Tag: Union Update

Hey Anno Community!

Today we have updates on the recent contest and voting, as well as on what’s awaiting you in terms of news in the coming weeks.

Contest Winners

At the very end of June we asked you to create a sponsor for the Hippodrome – or rather: for the inaugural chariot race taking place in the Hippodrome! Cause this very race will be featured in our trailer for the upcoming expansion, aptly named “The Hippodrome”, and will go live on August 20^th – release day!

The winners were chosen by an internal dev team jury based on a variety of factors like style, creativity, fun and how well it fit into the Anno universe. While slowly reducing the list of finalists, we ended up with the magic number of nine – nine submissions we just didn’t feel comfortable reducing further.

We therefore decided to expand the number of winners from four to nine, all of them will receive both the physical prizes and the inclusion in the trailer.

The winners have been contacted earlier this week, and we’re excited to now also share the winning entries below. Congratulations to all of them once again!

Voting Winners

Following the contest for sponsors, a public vote was held to decide on the racers for this very first Hippodrome race. It was surprisingly clear decision by you for the Sausage Purveyor Quirinus Rubellius as well as Dorian. When counting across all three platforms (Anno Union, Reddit and Discord), it then became a close race which Whataboutist Watis and the Diviner of Dough decided for themselves. Athr, meanwhile, has brought shame on the Jorgensen family as a whole…

(Apologies for the display issues with the voting on the Anno Union, we’ll have this looked into for future votings)

That means in the final trailer, on August 20^th, we’ll have these four compete in the Hippodrome, proudly sponsored by the Anno Community!

So, don’t forget to tune in to our live Twitch stream!

Road to release

You won’t have to wait quite as long for the first information about the upcoming “The Hippodrome” expansion and the update accompanying it.

Starting in August, both on our social channels as well as on the Anno Union, we’ll have updates on both topics for you – small teasers as well as full blog posts. You can expect:

• An article with the highlights of Update 2.0 and its new features and bigger changes, first week of August
• A DevBlog on the content of the “The Hippodrome” expansion, first week of August
• Full Patch Notes, August 18^th
• Release Day, livestream and the inaugural race itself, August 20^th

Legends aren’t born – they are made!

Preparations for the inaugural Hippodrome race are ongoing – but what about the racers? Well… have a look at the trailer!

When playing the “The Hippodrome” DLC in August, any of your specialists can race. Want to see Tarragon race in the circus? Just received a new specialists via a festival and want to see how they perform?

The choice is yours! Each racer has different strengths and weaknesses – and a different potential.

For now, though, we limit your options a bit to just six candidates from across the game, as you’ve seen in the trailer. Who do you want to see race?

You have one vote in this poll, and the four racers with the most votes will ultimately compete in the inaugural Hippodrome race – the race we’ll proudly present in part 3 of the trailer, and on Twitch on August 20th.

Hey Anno Community,

We have just released patch 1.6.1 for all platforms. Find some highlights of the patch below. The full patch notes can be found here.

• Fixed a crash related to major incidents
• Expanded building space on Cinis
• Fixed issues with vassalized islands
• Fixed some savegame compatibility issues

The next update for Anno 117: Pax Romana is planned for mid-August, together with the release of DLC 02.

The Hippodrome

Following the release of the first part of the trailer for the upcoming “The Hippodrome” DLC, we also launched a community contest: create a sponsor for the chariot races.

This contest concluded yesterday, and we want to thank everyone who submitted their idea for a sponsor. There were many, many submissions, covering wine, oil, sandals, chariots, horses, postal services, jewelry, tools, weapons and much more. Not an easy task for us to discuss and agree on just four winners – but we’re making some progress. Right now, we are planning to have an update at the end of next week. The four lucky winners will then be contacted via e-mail to discuss the details.

Also coming up soon is part 2 of the trailer – we have to talk about the racers themselves, of course! Stay tuned.

Later this month and then throughout August we’ll have more details on the DLC for you, as well as on the content of update 2.0 releasing alongside it:

• How do you build the monument and what does it do?
  • A DevBlog and a developer livestream will provide all the answers
• How do quality of life improvements like the note function work and what else is in the update?
  • We’ll make sure to give you an overview of the changes and improvements separately from the patch notes as well.

Stay tuned for news and updates in the coming weeks.

