Anno 117: Pax Romana – 5 Tips to Get Started in the Free Demo

Anno 117: Pax Romana's free demo is live now until September 16 on Ubisoft Connect, Steam, and the Epic Game Store. In the demo - which earned Anno 117 Gamescom's 2025 Best PC Game Award -  you'll have one hour to build out your province, start your supply chains, and advance your population to its second tier. While one hour may not be much time, you can replay the demo as many times as you like before September 16, optimizing different urban layouts and exploring the significant differences between provinces. Anno 117: Pax Romana is a deep and complex game and you'll learn and do more with each playthrough, but we've also compiled five tips to help you make the most of the free demo period.

Choosing Your Starting Province

When you start the Anno 117: Pax Romana demo, you'll have the choice of a starting province: Latium or Albion. While we recommend doing at least one playthrough in each province, new Anno players will find an easier time in Latium. The heart of the Roman Empire, Latium is a gentler experience for beginners due to its rolling fertile plains with plenty of room to build. Being so close to the center of the empire, you're less likely to face conflict from outsiders and your population and needs will be Roman to the core. Your population will advance along a single progression path, unlike your townsfolk to the far north.

In the wilds of Albion, you'll be confronted with new challenges and mechanics. The flooded marshes of the Celtic lands will present new building opportunities and limitations as only certain buildings can be constructed on marshes. When it comes time to upgrade your base level residents (known as Waders), you'll have to choose: allow them to maintain their Celtic cultural traditions and become Smiths, or convert them into a Roman way of life, turning them into Mercators. This decision will determine how your settlement develops as you strive to meet the specific needs of your selected citizens to keep them happy and thriving. For example, your Smiths will ask for cheese and beer while Mercators will demand sausages and bread. You're also free to Romanize some residents while keeping others Celtic. Doing so will unlock all possible upgrade paths, but comes at a cost. You'll still have to meet all your residents' needs, which means you'll have to set up two vastly different supply chains to keep everyone happy.

How To Grow Your Income

You're likely to be losing money when you first start a playthrough of Anno 117, and while keeping your population well fed, clothed, and satisfied is paramount, going broke means that no one is happy.

Just about everything in Anno 117 costs money: building roads, constructing most buildings, and operating those buildings will all eat away at your income. The best, most surefire way to increase your money is by building more residences. Residences in Anno 117 generate income when their needs are met and upgrading them to their second tier will cause them to generate even more income. Your residents comprise your workforce, and every production building will require a certain amount of a specific tier of worker. For example, a Sawmill requires three Waders to operate, while a more advanced production facility like a Dairy requires four Smiths in order to run properly. You need enough residents to meet your workforce needs, but if you find your balance is still negative even after all your production facilities are fully staffed, then you still need to build more residences.

In Anno 117, it's not just about building those residences, it's about affecting them through other factors and neighboring buildings, which leads us to our next tip.

Pay Attention to Where You Place Your Buildings

There are many different factors you need to monitor on your island, from income and health to happiness and fire safety. Nearly every building contributes either positively or negatively to one of these factors and some buildings will also affect all the buildings around them. For example, the Spinner will increase the income of all buildings within its area of effect by one. The Dairy will increase the happiness of all nearby buildings by two. As we stated before, your residents will be your primary source of income so placing a Spinner in the middle of a densely populated residential area can help increase your income greatly. 

Not all buildings provide beneficial effects, and some will negatively impact neighboring buildings. A Charcoal Burner, for example, will lower both the health and fire safety of surrounding buildings. Build them as far away from your other buildings as possible to limit their negative effects.

Pay attention to a classification of building called City Watch. These three buildings: Vigiles, Medici, and Custodes improve the fire safety, health, and happiness of nearby buildings respectively. In the event of an incident (a fire, riot, or disease outbreak) they will also deploy first responders to quell the crisis. Their wide area of effect makes them especially useful when trying to raise the stats that they govern, but remember, they can only be effective if they are near other buildings.

Any time you place a building that affects its neighbors in Anno 117, you'll see either a green arrow pointing up (to indicate a positive effect) or a red arrow pointing down (indicating a negative effect). Try to maximize the green arrows and minimize the red ones.    

Which God Should You Patronize?

Whether you're in Albion or Latium, eventually, you'll need to pick a patron deity for your island. Each island you control can worship a separate god, allowing you to customize the production of your islands. For example, build a majority of your military production facilities on an island that worships Mars, the God of War, and your troops will have higher morale and require less workforce and money to produce and upkeep. While the demo's 60-minute time limit means expanding to other islands will be difficult, we suggest patronizing different gods during different playthroughs to feel their effects.

The Anno 117 demo features seven gods, each with their own unique boons:

Ceres

• Increases production of many agricultural goods and provides all residences with one additional population.

Neptune

• Increases production of goods harvested from the sea and makes newly constructed ships more durable and cheaper to upkeep.

Mars

• Increases production of weapons, armor, iron, coal, and more, and gives troops higher morale and reduces the workforce and money required to keep them.

Minerva (must be researched in the Discovery Tree)

• Increases the production of clothing supply chains and grants all residences additional knowledge.

Mercury-Lugus (must be researched in the Discovery Tree)

• Passive trade is more profitable and increases island Prestige for every Depot, Trading Pier, and Harbour Warehouse.

Epona (must be researched in the Discovery Tree)

• Increases production of farm animals and allows production buildings to contribute to overall population.

Cernunnos (must be researched in the Discovery Tree)

• Increases production of building materials and allows residences to produce additional health and knowledge.

Build Your Supply Chains Efficiently

An efficient island is a happy, healthy, and wealthy island, and understanding supply chains is an important step to making your production facilities work best. Many supply chains are built with a 1:1 processing time. Take Timber production for example - a Woodcutter generates Wood every 30 seconds and a Sawmill takes 30 seconds to turn that Wood into Timber. This means one Sawmill is needed for one Woodcutter, but some production chains aren't perfectly 1:1.

Beer production requires a Barley Farm and a Malthouse. A Barley Farm harvests Barley every 60 seconds, but the Malthouse turns that Barley into Malt in only 30 seconds. In this case, the relationship is 1:2, meaning that a single Malthouse can support the production of two Barley Farms. Once you understand these production synergies you can maximize the production of your goods while ensuring you're not unnecessarily taking up land and workforce resources.

Anno 117: Pax Romana launches on November 13 simultaneously on Ubisoft+, PC through the Ubisoft Store, Epic Games Store, and Steam,  PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Amazon Luna. For all the latest insider news on Anno 117, visit the Anno Union.