Hey Anno Community,

We’re not sure how it happened, but somehow, we’re already at the beginning of December. While you all get ready for the festive season, we thought it might be good to have a little Union Update to recap the latest news and take stock of the situation.

Upcoming Patch for Anno 117: Pax Romana

As we mentioned last week, we’re planning on releasing Patch 1.3 mid-December on all platforms. It will include many fixes for various aspects of the game. Find a few highlighted below, the full patch notes will be available early next week.

• Addressing several causes for crashes
• Fixing various causes for multiplayer desyncs and connection issues during loading of multiplayer games
• Fixing an issue with the game running very slowly when large number of ships or land units built across all players
• Fixing an issue with the game running very slowly when rivals trigger festivals under specific circumstances
• Fixing an issue with the benchmark stuttering regardless of PC performance
• Fixing needs unlocked via research (beer, garum) being consumed even without completed research
• Making sure Caeso is correctly spawning on the map
• Fixing an issue that prevented blueprints of slot buildings (mountains, rivers, marshes) from being upgraded
• Adding the player logo on the sails of the ships
• Fixing an issue that removed access to Ceres, Mars and Neptune when the Hall of Fame was disabled or the player lost access to it during gameplay

Crossplay

As announced previously, we deployed a hotfix in late November to address some desync issues affecting the multiplayer mode. While we had temporarily disabled crossplay due to the staggered release of the patch, crossplay is now again possible between PC and PlayStation 5.

Unfortunately, the hotfix had to be postponed on Xbox Series X|S and will instead be deployed together with Patch 1.3 in mid-December. We will then also reactivate crossplay for our players on Xbox.

Bug Reporter

We know we’ve mentioned this quite a few times already, but we just want to make sure that this info reaches as many people as possible, especially if you’re new to the Anno Community and still learning about our processes and so on.

Our Bug Reporter is up and running, and it’s the place for you if you would like to:

• Report any bug/issue you’re running into
• Get an overview of the issues we’re currently working on and their status
• Upvote any reported issues to give us a better overview of the impact of the issue

We regularly update the website and each ticket’s status following our investigations into your reports.

When it comes to feedback instead, make sure to share it on Reddit where many team members are regularly scanning conversations, or go to  the Annoverse Discord and discuss Anno 117: Pax Romana with other players.

Upcoming livestreams

Now for the fun part: livestreams! Here’s reminder for our two upcoming livestreams from the Ubisoft Mainz studio:

• 3^rd December: a special edition GERMAN livestream with Oliver, Community Developer, Manuel, Creative Director, Christoph, Senior Producer, and Thomas, Technical Director
• 10^th December: livestream on the topics music and sound. We know how much you LOVE the Anno soundtrack, so we decided to bring the Audio Team to you!

As usual, our livestreams start at 5PM CET | 11AM EST on https://twitch.tv/annogame

Mods

In case you missed the news, Anno 117: Pax Romana officially supports mods and we noticed plenty of creations already on the mod.io website!

As stated in our dedicated blog, we’re not yet supporting mods with a dedicated in-game UI or in-game browser. That is planned for a later update: we would like to gradually improve the support on mods, and we welcome your input on this topic. So, keep an eye on the Anno Union to make sure you’re always up to date on the matter!

Until then, you can download your favourite mod from mod.io and drop it into the “mods” folder in your game installation path. The modloader integrated into the game will then automatically detect and load any mods in that folder when starting the game.

Hey Anno Community,

It’s been two weeks since the release of Anno 117: Pax Romana, and as the amazingly crafty Community that you are, you did not waste time when it comes to creating tools to help your fellow Annoholics. Therefore, we decided that today is the perfect day to highlight some useful tools that you created, in the hope that they will help a new Governor in need.

Before that, let’s briefly update you on our patch plans:

Our current plan is to release patch 1.3 mid-December on all platforms. It will include a large number of bug fixes, including further desync fixes. We’ll have a first overview for you next week, and the full patch notes closer to release.

And now, let’s dive into the topic of tools and guides that will help you become the best Roman governor!

