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.

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!

It’s August and that means gamescom in Cologne is just around the corner. Time to tell you in some more detail what you can expect at the convention in about 3 weeks and update you on some other news around Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Closed Beta

The Closed Beta for Anno 117: Pax Romana took place in mid-July and we want to once again say “thank you” to everyone who participated and shared their feedback with us.

Just please keep in mind that the playtest was under NDA, meaning, anything you’ve played and experienced must only be shared on the dedicated Discord server or the survey you were sent.

If you haven’t been able to participate in the Closed Beta: don’t worry. This won’t have been the last hands-on opportunity.

And, we’ll of course share far more about the game with you in the coming weeks and months. Starting with…. gamescom!

Community Event

A few weeks ago we opened registrations for this year’s Anno Community Event that will take place on August 20th at gamescom.

From all registrations, participants were drawn at random and received an invitation via email earlier this week, on Monday. Please check your inboxes and get back to us until end-of-week if you’re able to attend.

In case of declined invitations, we will send out another round of invites to fill the slots we have for the event.

Gamescom Overview

There’s far more for Anno 117: Pax Romana at gamescom this year than only the Community Event, however!

We’re offering you a full Anno experience at our booth:

• Get your hands on the game and discover both the provinces Albion and Latium!
• Take some photos with our Anno booth as backdrop or next to one of the giant statues we found in ancient temples in Mainz and brought to gamescom.

In addition, directly next to it in the Ubisoft Community Corner, you can meet us and join various presentations and panels on Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Learn more about the province of Albion at the border of the Empire and the challenges and decisions you’ll be facing as a governor – and use the opportunity to ask us your questions.

Panels will be held multiple times each day from Thursday (21st) until Sunday (24th), no registration required (but seats are limited for each session). The full schedule for the week will be posted here on the Anno Union closer to gamescom.

History Hit Podcast

Can’t get enough of of the historical period of the Pax Romana which inspired our game? Then check out the first of several episodes of the “Echoes of History” podcast in collaboration with History Hit: Episode 1 – What is Pax Romana?

But what does “Pax Romana” mean? Was this really a peaceful period in history? Or have we misunderstood its meaning for centuries? Dr Hannah Cornwell and Matt Lewis from History Hit are investigating this classic puzzle.

Community Spotlight: Anno 1602 to Minecraft Converter

A short Community Spotlight this time but we really wanted to share this one:

Over on Reddit, Pretty_Tie3781 shared their current project: a program that converts your Anno 1602 islands into Minecraft!

They are still looking for some contributors that help recreating the remaining Anno 1602 buildings in Minecraft. If that sounds like something you might be interested in, why not reach out?

Hey Anno Community,

It’s July! More precisely it’s the 11th of July, a date perfectly suited for a news round-up for Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Closed Beta

We start with a short public-service-announcement: Invites for the Closed Beta will be sent next week! Participants are randomly selected from all registered players, so, keep an eye on your inbox.

Like past playtests, the Closed Beta is subject to an NDA – so everything you see or experience during the test cannot be shared publicly but ONLY on the channels outlined in the invitation.

Gamescom event signup

As we announced last Monday, sign-ups for our Gamescom Community Event are now open! It will take place on 20th August, and just like last year’s Community Event, participants will be selected randomly. If you’re going to be around Cologne and want to attend the event and spend some time with fellow Annoholics and the Anno Dev Team, you can sign up here. You’ve got until Sunday 20th July to get your name on the list for a chance to be selected!

We’ll provide food and drink during the event as well as access to gamescom itself – travel and accommodation are not covered by us. Watch this space for more info on the Community Event and gamescom in general in the coming weeks.

Dark Horse Comics x Anno 117: Pax Romana

We know how much you love the art of Anno, so we’ve teamed up with Dark Horse Comics for “The Art of Anno 117: Pax Romana”. From concept art to character designs and meticulously crafted environments, this artbook is a treasure trove for the true Anno fan. It will release on 9th December this year, more info are available here while you can preorder the book on places like Amazon or (comic) book stores.

