Anno 117: Pax Romana News

It all starts here. Watch the Official Release Date Trailer and get a feel for the world you are about to build, one villa at a time.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Ready To Rule? Pre-Order Today![/h2]
Pre-order now to receive the Builder Pack, featuring exclusive in-game items. Be among the first to shape your legacy and the future of your provinces.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3274580/Anno_117_Pax_Romana/

[p]The past weeks have been filled with news, trailers, and videos by content creators that had the chance to put their hands on and try Anno 117: Pax Romana.[/p][p][/p][p]Cannot get enough of the Anno 117: Pax Romana gameplay reveal? Then check out this rebroadcast of our livestream here on Steam with Chris Watters and Chastity Vicencio from the Ubisoft News team![/p][p][/p][p]From setting up your first settlement and building buffs over Religion and deities, to Knowledge and the Discovery Tree – if you’re curious to know more, then don’t miss out![/p][p][/p][p]This rebroadcast will start at approximately 12AM CEST / 6PM EDT / 2PM PDT and run for about 12 hours.[/p]

You wouldn’t be doing your job as a Roman governor correctly if you didn’t try to become ever more efficient at your job and find the best ways to tackle the challenges your population, rivals and the emperor himself are throwing at you.

So, let us today take a look at the Discovery Tree feature!


The Discovery Tree in Anno 117: Pax Romana allows for the research of technologies (discoveries!), which offer additional options as well as improvements to many aspects of your governorship.

As you can see below, the Discovery Tree is split into three categories: Economy, Civic and Military – the names being rather self-explanatory as to what kind of discoveries await you in each.

Researching any technology requires knowledge (more on that further below), with technologies further down in the tree costing you more knowledge.




Here we also come back to the topic of “choice” we have mentioned at various points before.

With the three different categories, you can set the focus that’s currently (or in general) important to you and invest time and resources into what fits best to your playstyle. The unlocks also expand your toolkit and allow you to tackle challenges in a different or more efficient way.

It also helps us to better highlight features and mechanics to players and make sure they’re not getting lost amongst tons of other unlocks. For example, the repair crane in Anno 1800 simply unlocked through progression at some point amongst various other new buildings – but was never explained to players. With the Discovery Tree, unlocking the repair crane is a conscious choice and assures that players will know that they unlocked it and can now use it to repair their ships.

Finally, similar to the Optional Needs the Discovery Tree also allows us to expand your options later on in postlaunch, potentially adding new discoveries and therefore more options and choice for you.


[h2]How to research (knowledge)[/h2]
Okay, now we’ve given you an overview – but how do you discover new technologies?

First, you require Knowledge. Knowledge is one of the eight attributes we talked about in a previous blog, and is gathered in the same way: needs and building buffs let building generate knowledge points.

Your first way of doing this will be by building the Grammaticus, a public service need for the Plebeians, which let’s all buildings in its vicinity (even the pig farmer!) generate +3 knowledge points. As with other buff buildings, the more houses and other structures are within the radius, the more knowledge you generate.

Another way to generate those points can be, for example, to supply your Eques (Tier 3 residents) with Writing Tablets (also +3 knowledge), a household need. Regular practise with those makes them smarter, of course, and helps your research faster. Wine on the other hand buffs your belief but counteracts your education efforts to a certain degree.

You see, we very much try to tie all the different systems in Anno 117: Pax Romana together.



Alright, now you have gathered some knowledge points, let’s discover a new technology!

Each technology has a certain knowledge point cost, and the more points you produce, the faster the technology will be discovered. The time is displayed directly in the Discovery Tree.

To progress through the tree, some technologies have to discovered in a certain order – and, you will occasionally have to fulfill certain conditions to unlock certain “gates” we call “Inspirations”.

For example, setting up trade routes, building a certain number of aqueducts or reaching a specific city status. Focusing on what’s important for your current situation and your general playstyle therefore becomes even more important – even if you ultimately, with enough time, are able to discover everything. We didn’t want to lock you out of certain technologies entirely, so, there are no “it’s either path A or path B” decisions.



