week, meaning everyone can play the limited-time demo, alongside demos of many other upcoming games.

Last month we have extended availability of the Anno 117: Pax Romana demo past the originally planned end date that was September 16^th. We can now confirm that the demo will go offline on October 20^th, after the Steam Next Fest has concluded.

Upcoming content

More blogs and coming soon! Starting with a DevBlog dedicated to the multiplayer feature in Anno 117: Pax Romana for tomorrow (slightly delayed from last week), and a closer look at the campaign mode and story at the end of the week.

And of course, as mentioned in our last Union Update, don’t forget about our livestreams! In October, we are planning on having one developer livestream dedicated to the Campaign and Story, and one dedicated to the Art of Anno 117: Pax Romana – as always, on our Anno Twitch Channel. We will let you know date and timing later this week, so keep an eye out on socials and the Anno Union.

Hey Anno Community,

We’re here today with ANNOther Union Update! (Will we ever get tired of Anno-jokes? Don’t think so). We’ll recap what happened over the last few days and give you an overview of that to expect in the coming weeks and until the end of the year.

Livestream on the Diplomacy system

If you missed our last livestream dedicated to the Diplomacy system in Anno 117: Pax Romana, you can still watch it whenever you prefer here on Twitch. Together with Andrea and Dominik from the Game Design team and Jannik from Gameplay Programming, we talked about changes compared to past Anno games, the two different ways of waging war (limited war and all-out war), various diplomatic treaties and your relationship to the Emperor.

Next week Tuesday we’ll publish a DevBlog here on the Anno Union with all the details in writing.

Roadmap for upcoming weeks

It doesn’t stop with the DevBlog on Diplomacy, of course: As we get closer and closer to release, expect more (Dev)Blogs on various topics as well as more livestreams. Below, we want to give you an overview of our plans for the coming weeks – we’ll soon also have a more visual timeline on the frontpage of the Anno Union for quick reference.

• An overview of the multiplayer aspect of the game for those of you who want to play Anno 117: Pax Romana with (or against!) friends (end of next week)
• A closer look at the campaign and story (week starting the 13th)
• All about the Governor’s Villa and specialists (week starting the 20th)
• A glimpse into the future with our post-launch plans, something you have already been speculating on based on the Year 1 Pass artwork
• How things are looking on the topic of mod support
• An overview of the game, its features, population tiers of both provinces, etc.
• and a few more topics.

Together with DevBlogs, expect livestreams from the Ubisoft Mainz studio on our Twitch channel, to show you in practice what you will read in our blogs. As before, they will feature people from different departments of the Anno team – the perfect opportunity for you to directly ask questions to members of the dev team!

So, keep an eye on the Anno Union and our socials to make sure you don’t miss on the latest news!

Minor demo update

This is just a quick note to let you know that we’ll have a minor update for the demo next week (likely Monday) to help us better track crashes some of you are reporting. We’ll also use the opportunity to do some updates to the translations, and are adding French and Simplified Chinese localizations to the version.

Community Spotlight

To end this lengthy Union Update, we collected some more screenshots shared by you Annoholics, while playing the Anno 117: Pax Romana demo – which yes, it is still available to download and play on PC.

Let’s start with this screenshot by ONI-Player, a charming Celtic settlement in Abion, but make it “Dutch” style. Such a creative way to use the the marsh drainage and its canals!

What a peaceful shot taken and shared by PANacho on Reddit! That Latium sun and sky are quite hard to beat. We wonder how this screenshot was taken, so close to the residences… huh.

ChMalfet managed to capture Albion’s moodiness in just one picture: this Celtic city almost feels embraced by the darkness of the night, enhanced by the thick fog and the heavy rain.

You’ve built a stable first settlement, money is looking good and your citizens are happy – what other challenges await you? In this blog we’ll cover a few topics for after you reached Tier 2 and beyond in Anno 117: Pax Romana.

If you’re just starting out, check out our blog with some tips to get started!

Fertilities/settling island

While not a concern for the first population tier, on tier two (Plebeians/Mercators/Smiths) you might notice that not all goods can be produced on your starting islands anymore: lavender, olives, barley or herbs may not grow on your island and also some types of fish can’t be caught locally.

While you don’t have to fulfil all Needs of your citizens, as mentioned earlier, if you want to, you may have to settle a new island to grow different crops.

You can see which fertilities every island has by centering your camera above it and looking in the bottom left corner above the minimap:

If you’ve found an island that has what you need, send a ship there to build a trading post at the coast. Settling a new island requires a large sum of money – and the bigger the island, the more expensive it is. Don’t forget to also bring some construction materials with your ship in order to set up whatever buildings you need.

