The Anno line has taken gamers full into immersive, real-time strategy simulations set within some of the largest empires that humankind has ever created over the course of three years. From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution, Anno tasks players with balancing hungry economic growth with conflicts of intellectual revolution– and coming out the other side with a robust, integrated state.

The first historical setting for the Anno series to date, Anno 117: Pax Romana, is the series ‘ earliest, and it represents a surprisingly ambitious change ( as opposed to Anno 2070 and Anno 2205’s brief brief stint in futuristic settings ). As the dates suggest, Anno 117 takes position during a period of tremendous economic and cultural prosperity in antiquity– and I got an earlier peek at how that looks during a three-hour hands-on digital preview session moderated by an Gaming employee.

While Anno 117: Pax Romana is a sport in which you’ll also get focusing on your business and maintaining good relationships first and foremost, you’ll also need to think about creating fortifications and education facilities for land and sea fight.

As the game is centered on growing your own Roman empire, you’ll have to choose which end to colonize first, either beginning in Latium ( in modern-day western Italy, around Rome ) as a Roman governor or expanding Celtic influence by starting in Albion ( in modern-day England ). Although the Vikings ‘ influence on the game limited my hands-on demo, I was ready to see how much detail the Celts provided. Starting in Albion doesn’t really change the image landscape and resource nodes you can create round, it changes the research trees, religions and construction projects you’re able to get as well.

Many contemporary 4X strategy games, including Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 and Age of Mythology: Retold, emphasize outliving and destroying your opponents ( it stands for explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate ). In Anno 117, there isn’t really the same type of “win condition”– and there’s far less extermination to revel in overall.

If you want your empire to span multiple islands across the map, the interwoven construction systems of Anno 117 are simple to understand but challenging to master. Here’s what I picked up about the game during my three-hour preview.

The devil is in the details when creating a civilization.

If you’re choosing to set a game in the golden age of Roman civilization, it definitely makes sense to focus on graphical fidelity– I’m sitting down here to engage with the beauty and culture of Pax Romana.

Anno 117 does not let you down in this regard. Toward the tail end of my hands-on preview, I frequently found myself straying away from my self-imposed objectives to simply watch my citizens barter in the marketplace or work away on the wheat or hemp farms that stretched across the countryside.

These playable characters are fully simulated as they go about their day-to-day lives as you construct new dwellings that each house you construct adds three new inhabitants to your island.

I watched the plebeians master their crafts, making silks and baking bread before they retired to cultural centers to find an education. The lower class libertini created a mesmerizing stream of foot traffic by mining ore, cutting wood, and carrying goods on handcarts.

The complexity of these real-time interactions is a real treat. The roads become jammed up and productivity drastically drops if too many workers gather in a warehouse with goods and raw materials. It felt incredibly natural to manage these blockages and make necessary adjustments because I was already so involved with the little lives carrying on in the game.

Anno 117 has features that let you turn off the heads-up display once you’ve created something you’ll truly be proud of. In this section of my preview, I used this photo mode to capture some of my favorite images. The images can’t capture the simple joy of watching fields of golden wheat swaying in the wind, but I think they convey the splendor of a budding city-state in Latium.

You might need an urban planning degree to run a well-oiled machine

I’d choose to take a beat before beginning construction on my starting island if I could go back in time and start my Anno 117 preview play session.

That’s no joke– every resource node, production center and citizen dwelling will affect how future supply chains are built, and that’s before factoring in the increasingly complex web of roads you’ll have to build to connect everything to the docks.

I shrugged and placed my first homes and farms randomly in the middle of the map, which started to trouble me when I needed to build unsafe pigsties and dangerous kilns to improve my civilization’s economic prospects.

There’s almost an overwhelming number of variables to juggle. Warehouses need to be situated close enough for storage and production facilities will need quick access to the required materials because resources can only be extracted from certain nodes ( and some fisheries and farms can only be built where the soil or water is suitable for them ).

More complex goods require multiple resources to make, which means your supply chains will become even more complicated as ore, grain and animal products move further and further around your budding city.

Problems arise as cities become cities. Certain structures can spread disease and others are fire hazards, and you’ll need to invest in Pax Romana’s version of hospitals and firemen to mitigate these risks. You’ll have to secure your borders in the full release, making sure that there is enough military manpower spread around to keep your citizens safe. In the demo, I didn’t have to worry about invading forces; my Pax Romana was a true time of peace. It’s been some time since land combat was featured in an Anno game, but you can train warriors and scouts that patrol your land for different quest objectives.

