Anno 117: Pax Romana
On the 13th of November 2025, a new Anno game arrives. I'm so excited by that, that I've booked launch day and the day after off so that I can dive into the game and spend a long weekend both loving and hating my creation.
Because I'm a cheap bastard, I'll be playing this version on my Xbox Series X, which will be a first for me. I'd rather blow thousands on travel than feed that money into a PC, even though I am well aware that quid for quid, a PC has a better ROI than spending a fortnight getting hammered in a foreign country.
Digression aside, I'm going my usual when looking forward to a new game, which is watching people who can play, and have sanction from Ubisoft to play it ahead of the launch, craft their cities. I can see a fair few balance issues from their play throughs that make it look like this next Anno game is going to test your patience. Fire hazards seem to be extreme, and the workforce costs appear somewhat crazy. Then there's the usual challenge of building cities that look pretty, but simultaneously cater to the needs of your various classes of citizens. Some of the buildings look beyond massive, which isn't a bad thing. Just difficult to integrate into my definition of a beautiful city.
With the known knowns...known, I am looking forward to the changes that a Roman/Celtic style game will introduce. For one, while Anno 1800 was a lot of fun, I was never a fan of the grimy Victorian era slums that you'd end up crafting. I am alive in a period of political upheaval, the enshittification of everything, in an arena crated by small dick politicians trying to kick off a global collapse to appease their fragile little egos, all egged on by the billionaire bastard class who seem hell bent on turning us all into soylent green. What I am getting that is having the opportunity to build gleaming marble cities appeals to me. I can manufacture an escape from reality.
The known unknowns interest me the most. Balancing between the desires of the different sets of AI looks fascinating, especially as I do love a bit of a trade based economy where I can back off on building certain things directly and import them rather than manufacturing them myself. I'm also interested to see if there's a bit more balance from the other AI governors, where some seem to expand at a rate of knots, where others to do, or what benefits you can extract from these approaches if their expansion rates are considered balanced. Finally, there are the land armies. No matter what you do, you're going to piss someone off. That someone is likely to start picking off your trade ships, or, launching a full on invasion of one or more of your islands. If they just pick off your ships, it may well be worth launching a full on invasion of that faction to crush them, or force peace. If they invade, you can't let them capture your assets without putting up a fight.
I cannot wait for launch day so that I can dive in. Latium first, then Albion. Two massive metropolises and a series of smaller production focused islands scattered around both maps. I started playing Anno 1800 after a several DLCs had already been released, so I'm really looking forward to getting a foothold before they start dropping expansions in the future. Methinks that this is going to be a bit of fun.