Attributes

We’ve touched on the topic of Attributes on some of the previous topics already, but want to dive a bit deeper:

There are 8 attributes in Anno 117: Pax Romana: Income, Population, Knowledge, Belief, Prestige, Health, Happiness, Fire Safety.

These attributes are increased and decreased via the Needs you provide to your citizens, as well as the area effects of various buildings. In addition, specific event (e.g. a festival or the outcome of a quest) can also impact them, as will your city status (a larger city will get a debuff on health, happiness and fire safety).

Our tips:

• Hover over the different attributes in the bar on the top to see which factors are currently impacting each attribute.
  • This will help you to figure out why your fire safety is so low (e.g. cause you built multiple bakeries in your city) or which factors are contributing to your income.
• Always pay special attention to the area effects of (production) buildings when placing them – no one wants to live next to a pig farm or charcoal burner but having a lavender field nearby is highly appreciated.
• Negative attributes are not the end of the world: you will naturally run into times where you have e.g. negative fire safety and will find ways to counter them later (e.g. with aqueducts)
• Health, Happiness and Fire Safety have specific “resolver buildings” that not only raise these attributes but also fight fires, quell riots or cure plagues. Place them strategically in your cities to automatically address any incidents appearing in your city.

Discovery Tree

One feature you unlock by advancing to the second population tier is research. If you generate Knowledge (another attribute) you can open the Discovery Tree and start investing those Knowledge Points into different technologies.

The Discovery Tree is split into three categories (economic, civil and military research) with various technologies and discoveries like new buildings, military units or improvements to existing systems.

You can, for example, unlock new deities to worship (see “Religion” tip below) like Minerva (Latium) or Cernunnos, Mercury-Lugus and Epona (Albion). Or you can research Warehouse Organisation or Sewing Circles in the economic tree, or Night Watch or Portitores in the civil tree to make your task of governing a bit easier.

A few pointers:

• Hover over discoveries to learn more about them and figure out how they can help you
• Parts of the tree only unlock after meeting specific requirements. Hover over these nodes to learn more
• Find the things most useful to your current situation:
  • Upgraded warehouses (economic tree) can support more production buildings, preventing delivery delays
  • If you want to focus on research, unlock Minerva and worship her in your Sanctuary, and unlock “Sewing Circles” to gain extra knowledge from Spinners
  • If you’re struggling with incidents (Fire Safety, Happiness, …) there are multiple discoveries in the civil tree that unlock additional buildings and boost the existing resolver units like vigiles and custodes
  • Even if you’re not focusing on military, the “Tacking” discovery in the military tree speeds up all your ships, even if they’re sailing against the wind

Religion

Religion played a big role in ancient Rome, and it also does in Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Upon reaching Tier 2, you’ll be able to build the Sanctuary (Latium) or Fanum (Albion) and worship a patron god on each island. Some deities can be worshipped right away, some others have first to be unlocked via discoveries (see above). How you use the feature depends on your current plans and needs.

• Each deity provides a number of local buffs for the island they are being worshipped. At the beginning, Ceres (agriculture) and Neptune (maritime production) are likely the most useful for you.
• Later, Minerva is powerful if you want to focus on research and discovering new technologies
• Mars is useful if you decide to go on a warpath, but shouldn’t be worshipped in early game since his buffs provide no benefits as long as you aren’t recruiting units and planning to wage war
• You can switch to a different patron god any time but have to keep in mind that you’ll also lose any buffs granted by respective deity.
• Every island can worship a different deity, allowing you to specialise and make the most of the buffs

Statistics Menu

Checking your storage in the warehouse and looking at the production timers of each chain is fine at the beginning, but the more your city grows and the more islands you expand to, the more moving parts there are you want to keep track of.

Therefore, utilize the Statistics Screen!

Click on your character’s portrait in the top center of the screen to open it and get an overview of all your islands and production chains.

• Select an island on the left side, or multiple if you e.g. produce olives on one island but turn it into olive oil on another
• The green bar represents production, the white bar consumption: generally, you want them to be of equal size.
  • a larger green bar means you’re overproducing goods
  • a larger white bar means you’re not producing enough and your stock will start decreasing, resulting in potentially your citizens’ needs not being met anymore
• You can also find information on the buildings on your respective islands, how much money they cost and what their impact on your city attributes is

There is, of course, more to discover and to learn in Anno 117: Pax Romana and we’re only scratching the surface here. Don’t hesitate to simply experiment with the game and its features – or reach out to other players for advice.

We’re looking forward to reading about your experiences!

Anno 117: Pax Romana is releasing on November 13th, and we want to make your experience with the game as smooth as possible. For this reason, we’ve put together a little “survival guide” directly from the devs to help you get started.

If you’re new to Anno or haven’t played Anno 117: Pax Romana yet, we recommend activating “Full Tutorial” in the game settings and starting with the Campaign. The story will slowly guide you into your role as Roman governor, from the tiniest settlement to a small town and all way into the province of Albion.