Updates on the Anno Union

Finally, we have done a few updates on the Anno Union itself we want to briefly inform you about:

• The “Community Page” has received an overhaul, updating various links and adding links to various resources created by YOU
• There now is a dedicated modding FAQ page for Anno 117: Pax Romana
• Following your feedback, we’ll soon be launching the “Roadmap for 2026” page, with information on some of the content of the planned updates for 2026
  • This page will be continuously updated throughout the year to reflect development reality

Summer Twitch Drops

As part of the Twitch Summer Drops Fest, you can now also unlock a new market skin for Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Watch any participating livestream on Twitch between July 10th and 24th for an accumulated 2 hours to unlock it. You will need to have your Ubisoft and Twitch accounts connected to receive the market skin.

Hey everyone,

we want to just share a short update today with some reminders on what’s coming up!

First of all: tomorrow at 5PM CEST we’ll be holding a livestream again, at the center is the upcoming Cosmetic DLC “Blooming Cities”. As usual, we’ll be streaming on the Annogame Twitch Channel.

Join us in chat, learn all about the content of the cosmetic pack and ask your questions to us.

Want to get an a teaser in advance? In the little video clip below you can already find some of the new ornaments in action. A DevBlog will follow the livestream tomorrow evening.

Alongside Cosmetic DLC, we’ll be releasing patch 1.6 next week Thursday – the full changelog for it will be ready by early next week.

Your Prophecies of Ash achievements

The “Prophecies of Ash” DLC is now slightly over one month old – a good time to look back at some of your achievements related to it.

We can only say: governors, you’ve been busy at work on Cinis, all the while the volcano threatened your crops and cities!

Hey Anno Community,

It’s patch day! Today we’re releasing Version 1.5.2 with several more fixes – including the issue with ships renaming themselves (which didn’t get properly fixed last time), flickering ground plates and some adjustments to rivals’ behaviour related to wars.

Please have a look at the full Patch Notes here!

Upcoming updates

The next planned update will be on June 18^th and include some more fixes as well as the second cosmetic DLC: Blooming Cities.

We’ll follow that up with another update in early July. More details on those closer to their release date.

Livestream

On June 10^th we’ll be holding a livestream to show you the “Blooming Cities” Pack in action with Art Director Reiko, Project Coordinator Dennis and Clémentine, Junior International Product Manager.

Aside from talking about the very flower-y content, we’re also looking forward to updating you on our plans and answering your questions.

The stream will start on June 10^th at 5PM CEST | 3PM UTC on our Twitch channel.

Upcoming and what we’re working on

Looking further into the future, August is, as previously announced, the time of the Hippodrome! Our second gameplay DLC will release around mid-August letting you build an enormous monument in your cities and hold races to entertain your population. You won’t have to wait too long until we start talking about it.

This release will be accompanied by an update as usual, Update 2.0, further improving the game for everyone. To give you a little teaser:

• An often-requested feature is making a comeback: the note function!
  • Leave notes for yourself as reminders for later in your play-session or when you load your savegame a few days or weeks later and attach them to specific objects (e.g. ships).
• Take even more phantastic screenshots with the photomode
  • We have seen and admired what you can do with the postcard mode already – with a free camera and some effects you will have even more possibilities
• Time limited challenges will be available via Ubisoft Connect
  • Aside from the challenge aspect itself, you will get XP for your Ubisoft Connect profile level and Fame points to use in the Hall of Fame

Additionally, we are working on a bunch of further fixes and improvements. Please note that these can still move into later updates depending on their complexity or in case of unforeseen issues. As usual, we will confirm the final changelog for Update 2.0 closer to the actual release in August. To mention just five things currently being worked on:

• We’re planning to add field workers to farms/plantations after adjustments to the feedback unit system
• We’re working on a solution to increase the value of the proconsul title, in order for it to be less easily lost upon taking actions the Emperor doesn’t like
• In the first-person easter egg, groundplates/roads shouldn’t disappear anymore in certain angles
• We’re looking into Raiders not being defeatable/spawning without their main building
• Sandarac Tree Nursery will be reclassified as plantation

Talking about both DLC and patches, in the last weeks we’ve held both playtests for “The Hippodrome”, as well as a very early playtest for “Dawn of the Delta”.

Like the playtests we’ve done in the year leading up to the release of Anno 117: Pax Romana, our goals here were to gather feedback on both the overall state, but also the aspects “fun factor”, balancing and UI/UX.

