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Going Full Celt With Anno 117: Pax Romana at Gamescom
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Alyssa Mercante
But Pax Romana is not just set in Rome—that empire spanned across land and sea in Europe—as such, there’s a second, Celtic region you can choose to build your empire in, known as Albion. I played Anno 117: Pax Romana a few months ago, at a preview event in Rome. At the time, we couldn’t choose to play in Albion, but at a recent Gamescom hands-on, I was able to delve into the strange, misty world of the Celts.
For a Roman empire, Albion and its people are a mystery: they prefer beer and cheese rather than sausage and bread, they worship strange gods (Epona, Mercury-Lugus, and Cernunnos, all of which will offer you different paths in Pax Romana’s extensive skill tree should you chose to center them in your island’s culture), and their population is composed of waders, smiths, and aldermen—the latter of which garner far more respect from Albions than a Roman emperor.
Having gotten the hang of Anno 117 months ago, I was excited to finally jump into a different biome and decide how I wanted to rule. Would I build a more Celtic Albion and respect the locals’ traditions, or you terraform their land, draining their marshes that provide them with eels for food and reeds for making sandals, and risk alienating them even further?
Not long after building a sawmill and warehouse to ensure a regular supply of wood for my new empire, an in-game pop-up (how Anno drops narrative nuggets) alerts me: A wader wants to talk. He walks past, “straining under the basket of eels,” and eyes me up, clearly confused about my Roman attire, but kind enough to call me governor. Anno presents me with my first governing decision: do I seize his goods, wish him well, or buy his supply of eels?
Wishing to be a multicultural, open-hearted leader, I buy the entirety of his wares off of him. He can’t believe his luck, and I hope that luck will extend to my empire. The last time I played Anno, I bled money so fast I had to take out back-to-back loans, and I was still in dangerously deep debt by the time my demo was up.
I want my waders happy so they will work harder and produce more goods for us to trade, a crucial component of pulling your burgeoning empire out of the negative.
I know they love to eat cockles and eels, so I ensure I have everything set up to dredge the waters that dot Albion. I upgrade their homes as soon as possible (which will boost their happiness and therefore my income), build a market for trading, and a bard’s hearth to uplift the community with songs and stories. I find the nearest marsh (Anno always starts you on the coast, the gateway for trade, but much of what you need will be inland) and set up shop to produce shoes, which require a building to harvest reeds and another to weave them.
The citizens of my Albion seem happy, but as we all know, empires aren’t built in a day.
Ubisoft Mainz also shows off this game’s version of combat at the hands-on, an important (and controversial) component of Anno gameplay. Pax Romana centers land combat, giving players a chance to utilize troops such as axe bearers and chariots (both of which hail from Albion) to help spread the influence of their empire.
Axe bearers can piece through armor, while chariots can throw spears from a distance, making it especially difficult for enemy troops. But, as game director Jan Dungel tells us at the event, it’s not just about building up your units, but ensuring you have a large population to help build things for that army.
And a unique morale system means you can overwhelm enemy forces so much they’ll retreat, which certainly makes war a little easier, right?
Dungel also shows us how you’d conduct a siege, and how Pax Romana injects some variety into the mechanic. If the walls around a city are made of palisades (vertical tree trunks), you can easily burn it with torches. But if you’re trying to siege a city with a stone wall, you’ll need catapults to tear down the walls. “But be careful,” he warns. Catapults aren’t all that accurate, and if your troops are in the splash zone, they could get smushed.
Anno 117: Pax Romana is out this November, but players will get a chance to demo it through the Epic Games Store, and Ubisoft Connect from September 2 to September 16. During the demo, you’ll be able to decide to start your journey in either Roman Latium or Celtic Albion, both of which offer their own unique riches and challenges. Being governor isn’t easy!
