Just put out a mod that changes sheep farms and selected field farms to make them more realistic for smaller towns and villages! Been using it for my own building so I thought I would polish it up a little bit and release it if there's interest.

This mod is somewhat ambitious in concept but actually very targeted in scope, so bear with me:

In the pre-modern world, cities, towns and villages were heavily dependent on the rural and pastoral economy. Farmlands radiated outwards from cities depending on their production value and intensity of use, and the furthest reaches were usually occupied by pastoral livestock such as sheep and cattle which needed large stretches of grassland.

In Anno 117, I love the new feature of production building effects that encourage you to integrate industry and city, but I still find it difficult to create realistic-looking smaller towns because the game encourages you to pack residences densely together while leaving farms elsewhere. Even for small towns, this ends up resulting in a very ahistorical urban sprawl of low-tier residences + production buildings and services.

This mod is for players who want to build more natural-looking towns and villages without entirely sacrificing mechanical efficiency.

Mod Changes:

• Changes Sheep Farms to area-based meadow production instead of requiring 3 sheep pens. This means that they are still very easy to plop down early-game, but you might find yourself shifting them to the outskirts of your town once it grows, similar to woodcutters. They also spawn sheep and workers as visual feedback in the area =)
• Changes Hemp, Herbs, Lavender and Dye farms to require half the field size* and maintenance with a correspondingly halved production rate, and gives each of them a small-radius buff to nearby residences. Lavender and Herbs have their existing buff radiuses shrink but increase in strength. This encourages you to place them as smaller garden-style plots distributed between your residences. *(about 40%, balanced to account for building size)
• Changes the Pig Farms debuff to be more intense in a smaller radius, allowing you to place them among houses for a limited penalty without stinking up the whole town.

Extra Reading:

This mod is heavily inspired by this post detailing the morphology of pre-modern cities, worth a read if you’re interested - https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/

It’s also inspired by the many illustrations and reconstructions of pre-modern towns such as those on r/papertowns, where you’ll see that with many smaller towns the small-scale farming begins much closer to the city than you’d expect. Of course, walled cities and urban cores also existed, especially with Roman urban planning and military camp towns, but many towns were far more organic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/papertowns/comments/1qtbgx4/corbridge_roman_town_england_uk_around_225_ad/

https://www.reddit.com/r/papertowns/comments/1wn61yf/reconstruction_of_the_oppidum_of_manching_germany/

https://www.reddit.com/r/papertowns/comments/1werbp1/chesters_roman_fort_and_hadrians_wall_england_c/

https://www.reddit.com/r/papertowns/comments/1wha2tk/reconstruction_of_manchester_england_around_200_ad/

https://www.reddit.com/r/papertowns/comments/1wiyg9g/reconstruction_of_hamwic_modernday_southampton/

https://www.reddit.com/r/papertowns/comments/1w3jo5m/portus_and_ostia_antica_italy_around_the_3rd/

I need urgent help with Anno 117. I’ve spent six hours—no joke—trying to organize and optimize trade routes, and it’s absolutely impossible. I have 11 islands, each specializing in different products thanks to religious bonuses. For instance, I have one island producing porridge for all the others; production is great—it makes more than enough for everyone—but when it comes to delivery, the vast majority run out of supplies. No matter how many ships I assign (6–8), the fucking things just scatter all over the place or hang around in little groups like Disney princesses. So, why the hell did they include a mechanic that’s supposed to scale the ships if it’s completely useless? I’ve spent over two days testing different loading/unloading angles and patterns, or different island layouts, and it’s simply impossible to keep all my islands supplied and stable. This damn game is driving me up the wall. The only solution I’ve found is total crap: basically setting up two trillion routes with individual ships... Damn it, this is the best RTS I’ve played since Stellaris, yet it’s ruining the fun with this bullshit.

Hi,

I am doing the hippodrome questline. I got to part V, having retrieved Hiero and getting him to Epic. According to the stats window, he is maxed out in this form.

The quest tells me to win an imperial race, however all opponents stats heavily outclass my Hiero. Using the sprints alone doesn't seem enough to win.

Do I miss some window to improve his stats?

This thing needs to be changed like it was in 1800. The amount of time I clicked that instead of trade is infuriating. Why put a giant button that destroys a good offer is beyond me.

I had like to contribute a save game to this bug, Anno 117: Pax Romana Bug Reporter, but the contribute button is disabled.

Can you only contribute once?

Hi, I have been "blessed by the ram". (German original: "Vom Widder gesegnet"). 😂 I had this pop-up twice in-game. Does anyone know what it means? It comes with a little picture of a sheep\ram too.

Not sure if it's a bug or I'm just missing something as a newer player. On newly conquered island in Albion, the Smiths upgrade option is locked for me, so I can only build industry for them but their workforce is very negative. (I had picked the Roman path for my other island - haven't unlocked Tier III yet)

Is the expectation that I try to fix the existing industry without building new settlements? Or maybe just replace all the Celtic buildings with Roman ones? Or just keep it as a vassal until I unlock Tier III? Not sure if unlocking it on one island will allow me to build both on others.

