Salve Anno Community!

My name is Oliver Mertins, Senior Technical Artist on Anno 117: Pax Romana. I’m with Ubisoft Mainz for 5 years and have started on Anno 117: Pax Romana at the very beginning.

Often, I get asked: “What does a Technical Artist actually do?”
Simply said, they are the glue between the Art (e.g. Level Art, 3D Art, Animation) and development departments (e.g. Game Play Programming, Engine Development, Tools Development).

While Artists tend to think in shapes, colors and timing, Programmers might think in game logic, code design patterns or data types. To bridge between them a Technical Artist is needed who understands both worlds and can support in meetings, write scripts and little tools to support the Artists, do research to explore new fields of interest or investigate into asset optimization to improve the game performance. They take care of the more technical art side, like building functionality out of node networks, creating control rigs for character or props, developing procedural materials or stunning visual effects using several techniques or even writing shaders.

When you think about Anno, you immediately think about building a beautiful-looking empire. But today I will show you how to burn it down to the ground, leaving destruction and chaos. Curious? Then read on

Creating a fire

In ancient times, fire was a central element for humankind to survive and prosper. It not only spent light at night but enabled us to cook and prepare food, manufacture goods and weapons and helped to protect against wild animals. But whenever we thought we had total control over the forces of nature, we were proven wrong, as the great fire in Rome under Emperor Nero showed, for example.
All these cases found its way into Anno 117: Pax Romana – but before we start to create and control an inferno, we need to start mastering small flames and sparks first.

For achieving a vivid blazing fire effect, we will combine multiple visual components starting with emissive flames at its core, sparks for tiny details, heat distortion and a light source to send out light and shadow to its surrounding, to behave believable in the game world. Some aspects will be artistically exaggerated compared to reality to be visible from the usual player-perspective or to create more dramatic imagery.

For creating animated flames, we jump into the most advanced tool for creating visual effects: Side FX Houdini. Here we gain the ability to create digital fire-based rules on how it would work in the real world. This is called a simulation and will be done for each element: the flame, smoke and embers flying through the heated air.

Since a high-resolution simulation contains too much data to process in a real-time game environment, we need to simplify the information by baking a single animated flame into a texture – the “flipbook”. It will be read from left to right and from top to bottom in a repeating fashion from a shader later.

Now we want to have the appearance of a three-dimensional object as well, so we create multiple moving points in space called “particles” and attach the flipbook at each point to create the overall moving fire shape. Here is an overview of the fire ingredients:

Of particles, heat effects and light sources

“But wait a moment, the flipbook texture is just black and white, where are the colors?”, you might ask.
By using a gray scale texture for the flames and a fire color ramp texture, we can later tweak the colors of all fires in the game at a central place. This makes iteration and achieving a consistent quality much easier. We go even further and split the color into two ramp textures, one for the emitting color and one for the pure albedo color. But this is just for a more vivid color shifting look. These will be used as separate inputs for our shader later.

What else would you expect from a fire? Right, sparks! Let’s add some:
Back in Houdini we create particles flying around affected by wind turbulence and gravity. We make them a bit bigger than in reality to have them visible even from greater distance.

Now that we have made the more obvious and “loud” components, it’s time to address the subtle ones. We want to feel the heat the fire sends out, meaning, we want to distort the air around the fire. So, let’s add a few particles for that as well. To achieve the effect, a normal map gets assigned in the shader which deforms the pixels behind it.

Since Anno 117: Pax Romana has a day and night cycle, our fire should light our way at night as well. For dancing shadows on surrounding walls or a gloomy atmosphere, adding a light source becomes essential.

In the real world not only, objects get lit but the air around the light source as well. Tiny dust particles fly through the air reacting and transporting the light further, creating what we perceive as beams or god rays for example.

And there we have it:

Combined with fireplaces and baskets it nicely illuminates the city:

Setting a city on fire (in-game)

Now that we made fire, let’s have a look at unloved fire city incidents.
In Anno 117: Pax Romana we have three types of incidents: fires, disease, and uprisings. The fire incident is what we want to have a closer look at.

Overall fire incidents were a complex topic because they required multiple departments to achieve the overall feeling. When the incident happens, residents panic and run away, resolver units come to the rescue, extinguishing smaller fires. The air fills up with smoke, rooftop holes become visible and multiple fires spread in dangerous rings across the city leaving ruins behind. Therefore, multiple types of fires and smoke effects in several sizes were created, position markers were added to every building and all pieces got balanced and adjusted. For example: in the first iteration the smoke was way too intense from the players’ perspective, hiding the actions of residents and resolver units.

