What could be more Roman than the amphitheatre? Well, that’s what we thought, at least, and started working on the monument for Anno 117: Pax Romana. Let’s go over the history of monuments in Anno games – and then dive into the amphitheatre and its effects on your gameplay.

Monuments across Anno games

In Anno games, monuments are large projects that serve as prestigious landmarks and offer gameplay benefits. They are typically late-game buildings that require significant investment in terms of resources, workforce, logistics and, most importantly, time: it is important to keep in mind is that monuments are multi-phase construction projects. This means that monuments are built in stages, each requiring specific materials and/or conditions (e.g. being connected to your electricity grid).

Another important characteristic of monuments in Anno games is their uniqueness: they can only be built once per island, which emphasises the importance of their strategic placement.

Clearly, they are not the easiest projects to take on, especially when managing your already complex cities. However, monuments do not just simply exist in your cities, they also have rewarding effects: they boost city attractiveness, unlock special items or events, fulfil resident needs or even provide unique production capabilities.

That can be the huge cathedral in Anno 1404 that also plays a big role in the campaign, making you race against Cardinal Lucius: who can finish the cathedral first?

It can also be Leisure Center and Corporate Headquarters in Anno 2070 (with a third monument, the Science Forum, added with the Deep Ocean expansion), showing either your allegiance to one of the three groups – or your commitment to support multiple of them.

Anno 1800 then has the World’s Fair, hosting exhibitions that reward rare items, the Skyline Tower housing an enormous number of residents (added with the High Life DLC) and the Airship Hangar (added with Empire of Skies DLC) – and those were just some examples.

Anno 117: Pax Romana of course follows in these footsteps (otherwise we wouldn’t be writing this DevBlog) and has you build the great amphitheatre. Let’s take a closer look.

The Amphitheatre

When we think of Ancient Rome – or present Rome even, we might say – there is one thing that immediately pops in our minds: the Colosseum. So, let’s be honest: it wouldn’t be a game inspired by the Roman Empire if there wasn’t an Amphitheatre in it to invoke that very fantasy.

The Colosseum in Rome of course wasn’t the only amphitheatre in Roman times: many large cities had such arenas, varying in size, and their remains can still be seen today in many places (e.g. in Lyon, France, or in El Jem, Tunisia).

These amphitheatres could host crowds numbering in the tens of thousandth and were usually used for gladiatorial games.

This is also their purpose in Anno 117: Pax Romana – but first, you will have to build it!

How to build

When you have reached the fourth and highest population tier in Latium, Patricians, you can start the construction of the monument. The great amphitheatre is the biggest monument we have ever created for an Anno game, so, make sure to leave some space on your island! Each island can support one such arena.

There are four building stages to be completed by you before you can host any games in the amphitheatre. It all starts with the foundation:

Afterwards, there are stage two and three to complete, each requiring large amounts of increasingly more expensive resources – and workforce, of course. Each time you progress, the monument also changes visually: we highly recommend zooming in to discover all the details we put into this building.

And then, finally, the monument is finished: marvel at the arena with people training and preparing the next show, the rows upon rows of seats just waiting for audience, special lounges for the important people and the convenient sun covers (the velarium, as the Romans called it).

Effects

Right after construction finished, it’s time for a festival: parades will march through your city and people celebrate. Additionally, your architectural marvel will further increase your prestige, earning the respect of even the grumpiest of rival governors.

In a large area, the amphitheatre increases population (+3), happiness (+3) and prestige (+7). This will cover most large islands when placed strategically (but won’t cover the entirety of the huge island of DLC 1 – Prophecies of Ash – just in case you wondered).

It doesn’t stop there, of course: it’s only the beginning! You can now host different events in this arena to entertain your population. Different types of gladiator battles or even a naumachia – ship battles right in the arena. Let’s take a closer look at these events.

Events

There are three, to be precise, from small to large: the local gladiator games, grand gladiator games and the great naumachia.

Accordingly, the required resources to start such an event increase: requiring later not just weapon and equipment for the gladiators and some food for the nobles in the audience but also luxury goods and – for the naumachia – access to a nearby aqueduct cistern. Larger events also cost more money and require more Patrician workforce.

After a preparation phase where these goods have to be transported to the amphitheatre, the games start. There’s something to gain from these investments, of course!

Hosting events will make your population happy and boost the productivity of different parts of your economy, buffs various attributes, provides bonuses to military units and at its highest stage even prevents uprisings and increases the frequency of festivals. Repeating the same event will unlock the respective higher rewards of its category the next time around.

These rewards slowly time out and can be reactivated by hosting another such event.

With an event ongoing, you can watch the ranks getting filled with people from your city: a huge crowd is watching the events in the arena. Simulating crowds of this size was no easy undertaking for us – that’s maybe a topic for its own DevBlog.

There will also be the occasional side quest or story event happening during these events that require your attention.

“Why is there no monument in Albion?” we have seen asked here and there in the past. Our colleague Gabriel gave a more extensive answer in the Reddit AMA yesterday, but we want to pick up the topic here briefly as well: ultimately, as with many aspects of game development it comes down to development efforts. And monuments are significant efforts across multiple departments, as they are not “just” a public service building but have significant gameplay attached to it. That said, Albion does have two huge public buildings for the Celtic path (even if they’re not multi-stage monuments) which are strong visual anchors on your islands up in Albion.

And for the future… working on some more monuments for a DLC sounds like fun!

With that, we’ve reached the end of today’s blog post. How long will it take you to construct your own amphitheatre? We’re looking forward to watching you race to its completion – as we have done already for the World’s Fair in Anno 1800.

And for everyone who likes to take it slow: find a great place for this monument on your island, maybe build a park nearby? Rebuild the historical area around the Colosseum? We’re curious with what you come up with!