63 Game-Changing Tips and Tricks in Anno 117 Pax Romana – Beginner and Advanced Guide

Getting into a city builder isn’t always easy, especially with complex titles like Anno 117: Pax Romana, a franchise with such a rich history.

It went through a lot of innovation throughout the decades, being one of the most in-depth Anno games ever at launch. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you get started as a Roman governor in Anno 117: Pax Romana.

63 Best Tips and Tricks for Anno 117 Pax Romana – Beginner and Advanced Guide

• Production supply chains logistics can bypass going to Warehouses when placed properly – A -> B -> C, where C is the Warehouse located at the end of the road.
• Warehouses can get overloaded when there are too many production chains needing items from them. To avoid bottlenecks, you can do the tip above or put down more Warehouses.
• Paved Roads unlocks at tier 3, and having that tech may change how you want to design your layouts since every building can reach further areas, maximizing efficiency.
• When trying to calculate 100% efficiency production chains, count how many of the slowest processing time building it takes to have a 1:1 ratio with the fastest processing time building. For example (Soap Maker), Lavender Growers has a 2:00 processing time with Pig Farms at 0:30 and Renderers and Soap Makers at 1:00. In this case, you need four Lavender Growers for each Pig Farm to match the speed of the 0:30 processing time of the farm (4 x 0:30 = 2:00 or 0:120). Do the same for Renderers and Soap Makers, and you’ll have a 4:2:2:1 ratio for the whole production supply chain running at 100%.
• For harder production chains with more ridiculous numbers like 0:30, 0:45, 1:30, and 2:00, you can convert everything into minutes and use the LCM (least common multiple) math approach. Using the numbers given, it would be 30, 45, 90, and 120, which would give a least common multiple of 360. Divide 360 by each of the numbers, and you’ll have the ratio in terms of the number of buildings you need – 12:8:4:3, which is just crazy to think about.
• 100% efficient production chains are just too satisfying to make, so let’s get a little crazy.
• Avoid blocking buildings that need cultivation areas. Woodcutters need trees around it to run at 100% efficiency. If you cut down the trees near it, you can drop the Wood production to almost 0%, giving your Sawmill nothing to work with. The same goes for a Charcoal Burner or even an Apiary. If you get the Woodland Rebirth research from the Economic tree, Woodcutters will gain the ability to grow trees around it so that’s a workaround.
• You can upgrade Warehouses to have more ramps for loading.
• If you have overproduction of certain goods, you can always set a sell order when the stock reaches a certain number at the trading post.
• If you are lazy, you can set a stock limit for all goods by pressing the “All Goods” tab when interacting with the trading post’s harbor trade.

• Overproducing soldiers and ships may bankrupt you because of their stacking maintenance costs.
• These soldiers and ships also use up your workforce until they are gone.
• Some production buildings gain certain buffs when placed with residences.
• Make sure you have city watches all over your island like Vigiles, Custodias, and Medicis. If the residential area doesn’t have access to these city watches, your Island’s health, fire safety, and happiness will suffer.
• Build city watches on your production buildings, too. Most of them are prone to fire and disease anyway.
• Read the area effects of production buildings. Having something like a Bakery near a lot of residences would give a lot of income.
• Public Service buildings can help you get over the top of certain problems when placed at the right spot. For example, having a Theatre in the middle of thousands of residences can skyrocket your Happiness, Knowledge, and Prestige, as these are the bonuses given by the Theatre.
• Build Public Service buildings at the heart of your residential areas for efficiency. You don’t want to place them at the sides and just a lot of them. They cost a lot of money, and they also have a maintenance cost.
• Public Service buildings that don’t meet the needs of a resident still give the bonus. For example, putting a Forum, which is a need of the Equites, can still benefit Plebeians and Libertus.
• Always plan for your Aqueduct infrastructure to give water to your residents.
• You can hit “R” or “Shift + R” to bring out the build road and build paved road commands immediately.
• While having any road command active, you can hover over a building and press on top of it to instantly put a road around the building or a clump of buildings. You can use this method when turning normal roads into Paved Roads as well.
• Pay attention to island fertility. When expanding, you want to at least have as many types of produce as possible.
• Don’t expand too much. Claiming islands exponentially gets more costly for each island claimed.
• You can set different religions for each island. You can have an island specialize in one or two aspects and pick a religion that complements them.
• Place the Governor Villa and Officias at the heart of your residential area, similar to public service buildings. Capitalize on using as many specialists as possible.
• Meeting the needs of your residents increases your population. If you are lacking some more workforce, always check if you are meeting all the needs for each type of resident to maximize space.