Looking at a single residence building the visual dramaturgy can be explained:

First, smoke and small fires start to evolve, getting bigger and more threatening.
After the fire has eaten through the building, holes in the rooftop get visible, showing glowing and black burned wood beams. When the building has reached its end, it collapses to dust leaving ruins behind.

How to destroy a building

This leads me to the final topic: Building Destruction.
Since Anno 117: Pax Romana contains many different building types and creating an individual destruction animation would require significant extra hard drive storage, we came up with several solutions for specific cases.

The bulk of buildings which are not that often destroyed, get a shader solution with additional smoke and dust effects leaving the detailed destruction animation for military strategic targets like walls, towers, gates and the villa which get seen relatively often.

Usually, the buildings are created in an “onion style” meaning multiple single sided shells got added to compose a building. Unfortunately, this is not ideal for the destruction process for which a “solid” geometry – closed geometry from all sides – is needed.

Therefore, the mesh gets prepared to be solid first. Afterwards it gets cut into pieces – “fractured” as we say – by using simplified fracture patterns, each standing for a different material like wood splitting into long shards, while stone bricks stay as single bricks compared to concrete material crumbling into many pieces. Marble, for example, gets chopped horizontally into multiple pieces:

Now let’s have a look at how we achieved the destruction animation for the stone tower.

By having loose fractured pieces only, our tower would instantly fall apart in an uncontrolled way – but that is not what we want. So, to gain controllability, we glue the loose pieces together and remove the glue partly over time, exactly where and when we want. This results in areas where the tower crumbles first, then second and so on which looks much more realistic.

In our game engine – the Empire Engine – we use a technique called “vertex animation” to playback the animation of the falling pieces in a shader. This is an alternative method for animated meshes compared to the “bone with a skinned mesh” approach usually used for characters and animals. A vertex animation requires two animation textures, one for translation and another one for rotation of the fractured pieces in addition to the fractured mesh. All these get exported, converted and put together by a python script to speed up and smooth out the process.

This is only a high-level overview of the main process of how we destroy specific assets. The whole network to do all these steps bit by bit looks like this under the Houdini hood:

This brings me to the end of the insights into fire and destruction. I hope you will enjoy the effects as much as we do while playing Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Have fun,

Oliver

To the north, governor, you can see the outlines of the great volcano. Ah, I remember the resorts, the villas, the busy harbours on the coast of Cinis. Broken, destroyed and swept away by the volcano all those years ago.

The island, however, Cinis – what a beauty! Venture north, see for yourself and marvel at its wide beaches and green pastures. It’s waiting for you, governor, to build a city like no other in Latium.

The volcano, you ask? Don’t worry about that, focus on the bounty instead!

On April 23^rd, the first gameplay DLC for Anno 117: Pax Romana will release: Prophecies of Ash. This DLC will expand the province of Latium and add the biggest island in the history of Anno to the very North: Cinis.

Very important note right away: you won’t have to start a new savegame to enjoy the DLC. It can be integrated in any existing save.

Aside from this vast space of land for you to build your megalopolis on there is another dominating visual feature: the volcano! Eruptions can not only cause destruction in your cities but also impact your economy during volcanic winter.

Get a first overview of the DLC before we dive into the details below:

This is part of the Roman fantasy we aim to deliver with Anno 117: Pax Romana: a history of rise and fall. Since we know some of our fans don’t want this added “drama”, we paired it with the biggest construction space in Anno’s history – and made it optional.

In this first DevBlog, we’ll be talking about the expanded Latium province, the new islands and the big continental island – as well as the new trader that’s being added to Latium.

In our second DevBlog, next week, we’re diving deeper into the gameplay related to the volcano, as well as other new additions and features of the DLC.

Expanding Latium

With this DLC, we’re expanding the size of the Latium region by adding another “belt” of islands along its current north-western and north-eastern borders.

This area will be populated by additional islands – including the five new ones – as well as Cinis: the super large continental island in the far north.

You heard right: Prophecies of Ash also adds five new islands to the game which will populate the expanded area. The three medium-sized and two small-sized islands are visually designed like Cinis, with the volcanic influences clearly visible.

