Anno 1800 vs Anno 117: Pax Romana – Which to Play First

You have picked your genre. City-building strategy, slow-burn economy puzzles, the satisfaction of watching a settlement grow into an empire. Now you are staring at two Anno games and one backlog slot, and the internet is not helping much because most comparisons either assume you have already played one of them or turn into a “which is objectively better” argument that misses the actual question. The real question is simpler: which one should you, a newcomer, open first tonight.

🏛️ Two Very Different Worlds, One Shared DNA

Anno 1800 drops you into the industrial revolution. Smokestacks, steam engines, ocean liners, and a production economy that scales from farmhands to zeppelin factories over the course of a campaign. The aesthetic is Victorian ambition: brick terraces, glasshouses, and skylines that get denser and dirtier the more you industrialise.

Anno 117: Pax Romana goes the other direction entirely, casting you as a Roman governor at the height of the empire’s peace. You are raising villas, aqueducts, and colosseums across the sun-baked province of Latium, or the colder Celtic-influenced province of Albion if you fancy a different palette. Ubisoft has confirmed both provinces are playable from the start, with direct trade between them impossible because of the distance, so you end up managing two very different regional identities rather than one continuous map.

Tone-wise, 1800 feels like empire-building through commerce and engineering. Pax Romana feels like empire-building through governance, culture, and infrastructure that still looks good a thousand years later. If you find yourself more drawn to marble and toga aesthetics than soot and rivets, that pull matters more than any spreadsheet of mechanics.

Scale plays out differently too. Anno 1800 eventually spans multiple hemispheres, from the temperate Old World to tropical colonies and an arctic research arc added in later expansions, so your map grows outward over dozens of hours. Pax Romana keeps you anchored to two named provinces rather than an open-ended world map, which is a smaller canvas by design but one that lets the art team put more detail into every villa roof and forum square you actually build.

🧭 Which Game Actually Onboards You Gently

This is the part most comparisons skip, and it is the part that matters most for a first-timer. Anno 1800 has a genuinely excellent early game because Ubisoft has spent years refining it, but it also front-loads a production chain philosophy that can feel dense within the first few hours. If you want the full walkthrough of that curve, our Anno 1800 beginner’s guide to your first island covers the specifics step by step.

Pax Romana was built knowing it needed to welcome players who had never touched an Anno game, and it shows in the population tier structure. Latium in particular uses a more linear four-tier progression on flatter terrain, which gives new players fewer competing systems to juggle in the opening hours compared to 1800’s more branching, multi-continent approach.

Neither game is simple, because Anno as a series is not a simple genre. But Pax Romana asks fewer questions of you at once early on, while 1800 rewards patience with a payoff that arrives once you already understand the earlier layers. If you are the type who reads three wiki tabs before touching a new mechanic, 1800’s depth will feel earned rather than punishing. If you would rather learn by doing without a second monitor open, Pax Romana’s flatter start is kinder.

Interface design plays into this too. Pax Romana was designed from day one to work identically well on a controller and a mouse, since it launched simultaneously on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Anno 1800 began life as a PC-first game and its console version arrived later as an adaptation, which means some of its menus and camera controls still feel more natural with a keyboard and mouse than a pad. If you are planning to play on a console primarily, that alone is worth weighing.

📚 Content Maturity: Established Giant vs Fresh Entry

Anno 1800 launched in 2019 and has had a genuinely long life since. The Complete Edition now bundles four full season passes worth of gameplay DLC, twelve expansions in total covering new regions, new production chains, and entirely new endgame arcs, on top of a run of cosmetic packs. Ubisoft has confirmed main development on 1800 wrapped after Season 4, with only cosmetic content still trickling out, which means the game you buy today is a finished, mature package rather than a work in progress.

Anno 117: Pax Romana released on 13 November 2025, so as of this writing it has been out for less than a year. It has already picked up post-launch patches, including a September 2026 update adding the Echoes of Kassandra cosmetic pack, and it became the fastest-selling entry in series history shortly after release. But it does not have anywhere near the volume of expansion content 1800 has accumulated, simply because it has not had the years to do so.

That is not a knock on either game. It means 1800 offers a deep, sprawling world you can disappear into for hundreds of hours right out of the box, while Pax Romana offers a leaner, more focused experience that will keep growing but is not there yet. Neither is unconfirmed rumour territory here: we are only describing content that Ubisoft has already shipped or officially patched in.

