For Gamescom 2025, Ubisoft put together a polished, one-hour demo for Anno 117: Pax Romana that allows players to try their hand at exploring the friendly Roman province of Latium or the more challenging Celtic lands of Albion. Albion is designed to challenge veteran Anno players, with more specialized resources and marshes that can be used for building unique Celtic buildings. The marshes can also be drained to allow for construction of Roman buildings. As an Anno beginner, I opted to spend my demo time in Latium, but I suspect franchise fans are going to love the extra complexity that Albion brings.

Complexity is certainly a word that describes Anno. When I first looked at Anno 117 back in May, I was constantly losing money. My government ran in the red from the start, and despite borrowing money to build more and more nifty buildings and items, I was bankrupt before the end of the demo.

To prepare for the Gamescom Anno 117 demo, I first spent a few hours with Anno 1800 to get my head around the basics. I was able to get a (barely) profitable city going in the early hours of Anno 1800, and those lessons helped me survive the new demo, but I won't say I crushed it. It was more like, "I got the basics going and didn't totally drain the bank." Hey, I still did better than most real-life governments!

One key element in Anno 117 is planning for building interactions. You need to build homes to house farmers and workers, but if you want them to be at their best, you also need to build things like a tavern and a marketplace. Those support buildings have a sphere of influence on the homes and help fulfill the needs of those living there.

It's this building interaction element that most intrigues me, as it does make city planning more like a real-life puzzle. You can't just slap down buildings because you need them; you have to make a minimal attempt at placing them where they do the most good (or the least harm). To the latter point, there are industry types that can cause pollution, increase the risk of fires, and so on.

The catch in all of this is staying profitable. It's easy enough to get ahead of yourself and build things you don't quite need. If you do, you just kick off a debt spiral. Resource management is key. That includes natural resources, buildings, and first-level manufactured items in the tech tree.

In Anno, you often have to process a raw resource before you can use it. For example, you need to process cut trees into lumber, or an oat farm to make wheat. However, another building is needed to turn that wheat into porridge. This two-step build chain is just the starting point of complexity. In the early game, you may only use a first-level resource for one thing, but as the tech tree opens up, suddenly your resource demands may shift, and you'll have to compensate.

Resource demands are also impacted by distance and warehouses. You want to move your raw materials to the next stage as quickly as possible, so arranging roads for minimal travel time is another fun challenge. They say that wars are won on logistics, and it's similar when it comes to building a successful city.

While I didn't get to delve into exploration, combat, diplomacy, or any of the more complex elements before my time with the demo was up (it automatically ends after an hour of play), I did find myself starting to fall into the Anno groove. Unlike the first demo, where I sometimes felt like I was fighting the system, this time around, it felt more like controlled chaos. I still wasn't completely in charge, but I was nudging the economic engine of my city in the right direction.

Even if you're not at Gamescom, you'll soon have a chance to play the Anno 117: Pax Romana demo yourself. Between September 2 and September 16, 2025, the one-hour demo will be available for download via Steam, the Epic Games store, and Ubisoft Connect.