You may spot old lava channels, volcanic craters, hot springs, black sand and plenty of the dark rock faces – all talking about a long history of volcanic activity.

The Continental island

We know, you’ve been waiting for the star of the show: the continental-sized island awaiting you in the north of Latium.

This island’s name is Cinis (can be renamed by you, of course) and is dominated by the large volcano further in-land. In contrast to volcanos in previous Anno games, here, it’s not placed in the middle of the island (requiring you to build around it) but in the back, outside of your immediate construction zone. That doesn’t mean its eruptions won’t impact you – more on that in the second blog – but they impact you differently, and this approach ensures you have a large area to build the city of your dreams.

We can already calm everyone who prefers building without a volcano interrupting their gameplay: you can disable volcanic eruptions at any point.

You can still spot remains of previous eruptions, with old lava channels, destroyed and abandoned villas and the black sand all over the island.

In terms of pure construction space, it provides you more than twice that of the largest island of the basegame, broken up into several bigger and smaller areas by cliffs and rivers – the biggest island in Anno’s history! (about 13% larger than Crown Falls in Anno 1800)

Neither cliffs nor rivers are pure decoration, of course, since their existence also results in a large number of both river as well as mountain slots.

If you’re starting a new game, you can decide to start on Cinis right away, instead of only settling it later in the game. If you integrate the DLC into your existing savegame, simply sail north and claim Cinis for yourself.

In the settings for Prophecies of Ash, you can also decide if NPC rivals are allowed to settle the island or not. Even if disabled, you can still lose the island if a rival conquers it in a war. In multiplayer, ownership over Cinis can likely become a central element for map control in Latium.

Super large islands like Cinis were already a point of discussions within both the dev team as well as the community in the days of Anno 1800. There, the Old World received “Crown Falls” with the “Sunken Treasures” DLC, and “Manola” with the “New World Rising” DLC.

As we know, the Anno player base is made up of people with very different playstyles and expectations towards Anno – and continental islands have their fans, as well as people who consider them making the game too easy.

That poses the question: Why are we adding these islands at all and why not in the base game?

Even though we consider Anno games comparatively chill builder games, we also want them to offer challenges to our players. These don’t need to be insurmountable (Anno doesn’t aim to be the Dark Souls of builder games) but are there to push the player forward, think about efficient ways to use the game’s systems and get the feeling of achievement and success when overcoming an obstacle. With a continental island like Cinis in “Prophecies of Ash” we therefore want to fulfil both: providing a place for beauty builders and record builders alike.

We even addressed this topic back in our DevBlog on how we defined the creative vision for Anno 117: Pax Romana, when we talked about islands in general:

For us, islands – or at least the principle of islands: space limited areas with a logistics area between them – are core to the Anno experience. They would not need to be literal islands, but the limitation of space (through island size, number and design) and the challenges that arise based on that are key – they create a purpose for the player and influence many other aspects of the game’s design.

The continental island does, by design, take away quite a bit of said challenge by offering so much building space, river slots, etc. on a single island. It therefore isn’t something we want to include in the base game but instead offer it separately, as an option for players who enjoy having such vast open areas for their cities without having to worry about limited building space.

It was clear for us from the beginning that we wanted (and had) to cater to this part of our player base, which is why “Prophecies of Ash” and the island of Cinis are the first gameplay expansion for Anno 117: Pax Romana.

To contrast this reduced building space challenge, we introduced the volcano that adds difficulty and prevents the game from becoming too easy. Ultimately, however, this decision is in your hands since if and how you use the island and if you enable the volcano gameplay is, as mentioned, in your hands.

The oracle Caecilia

One could almost consider Cinis to be uninhabited if we were to compare it to its glory days as a resort for the wealthy – however, there is still a village on its western side, watched over by Caecilia.

Caecilia is an oracle, having lived on Cinis for a very long time, having experienced the last outbreak of the volcano and claiming to know everything about it and its moods. You decide, how much you want to trust that.

Her quests will give you a better idea of the history of the province while also introducing you to the gameplay mechanics surrounding the volcano; there’s also the option to skip these quests and tackle things your way.

We can take a look at her settlement, built on the remains of a previous city. It lies on an “arm” of the volcano island and makes great use of the fertile soil to grow grain and wine. On the hill right above the settlement you can find both a temple, as well a watch tower to keep an eye on the volcano and its moods. A wide bridge spans over a chasm where lava once flowed from the volcano all the way into the ocean.