The caliber of citizens you’re drawing to your island depends a lot on how quickly your city’s growth and expansion progresses. To improve your citizens, you must meet their basic needs and their luxury wants by integrating them into the supply chain of the city-state.

This can be confusing to a new player– I was left momentarily scratching my head about being limited to construction of logging camps, wheat farms and basic food and clothing production– but the real construction possibilities open up once you begin diversifying your population with more worker types. In the final hour of my first encounter with Anno 117, I unlocked the Plebeians, and that is when the game really picked up and more building options were available.

Even so, I’d caution against rushing the citizen class upgrades. Expansion can put a lot of strain on your purse on your hands, and I found that I needed to spend a lot of denarii to start making a decent living.

This is one of the cases where slow and steady improvements to your supply lines are extremely important. I quickly realized that private equity appears to have learned from this: Don’t sacrifice long-term growth for short-term profits. That’s a good way to get hosed down with a net negative denarii drain, which will slow your expansion indefinitely.

Players will find Anno 117 to be a very rewarding ( though occasionally confusing ) city builder that spans a rich territorial tapestry of different island factions if they take the time to do some very basic planning before clearing out trees and setting up their first builds.

Hidden at the periphery: Trade routes, disputes and random events

I spent three hours creating the cultural landmarks and basic necessities that would help to launch a growing Roman province. During my three-hour play session, I was largely relegated to a single island. Even still, I was able to get a glimpse at some of the game’s deeper systems– and there’s a lot going on in the wider world while the player is getting themselves situated.

There are many other unplayable characters who live on nearby islands and have their own states, and I would occasionally receive emails informing me of their accomplishments in terms of trade, development, and research.

These pop-ups created a sense of urgency– my civilization was not being built within a vacuum, and I couldn’t be sure if these other peoples had a tendency to build mutually beneficial relationships or if they stood only to conquer their nearby foes. I’m a big trader and forge alliances with other people, but I wouldn’t lie if I said that I wasn’t thinking about investing in a bigger military presence.

I imagine that starting with the Romans in Latium or the Celts in Albion won’t just affect the nodes you can unlock in your research tree, but will change the way different neighbors interact with you as you make contact with them throughout the wider world.

Outside of trade, there are other ways that NPC factions can assist you in creating a better future. Not every interaction with outsiders is a promise to paint the streets or oceans red.

Provinces that adopt the same faith as you cement the belief in your gods, and both societies will reap greater buffs as the religion spreads among a larger population. These advantages can speed up research, boost military might, or boost economic output. A rising tide raises all ships, and spreading religious fervor benefits all governors who worship the same gods.

The society they’ll build is only one piece of a much grander, ever-shifting puzzle, but it will also have an impact on the wider world.

On a more granular level, a player’s civilization will undergo random events and disputes that keep it in a state of perpetual motion. Their people never come to a standstill (unless one uses their omnipotent powers to literally pause time ), which results in trade disagreements, spread rumors, and even riot.

Some of these events are simple decisions: In a moment of economic turmoil, I took a bribe from a wealthy businessman, but ended up enraging workers throughout the city, another time, I chose a personal advisor who increased my passive income instead of one who would optimize the storage of my warehouses.

Other events start up more involved questlines– when citizens live in fear of a nearby shipwreck that is said to be haunted, I’d have to train up a scouting party and send them into the depths to report on what was truly happening. These secondary objectives help the player explore their own territories while engaging them in non-traditional city-building activities.

There’s a complex world hidden behind the curtain of Anno 117, but the game is approachable for new real-time strategy players, continuing the series ‘ usual throughline of placing an emphasis on solving conflict through economic and diplomatic means.

Combat is undoubtedly present, but during my preview session, I was able to avoid it completely, which makes it difficult to imagine how much combat will be for the more militaristic players. Either way, Anno 117: Pax Romana sold me on its premise– and I wanted to continue building my empire during this historically unprecedented time of peace.

Anno 117: Pax Romana is scheduled to be released in 2025, but we haven’t yet given an exact release date. The game will be available on PC, PS5 şi Xbox Series X and S.

Urmărește asta: I Used the Nintendo Switch 2 for Public Use.

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