Anno 117: Pax Romana is a complex game and learning and understanding some mechanics might take some time – take it slow and don’t be afraid of restarting for a more successful second attempt.

The basics

Your first decision: Campaign or Endless mode

If you’re new to Anno in general but also if you enjoy a good story, we recommend starting with the campaign. In the role of either Marcus or Marcia learn how to be a good governor under the tutelage of your advisor and imperial slave Ben-Baalion. This mode slowly introduces the different features of Anno 117: Pax Romana while also involving you in a story that doesn’t just involve your character’s personal future, but also the events in the wider imperium!

If you’re an experienced player or simply want to get started right way, pick the Endless mode. You can still activate the tutorials to learn the basics along the way but in contrast to the campaign there are no artificial restrictions – and you can pick your starting province!  Select Latium for a regular playthrough with large, inviting islands – the classic Anno experience. Select Albion for a more challenging experience with marshlands and two potential population paths.

First steps

Whichever game mode and province you choose, your first steps will be very similar: you start with a trading post at an island and should set up a timber production first. Build two woodcutters and two sawmills in the forests near the trading post. Make sure each woodcutter has the minimum number of trees in its radius, as displayed when hovering the building over a forest. Less trees means lower productivity.

All buildings in Anno 117: Pax Romana require a road connection: production buildings to transport goods, and residences to consume goods and services. Production buildings also require Workforce as well as a warehouse in range (see range indicator on the roads) – your Trading Post at the coast also counts as a warehouse. Therefore, connect your wood production chain with roads to your trading post.

To address the need for workforce you require population. Your available workforce is displayed in the top left of the screen. Build some residences further inland and make sure they all have a road that connects them to the trading post. People will only move into those residences if specific needs (with the population symbol) are fulfilled. For a start, building a Fishing Hut (Latium) or Cockle Picker (Albion) are great to fulfil the “Food” need and when unlocked you can follow that up with the Market which should be placed near the residences.

Be aware that in Albion, some buildings – like the Eel Grabber – will have to be placed in the marshland.

Supplying your population

Let’s take a closer look at “Needs”. The menu of a residence (Liberti in Latium or Waders in Albion) shows you three Needs Categories: Food, Public Service and Fashion. You will need to provide at least one Need per category to upgrade your residence.

Each Need also provides certain Attributes: you can check those by hovering over the respective good or building. Sardines from the Fisher for example provides +1 Population and +1 Income, Porridge provides +2 Population. For the beginning, you want to focus on Population and Money to stabilise your economy and acquire enough workforce. Only when a need is fulfilled will the residence provide the respective Attributes and e.g. increase your population on the island.

You can provide all needs (e.g. both Sardines and Porridge as food in Latium) to have your residences provide as many attributes as possible. While not necessary to advance further in the game, this way you can maximise the number of residents per house or gain additional income.

Production chains and times

Early production chains are relatively straight-forward in terms of production time: Both the Woodcutter and the Sawmill each have a 30 seconds production time, meaning, you need one of each for the most efficient production rate.

Same goes for the Hemp Farm and the Spinner (to produce Tunics), for example.

Later you will encounter trickier production timers: the bread production chain has a 60 seconds (Wheat Farm) 30 seconds (Grain Mill) and 60 seconds (Bakery) combination. Meaning, for maximum efficiency, you would want to place 2 Wheat Farms,1 Grain Mill and 2 Bakeries.

Clicking on one of your warehouses gives you an overview of how many goods of each type you have and if the stock is going up or down. Only build so many production buildings to provide for all your current residences – setting up more than you need right now only cost you money.

Making money

You will start each game with a deficit and will have to find ways to increase your income soon. Let’s cover a few ways to manage money and make MORE money.

Firstly, your money will mainly be used to cover maintenance costs. All production buildings, public service buildings, ships and later military units cost your maintenance. Make sure to not build more of those buildings than you need at the current time. Hovering over the money icon in the top bar tells you exactly where you get money from and what it is being used for.

In addition, almost any construction – buildings, roads, ships – also cost a one-time sum upfront.

To make money, provide goods and services to your residents and keep building more houses! Keep an eye on goods and services that specifically provide money (e.g. sardines, eels or a market) – when these needs of your residents are met, your income will increase.

The second main way to make money is via area effects: production buildings like the Hat Maker or Spinner also effect all buildings within a certain radius, each building producing one additional gold. Build those near residences (but don’t forget to have a warehouse nearby for the transport of the goods) to profit from their buffs.

You don’t want to overproduce too much or immediately set up every new production chain but keep growing your settlement slowly and make sure your production and finances are stable before taking the next major step.

