Hey Anno Community,

Here we are at the end of a special and eventful year: 2025 was a huge milestone for Anno and the Anno team, with the release of Anno 117: Pax Romana. So many things have happened throughout the year and today we would like to have a look at 2025 and recap the latest news.

In case you missed it, this week we released version 1.3 of Anno 117: Pax Romana, which fixes several bugs, crashes and performance issues and resolves various causes for desyncs. If you missed the Patch Notes that we shared last week, you can find them here[www.anno-union.com].

If you encountered any issues following the patch, please let us know via the Bug Reporter[www.ubisoft.com]https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/anno/117-pax-romana/bug-reporterwebsite.

A lot has happened in the past 12 months. It all started with the first teaser of the year back in January, showcasing diagonal roads[www.anno-union.com], which kind of blew up and created some concerns for the Anno grid (fear not, it’s still there). Plus, in January we held the final Community Contest[www.anno-union.com], where we asked you to design an island for Latium; speaking of, have you spotted it on the map while playing?

Where it all began – many months ago…

While we were slowly introducing you to the world of Anno 117: Pax Romana throughout the first few months of 2025, we were secretly getting ready for our big comeback in May, when we first publicly showcased gameplay. Seeing your reactions when the first trailer and all the videos by content creators dropped, was priceless.

And of course, back in May we also celebrated the 30th Anniversary of Ubisoft Mainz! Originally founded as Related Designs and having developed games like No Man’s Land and Castle Strike, the studio is now most known for working on – you guessed it – Anno! Together with our other colleagues at the studio, including teams working on Rainbow Six and Beyond Good and Evil 2 we celebrated three decades of game development.

One thing we loved about 2025 was having the chance to meet so many of you in person at gamescom – where we even held our biggest Community Event! Plus, we had a very special guest with us: the Town Crier himself was there to celebrate with all of us. Thanks to all of you who came around to watch our panels, queue FOR HOURS to play the demo, or just to say hi and share your love for the game with us.

But of course, let’s not forget another important thing that happened at gamescom 2025: Anno 117: Pax Romana won the awards for Best PC Game and Best Consumer Booth! Well, it’s hard to beat a 4.5-meter statue of the Town Crier…

With all these things happening throughout the year, 13th November arrived quickly. Seeing Anno 117: Pax Romana out in the world has been both unbelievable and fantastic at the same time (and a little bit scary).

We know, Anno 117: Pax Romana has been out for just over a month, but we still wanted to provide some stats to wrap up the first few weeks of the game and celebrate your achievements! Safe to say you’ve done pretty well – congrats, Governors!

We cannot wait for you all to see what’s next for Anno 117: Pax Romana. After all, this was just the beginning.

• We’ll have more insights into the work of different departments for you, both via DevBlogs and dedicated livestreams.

• In early spring, we’ll have more information on the first DLC: Prophecies of Ash.

• And we have some more surprises planned that we can’t talk about just yet.

We would like to thank each and one of you for your continued support throughout the years, and especially 2025: you, Anno Community, made the release of Anno 117: Pax Romana truly special.

Finally, we would like to wish you all happy holidays and an amazing start into the new year. May 2026 bring everything you want and more!

The Anno Team

Please find below the patch notes for next week’s update.

Version 1.3 will release on all platforms on Tuesday, December 16th, at 10AM UTC.

• Fixed several crashes and performance issues

• Fixed various causes for desyncs

  • With these desync fixes, we’ll also re-enable crossplay for Xbox since all 3 platforms will be on the same version again

• Adde various updates and fixes to texts and localizations

• Fixed an issue with deities (Ceres, Neptune, Mars) disappearing from the Religion menu

• Fixed an issue making it impossible to upgrade blueprints of slot buildings (mountain, river, marshland) and farms

• Pirate Ships will drop more items from now on when destroyed

• Shrines are supported to be built on plazas tiles now.

• The Credits movie now has subtitles.

• Session generation has been improved. There should be no island missing any longer.

