Building the best city in Anno 117: Pax Romana can feel a little daunting. After all, you've got residences, production buildings, military defense, fire safety and so much more to consider. Fitting it all into your landscape, while still making it visually pleasing and incredibly efficient, is quite the task. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day...
Fortunately, we've gathered together some tips and tricks on how to structure your city to get the best from the game and the best for your growing, and hopefully flourishing, population.
1. Keep up the timber production
Before you can build pretty much anything in Anno 117: Pax Romana, you're going to need to produce timber and to do this, you need to set up the production chain that includes Woodcutter and Sawmill. It's pretty basic stuff and when it comes to Anno 117: Pax Romana production ratios, the timber production line works incredibly efficiently straight off the bat. But, don't rest on your laurels by just building one Woodcutter and Sawmill and hope you'll get all the timber you need.
When you get an opportunity, build three Woodcutters throughout the woodland area of your city and two Sawmills closer to the Warehouse. This will increase production and get you ready for the next steps.
It's also worth noting that over time, the trees around your Woodcutter will get used up, but you can use the relocation tool to move your Woodcutters into a new wooded area while the previous one replenishes.
2. Build houses together but leave space for things like Markets or Taverns
Residential quarters are the cornerstone to starting out your grand city in Anno 117: Pax Romana because without population, nothing will get done. To attract population to your city then, you'll need to build homes and then fulfil the needs of the people once they've moved in.
For the perfect city, you need to focus on location, location, location. In order to fulfil needs, you need to construct certain area of effect buildings, like a Market or Tavern. These should be placed near to homes so that they fall within the range that lets them benefit from buffs like happiness, population and a whole lot of income.
So, while you should build your homes together, you should also leave room in the middle of your densely populated residential areas for buildings like these.
2. Keep industry buildings away from your general population
While the placement of your residences is important, so is where you place your production buildings. After all, they can take up quite a lot of space, especially when you consider the Wheat Fields and Hemp Farms that come into play. Fortunately, these have a positive impact on your residences.
But, there are some buildings, especially industrial ones, that can have a negative effect on your population and that's why you should build them further out. For example, the Charcoal Burner is dreadful for both fire risk and health to buildings nearby.
Get these buildings out of town and away from your homes and be sure to build a Warehouse that services any industry out there, so that you can reduce any damage should a fire breakout.
3. Construct these important buildings like the Governor's Villa and more
While all the buildings have their own levels of importance in Anno 117: Pax Romana, whether that's fulfilling your resident's needs or producing goods, there's some buildings in particular that you should think about integrating deep into your city.
The Governor's Villa, for example, has a huge area of effect with positives shared with the surrounding residences. It also becomes the main building of your entire city, so if you're unfortunate enough to find yourself under siege, the enemy won't just have to take your Trading Post, but your Governor's Villa too.
Additionally, this is also where you can utilize your Anno 117: specialists as the Villa has slots to house them so you can take advantage of the buffs they come with.
Another important building is the Grammaticus (and this will come into play in the next tip). The Grammaticus is the home of knowledge and with knowledge comes the opportunity to research new branches of the Discovery Tree. Build one of these if you want to get vastly important tasks done quicker.
4. Upgrade to paved roads as soon as you can
You'll start out with dirt roads connecting every part of life in your city. And they're fine, but they're not great. In order to boost the efficiency (and overall look) of your city, you'll need to upgrade to paved roads.
This is done by first reaching population tier III by fulfilling the needs of the previous tiers and upgrading residences to suit. Once you've done this, you can start to produce concrete. With this concrete, you can research 'Paved Roads' in the Discovery Tree and improve the roads across your city.
These paved roads don't only look great, but they also increase the speed of travel, extend the areas of effect of buildings and make your population happier, healthier, and less at risk of fire.
5. Focus on fire safety and make it a priority
On that note, don't waste all the hard work you've put into building the best city by ignoring the fact that fires are a real problem. And watching everything you've built go up in flames is a totally avoidable situation.
Place City Watch buildings around your city and reap the benefits of their wide area of effect. For fire, Vigiles will tackle the flames if they begin to spread. Additionally, Custodes can protect you from riots and Medici can be built to prevent the spread of diseases.
And a top tip for a fire as soon as it breaks out: move everything away from it. With the quick tool, you can relocate buildings with ease before they get in harm's way. It feels inevitable that you'll lose something, but you can certainly avoid a bigger problem.
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