Two great weeks are ahead of us: We put a demo of Anno 117: Pax Romana in your hands to play and explore! Until September 16^th you can try out our game via Ubisoft Connect, Epic or Steam.

If you’re new to Anno or haven’t played Anno 117: Pax Romana yet, we’ve put together a little “survival guide” directly from the devs to help you get started. Anno 117: Pax Romana is a complex game and learning and understanding some mechanics might take some time – take it slow and don’t be afraid of restarting for a more successful second attempt.

The basics

First steps

Your first decision will be in which province to start. Select Latium for a regular playthrough with large, inviting islands – the classic Anno experience. Select Albion for a more challenging experience with marshlands and two potential population paths.

Whichever province you choose, your first steps will be very similar: you start with a trading post at an island and should set up a timber production first. Build two woodcutters and two sawmills in the forests near the trading post. Make sure each woodcutter has the minimum number of trees in its radius.

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

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

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

Supplying your population

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

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

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

Production chains and times

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

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

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

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

Making money

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

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

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

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

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

You don’t want to expand too quickly or overproduce too much but keep growing your settlement at the same time to not lose money too quickly.

Upgrading and progressing

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

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

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

Please note that the Anno 117: Pax Romana demo only features the first 2 population tiers of each province – in the final game you will be able to upgrade your population further.

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

You’re faced with the choice to either upgrade the Celtic way (to the Smiths) or start Romanising your population (and upgrade to the Mercators). Each path will not only visually shape your city but also come with its own set of needs and buildings. Feel free to pick whatever path seems more attractive to you. You can always start a new savegame in the demo to try out the other path.

Community Help

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

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

Advanced

You’ve built a stable first settlement, money is looking good and your citizens are happy – what other challenges await you? Let’s go over some of them below.

Fertilities/settling island

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

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

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

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

Attributes

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

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

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

Hover over the different attributes in the bar on the top to see which factors are currently impacting each attribute. This will help you to figure out why your fire safety is so low (e.g. cause you built multiple bakeries in your city) or which factors are contributing to your income.

Always pay special attention to the area effects of (production) buildings when placing them – no one wants to live next to a pig farm or charcoal burner but having a lavender field nearby is highly appreciated.

Specifically for Health, Happiness and Fire Safety, there are specific buildings to not only raise these attributes but also fight fires, quell riots or cure plagues. They can be found in the general construction menu behind the City Watch tab. Place them strategically in your cities to automatically address any incidents appearing in your city.

Discovery Tree

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

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

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

Religion

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

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

Each deity provides a number of local buffs for the island they are being worshipped – Neptune, for example, buffs all production chains related to the ocean. Take a careful look at the different deities and select the one that is most useful to you at the current time.

You can switch to a different patron god any time but have to keep in mind that you’ll also lose any buffs granted by respective deity.

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

We’re looking forward to reading about your experiences!