These types of closed playtests will continue for all future gameplay content, and while we can’t go into the details of the provided feedback here, we received valuable input on the UI/UX side of the Hippodrome DLC and its connection to the rest of the game, as well as the province layout of DLC 03 and the clarity/onboarding of its features.

Community Spotlight

Closing the update with a Community Spotlight once more, starting with this website DukeEntropy created: it lets you pre-plan trade routes in preparation for our next Anno 117: Pax Romana session.

To quote them: “I made a website to plan my Anno 117 island and trade routes. Since I cannot play anno during work hours, but I can go to the internet and plan my anno game during work hours.”

Check it out here: https://antondemeester.github.io/anno-planner/

Moving over to the art side, Dulcamarra recently shared a comic summarising her experiences with the volcanic eruptions.

You can find more of her art on her Instagram.

Finally, we also want to feature here some of the awesome screenshots you took for “Prophecies of Ash”, capturing both the island itself as well as the volcano and its eruptions in particular.

Patches and Updates

On May 11^th, we released Patch 1.5.1 with various bug fixes you can find here. We also added an additional Tier for each Latium and Albion in the Hall of Fame with more ornaments and other unlocks.

Right now, we are working on Patch 1.5.2, with a release planned for May 28th. It will address some other problems like not-buildable obsidian groundplates, various “dead tiles” in harbour areas, and the problem with ships changing their name which didn’t get entirely fixed with 1.5.1.

We will share the patch notes when we have finalised the patch, early next week.

Beyond that, another update is planned for mid-June with additional fixes and changes, as well as the release of the already announced “Blooming Cities” Cosmetic Pack.

Encountered an issue? Use the Bug Reporter!

If you encounter issues like the ones mentioned above, the best place to report them (or check if someone else has already reported them), is the Bug Reporter website:

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/anno/117-pax-romana/bug-reporter

This website allows you to submit bug reports for us to investigate, and you can also follow their current status as we start investigating, working on and ultimately planning in a fix for the issues.

Please also have a look if the issue you encountered has already been reported by someone else. In this case you can upvote the report and – even more useful for us – contribute to these existing reports: provide additional details, screenshots or a savegame or simply give more context on how this issue is impacting your enjoyment of the game.

It helps us both with our investigation as well as with the prioritization of issues for future patches.

Next livestreams

After a break, we’ll soon be returning to livestreaming on the Anno Twitch channel.

Aside from devstreams for e.g. upcoming (C)DLC like the “Blooming Cities” Pack and later also dedicated dev insights, we’re also planning to start a series of pure gameplay streams with a completely new savegame that we’ll carry forward into all future gameplay livestreams.

Stay tuned for precise dates for those streams.

Upcoming DevBlogs

In the second half of May and beyond we also want to go back to giving you some development insights outside of DLC content, similar to our articles on UI Design and UI Icon Design in March.

Upcoming are blogs first give you insights from the Art Team, when we talk “Fire and Destruction” on Thursday, May 21^st, before covering the topics of sound and music – which we already touched on last year in a dedicated livestream.

We also have some more topics on the UI & UX side we’d love to cover.

And, as usual, if there are other topics or departments you’d love to hear more about, don’t hesitate to let us know and we’ll see if we can make a dedicated article out of it later this year!

Hey Anno Community,

Due to a recently discovered potentially savegame-breaking issue in version 1.5, we decided to move the release of “Prophecies of Ash” and Patch 1.5 by a week to April 30th.

We always want to create the best player experience, so, thank you for your understanding.

The Patch Notes (originally announced for today) will also slightly move and be posted latest Monday (27th) here on the Anno Union. In the meantime, earlier this week we released a blog detailing some of the improvements and changes we’re adding with the patch; if you haven’t checked it our yet, we certainly recommend you doing so.

We reached a player milestone!

In significantly more positive news, we reached our first player milestone:

We’re celebrating 1,17 million governors for Anno 117: Pax Romana!

Thank you for all your support, Anno Community! We’re looking forward to improving your experience with our game further in the coming months.

Free Weekend

As you could already see at the end of the video above, Anno 117: Pax Romana will have another Free Weekend, starting tomorrow!

Play the game for free from the 23rd until Monday the 27th or have friends and family members join you for a nice co-op game.

The version includes the entire base game, is not time-limited and your savegame carries over if you decide to buy the game following the Free Weekend.