Anno Companion

Taludas has created an extensive website called the Anno Companion, where you can find EVERYTHING you need as a Governor: production chains layouts, island atlas, map template database and more. It’s a work in progress, but we can already see how much work has been put into this project. Thank you, Governor Taludas!

Productions optimised for Latium and Albion

If you’re a fan of optimisation in your cities, then these images by TheConcepteur are perfect for you – and you even have them both in light-mode or dark-mode.

Production calculators

While you were busy building your cities, AgentQuackYT spent launch weekend building the very first version of their Production Chain Calculator which includes: all production chains from Liberti to Equites, Aqueduct effects, Dependency Graph, and much more. It’s still a work in progress, and more is planned to be added in the future.

You can also use the calculator on “Anno Layouts” by DaHoMiE, which also accounts for buffs, items and research to be factored into the calculations.

It’s certainly not the only calculator for Anno 117: Pax Romana. Another great and comprehensive calculator is this one by DuxVitae.

Ultimately, we recommend checking out all of them to find your favourite.

Building Production x Minute

This is a quick cheat sheet created by kakashi_917, “so you don’t have to do math every time”: this seems like a great selling point. We do echo the comment by heetschi on Reddit saying “this is going up on my wall”.

Deities, Buffs & perfect island seeds

If you want to fully maximise the boost provided by deities, then check out this handy tool created by Rahbek89: this will help you plan by looking for islands with specific fertilities in order set up specific production chains there, and then choosing the perfect deity and get the maximum out of their buffs.

Fan-Made Anno 117: Pax Romana Guide App

What about a fan-made app on your phone? Farm0nn is working on one for Android! Plus, if you’d like to help a fellow Annoholic in need, they’re looking for testers for the app itself.

For iOS, you can check out the “Companion for Anno 117” by Jannis Mertens.

Anno Toolkit webapp

Speaking of apps, DrawingAffectionate7 is working on a webapp to check production chains and their requirements. You can check it out here.

Annoland

Finally, another great resource is the website “Annoland” by Phil with a variety of information, tips & tricks and tools.

*Please be aware that visiting any non-Ubisoft websites linked here happens at your own risk. We do not take responsibility for any content posted on these websites or platforms.

Hey Anno Community – it’s release week!

Anno 117: Pax Romana is releasing this Thursday, and we have our launch trailer ready for you below. Which player type are you?

Twitch drops

Today at 6PM CET the “review embargo” for Anno 117: Pax Romana ended, meaning, you will now be starting to find articles and videos from various press outlets, as well as videos and livestreams from Content Creators online.

Additionally, you can earn the below Twitch Drops.

The middle ones, the ship and trading post skin, can be earned via any channel streaming Anno 117: Pax Romana. The special Twitch Drops from Gronkh and Cringer can only be earned on their channels.

Timing reminders

We’re closing this blog with some reminders on various timings:

• You can now preload Anno 117: Pax Romana if you preordered the game
• Anno 117: Pax Romana releases on Thursday, 12AM CET. Check out the map below to find the release time in your local time zone
• Join us on Wednesday at 5PM CET on Twitch for the last developer livestream before release
• And if you want to celebrate with us, join us for a release day livestream on Thursday, starting around 5:30PM CET

Hey Anno Community,

with less than three weeks until release, there’s plenty of news to share and blogs and other announcements to come. Let’s give you an overview below so you don’t miss any of it.

Upcoming livestreams

We’ll have several more livestreams coming up in the next weeks!

We’re starting this Thursday, October 30th, with one focused on the work of our Art team with Marion, Senior Animator, and Rolf, Expert Artist. Tune in at 5PM CET | 12PM EDT on twitch.tv/annogame!

Afterwards, expect livestreams on:

• November 4th
• November 13th (release day!)
• Somewhere between November 17th and 19th

Always on our Twitch channel and always at the same time. Mark those days in your calendar!

Reddit AMA

You have more questions and didn’t receive an answer during one of our livestreams? Don’t worry, we got just the thing:

On November 5th, we’ll hold an official AMA on the Anno Subreddit. A dedicated thread will be opened the day before, allowing you to post your questions in advance.