Some technologies, and “gates” also are province specific. For example, only if you expand from Latium to Albion will you be able to research a discovery that allows your woodcutter to plant trees in those wide meadows, instead of relying on forest-areas.

[h2]Examples[/h2]
Give us examples! What kind of discoveries have you hidden in the Discovery Tree?

Alright, alright, let us walk you through three examples in a bit more details.

• Paved Roads: Not only do they look much nicer than dirt roads, they also let your transports travel faster, which extends the street range of buildings. A classic.
  
• Blood of Terra: If you just dig deep enough, you’ll find iron everywhere! This allows mining of iron ore even on islands without a deposit – albeit at a greatly reduced rate.
  
• Protective Entourage: A personal guard never hurts. This discovery increases the morale and toughness of your Auxilia troops.
  

As you might imagine, the feature underwent multiple iterations over the course of the development. Both visually – improving the structure and readability, making it easier to see in which direction you need to progress – as well as regarding its content: which discoveries make sense, where do we want to put a focus on (see the “why” section at the beginning), etc.


All in all, there are over 150 discoveries waiting for you. While you can queue the research of several of them, it’s always worth checking back to see if there’s a new Discovery that would help you now that you made some progress – or which requirements the next gates have, so you can work towards unlocking them.

While discovering new technologies is optional, they do provide you with a wider range of possibilities to build and supply your cities, optimise your production and get an advantage over your rivals.

Any questions on the Discovery Tree left? Do you want us to tackle a specific part of this feature in more detail in the future, for example in a livestream? Let us know!

The past weeks have been filled with news, trailers, and videos by content creators that had the chance to put their hands on and try Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Cannot get enough of the Anno 117: Pax Romana gameplay reveal? Then check out this rebroadcast of our Developer Livestream here on Steam: Community Developer Oliver and Community Manager Celeste sit together with Art Director Reiko and Game Director Jan to talk about some new game features and play the game live.

From Religion and deities, to Knowledge and the Discovery Tree – if you’re curious to know more, then don’t miss out!

Hey Anno Community,

Not too long ago we told you about Attributes and Needs in Anno 117: Pax Romana, and how fulfilling them will grant you bonuses for your island. In that DevBlog we hinted at 8 different attributes, but didn’t reveal the full list to enjoy the suspense for a little bit longer.

Well, it’s now time to reveal one of those previously hidden attributes: Belief! What does Belief do and what is it connected to? Well, as the word suggests, it is connected to Religion: this is a brand-new feature added for the first time to an Anno game.


There are different reasons why Religion and Belief have been added to Anno 117: Pax Romana. Firstly, this will allow an additional level of customisation for our players, who will have the chance to strengthen their island identity by choosing which deity to worship on their islands. Secondly, it was important for us to portray the polytheism and cultural diversity of the ancient world which Anno 117 is inspired by.

As you might already know, Roman religion was primarily polytheistic, involving the worship of numerous deities who were believed to influence all aspects of life, by playing an important role in daily events. Among these deities, for example, we can find Jupiter – also known as Jove – god of the sky and thunder, who was worshipped in Rome itself. Or if we think of the “home” of Anno, Ubisoft Mainz: did you know that our office is built above a Roman Sanctuary of Isis and Magna Mater?

How is this been translated in Anno 117: Pax Romana? Let’s now take a closer look at this new feature and its impact on your settlements.


You’ll be able to unlock the Religion feature as soon as you have settled a few Plebeians on one of your islands: this will allow you to place a small temple in your city – the sanctuary.



Once you’ve built your sanctuary, it will be time for you to choose the patron deity of this very island, aka the primary deity you want your residents to worship on that island. You’ll be able to do so from accessing the Religion menu from any religious public building. Every island you have settled can have its own patron that its population worships.

At first, you will only have the option to choose among four deities, but you will unlock more by reaching specific conditions in the game and discovering them via the Discovery Tree. More on that feature in the next DevBlog.

Your starting deities will be Ceres, Neptune, Minerva and Mars; based on your playstyle and what you would like to achieve, it’s important for you to pick the right one: each deity will have its own unique effects for your cities, production and units.