Caecilia also acts as a new trader for Specialists in Latium, but dealing exclusively in Obsidian. We’ll go more into detail on these topics in our second DevBlog next week.

Outro

Here we are, you’ve arrived on Cinis and have a first grasp of the lay of the land. Now you could start building your city as usual and don’t worry about a thing – the volcano is sleeping for a long time already, after all – but maybe you do want to worry? Or maybe you wonder if there are any other advantages to be gained from the volcano?

In that case you shouldn’t miss our second DevBlog next week where we’ll talk about the volcano’s eruption phases, how to obtain Obsidian and what to do with it.

In the meantime, we’d love to know: what’s your stance on large and even super large islands? Are they one of the things you’re looking for most in an Anno game or do you prefer the challenge that medium-sized islands offer you?

The “Prophecies of Ash” DLC releases on April 23^rd on all platforms.

All Anno games feature a substantial number of icons, more than most might expect! For 117, we made an incredible amount of 1700 icons (not counting discarded variations). Our icons come in a variety of styles. The ones we use the most can be split into 2D & 3D icons.

2D icons are simple graphic images designed to remain readable even on a small scale. You can find them throughout the game: info-tips, in descriptions, or next to values.

Our 3D icons are small life-like paintings (also called skeuomorphic). These are commonly used for items and specialists as well as for buildings, ships, and resource icons.

2D Icons (Glyphs)

• Simplified and stylized drawings in a single color
• What we use it for:
  • Works for small icons
  • Works with a single color
  • Abstract concept
  • Categories
• Limitations:
  • Similar objects can be difficult to differentiate by shape alone.

3D Icons (Skeuomorphic Icons)

• Realistic depiction of an object
• What we use it for:
  • Great for differentiating similar objects, e.g., between the several types of ships.
  • Color can be used to distinguish the rarity of objects.
• Limitations:
  • Requires a bigger size due to the high amount of detail
  • Best for objects rather than concepts.

The Planning and Ideation Phase

Icons are part of the UI team’s responsibilities, with multiple team members contributing to their creation, export, and ongoing management. One UI team member oversees the overall planning and coordination, working closely with the team to define icon needs and determine which icons are produced in-house and which are created by our long-term freelance icon specialist, Sebastian Erb, who has been part of the team since Anno 2205.

2D Icons – Glyphs

Glyphs are used to represent abstract concepts or categories. To make them easily recognizable, we reference real world objects or rely on established visual concepts conveyed through ideograms or mix of both.

Pictogram

This icon resembles a real-world object.

Ideogram

The meaning of this type of icon must be learned.

Mix

Often pictograms and ideograms are combined to help clarify meaning.

2D icons might appear simple, but a great deal of discussion often goes into the creation of even a single icon. We must balance the “Roman” of the icons with clarity and recognizability. The “floppy disk” is still the go to symbol for saving but maybe we should go with something more roman? How detailed do we want to be?

To find the right design we create several alternatives. The variations are then discussed with the requesting designer and the icon team to pick the variation that works best

Since 2D icons are usually displayed at a small size, we have to keep the level of detail fairly low. We have to ensures that icons remain easy to tell apart at a glance, usability is our most important criteria. Because of this, our 2D icons mix roman and more modern elements. More detailed roman elements are mainly used on larger painted 3D icons, where they can be easier to see and read.

We decided to reference the Anno “A” from 117 for the arrow icon. The left hand icon was chosen for the game.

3D Icons

Painting detailed 3D icons allows us to add a lot more flavor and tell a story within each icon.

To keep our 3D icons consistent, we pay close attention to lighting direction, proportion, and level of detail.

Even though the scrolls are similar objects, they are made to look distinct through arrangement, shape, and angle.

The rarity and value of these scrolls is communicated through materials from dull to shining, paper to gold, and an increase in intensity and variation of colors.

Production Chains & Buildings

Production chain and building icons have a high priority in the game, as players interact with them constantly. These icons are most often seen in the construction menu, where many options are displayed side by side while players browse, compare, and plan their layouts.

Because players spend a long time looking at and working with these icons, we pay extra attention to readability, clarity, and visual balance. Icons need to be easy to recognize and distinguish at a glance, while remaining comfortable to look at over extended periods. This often takes multiple iterations to ensure each icon stays clear, consistent, and recognizable even at a small scale. We try to visually relate the input goods to the final good by keeping colors similar.