🗣️ What the Reception Actually Looks Like

Critical and community reception gives you a useful sanity check alongside our own framing. Pax Romana landed with a Metascore in the low-to-mid 80s and an OpenCritic “Strong” rating, with the large majority of critics recommending it, while Steam player reviews sit in solidly positive territory across a growing review base. That is a strong critical showing for a first entry into a brand new historical setting.

Anno 1800 carries years of accumulated goodwill instead. Its Steam review base is enormous by comparison, built up over half a decade of expansions, balance patches, and community mod support, and it is routinely cited as one of the strongest entries the series has produced. Neither reception picture should be the deciding factor on its own, but it does confirm that both games are safe, well-regarded purchases rather than a “good one and a risky one.”

⚙️ Mechanical Differences Worth Knowing Before You Buy

Without turning this into a strategy deep dive, a few structural differences will shape your first ten hours regardless of which game you pick. Anno 1800’s economy is built around long, branching supply chains where a single product might need four or five upstream inputs, a system we break down properly in our Anno 1800 supply chains explainer if you want the mechanical detail.

Pax Romana restructures that loop around governance choices layered on top of production, letting you lean into economic growth, diplomacy, or military expansion as your primary lever rather than treating production chains as the only route to progress. It also supports drop-in, drop-out co-op for up to three friends across both campaign and endless modes, on both PC and console, which 1800 does not offer in the same form.

A few other first-timer-relevant points:

• Pax Romana lets you choose your starting province, so your first few hours look different depending on whether you pick Latium or Albion, whereas 1800’s opening is more standardised around your first industrial island.
• 1800 has a heavier trade and shipping layer early on, since moving goods between islands is central to its economy from hour one.
• Pax Romana leans harder on population tiers tied to culture and education buildings rather than pure consumer goods variety, which changes what “upgrading your city” actually means moment to moment.

None of this makes one game harder in an absolute sense. It just means the skills you build in one do not map perfectly onto the other, so do not expect to be an instant expert in the second game just because you finished the first.

Combat also sits differently in each game. Anno 1800 treats naval warfare and land conflict as a supporting system you can mostly avoid if you play peacefully, since the campaign is built around a strong narrative arc rather than constant skirmishing. Pax Romana leans a little further into military expansion as a genuine path to growth, letting a governor who wants to play as more of a conqueror lean into that identity without fighting the game’s own design. If combat-light, builder-focused play matters to you, that is worth factoring in alongside setting and learning curve.

💰 Price and Value Snapshot

Anno 1800 frequently appears in bundles and sales given its age, and the base game plus Complete Edition options give you a lot of flexibility depending on budget. If you decide 1800 is your starting point, the Anno 1800 PC base game is the straightforward way in, and you can always add season passes later once you know which expansion themes you actually want.

Anno 117: Pax Romana launched at a standard $59.99 price point across PC and console, with third-party key retailers occasionally undercutting that. It has already picked up periodic storefront discounts of 25 to 35 percent within its first year, so patience around a sale is realistic even for a newer release.

In pure value-per-hour terms, 1800 currently wins simply because of its content volume relative to price, especially if you catch a bundle sale. Pax Romana is the better bet if you want a game whose meta is still being written and whose price will likely soften further as its own post-launch content rolls out.

If budget is the main constraint rather than content volume, buying just the Anno 1800 base game and holding off on any season pass is a perfectly sound way in. You get the full core city-builder experience, and you can decide later, once you know your own preferences, whether Sunken Treasures or Docklands or any other expansion theme is worth adding. The same patience applies to Pax Romana: waiting for its first proper storewide sale rather than buying at launch price is a reasonable move for a newcomer who is not yet certain the setting will land for them.

🎯 Start Here If: A Decision Framework

If you love slow, layered optimisation and want a game with a long tail of expansions to grow into over a year or more, start with 1800. Read our full Anno 1800 review first if you want the complete picture before committing.

If you are newer to city builders generally and want a gentler on-ramp with a shorter but still satisfying content loop, start with Pax Romana. Its flatter early population curve and choice-driven governance systems are easier to hold in your head on day one.

If you mostly care about co-op with friends, Pax Romana is the clearer pick today, since its drop-in multiplayer across campaign and endless modes is built into the base experience rather than layered on separately.

If you are playing primarily on console and want the smoothest controller experience from the first hour, lean towards Pax Romana as well, since it was designed for pad and mouse in parallel rather than adapted afterwards. Whichever you choose, treat it as an entry point rather than a final verdict: plenty of players end up owning both once they know which flavour of empire-building they prefer.