Your population is always demanding something new: food, clothes, public buildings, … what do you get from it? Why fulfil all these demands?

Well, alright, because it’s part of the core gameplay-loop of course; but also cause each need you fulfil gives you something in return: citizens pay more taxes, have a lower chance of setting their own houses on fire or are simply happier and less prone to rebel against your glorious governorship.

These bonuses of needs and – as you’ll soon see – also buildings we call “Attributes”.

In today’s DevBlog we will take a look at how we handle these attributes in Anno 117: Pax Romana and how we spice it up with a new little puzzle system.

If you haven’t watched our livestream on the topic, we also recommend to check it out here.

Attributes General

Anno veterans know: attributes are nothing entirely new, things like income, happiness or population have already been a part of past Anno’s and picking which needs to fulfil first and which additional happiness needs (Anno 1800) to fulfil for bonuses are a part of progression strategy.

In Anno 117: Pax Romana, attributes are values provided by different buildings, but to large parts by residences and are primarily increased by fulfilling their needs. Let’s use an example and reference the topic of “Optional Needs” which we have discussed in the previous DevBlog.

Providing your Tier 1 residents with Fish (+1 Population, +1 Income), Tunics (+2 Income) and access to a Market (+1 Population, +1 Income) means all residences supplied this way give you +2 Population and +4 income total (and the residence is now upgradeable).

If you provide them with Porridge (+2 Population), Pileus (hats) (+1 Income, +1 Happiness) and access to a Tavern (+1 Population, +1 Happiness) on top, each residence will provide you with the total following attribute values: +5 Population, +5 Income, +2 Happiness.

(Please note: as we are still very much in development, these and any other balancing values mentioned throughout this blog might still change.)

You can check which kind of attributes each residence is currently providing for you and each respective island directly via the object menu of the building.

It’s not just happiness, income and population, though: we also include fire safety, health and some others (that are related to features we haven’t talked about yet) in this attribute group. Having such a wide range of different attributes and linking them to the needs system means, that we have more options to work with for the needs – and you get a larger number of choices to fulfil the needs that make the most sense for your playstyle or the island’s current situation.

We also want to provide more overall visibility on your islands’ “values” , and therefore now list all these attributes and the source of e.g. the -100 fire safety points in detail in a dedicated bar at the top of the screen. This will make it much clearer to you what’s contributing to the positive or negative value and will help you address e.g. the low fire safety by moving buildings or adding new ones.

Let’s take a closer look at what has an impact on said attributes.

Attributes Details

Of course, needs are something we have already touched on in far more detail in our DevBlog on “Optional Needs”. We highly recommend checking out how needs are handled now in Anno 117: Pax Romana and how we increase your flexibility in regard to with which types of production chains you want to engage with, how fast and where you want to expand to and how this helps you setting your own level of game complexity.

Fulfilling needs plays the main role in how you make money and increase your population: all attribute values a residence provides are dependent on the needs they are supplied with. Higher-level needs also provide higher attribute values, both for fulfilled needs and as buffs (if they’re buildings – see the “Building Buffs” section below).

We always try to link the attributes of a need narratively to the object in question, so that soap – besides increasing your income – also increases the health attributes of the residences supplied.

We also differentiate between two major different layers for the attributes: island values and global values.

An island value impacts island-related features like incidents (fire safety, health, happiness) or workforce, while global values (like province-wide population) unlock new buildings and needs. Income of course also is a global value that can be accessed from any province or island.

Finally, on the topic of calculation, attributes are calculated with decimals and then summed up over the island (e.g. 10 houses with 10% fulfilment provide 10×0,1=1 income), so you’re not losing out on partial values. We’re only rounding numbers for displaying it in the UI, meaning, an income of 1,1 provides 66 money per hour, not 60.

While workforce is linked to your population (or rather: the population attribute of a residence), it’s calculated via a workforce factor that’s also displayed in-game: not every citizen is a worker.

Building Buffs

But wait, we basically only talked about the impact of needs on the attributes of your residences. However, those aren’t the only things that have an impact on your attributes. Let’s talk about “building buffs”.

At the core, this also isn’t something entirely new, since e.g. a fire station already existed in Anno 1800. It increases the fire safety in its vicinity and helps should any fires break out after all. This principle exists the same way in Anno 117: Pax Romana, but we’re now providing more visibility on the fire chance in your city: In the aforementioned attributes bar at the top, you can see how high the fire safety of your island is, which buildings have a positive and which have a negative impact.

The fire station (or Vigiles in Anno 117: Pax Romana), therefore is a buff building.

Similarly, a public service building essentially also provides a buff to residences within its area: if it’s a residence need, it counts towards its fulfilment and gives attributes. If it’s not a need, it still provides additional attributes to the affected residence (and other buildings in its radius)  in the form of a status effect.

What’s new in Anno 117: Pax Romana, however, is that production buildings now also provide buffs (and debuffs) to buildings in their vicinity.

Let’s use the bakery for this example: Within a certain radius around it, the bakery provides a buff of +2 income and a debuff of -2 fire safety to all buildings. This leaves you with the interesting choice of where you want to want to place it: somewhere outside where the reduced fire safety may only impact a few other production buildings? Or in the city to make the most of its income buff?

Other production buildings similarly come with a range of buffs and debuffs which can greatly impact your island attributes. The intention here is to give you something else to puzzle with within your cities and to further home in on the attributes that you need most.

This buff is always applied to all buildings within its radius, which you can already see while constructing the building in question:

As mentioned earlier already, we try to tie the attributes narratively to the object they’re originating from, and anything with an open fire naturally is a risk for any city. Please be careful.

These buffs are non-stackable, meaning that the hat maker, for example,  will only give residences +1 income, multiple hatmakers in the vicinity do not provide the income buffs multiple times

It’s also important to note that the building in questions needs to be functional (e.g. neither damaged/destroyed nor paused) to apply the buff – and production buildings have a productivity threshold which decides if the (de)buff is applied or not.

And finally, to answer a question from previous week’s livestream: Supplying the need to a residence (e.g. hats, to receive +1  income and +1 happiness) and the residence being in vicinity to the production building (+1 income) count as two separate buffs, meaning, the result here would be +2 income and +1 happiness.

Outro

This concludes our two blogs on the topic of Needs and Attributes, which essentially are an evolution of the systems our veterans know from previous Anno games. The Building Buffs are a new feature, which we hope has an impact on your city building strategies.

The Needs Attributes are also closely tied to for example incidents (fire safety, health, happiness) and ways to reduce the chance of them happening, workforce and its relationship to your military (ships require workforce to be built) and some more features which we will talk about in the coming months.

To summarise, our goals are more choice for you which needs to fulfil, greater transparency on the different island attributes and more ways to influence said attributes if you want to get the most out of your cities and production chains.

We’d love to read your comments on these changes and are also happy to answer any further questions you might have on the topic. Leave them in the comment section!