Ships

At the core of every Anno game is the exploration and trade with the outside world. Ships are the vehicle to achieve the dream of endless expansion and naval domination. Our ships are first created by the art department. They evolve quite a lot during the game’s production. Once the finish line was on the horizon, we collected renders (screenshots) of the game’s ships to hand them over to our icon specialists to create beautiful 3D paintings of each. Since these icons have to work on a small scale, they are not just a simple copy of the original 3D object but highlight the unique features of each ship. Emphasizing details such as railing and ropes to make them distinguishable.

Specialists

The wise residents of the villa are quite a colorful bunch. They represent all residents which were part of the Roman empire: from the Celts to the Egyptians, the vast diversity of the Roman empire is represented though their faces and clothing. Though it can be a challenge to find information on historical dress, we look for sources like frescos to create clothing that might resemble what was worn back in the time of the empire. When working on the specialists, we had a list with name, ethnicity, and sometimes a little description about them. With each specialist, we try to tell a story through their design.

This specialist was inspired by the fresco “Mycenaean Lady.”

For the dress and hair of this Minoan woman we referenced the fresco “Dancing Lady” which was discovered in the excavations of Heraklion.

The base game features about 400 specialists! It would have been a huge effort to hand paint all of them individually and taken many months of work time which we needed to create other icons as well. Therefore, we adopted an approach that has already proven successful in Anno 1800.

We developed a system similar to the toy ” Mr. Potato Head”. Interchangeable parts are utilized so we can mix and match based on the need of each specialist. Sebastian Erb also built a modular library of eyes, beards, hairstyles, noses, brows, clothes, scars, and items. The base bodies come in a variety of skin colors and shapes that help us create a huge library of specialists in the same style and in a short amount of time.

After the elements are chosen making up our specialist, we add a few finishing touches such as shadows, age spots, and body hair.

From posh patrician to rugged wetland walker, these outfits cover a range of the attire worn by the empire’s population. By adding dust and adjusting color, we can further add depth to the characters. This is only a small selection of the clothing created for our specialists.

A witty smirk, a disgusted frown, a content smile. This small selection of face parts hints at the variety of faces that can be created from this base.

Special Icons

If you pay close attention to our icons, you might encounter Easter eggs and references. Happy hunting for these little surprises in the game.

This is the Anno sheep that was on display during Gamescom 2025 and has found its way into the players’ and team’s hearts alike. You can encounter Gaius Schafus III. as an easter egg.

Thank you for reading this article! The Icon Team on Anno 117 are Farah Mahadon, Benjamin Clendon & Eva Kaup. Our freelance artist who created most of the wonderful icons featured on this blog is Sebastian Erb (https://sebastian-erb.de/).

Anno 117: Pax Romana is a game packed with numerous interconnected game systems that bring its world to life. All these require interfaces of some sort, and early on our User Interface Team (short: UI Team) realized that managing this complexity would require a smart approach from the start. For this reason, we formed different groups (“sub-teams”) during development. Each group focused on specific areas of the UI, the visual design, interaction design, technical implementation, and accessibility to name a few. This new approach helped to spread the work across several shoulders and allowed the team members to play to their unique strengths. The new process greatly helped to match the game’s growing ambitions.

Beyond ensuring the UI could scale with the project’s needs, we were committed to launching on both PC and console from day one, which was a challenge in itself. Creating an experience that feels intuitive and natural on two very different input devices requires careful interaction design, strong UX guidelines, and plenty of iteration to ensure the experience remains smooth and consistent. Here, we can share a few insights from that process as well.

Meet the team!

My name is Alex Gibson, and I’m one of the two UI Leads on Anno 117: Pax Romana. The UI team is significantly larger than in the previous installment, bringing together a mix of industry veterans and newcomers — a combination of experience and fresh perspectives.

In no particular order, I want to give a huge shout-out to the team for their commitment, dedication, and resilience in shaping the UI of Anno 117: Pax Romana. Their hard work is what makes the game’s interface both functional and engaging:

Jan Wawrzik (UI Lead), Benjamin Clendon, Christoph Weber, Elisabetta Andreini, Eva Kaup, Hong Nhung Hoang, Khajag Jabaghchourian, Max Pellegrino, Nur Farah Ain Mahadon, Angus Jewkes, Carlos Cervantes, and Bien Thuy Tran.