Alternatively, you can also post them during the AMA itself where several members of the dev team will be answering as many questions as we can from about 5PM CET to 7PM CET (11AM EST – 1PM EST).

Join us and ask any questions about the game or game development you might have!

Upcoming DevBlogs

There are also a few more DevBlogs coming up in the next 2 weeks leading up to the release:

• The Hall of Fame: unlock additional cosmetics or gameplay shortcuts via in-game achievements (October 28th)
• Villa and Specialists: boost production chains and squeeze even more knowledge points out of your residences (October 31st)
• Amphitheater: built the grand monument in Latium and host games for your people (week of November 3rd)
• … and a few more topics.

We don’t stop after release, however, since we really want to cover topics like music and sound, as well as some other aspects from the development of anno 117: Pax Romana that we didn’t get to shine a light on yet.

Year 1 Content overview

Have a first look at the content that’s included in the Year 1 Pass for Anno 117: Pax Romana. You can expect three new pieces of content to launch in the first year of the game, which you’ll have instant access to upon their release with the Year 1 Pass. 

Prophecies of Ash 

In Prophecies of Ash you’ll discover a large, untamed island in Latium, perfect for building massive cities. A wild untamed land abundant with resources, unique cultural encounters, a new deity to worship, and plenty of strategic depth await. But be wary, as the island also features a towering volcano with a burning desire to erupt. 

The Hippodrome 

Inspired by the legendary Circus Maximus, one of the largest stadiums ever built in the ancient world, you’ll be able to construct your own arena and host thrilling chariot races to delight and excite your citizens, boosting your prestige and attracting elite specialists from across the Empire. 

Dawn of the Delta 

A new province, vast deserts, a mighty and fertile river – it all awaits you, along with a host of unfamiliar gods and a new culture. Journey to the distant Egyptian frontier to expand your reach and influence and establish a new foothold in this faraway land replete with new experiences, challenges, and unique needs. 

Collectors Edition unboxing

What’s in the Governor’s Edition? We received an early version here in the studio and filmed an unboxing video for you. Watch below when Brand Director Haye, Art Director Reiko and Creative Director Manuel unpack this collector’s edition for Anno 117: Pax Romana with Community Developer Oliver.

Hey Anno Community,

As you might have seen already, a new Deep Dive trailer is out! In this video, we’re giving you a detailed overview of the game and its features. Not just that, but starting today previews of Anno 117: Pax Romana are also out – so make sure to check out what your trusted gaming website or Anno creator says about the game. In the meantime, you can check out the trailer here:

Additionally, in the following trailer you get a closer look at the amphitheater monument and its functionality.

Twitch Drops

Twitch Drops alert! From 16th to 23rd October, you can receive an Anno 117: Pax Romana Twitch Drop, the Northern Colours Ship Skin. To earn it, you will need to watch 2 cumulative hours of livestream on Twitch. Anyone can stream the game and activate drops for their channel – so make sure to check out your favourite Anno Twitch streamer!

The only thing you need to do is to first link your Ubisoft account to your Twitch account and then watch the streamers during the event for the mentioned time to receive your loot.

After receiving a drop, you need to claim it via the Twitch inventory. You can find more information on Twitch Drops in general in this official FAQ.

Upcoming Livestream with the Narrative team

One last bit of news for today: we are planning a live stream for next week, with the Narrative Team. This time, the livestream will focus on campaign mode and its story, together with the interesting characters you will meet along the way in Anno 117: Pax Romana. So, make sure to clear out your calendars for Thursday 23rd October, 5:00 PM CEST!

We hope to see you there. 🙂

Happy Tuesday Anno Community, we have another round of news for you to start the week.

Let’s get started with a little gift:

Fan Kit

We’ve put together a little bundle with artworks, screenshots and the Anno logo for you to download. In this Fan Kit you can find:

• They Anno 117: Pax Romana key art as wallpaper in different formats for PC and mobile
• Three other artworks (Latium, Albion, Romanization) in various formats
• A collection of 17 high-res screenshots
• Four Wallpapers with the Anno logo
• Six GIFs to use on your social media or chat platform of choice
• The Anno 117: Pax Romana logo in 2D and 3D
• The Anno symbol in 2D and 3D

You can download the full bundle by following the link below, it’s roughly 300mb in size.