• Having a big population is always good for income as long as you can meet their needs.
• Always look at potential specialist offers from neutral NPCs like Valeria or Diana.
• Always keep researching. There’s no reason to stop researching as you gain Knowledge throughout the game.
• Trade routes can have multiple ships in one route. Having multiple ships is best for fast-moving consumer goods, so you can keep up with the production supply chain and meet demands.
• One of the biggest income problems is mostly caused by having a large military or inefficient production. You can have overproduction, but you can always sell the final products for more money. It is the inefficient lines that bring economic problems.
• Most buildings have no construction costs. City watches, Public Service buildings, and other special buildings are the only ones that have construction costs. Always keep some Denarii (money) available, especially when you need an emergency Vigiles built or even a random festival where your population asks for money for the event.
• Pay attention to public matters that show up as notifications in the upper-left corner of your screen. Some situations need a crucial decision, such as executions, pardons, and more.
• Try to have a trade treaty with everyone in the game to have more potential traders to buy your surplus.
• Avoid covering up Mountain Slots on your island. You’ll never know if you need more of them.
• Try to focus on managing multiple islands and progressing them to the highest tier. That should catapult your knowledge gain, even if the other islands aren’t profitable yet.
• Avoid researching discoveries that are way too far in the tree unless they are extremely vital to your situation. Look at the estimated duration and focus on the easy discoveries first.
• You can set escorts or patrols around your trade routes to safeguard your resources – absolute hatred for those annoying raiders.
• If you get lazy making those farms look good, you can always place them at the corners of your island and squeeze out every corner for your farm plots.
• You can relocate buildings instead of demolishing and building them again.
• You can have a specific residential layout on one island and use the copy tool to paste that same layout in every new island you get.
• When you reach the Concrete tier, build at least three Concrete Mixers, as you want to speed up your Paved Road upgrades, and these need a lot of Concrete.
• You can manually send supply ships of Timber, Tiles, and Concrete to newly-acquired islands to jumpstart their progress.
• Always check your production menu or statistics by pressing Ctrl + Q and look for uneven supply and demand production bars for each product.
• When the output or storage is full for a production building, it still contributes as an expense. Either sell the goods so the building can produce more, or pause the production completely to negate the extra expense.
• Trade routes that go from province to province take significantly longer. If you want these resources faster, add more ships to the trade route.
• You can add military ships to escort trading or civilian ships on trade routes by just right-clicking the ship with a military ship.

• Workforces are used to train military units and are permanently used until the military units die.
• Workforces are also used for ships with the same mechanics. However, cargo or civilian ships have less workforce maintenance than military ships.
• You can put patrol units around the raider islands to keep them permanently suffocated.
• Add a massive fleet to a patrol or escort group to avoid losses.
• Research and put Repair Cranes when you start using trade routes.
• When you are losing critical workforce numbers, you can restart your population by either importing the needs of the struggling class or stopping all production chains and starting to activate them by tiers.
• Remember to add archers or units to your military ships.
• Start planning to create an island that worships Neptune, and establish your naval forces there for extra power and efficiency.
• When your military forces are dwindling, you can always fight other nations only up to a point where you can request a ceasefire or a non-aggression pact.
• When your land forces are weak against an impending attack, you can always use the Governor Villa as a shield while you dismantle the attacking forces. In some weird way, the AI attacks the Governor Villa even with multiple units available on the field. However, if they are melee units, the enemy could still switch from the Villa to your melee units when close enough.
• Try to equally progress the Latium and Albion provinces. When one progresses far enough, the other Governors will progress and could bully your less developed province.

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