Their passion and collective efforts truly brought the UI to life and continue to shape and improve it with every update.

So, you might be wondering: what topic are we starting with today? I’d like to kick things off with the visual direction and why we chose it. This section will explore early concept designs, how our approach aligns with overall branding, and the innovations the UI team developed to make the interface both distinctive and functional whilst being conscious of time.

Visual Ideations and Concepts

Let’s go back three years, to when we first began conceptualizing the UI. At that time, the art direction was still undefined, leaving all avenues open for exploration. This created an opportunity for a few team members to start developing ideas for the game’s UI visual style, laying the groundwork for what would later become the dedicated visual team inside the UI department and providing a strong foundation for the styles we wanted to pursue.

Benjamin Clendon, Christoph Weber, Eva Kaup, Angus Jewkes and I are the key contributors in shaping the initial vision and guiding the overall visual direction of the UI. In the short pre-production phase, we explored and designed a diverse range of visual styles, quickly identifying what resonated and what didn’t. Throughout the process, we worked closely with the Creative Director and Game Director to ensure the UI evolved in alignment with their vision, establishing a clear creative foundation for the rest of the interface.

Early Miro board snapshot showcasing initial concepts and ideation.

After months of iteration and refinement, the word “Elegance” emerged as one of the foundational pillars guiding our design decisions. Complementary words such as polished, delicate, and refined also became central to the visual direction. The goal was to create a UI that felt authentic and relevant to the time period, avoiding anything that appeared aged, worn, or out of place within the world of Anno 117: Pax Romana.

We also had to remain highly mindful of technical constraints and broader project requirements. This included considerations such as texture resolution to support multi-platform development, ensuring textures could tile seamlessly (i.e. repeatable without a visual “seam”), and meeting accessibility guidelines. As a result, many factors had to be carefully balanced throughout the process. A fun and complicated puzzle which is always a challenge!

Choosing Colours and Styles

Early on, we decided to pursue a darker UI direction rather than a lighter one. While there were several practical considerations behind this choice, the primary reason was that a darker style better complemented the in-game world.

Early visual concept, missing a lot of mechanics and features.

It allowed the interface to feel integrated rather than appearing as a separate overlay, ensuring it supported the experience without distracting from or pulling the player out of the game…but why blue you may be asking?

The Roman Empire made use of a wide range of colours, though some were far rarer than others and often restricted to specific social classes due to wealth and availability. One of the most prestigious was Tyrian purple, a colour strongly associated with power and status. Because of its rarity and cost, it was largely reserved for politicians, high-ranking officials, and emperors, symbolizing authority and imperial prestige.

Because Tyrian purple was intended to feel rare and powerful, we reserved it exclusively for significant moments within the experience, specifically as the selected state for buttons. This ensured the colour retained its sense of importance and visual impact and which can be seen in our early and final button concepts below.

Early button concepts exploring different styles and colour directions.

Final primary button states and styles.

In-engine breakdown and structure.

Blue, particularly a dark blue, proved to be the most suitable and preferred foundation colour for the UI. The chosen tones convey elegance and clarity while providing strong contrast for key elements such as whites, greens, reds, and yellows, ensuring both readability and functional clarity throughout the interface.

To prevent the interface from feeling overly flat, we introduced a subtle fabric texture. This added depth without overwhelming the design, as the background needed to remain understated to support a wide range of content layered on top of it. The goal was to create visual richness while maintaining clarity and flexibility.

We introduced variations in fabric tones to create a stronger sense of hierarchy and depth.

On top of these foundations, we later decided to introduce a secondary texture to the UI. Marble, a prominent material in Roman architecture, was a natural choice to explore. Since marble comes in a variety of colours and vein intensities, we selected a blue-tinted marble for the base, complemented by Tyrian purple veins to reference the rare and prestigious Tyrian colour, tying the texture back into the visual language of the UI.

Three different marble textures were created at varying sizes to optimize memory usage.

Decals, Details and Refining

Once the core of our UI style guide was locked in, we had the fun part ahead of us – polishing. We started refining patterns, tweaking visual details, and layering in elements that helped the interface feel more grounded to the time period.