Fan Kit Download

Steam Next Fest and end of the demo

Anno 117: Pax Romana joins the Steam Next Fest  this week, meaning everyone can play the limited-time demo, alongside demos of many other upcoming games.

Last month we have extended availability of the Anno 117: Pax Romana demo past the originally planned end date that was September 16^th. We can now confirm that the demo will go offline on October 20^th, after the Steam Next Fest has concluded.

Upcoming content

More blogs and coming soon! Starting with a DevBlog dedicated to the multiplayer feature in Anno 117: Pax Romana for tomorrow (slightly delayed from last week), and a closer look at the campaign mode and story at the end of the week.

And of course, as mentioned in our last Union Update, don’t forget about our livestreams! In October, we are planning on having one developer livestream dedicated to the Campaign and Story, and one dedicated to the Art of Anno 117: Pax Romana – as always, on our Anno Twitch Channel. We will let you know date and timing later this week, so keep an eye out on socials and the Anno Union.

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.

You’ve built a stable first settlement, money is looking good and your citizens are happy – what other challenges await you? In this blog we’ll cover a few topics for after you reached Tier 2 and beyond in Anno 117: Pax Romana.

If you’re just starting out, check out our blog with some tips to get started!

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 large sum of money – and the bigger the island, the more expensive it is. Don’t forget to also bring some construction materials with your ship 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).

Our tips:

• 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.
• Negative attributes are not the end of the world: you will naturally run into times where you have e.g. negative fire safety and will find ways to counter them later (e.g. with aqueducts)
• Health, Happiness and Fire Safety have specific “resolver buildings” that not only raise these attributes but also fight fires, quell riots or cure plagues. 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.

A few pointers:

• Hover over discoveries to learn more about them and figure out how they can help you
• Parts of the tree only unlock after meeting specific requirements. Hover over these nodes to learn more
• Find the things most useful to your current situation:
  • Upgraded warehouses (economic tree) can support more production buildings, preventing delivery delays
  • If you want to focus on research, unlock Minerva and worship her in your Sanctuary, and unlock “Sewing Circles” to gain extra knowledge from Spinners
  • If you’re struggling with incidents (Fire Safety, Happiness, …) there are multiple discoveries in the civil tree that unlock additional buildings and boost the existing resolver units like vigiles and custodes
  • Even if you’re not focusing on military, the “Tacking” discovery in the military tree speeds up all your ships, even if they’re sailing against the wind

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). How you use the feature depends on your current plans and needs.

• Each deity provides a number of local buffs for the island they are being worshipped. At the beginning, Ceres (agriculture) and Neptune (maritime production) are likely the most useful for you.
• Later, Minerva is powerful if you want to focus on research and discovering new technologies
• Mars is useful if you decide to go on a warpath, but shouldn’t be worshipped in early game since his buffs provide no benefits as long as you aren’t recruiting units and planning to wage war
• 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.
• Every island can worship a different deity, allowing you to specialise and make the most of the buffs

Statistics Menu

Checking your storage in the warehouse and looking at the production timers of each chain is fine at the beginning, but the more your city grows and the more islands you expand to, the more moving parts there are you want to keep track of.

Therefore, utilize the Statistics Screen!

Click on your character’s portrait in the top center of the screen to open it and get an overview of all your islands and production chains.

• Select an island on the left side, or multiple if you e.g. produce olives on one island but turn it into olive oil on another
• The green bar represents production, the white bar consumption: generally, you want them to be of equal size.
  • a larger green bar means you’re overproducing goods
  • a larger white bar means you’re not producing enough and your stock will start decreasing, resulting in potentially your citizens’ needs not being met anymore
• You can also find information on the buildings on your respective islands, how much money they cost and what their impact on your city attributes is

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!