Find some impressions from the book below:

Upcoming

In the coming days and weeks until gamescom we of course won’t leave you completely without news.

You can soon expect a DevBlog on Game Production: Now that we’ve already talked about and shown so many parts of Anno 117: Pax Romana we’re taking a step back and look at the planning side of things. How are we planning a project like Anno 117: Pax Romana?

We also really want you to meet your future rivals – or new best friends: We’ll be talking about the diplomacy system and introduce you to some of the characters you’ll meet in Anno 117: Pax Romana.

And for more behind the scenes information, we’ll also be taking a look at the work of the Game Design team, their processes and the creation of feature concepts and design documents.

Of course, you can also expect us to step in front of the camera for a livestream again, specifically on the Diplomacy topic, and share more updates on gamescom and generally news on Anno 117: Pax Romana with you!

Hey Anno Community!

With the big gameplay reveal for Anno 117: Pax Romana behind us, we’ve put together a high-level overview of all recent news, as well as some general information on the game.

Find below information on some of the most frequently asked questions as well as links to further resources.

And don’t worry if we haven’t answered your questions just yet – far more news coming soon in the next weeks and months until November 😉

General

Q: What’s the release date for Anno 117: Pax Romana?

Anno 117: Pax Romana will release on 13th November 2025.

For all the Annoholics asking why the game is not launching on 7th November so we would get 11/7/2025 (following American dating format) as release date – the answer simply is that it’s never a good idea to release a game on a Friday. 😉

 

Q: What will Anno 117: Pax Romana cost? What kind of editions are available? When can I pre-order?

You can preorder Anno 117: Pax Romana now!

There are three different editions:

• Standard Edition at 60€
• Gold Edition (base game + Year 1 Pass) at 90€
• Collector’s Edition at 160€ (only available physically at retailers)

You can find out more about these editions here.

 

Q: Where can I wishlist or preorder the game?

You can wishlist or preorder Anno 117: Pax Romana on your platform of choice:

• Ubisoft Store: https://ubi.li/3FMo7
• Steam: https://ubi.li/DkL8F
• Xbox: https://ubi.li/pkyht
• PlayStation: https://ubi.li/B6Kze
• EPIC: https://ubi.li/3Xcf0

 

Q: Will all the DLC you announced as part of the Year 1 Pass also be released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S?

Yes, all announced gameplay DLC will also be released on consoles.

 

Q: Where can I find the trailers you’ve published so far?

• Announcement trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJNzvo3UJb8
• Modular ships: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gbGY0rJ80A
• Gameplay Showcase Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBXNl88yeW4
• Gameplay Overview Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8G9VCHS1xQ
• Cinematic Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6a37J87bew
• Military overview trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGJKEWw3wr4
• Governor Edition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX1EhztmAMg

 

Q: Will you be at gamescom 2025 in Cologne?

Yes, Anno 117: Pax Romana will be at gamescom from August 20th to 24th – we’d love to meet you there!

Q: Will there be more playtests before release? I signed up for beta tests but didn’t get an invite yet.

Yes, the Technical Test in May was not the last playtest and there will be more opportunities to play the game before its release in November.

 

Q: Where can I discuss further with fellow Anno fans?

Two great places to start are the Anno subreddit and the Annoverse Discord server.

Features 

Q: Will Anno 117: Pax Romana have a campaign? What’s the story about? 

Anno 117: Pax Romana will feature a campaign, putting you in the role of a young governor. We will reveal more about the story later this year. 

 

Q: Will Anno 117: Pax Romana have multiplayer? 

Anno 117: Pax Romana will allow you to play with or against other human players in PvP and co-op multiplayer. 

 

Q: Are you bringing back land combat? How does the military aspect of the game look like? 

Anno 117: Pax Romana will allow players to fight rivals with both warships and land units if they so desire. Ships can be built using different modules, while on land a variety of unit types are at the player’s disposal – together with fortifications for defense. 

We’ll soon reveal more on the military and will then update this blog. 