A big focus was creating iconic shapes and ornamental motifs that could be reused in smart ways. We built them to be modular, so designers could mix and match pieces to create unique decals for different features in just a few clicks. This gave us the best of both worlds: a UI that feels cohesive overall but still has room for personality and variation where it matters.

A great example of our modular approach is the mosaic patterns you’ll see throughout the UI. We first designed the patterns in clean vector form, then transformed them into mosaic variations that fit the game’s aesthetic. Because the system was built to be flexible, we could quickly generate unique decorative elements without starting from scratch each time. The result? Strong visual consistency across the interface and a production process that saved the team a significant amount of time.

So how did we create so many scenes, and do it all on time?

As the UI visuals entered a more refined phase, the UI visual team began creating building blocks that could be used consistently throughout the game. While this document was by no means complete, given the numerous mechanics and systems that required bespoke visual solutions, it provided a foundational colour palette and reference materials that the UI department could rely on. The examples below showcase many of the visual elements that designers could access through the shared Adobe Creative Cloud.

Example asset sheet available in Adobe Creative Cloud as separate elements.

We maintained asset sheets containing all button states, textures, decorations, generic assets, and basic shapes, giving the team ready-to-use building blocks to streamline visual feature design. While these sheets covered reusable elements, many unique assets still needed to be created, a task that the visual sub-team actively supported throughout development.

So how do we construct elements?

Over the course of the project, creating new elements became increasingly efficient as more references and templates became available. Below is a brief breakdown of the process, showing how an element is generated and prepared for implementation into the engine.

Element examples to demonstrate how the UI can, and is, broken down.

Conclusion

While this only scratches the surface of the UI’s visual style evolution, I hope it provides some insight into why we chose the direction we have today. We continue to refine and enhance the style with every major update (including the upcoming update 1.5), ensuring it remains both visually cohesive and responsive to the game’s needs.

Hey Anno Community!

Today we want to give you an overview of our efforts in terms of mod support on release, and a brief look into the future and what we’re planning for postlaunch.

Mod support at release

As previously announced, the mod loader is integrated into the PC version of the game right from the start. This means, mods in the mod folder are automatically detected and loaded when you start the game.

There are even a few example mods already pre-installed. You can find them and a small how-to textfile in your game installation folder under mods/

However, we’re not yet supporting mods with a dedicated in-game UI or in-game browser. That is planned for a later update (see further below in this article).

For now, you can install and activate mods the old way by extracting. zip files into the mods/ folder as outlined above.

The mod loader comes with nice improvements and a few changes over the previous version in Anno 1800. Namely:

• ModOp improvements
• additions for Lua scripts
• built-in support for activation profiles and options (similar to iMYA tweaks in case you know them).

More details about the changes are documented in the mod loader GitHub repository which we highly encourage you to check out: https://jakobharder.github.io/anno-mod-loader/

Partnership with mod.io

We’re excited to confirm we’re partnering with mod.io on our mod support plans. mod.io is an industry-leading middleware solution for mods and user-generated content (UGC) support, used in hundreds of games.

After our collaboration on Anno 1800, mod.io will again become the home for mods for Anno 117: Pax Romana – and your way to easily both share your creations and download mods others created. You can find the dedicated Anno 117: Pax Romana page on mod.io here: https://mod.io/g/anno-117-pax-romana

This is just the beginning of this collaboration and we’re looking forward to sharing more in the coming months.

State of Tooling

Further, for the mod creators out there: the engine of Anno 117: Pax Romana is a continuation from Anno 1800, thus many community tools continue to work as is or need only some smaller adjustments.

RDA tools to unpack data work unchanged, e.g.

• https://github.com/anno-mods/RDAExplorer
• https://github.com/anno-mods/RdaConsole

The Visual Studio Code plugin has been updated to support Anno 117: Pax Romana. A new addition are templates for empty mods with the standard file structure:

• https://anno-mods.github.io/vscode-anno/

The Blender plugin still needs some work, but should be able to open most CFGs at this point already thanks to community efforts:

• https://github.com/anno-mods/Blender-Anno-117

And finally, like in the past, we recommend visiting the modding Discord server for more resources and discussions with fellow modders:

• https://discord.gg/qfUgFUTSqj

A big shout out to all who have contributed to tools and documentation in the past: taubenangriff, xormenter, lukts30, Serpens66, Hier0nimus to name a few.

