In Anno 117: Pax Romana players dictate Britain's fate under Roman rule

In most city-building strategy games, your role is fairly well-defined. You’re either building a society completely from scratch or taking an existing society already developing along a clear path and trying to nurture that future. You either get to determine the direction for a society or nudge the development of a culture already set on a specific trajectory.

Anno 117: Pax Romana is set at the peak of the Roman Empire during a couple of centuries of relative stability. Almost a quarter of the world is part of the empire, culture is being distributed and collected by Rome, and communities have to grapple with their identity as independent but conquered nations.

Anno 117 will feature two playable regions at launch. Latium is warm, sunny, full of large cities, and the kind of area you might traditionally associate with an ancient Roman city-builder. However, the other region is far more interesting. Albion, another name for ancient Great Britain, is gray, wet, and conflicted about its new rulers. As a Roman governor, you’re tasked with developing the region, but doing so means controlling how the region should grow.

Detailed in a behind-closed-doors session at Gamescom 2024, developer Ubisoft explained that as players upgrade their communities, they’ll need to make choices about whether to allow Britain to keep elements of its own traditional culture or if they need to get used to doing things the “Roman way.” This might manifest as different resource trees for fulfilling basic needs, such as needing four types of material to create a Roman toga compared to just two for British trousers. These choices will also impact the narrative, as Rome will be more supportive of your efforts if you spread Roman culture, but you might piss off Albion’s residents in the process and make them harder to maintain rule over.

While this choice between maintaining local culture versus expansive Romanization is at the core of Anno 117, the developers told us they don’t want players to be forced to stick with one of these two paths permanently. While players can’t flip-flop constantly between the two, there will be room for changing approaches over time or even revisiting some of your past choices to course correct. You’ll be locked into choices for a while, and they will come with consequences, but there’s also some flexibility if you don’t enjoy how your approach seems to be working out.

One thing I was curious about, given the game’s time period and setting, was the topic of slavery and if that was likely to factor into a story set in the heart of Rome’s expansion. The developers were clear that while they recognize the Anno games sometimes look at history through rose-tinted glasses, they said that, in this particular case, they “won’t shy away from the realities of the situation.” They emphasized that they’re taking the subject seriously and want to treat it with the level of tact and nuance it deserves. 

Anno 117 isn’t due to release until 2025, and gameplay won’t be shown to the public until early next year, but the overall concept does seem like an interesting spin on its genre and one that is well worth checking out if you’re a bit of an ancient history buff.

You can check out Anno 117: Pax Romana on the Epic Games Store.