Category: Games

Anno 117: Pax Romana – Choosing Between Celtic Tradition or Roman Ambition

Summary

Anno 117: Pax Romana launches Day 1 on Xbox Series X|S on November 13.
The decisions you make during the Anno 117: Pax Romana campaign will dramatically affect your gameplay and narrative.
Choose between Romanizing your population or allowing them to maintain their Celtic culture.

For the first time in franchise history, Anno is coming to Xbox Series X|S on day 1 when Anno 117: Pax Romana launches on November 13. In Anno 117: Pax Romana, you’ll play as a Roman governor in charge of building a brand-new city in Latium, the heart of the empire. A warm and sunny province, Latium embodies the strength and stability Rome maintained during the Pax Romana, a time of prosperity for the empire. It’s the perfect place for a newly appointed governor to thrive in … at least until a series of events sees a new Emperor take power and subsequently exile you to the marshy shores of Albion where new challenges and tough decisions await.

“Albion is inspired by the Celtic world, and it’s a mystical place,” says Creative Director Manuel Reinher. “It’s a wild place at the border of the Empire. It’s also a place no civilized Roman wants to be and your mission there is to stabilize the province.”

Stabilizing the province will be much easier said than done, as players will have to make choices that impact not only the narrative, but the gameplay in Albion. Progress in Anno 117: Pax Romana is tied to your residents. As you fulfill their needs, you’ll be able to upgrade them to higher tiers, unlocking more advanced buildings and technology. In Latium, this upgrade path is linear, but in Albion you have a choice: allow your residents to maintain their Celtic culture, or Romanize them and make them conform to the empire’s way of life.

This decision will have wide-ranging implications. For starters, Celtic residents have different wants and needs than Romanized residents. They require different production chains that produce different goods to fulfill their needs. Many of their buildings and technologies take advantage of the natural marshy landscape of Albion. Marshes in Anno 117: Pax Romana, are a unique land type. Certain buildings can only be built on top of marshes, while others must be built on solid land. A Celtic population will work symbiotically with the landscape while a Romanized population will drain the marshes and build aqueducts, forcing the land to conform to their wants and needs.

“You’ll also have to deal with the Voada problem,” says Reinher. “She’s the Celtic leader and creates a lot of headaches for Romans. She hates Rome and during your time in Albion, you’ll have to decide if you want to resolve the conflict with her diplomatically or by using military force. If you allow the Celts to worship their gods and protect their holy sites, it will be easier to solve the problem diplomatically.”

Voada will also test your dedication to her cause through specific quests that might ask you to free some captive relatives or work closely with her. However you decide to deal with her, your actions in Albion won’t go unnoticed. Other governors in the world will react to your actions and comment on them. Your relationship with them will also be impacted by how you deal with your residents in Albion.

This amount of narrative and gameplay variation was in response to the linearity of recent Anno games and directly influenced by the historical research Reinher and his team did during development.

“There are examples where Roman governors made room for local identity. And then it was quite clear that this could be a good thing for a game like Anno. In general, we wanted to introduce choices with impact throughout the game. Anno 1800 was quite linear, so now we try to provide more agency for the players but also make the game more flexible.”

Part of that flexibility meant bringing land combat back to Anno. While the franchise is most known as a city-builder where diplomacy is always an option, a game set in the Roman empire needs to feature a robust land and naval combat system. Combat is deeper than ever thanks to modular naval ships, upgradable infantry units, devastating siege weapons, and buildable fortifications. Players have no obligation to play nice with Voada, and while dealing with what Reinher calls the “Voada problem” can mean diplomacy, it can also mean legionnaires, triremes, and siege weapons that decimate her and her people.

Of course, the decision will ultimately be up to you. Will you be a cunning negotiator? A master strategist? A brutal conqueror? Play the campaign multiple times and try them all when Anno 117: Pax Romana launches on Xbox Series X|S on November 13. The game will be available for purchase or playable with a Ubisoft+ Premium membership.