Road Ahead

There are two missing pieces when compared to Anno 1800: in-game UI with info tips and popups for activation, and a mod browser with download platform.

Both are topics we’re looking into bringing to the game in postlaunch – we’ll keep you updated.

If you’re wondering about mod support on console: for now, we’re focused on PC mod support.

We do expect new needs, requests and ideas raising in the modding community following the release. There is still some potential especially around the new Lua scripting options. Therefore, we plan to gradually improve the support here and are welcoming your input on this topic.

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!

The Anno veterans among you will remember: back in 2009, Anno 1404 introduced the item mechanic for the first time to the series. Items are objects or people in the game that you slot into specific buildings or ships to modify some of their values, for example:

• Increase the productivity of all sheep farms within a certain radius
• Increase the happiness of all residence buildings near a market building
• Increase the sailing speed of a ship
• And many similar effects

The idea behind the introduction of this mechanic back then was, to deepen the puzzle aspects of an Anno game by letting you boost certain productions further, specialize your fleet for e.g. higher speed, or simply get the most out of a densely packed city. They are a tool that provides more choice for you, the player, on how to tackle the challenges in the game.

How items were handled differed a bit from game to game: Anno 1404 allowed slotting items in ships and your trading post, while Anno 1800 not only greatly expanded the number of items in the game but also added special buildings (Townhall, Harbor Master and Trade Union) where these items would be slotted to affect buildings in their vicinity.

Following the release and throughout post-launch we eagerly followed the discussions around the item mechanic (and the sheer volume of different items) in Anno 1800 and decided to adjust it on some levels for our next game – but don’t worry item-lovers, there’s still plenty to tweak and puzzle.

Hiring Specialists

Let’s take a look at how we’re tackling the topic in Anno 117: Pax Romana then.

Firstly, we did a small renaming: “items” are called “specialists” in Anno 117: Pax Romana. The reason is that all items are now people who you invite to work for you and who provide their services and special skills to your cities – therefore: specialists!

The specialists can mainly be obtained via quests or by visiting traders – they usually have some specialists visiting who you can hire for a certain sum. Additionally, the Discovery Tree and the Hall of Fame also offer ways to obtain specialists.

These specialists can then be slotted into either your villa and officia or your ships.

There are a total of 4 rarity categories for items. Higher rarity specialists have stronger effects but are – as their name suggests – harder to obtain. Specialists can affect residences, production buildings, public service buildings and ships.

Employing specialists

We acquired a few specialists, let’s put them to good use and take a look at where you can employ them.

Villa

As probably the first places you will slot a specialist in, your governor villa is your home as a governor and – especially in Albion – a symbol of Roman power and prestige. It has a large effect radius for items slotted here and provides other benefits, for example allowing you to recruit some personal guard units to defend your city in case of war.

It’s important to protect your own villa on each island, since capturing the villa is the way to overtake other player’s islands.

A villa comes with several slots to put specialists in. The higher your Prestige attribute, the more slots you unlock. Prestige is earned via certain needs and public buildings, as well as your city status and ornaments (incl. the beautiful marble roads).

If we look at two examples of specialists that you may want to employ in your villa, we’d have:

• The Vesseler: Reduces the needed workforce (-25%) and upkeep cost (-50%) of taverns in range
• Iain Thespis, Brightener of Days: Increases the Happiness of all residences in range by 1.8

Officia

With the villa having a large but limited radius, the way to affect other parts of your islands with the buffs from specialists is by building Officia.

An Officium is a smaller administrative building with a smaller radius and just two item slots (later three, if you progressed very far in the Discovery Tree). The radius of a villa and officium, or multiple officia, cannot overlap.

How many officia you can build per island depends on how many “permits” you have acquired. Additional permits are unlocked via your island prestige, as well as the Discovery Tree.

Ships

Some specialists are experts at guiding ships. These captains can only be slotted in naval vessel, with each ship having exactly one slot for such a specialist. Things are rather straightforward here, so, let’s also check out two such captains:

• Thunderous Bolter: Increases the accuracy of scorpiones (+15%) and their attack speed (+20%)
• Unburdener: Decreases trade prices (-5%) and reduces cargo weight slowdown (-25%)

How and to which degree you are going to make use of specialists is up to you. For us it was important to provide another mechanic for you to specialize your cities and fleet but also further boost production buildings or tax income and this way enabling you to squeeze the most out of the limited space you have on each island.