  • Please note this will change the seeds

• General improvements to street- and path construction

• Various improvements on the technical side, like refinement on game stability and performance, including:

  • A fix for heavy stutters during fights involving many ships and/or land units

  • A fix for heavy stutters when rivals triggered festivals under specific circumstances

  • A fix for benchmark stutters

  • A fix for the game not booting

  • A fix for slow performance on Intel GPUs

  • A fix for the lag when opening the Save Menu

• Fixed an issue with the title freezing for 10 seconds after pressing the “Quit Game” button in the Main Menu.

• Fixed an issue with the game crashing when moving an Aqueduct under certain circumstances

• Fixed an issue that prevented the instant repair of ruins

• Fixed an issue making it impossible to upgrade blueprints of slot buildings (mountain, river, marshland) and farms

• Fixed an issue where destroyed shipyards of rivals continued to spawn ships

• Fixed an issue with the trading post menu being unusable, when the trading post was destroyed with no villa present.

• Fixed an issue with deities (Ceres, Neptune, Mars) disappearing from the Religion menu when the player disabled or lost access to the Hall of Fame

• Fixed several issues with gates and walls

  • Gate could be constructed without available resources

  • Gates were not showing maintenance and build costs in construction bar

  • Walls could be placed on islands of rivals

• Fixed an issue with the villa garrison cavalry in Albion requiring workforce

• Fixed an issue with cisterns not having water supply costs

• Fixed the Naumachia event not showing the naumachia (ship battles) all the time

• Fixed an issue where extra-needs were consumed before they were unlocked via the research tree

• Fixed an issue that broke the Research Tree queue after changing the research speed while research was ongoing

• Unlocking a discovery via the Hall of Fame no longer unlocks the full cluster of research around it

• Replaced the placeholder AI artwork in loading screen and campaign cinematic

• Fixed an issue with City Status notification appearing too often.

• Fixed an issue where rivals invited after the game started were not considering in the diplomacy comparison reasons

• Fixed an issue with the deposed emperor still granting reputation

• Fixed an exploit that allowed +100 reputation exploits

• Improved the ship-boarding handling for land units

• Fixed an issue with rival land units teleporting while patrolling

• Fixed an issue where Ranged Units didn’t defend themselves in melee

• Adjusted civilian ships to not follow a group-attack command any longer when grouped with warships

• Fixed an issue with land units not defending themselves while partially embarked

• Fixed an issue with the festival banner reappearing every single time a user jumped back to their island

• Fixed an issue where pirates didn’t show up on the map

• Fixed an issue with the Builder Pack content not being present on first boot of the game

• Fixed an issue with new Asset ModOp

• Fixed an issue with easy and medium rivals settling all islands in a session

• Fixed an issue with marsh-only buildings of rivals not getting destroyed when the marsh is drained

• Fixed an issue with rivals not considering the correct costs of building trading posts

• Improved defensive behaviour of rivals during island invasions

• Various desync fixes

• Fixed an issue with the trade route warning messages missing their icons in multiplayer

• Fixed an issue with the Save Game Menu being empty after enabling Persistent Coop during a session or loading into a Live Save Game

• Added a confirmation pop-up when attempting to overwrite a cross-progression save file

• Fixed an issue where in the setup screen of a multiplayer game (upon loading a savegame) players were shown as connected even if they weren’t present in the lobby

• Locked the ‘City Status Impact On Incidents’ difficulty setting so that it’s only changeable by the host, not by other participants

• Fixed an issue with Hall of Fame specialists not being available to other players than the host

• Fixed an issue that prevented players from hosting a multiplayer game while “house access” was turned off

• Improved the visibility in co-op when a fellow player selects or moves a building

• Improved the UI of the multiplayer lobby

• Fixed an issue with gamepad controls becoming unresponsive when a player’s or enemy’s land unit retreats

• Fixed an issue with mines becoming selected when the mouse cursor is a significant distance away

• Fixed an issue where trade routes couldn’t be renamed via gamepad

• Fixed an issue with uppercase letters not being supported for savegames when using non-English keyboards

• Fixed an issue with mouse and keybord not always working simultaneously on PlayStation 5

• Fixed a highlighting issue when hovering over a drainage channel with a gamepad

• Improved the placement of Ground Ornaments when using a gamepad

• Added various usability improvements for gamepad

• Fixed an issue where upgrading buildings from blueprint mode didn’t always have a sound effect

• Improved the audio feedback upon claiming rewards in the Hall of Fame via gamepad

• Various audio improvements, including a fix for audio degradation during extended play-sessions

• The “Repairing Damage” infolayer is only visible when hovering on damaged buildings now. It’s not shown all the time a building is damaged anymore.