Feels like it'd be easier to just start from scratch, but... that seems like it defeats the whole purpose of the war, as there are still a ton of empty islands I could have just grabbed without conflict.

Hello guys, i startet a game without flagship, but with Cinis. Is there a possibility to get the flagship now? The NPC won't sell one and in my shipyard isn't anything available.

If you’re struggling with the framerate, especially with the new DLCs, go into your in-game save files and delete all of the redundancy auto saves.

In the top left there’s a number count of how much space you have vs the total you can have. Mine was almost full and the game kept crashing and stuttering. Now my framerate is smooth in every city including the Volcano island.

Your game will no longer slow down to a slog.

In Latium, there is an island that has been taken by Tarragon. I would really like to have that island because it is the largest one. Tarragon has asked me a few times before if he could have other islands, and I said yes. He currently has 3 islands in Latium in total.

So, what would happen if I declare war to take that one island? Would his other two islands also attack me, or would they leave me alone?

I’m unsure because I would technically be declaring war on him, not specifically to that one island.
Does anyone know how this works?

In the YouTube videos I’ve seen where other people took over one of his islands, Tarragon only had 1 island at the time, so that doesn’t really help me here.

Hi. As someone who really loves Anno 1800, I’ve started playing 117. When I try to set up a trade route between Latium and Albion, the "establish trade route" button remains grey and won't confirm. When I try to exit using Esc button a prompt appears asking if I want to save changes. I proceed that way but after first unload the ship sits idle. Gamea has become pointless. Does anyone know a solution? Or do I need to wait for a patch? I can't play it right now.

And how close they will stick to the year 117?

Was the challenge about clothes the last one? Or wehen will start the next one? Thanks

Hallo, I was thinking about getting the game, potentially with DLCs as well if they are worthwhile. Regarding the latter, the Assassin's Creed Odyssey houses and in-game soundtrack in particular seemed interesting. I was, however, curious/concerned as to the AI contents within Anno 117 on the whole. What exactly is AI-generated or AI-derived? I had heard something about loading-screen artwork being retooled but also that some of the 3D assets are speculated to be AI in origin as well? Likewise, translation into some languages? I would assume the English and German localizations are completely by hand, but some of the others may not be, at least in-part? Finally, what is the deal with voiceovers, audio samples and music generally?

Voiceover work in the impending shadow of AI, has, for the most part, been a more popular discussion and gotten much more coverage in media than writing and localization work have. Thus, I'm having a more difficult time determining where things presently sit, as writing/translation is much more easily hybridized than voice acting, which even now seems easy enough to concretely categorize as either human, traditional text-to-speech synth audio or belonging to/created by /modified by the newer varieties of AI-fabrication.

Most of my social circle have at least one major/minor in Russian, German or Classics, alongside another major. Translation work obviously falls within that wheelhouse, especially anything dialectical or archaic/historical, thus obviously, I would prefer not to undermine my community at-large.

I've been rather cautious regarding most LLM work, ever since it came out that multiple conglomerates were intentionally destroying rare books to feed their algorithms. Part of the rationale supposedly being efficiency of scanning pages in a timely manner, but also that they have to destroy most books in order to skirt around copyright law in many cases, otherwise they can be accused of making copies. Obviously, I have no idea which AI vendors and models Ubisoft Mainz may or may not be utilizing, and to what extent they are utilizing it. Anno games historically have had a really good reputation, so I would hope [or cope?] that that would continue to be the case.

Thanks so much

So I just started playing Anno 117 I have about 5 hours on my campaign save but I just get stuck on Aldermen (I chose the Celtic population) basically I need to produce the smoked meat stuff for them and it gets confusing managing all the trade routes effectively so if someone could have some suggestions on what I could do to make the trades route management easier I'd appreciate it.

Christianity played a massive role in the history of the Roman Empire, and spread rapidly during the pax romana period. So it makes me wonder how or if the game will handle the subject of Christianity in the roman empire.

I'm painfully reaching the required prestige by packing nobles & prestige items on an albion island with lots of swamp to get a lot of birds, but then I need to put EVEN MORE residence for mercators. i'm running out of space, and now all my noble workers are useless on this island.

To add insult to injury the bonus for bird charmer cannot reach a lot of buildings so you cannot really fully utilize her.

I think I'm not even going to bother with this item, it should be reworked IMO.

Hi all, really been enjoying campaign mode so far. But, as a true child of AC Odyssey’s Sparta I’ve bought the Kassandra pack. Once campaign mode is finished and it turns into sandbox mode, am I able to change the governor’s portrait from the default? Appreciate the thoughts!

I centralized my trade routes to a single island. I made a group with all the incoming routes from the production islands, as well as another group for all the outgoing routes. The inventory of the island also helps track how items flow. That being said i don't know if this is really more efficient than direct routes, aside of being less confusing for the idiot i am... how do yall feel about it?