Q: What is the “Religion” Feature? 

Choose which deities to worship on your islands in sanctuaries and temples, increase the belief of your citizens and unlock powerful local and global buffs for your empire. 

More details in this dedicated DevBlog.

 

Q: What is the Discovery Tree? 

Via the Discovery Tree, players can research new technologies and improvements, as well buildings and military units. They allow the further optimisation of economic, civil and military matters, increasing production, improving troop morale or unlocking new deities to worship. 

More details in this dedicated DevBlog.

 

Q: What did you change regarding the Needs system? 

Needs are now sorted into categories (e.g. food, clothing, …), and each category will only have to be fulfilled to a certain level in order to upgrade residences. Fulfilling as many needs as possible still provides you with bonuses in the shape of extra income, happiness, population and more. 

More details in this dedicated DevBlog. 

 

Q: What are attributes? 

Attributes describe the overall workings of your islands and your empire overall: fire safety, happiness, income and the other five attributes are broken down into detailed overviews to allow you to optimise or adjust where necessary. Low fire safety? Seems like those bakeries are the culprit – nothing an aqueduct can’t fix! 

More details in this dedicated DevBlog.

 

Q: When will you tell and show us more about the other province, Albion? 

We’ll talk more about Albion specifically later this year at gamescom. 

Until then, make sure you’ve checked out our blog post on Romanization. 

 

Q: Will Anno 117: Pax Romana have an active pause feature? 

Yes, it’s possible to pause the game and issue certain commands – even though certain calculations will require the game to be unpaused. 

 

Q: Does Anno 117: Pax Romana support cross-play and cross-save features between PC and consoles?

Yes, both features are supported, allowing you to play with friends on other platforms, or even share saves between platforms.

 

Q: Can I play with mouse & keyboard on Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X|S? Can I use a controller on the PC?

Yes to both questions 🙂

 

Q: Are you planning more DevBlogs and livestream to talk about diplomacy and NPCs, trade, the lategame in Latium, system specs, multiplayer, sound, beauty building, … ? 

There are so many more aspects of Anno 117: Pax Romana we want to still talk about and show you – don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of content planned for the coming months. 

Today, we just covered a fraction of the questions you likely have, so: don’t hesitate to leave a comment to tell us what you’d like us to talk about or go into more detail on!

Hey Anno Community,

As we get closer and closer to our gameplay reveal, we wanted to recap some news for the upcoming weeks. We know you’ve been waiting for this for a long time: on Monday 19th May we will reveal the gameplay for Anno 117: Pax Romana! So, keep an eye on our socials around 6 PM CEST/4PM UTC/12PM EDT to not miss our trailer. Plus, you might spot some of your favourite content creators sharing their first impressions and hands-on on the game starting Monday evening as well.

Developer livestream

Cannot get enough of the Anno 117: Pax Romana gameplay reveal? Well, we got you covered – tune in on May 21st, 5 PM CEST/11 AM EDT at twitch.tv/annogame for a livestream dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana! During the live stream we will show you the game in action, whilst giving you the opportunity to ask your burning questions in chat. Community Developer Oliver and Community Manager Celeste will be joined by Game Director Jan and Art Director Reiko to talk about the game and discuss new features: some you may already know about, others… not so much.

We hope to see you there!

Steelbook voting – and the winner is…

It’s official, with 78% of the votes, the colourful mosaic has emerged as the clear winner and will be the steelbook design for the Governor’s Edition!

With this, we conclude the voting campaign for the Governor’s Edition. If you’re interested in the Anno 117: Pax Romana Collector’s Edition, don’t forget to register your interest here to not miss any future news on the topic.

We’ll have more details on the Governor Edition soon.

Future playtests

Whilst our current Technical Test is coming to an end, we wanted to remind our beloved community that more tests are planned for the future – so if you haven’t been invited to this one, don’t worry! There will be more opportunities in the future. Just make sure you have registered your interest here!

Anno 1800 reached 5 million Players!