• Improved and aligned visuals of connection slots of aqueducts and marshland buildings

• Fixed an issue where trading post infotips weren’t accessible when the passive trade popup was open

• Fixed an issue where a water-consuming building was listed in the menu of multiple cisterns in range of the building

• Fixed an issue where Sheep were displayed instead of Flax in the Loungers production chain

• Fixed incorrect construction phase numbers of the amphitheatre monument

• Fixed an issue with the wonders category for Patricians appearing to not be fully fulfilled in the residence menu even if all needs were provided

• Fixed an issue with Albion always being the default selection in the trade route menu

• Hovering over a good on the trade route map will now storage information

• Fixed an issue where the route between regions was not visualized on the World Map during manual ship transfer

• Fixed an issue with the Twitch-Drop Nova Alba skin icon missing

• Fixed an issue with ruins being lit up at night (we called the Ghostbusters)

• Roman-Celtic Tier 3 residences in Albion are now using assets fitting to the region

• Fixed an issue with the player logo not being visible on sails

• Improved low morale visibility via making unit banners blink

• Feedback units in the marshland are now more fitting to the production building there

• Fixed a placeholder logo on the “generic enemy” ships

• Fixed a graphical issue with male priests becoming invisible.

• Fixed an issue that resulted in the loading screen occasionally showing a black image

• Fixed various issues with the lighting of character portraits

• Installed guard rails to prevent feedback units from falling down (and up) some temples

• Fixed an issue that prevented markers from appearing in another province during the Inferno quest after switching between provinces

• Improved spawning behaviour for quest objects

• Improved quest behaviour related to save & load functionality

• Fixed several issues affecting tutorial buttons that didn’t vanish, including the “All buildings require a street connection” bubble

• Campaign: It is no longer possible to set Caeso active through the Game Setup menu

• Campaign – Quest Empty Coffers: Fixed an issue that required players to interact with Rivals not present on the map

• Campaign: Adjusted the end screen to better lead players into Endless Mode

• Fixed an issue with the “Hic Svnt Dracones” achievement not unlocking when the player explores 100% of Albion in Campaign mode

• Quest Ultima Ratio: Fixed an issue that prevented the quest to be completed with Celtic ships

• Fixed an issue that prevented the Emperor’s ships to count toward the “Oceanic Battlefield” achievement progression

• Quest Mare Infestum: Fixed an issue where the “Select Ship” objective could become stuck if the player was in a different region when it appeared

• Quest Transgress to Impress: Fixed an issue with localization

• Quest The Stuff of legends: Fixed an issue with localization

• Fixed an issue with quest bubbles not showing the exact position of the quest giver ship

• Quest Weapons from the Stars: Fixed an issue that appeared when the ship had a Specialist in the Captain slot

• Quest Tarragon’s Troubles: Fixed an issue with the quest skipping the final objective, preventing the player from completing the quest

• Quest In the Name of Venus: Fixed an issue that prevented the completion of the quest

• Governor Decision Gymposium: Fixed an issue affecting the randomly chosen trading post in Latium or Albion, after selecting “Promise them writing materials” option

• Quest Lost Family: Quest will now trigger when the player reaches Tier 3 population (Equites)

• Quest Potion Seller: Replaced placeholder objective text “Decision” with “Decide the Hermit’s fate”

• Quest Meddling with Metal: Fixed an issue where delivering iron ore didn’t show the interaction bubble with the weaponsmith

• Quest Holy Stones: Fixed an issue that prompted players to deliver still-locked materials during the quest stage

• Quest Cutting the Chain: Fixed an issue with the quest item spawning in another province

• Quests Dominus Mirabilium: Adjusted the spawning position of the quest object

• Fixed some wrong texts for in City Status names

• Various changes and additions to the Credits

• Various fixes for text and localization issues