From village to small town

With the basics covered and your economy and finances stable, your village is flourishing! Time to take the next step and upgrade your residences to the next level.

Upgrading and progressing

To progress in Anno 117: Pax Romana, unlock larger, more impressive buildings, new production chains and features – in short: become more powerful – you will need to upgrade your residences to the next level (or “tier”).

When you have supplied your residences with at least the minimal number of needs (for Tier 1, Liberti or Waders, that’s fulfilling one need per each of the three categories) the upgrade button with the arrow will become available.

The second population tier, no matter which province you’re in, will come with additional Needs and a new, fourth Needs Category (Household), requiring you to set up additional production chains and building new public service building – like the Sanctuary, for example. You don’t have to rush to fulfil these needs immediately but can very much approach it at your own pace.

Look at what kind of attributes each Need provides and select the one most useful to you: Do you need to make more money? Do you want to research? Are your people unhappy?

To progress beyond Tier 2, you will need to fulfill needs worth three supply points in each category. Tier 1 needs provide one such point each, Tier 2 needs provide two points each. You can check this by clicking on a residence and looking at the supply bar of each category.

Upgrading in Albion

While in Latium, upgrading to the next population tier happens in a straight line (Tier 2 are the Plebeians), in the province of Albion things are a bit different:

You’re faced with the choice to either upgrade the Celtic way (to the Smiths) or start Romanising your population (and upgrade to the Mercators). Each path will not only visually shape your city but also come with its own set of needs and buildings. Feel free to pick whatever path seems more attractive to you, the differences are visible on the selection screen.

Your choice isn’t permanent, when progressing further in Albion, you will later be able to also upgrade your population the other path.

Quick tips

• Remember you can manipulate the camera with mouse & keyboard or your gamepad to get a better view at things: zoom in, turn it and change the angle to design the city exactly how you want it – and not miss any of the details.
• Many buildings and screens have a built-in infotip marked with a i-button. Don’t hesitate to check those out to find more info and explanations.
• Want to take some beautiful screenshots? Enable “postcard mode” via he F1 key (PC) or the button in the menu (console)
  • On PC, you can also deactivate the overlay and the little building markers at any time to take beautiful screenshots via Ctrl + H on PC and Ctrl + I
• Make sure to try out the day & night mode! You can either change to a time of day of your choosing or let the day & night cycle run automatically.
  • The mode does not have gameplay impact but is purely cosmetic.

More help and tips & tricks

In addition to reading this blog, we recommend heading over to the Anno subreddit or the Annoverse Discord server to talk with other players, ask questions or discuss strategies.

Our welcoming community is always happy to answer questions and help our new players – big thank you to our awesome community!

If you feel you have a good grasp of the basics, check out our blog with advanced tips and tricks.

Hey Anno Community,

Today we’ve got a packed Union Update for you today, covering some exciting demo news, livestreams and the very first Community Spotlight dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana!

Demo availability

Great news, Governors: the Anno 117: Pax Romana demo will still be available and playable after 16th September! More info about the demo (platform, time limit, etc.) can be found in this blog, together with a useful guide on how to get start in Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Diplomacy Livestream

If you caught last week’s livestream and you enjoyed it, then we’ve got great news for you: we’re planning another livestream! This time we will dive into anything that revolves around Diplomacy in Anno 117: Pax Romana. In details, we’ll focus on rivals, characters in general, and the diplomacy menu. The stream is planned for September 30th, 5PM CEST / 11AM EDT – as usual on twitch.tv/annogame.

In case you missed last week’s livestream, you can watch the VOD here on Twitch.

Community Spotlight

First, a huge thank you to all of you who played the Anno 117: Pax Romana demo! We’ve seen so many great screenshots and videos around socials, Reddit and Discord, so we decided to share some of our favourite here on the Anno Union today… which makes this the very first Community Spotlight dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana!

Let’s start with this lovely shot by Dr_PoopiePants, portraying a lovely settlement by the river in Latium. And great job on placing those Vigiles (Fire Station) to protect your residents from fires!

In this collection of screenshots by OnEst1_ we can spot both Roman and Celtic residences in Albion. Why choose only one when you can unlock both on the same island?

TheUnbrokenCircle shared a screenshot of this walled Roman city – great job on using those walls! And we love the little island in the middle of it – who knows who lives there?

Another Latium screenshot, this time shared on Discord by Electric: this is a special one, as it portrays a special statue, Annocius! You might recognise this statue as it’s the one created by HiddenMoon79, winner of the first Community Contest dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana.

If you’re just getting started and playing the demo for the first time or you’d like to help a friend in need, Taka has created a super useful guide for the Anno 117: Pax Romana demo:

Keep sharing screenshots and videos on social media, Reddit and Discord – we love to see your Anno creativity in action, and we’d be happy to share it here on the Anno Union!