Let’s close this Union Update with some more FANTASTIC news: we’re super excited to share that Anno 1800 has passed the 5 million players milestone! It’s amazing to see the outpouring of love for this title, 6 years after its release, on the dawn of Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Anno Community – 5 million times thank you to each and every one of you, for the constant support through the years.

Hey Anno Community,

Today is a great day for Anno 1800, as it marks the release of the “New Horizons” mod! After 5 years of hard work and effort, we wanted to celebrate the release of this highly anticipated mod together with its creators and the Anno Community as a whole. The team behind this massive project includes Taubenangriff, jje1000 and Hier0nimus – well-known names in the Anno modding community.

Who can explain the content of the mod better than the people behind this big project? So, we asked them:

What can Anno 1800 fans expect in the New Horizons mod?

In Vanilla Anno 1800, there are four regions, the Old World, New World, Arctic and Enbesa, each with their own population and production. In New Horizons, we are adding a fifth region, Horai, which is inspired by East Asia, mostly Japan and China. Horai itself has two population tiers, as does each Colony region, and its residents want products like porcelain, tea, sake and koto instruments. On top of that, the session comes with its own challenges and mechanics: First of all, your farm production in Horai is going to be regularly interrupted by monsoons, something you might have already experienced in the Seasons of Silver scenario. If you need additional workforce and money, you can provide your Horaiese population with street food, and if you look to complete fancy architecture projects, you can rebuild the Wonders of Horai on your islands.

Not only does New Horizons contain an Asian-inspired session, it also adds a sixth population tier in the Old World at the end of the progression where Investors can now upgrade to Magnates, who turn the endgame economy on its head by providing little income for high efficiency, and it should come as little of a surprise that Magnates primarily want goods from the Horai session.

As with previous Modding Spotlights, we’ve prepared for you an extensive Q&A with the team behind the mod – both about their modding experience as well as about the mod itself. Without further ado, let’s dive into it!

Q&A, Part 1: Modding experience

What would you advise someone who wanted to get into modding Anno?

Discovering your creative side takes a lot of effort and time, and you will never find out about it if you do not start off just creating things. Creative skills can be learned, and ultimately you do not have to be the best in your discipline to create cool stuff and have fun with it. It takes a bit of stubbornness and persistence to transform your vision into reality.

But most importantly, do it for the fun, not for the result. And you will always have learned something valuable in the process.

 

Did you have any prior modding knowledge or specific skills (programming, 3D Art, UI Design, …) when starting to mod Anno?

We had and have a lot of talent on the team that was involved, and what we can do covers pretty much the entire palette that you might need when creating and modding games. That reached from being very capable at reverse engineering and programming to bringing 3D art skills or general knowledge of how to code mods for Anno 1800. But most importantly, no single person on the team could do everything, so it was very important to assign tasks based on who could do what. This collaboration was very important during development, because this way every task could be handled by someone who knew what they were doing.

 

The skillsets on the team could be very specific, we even had someone on the team who specialised in Sound Engine modding, which became very handy when porting and implementing resident voice lines from other Annos into 1800, because none of the others on the team could have done that. Some of us also used New Horizons to expand and practice their skillset, like learning and improving 3D art skills with and for the project, which was a great learning opportunity.

How did you get into modding? What prompted you to create Anno 1800 mods specifically?

Taubenangriff: I used to do record building on Anno 2070 a lot before 1800 came out. That was roughly the time where I learned general programming. Then 1800 came out and it all started at a white empty Plaza tile that was missing from the release, but which I wanted to build. So, I tried my luck on it, it worked, and through that I got to know a lot of awesome people that also tried their luck with modding Anno 1800. Mind you, that was even before there was a modloader for the game.

Well, in the midst of that pioneer era of modding, we started getting better and better and eventually went crazy with our ideas – that is when New Horizons was born out of pure hybris and megalomania. Well, and now 5 years later I’m here and it’s done.

 

Not too long ago we did an interview with Hier0nimus. You can check it out here.

