Anno 117: Pax Romana Hits Steam, Letting Players Steady Rome Instead of Build It

Anno 117: Pax Romana is now available on Steam and the Ubisoft Store, and its pitch is clear: turn the Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD into a large-scale simulation built around management, expansion, and the power to reshape its trajectory.

This new Ubisoft Anno entry keeps the series’ established city-building and management foundation, but it is not just about placing buildings. You begin as a provincial governor, juggling resource gathering, city construction, cross-regional trade, class demands, and military expansion. Core infrastructure such as lumber camps, farms, aqueducts, and roads determines how efficiently your territory runs, while the needs of freemen, commoners, equestrians, and nobles steadily raise the difficulty of governing. That makes it less a simple management sim with a Roman skin and more a full imperial system where economic chains and the logic of rule are tightly linked. The game also uses specialist assignment mechanics and cross-region production-and-trade loops to improve efficiency while echoing how the Roman economy functioned.

Its handling of expansion is where the design looks strongest. You can take the hard route by building barracks and armories, then fielding heavy infantry, cavalry, and siege engines, or go the softer way through trade alliances, prestige, and diplomatic maneuvering. On top of that, Senate-style decision-making, religious rites, cultural construction, and the Emperor prestige system push the game beyond raw output and into political balance. The wider political layer is built around dual-province management in Latium and Albion, including choices between Romanization and preserving Celtic culture. That turns “unification” into a value judgment rather than simple map painting. Cultural life is also part of the simulation, with gladiator contests, theatrical performances, and a polytheistic belief system centered on deities such as Jupiter and Mars.

From a systems perspective, Anno 117 feels like a clear step forward for the series: freeform gridless construction, dynamic historical storytelling, a living society with ecological management, and both Campaign and Sandbox modes, plus 500+ Workshop mods already online. The gridless system supports diagonal building, circular layouts, moving structures, and batch copying, with roads automatically adjusting to terrain, which is useful whether you optimize for efficiency or aesthetics. Player choices in the dynamic history system can affect historical events and the development path of the Roman Empire, including whether Roman and Celtic cultures move toward conflict or coexistence. Citizens’ needs also shift as the city develops, and the game adds sustainability concerns around ecology and resources to discourage over-extraction.

The visual side is built on a fully upgraded Anno 1800 engine, adding ray tracing, dynamic global illumination, dynamic weather, and a day-night cycle, with 4K real-time rendering. The game also gives residents, workers, and animals their own behavior logic to make daily life feel more convincing. It recreates more than 100 independently modeled buildings based on historical research, including Roman amphitheaters, triumphal arches, public baths, and distinctive Celtic structures. Public works such as aqueducts, sewers, and plazas are not decorative extras either; they directly affect city efficiency and resident happiness. The military system likewise goes beyond land combat, covering barracks, armories, heavy infantry, cavalry, siege equipment, and a naval warfare module with customizable ships.

The original article notes that the game has earned a 9 from IGN, an 84 on Metacritic, and the Best PC Game award at gamescom. If you already enjoy the escalating industrial-chain rhythm of Anno 1800, then Anno 117: Pax Romana is easy to recommend. If you prefer constant, high-frequency combat, its military layer is complete, but the real strength still lies in the process of putting a city, then a province, and finally an empire onto stable footing. In the end, this is not a strategy game defined by one decisive clash, but one built around logistics, institutions, and execution over the long term.