[h2]Buff effects[/h2]
These Patron god effects are unlocked by gathering Devotion over time – with Devotion being tied to the Belief (more on that in a second) in the chosen island Patron. To unlock a buff effect, you will need to reach a specific threshold of Devotion on the progress bar in the dedicated menu. Whenever the Devotion passes a marked threshold, you unlock an improvement to the primary or secondary Patron effect.



What if you would like to change your Island Patron, switching from a peaceful farming community to a war economy? Don’t worry, you can still do that. However, changing the Patron resets the Devotion to zero.

Let’s look together at an example: Neptune, protector of freshwater and the sea. If you choose Neptune as your island Patron, your fishers will feel significantly more courageous: you will notice an increase in productivity of all sea food. Additionally, you’ll attract master craftsmen who not only construct ships faster but also make them more durable.



Ceres blesses your agriculture and population! Her worshippers can increase the yields of farms and the production and storage of farming goods.

And Mars… well, he’s not so much a deity of growth and construction but your troops will have higher morale and fight better when global devotion to Mars is high enough.

[h2]Local vs Global effect[/h2]
Not only do Patrons have a local effect on your islands, but they also have a global effect on all provinces, affecting all islands under your control. This is the effect of your dominant Patron. A Patron becomes “dominant” when its global devotion is larger than a certain threshold: the Patron that has the most added-up devotion on all islands you control becomes the dominant Patron.

Let’s go back to the Neptune example: his global bonus will affect your ships speed, making them faster when sailing the high seas across the map.

[h2]The Belief Attribute[/h2]
Alright, let’s take one step back and talk about HOW you increase Devotion – and Belief.

As we mentioned at the beginning of this blog, Belief is one of the new attributes introduced in Anno 117: Pax Romana. The two main ways of increasing the Belief attribute are:

• Public buildings (like the Sanctuary we showed earlier) which affect building in their radius, resulting in them each providing Belief
  
• Goods which you provide via the Needs categories (like for example Wine)
  

There may be some other way (e.g. via items), but let’s keep it at that for now. In short: the more buildings are affected by various effects like these, the higher your Belief.

Devotion in turn comes from your island’s Belief. Over time, Devotion will rise to the same value as the island’s Belief. Therefore, the more Belief you have, the more Devotion will result from it, unlocking the higher buffs mentioned above.

[h2]Where do gods live?[/h2]
As you probably have gathered from the paragraphs above, Anno 117: Pax Romana doesn’t feature “physical” deities which roam your cities or throw lightning bolts at people who offend them.

What we wanted to represent in our game is rather the psychological effect: your people are worshipping certain deities, and find courage and motivation in doing so. They believe that this worship has an effect and work harder (e.g. farmers worshipping Ceres) or fight better (when worshipping Mars).



The sanctuary we showed you earlier is a rather humble place of worship. Later, you will be able to construct mighty temples to dedicate to your Patron of choice. Not only do they influence a much larger area of your island, but they also provide much higher Belief buffs to the surrounding buildings.

No matter which Patron you choose for your respective island: the sanctuaries and temples, as well as the priests they spawn will visually change to fit the worshipped deity.

The ancient time we were inspired by was a polytheistic one, and while each island can only dedicate itself to one dominant Patron god, you can still construct shrines to other deities. These shrines will buff buildings in their vicinity and increase your attributes like fire safety, happiness or income further. It pays off to be a devoted governor.

“What about Albion?”, we hear you ask. Well, let’s say the Celts have their own deities and places of worship. More on that later this year.




In the world of Anno 117: Pax Romana, gods are very present in the minds of your citizens. Increase your population’s Belief and unlock powerful bonuses to strengthen your economy or navy by worshipping Patron gods on your islands.

Are you worshipping Mars to wage wars on your rivals or prefer to see your cities grow and thrive by promoting the worship of Ceres, Minerva or Neptune? The choice is yours!


Stay tuned to next week when we talk about the Discovery Tree – and yet another new attribute: Knowledge!

Until then, leave any feedback or questions below in the comments!