Q&A Part 2: Behind-the-scenes of the “New Horizons” mod

For the second part of this spotlight, we were of course very curious how the team handled the development of the “New Horizons” mod.

 

Did you know what you were committing yourself to when starting the project?

No, absolutely not. This project is the result of the pure stubbornness to complete a vision that we came up with years ago. We knew that this project was not going to be easy, it was going to be a lot of work, but the scope kept on growing and growing – which primarily came down to increasing standards. When you compare the visual quality of the early Anno 1800 mods with mods that are more recent, there is a huge apparent upgrade, and that upgrade coincides with our skillset and toolstack growing.

So, not only did we create all of New Horizons, but we also updated old assets multiple times, because we just knew that we could do better than what we created earlier.

 

You’ve mentioned multiple times in reddit posts or videos the different contributors to the mod. How big of a team worked on this mammoth project? How did you collaborate?

We always had a core team, which for the first two years or so pretty much consisted of Taubenangriff doing art content by himself, but the core team expanded to 2-3 people, namely bringing in jje1000 to create and overhaul a lot of art assets and Hier0nimus for coding and item work. Moreover, a lot of people joined to contribute in the form of individual projects over time, where they would create a single part of the mod, i.e. a set of ornaments, a single wonder or the magnate houses. So, in total around 15 people worked on the project but they never did so at the same time.

 

To organize our effort, we set up half-yearly milestones where we would define tasks in advance and distribute the work among the team, and regularly shared our progress internally, as well as using version control to backup, manage and bring together our work.

But we also regularly stepped in to help each other complete our tasks, so that everyone could bring in their skillset where it was suited for best. This was perhaps the most important part in getting the mod to a reasonable quality level, being pragmatic about who should commit on doing what on often very limited time and resources.

Well, we know Anno 1800 doesn’t always make modding very… straightforward. What were your main challenges? How did you tackle them?

The main challenge during the development was that we could often not edit certain parts of the engine – like islands. Often, we then wrote our own tools to give us those possibilities for New Horizons, which were often then made public and have since become widely used in the modding community.

 

What is something players will have to get used to that they don’t know from the unmodded Anno 1800?

The regular seasons in Horai will certainly be a challenge for players, as storage space suddenly is a central resource. You will need to stockpile 30 minutes’ worth of farm production to get through a monsoon unimpeded, and that means you will need to invest extra space into building storages – but there is only so much building space to work with, and every tile that goes towards storage cannot be used for production buildings.

 

If you install the optional Item Rebalancing that comes alongside New Horizons, your items also suddenly will do different things – as an example, you cannot circumvent Steam Carriage production with Susannah Brightwoman anymore. But I want to stress the optionality of this, this is meant to be part of the mod, but ultimately up to your choice whether you care about better balancing or not.

If other players want to know more or have questions, where would you want them to go?

I reckon this is pretty much a standard answer by now, but you can always find us on the Anno 1800 modcorner discord. Don’t be shy, join and ask your questions there .

And you can visit the New Horizons modpage on mod.io: https://mod.io/g/anno-1800/m/new-horizons

 

 

A big thank you to the “New Horizons” team for taking the time for this modding spotlight and congratulations once more on the release of the mod!

We love seeing the Anno 1800 community still going strong and are sure this long-awaited mod will make many in the community very happy.

That brings us to the end of today’s blog. Make sure to check out “New Horizons” on mod.io and as usual: leave a nice comment over there for the mod creators if you enjoy their work.

Hey Anno Community,

As you might have seen from our social post last Friday, we announced a couple of things happening in the upcoming weeks.

Back in February, during our IGN Fan Fest segment, we mentioned we would show more of the game in April… well, we got the months mixed up. The full gameplay reveal will happen during the week of 19th May.

In the meantime, what about a developer livestream next week? During this livestream, we will be talking about changes to the Needs and Attributes system with Creative Director Manuel and Game Director Jan. So, if you’re curious to more about these topics, don’t miss out our livestream on Twitch, 15th April at 5:00 PM CEST / 9:00 AM PT.

We’ll see you there!