How to improve FPS in Anno 117: Pax Romana (PC)
Anno 117: Pax Romana is the latest entry in Ubisoft/Blue Byte's legendary city-building and economic management saga, this time set in Ancient Rome, with two playable regions (a Mediterranean Latium and a more Nordic Albion) and the franchise's trademark: cities that grow building by building, interdependent production chains, sea trade routes, and thousands of citizens individually simulated reacting to taxes, needs, and events. Graphically the game cares a lot about close-up detail (packed markets, ornate villas, ports with ships coming and going), but the real performance challenge, as in the whole Anno saga, appears over the course of a playthrough: the more districts, citizens, and trade empires pile up on the map, the more work the CPU has to do simulating economy, routes, and population, long before the GPU becomes the limiting factor.
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Calculations based on our FPS model combined with the % gain of each setting (measured in public benchmarks).
1. Quick wins (no visual loss)
Start here. Each one adds a little, but together they give +37% free FPS.
Population Density/Citizen Detail
Controls how many individual citizens are rendered moving through the streets instead of using simplified representations at a distance. In large cities with thousands of inhabitants, it's one of the settings that costs the most CPU and GPU at once.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic shadows from hundreds of buildings, columns, and vegetation in a dense city are constantly recalculated when zooming or rotating the camera, a cost that grows with every new district built.
Vegetation/Foliage Density
The forests, crops, and ornamental gardens surrounding each city add a lot of background geometry; on maps with several fully developed islands or regions this setting weighs more than it appears at first glance.
Draw Distance
Reduces how far the terrain and distant buildings are rendered at full detail, something that in a management game with the camera usually pulled back is rarely noticed without zooming in deliberately.
Anti-Aliasing (TAA)
Temporal smoothing cleans up the edges of rooftops and streets nicely in the typical aerial management view, but at its highest level adds a sampling cost that doesn't always pay off at that camera distance.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Texture Quality
The facade, marble, and rooftop textures are an important part of the game's Roman visual identity, and their cost falls mostly on VRAM rather than raw compute power.
Water Quality/Reflections
Reflections of the Mediterranean Sea and rivers, with trade ships constantly sailing between ports, are a GPU cost that grows with the number of active trade routes on the map.
Post-Processing/Ambient Occlusion
Reinforces the visual contact between buildings, columns, and streets, but at its maximum level doubles the cost without a proportional improvement in the typical, camera-distant management view.
Simulation Speed/Tick Rate (match options menu)
It's not a graphics setting, but in very advanced playthroughs reducing simulation speed or managing fewer active islands at once noticeably eases the CPU load generated by calculating trade routes and economic AI.
Object/Building Detail (LOD)
Determines the geometric detail level of buildings based on camera distance; in large cities with hundreds of structures, the accumulated impact is considerable.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
AMD FSR
+15% FPSAnno 117 uses a proprietary Ubisoft/Blue Byte engine, not Unreal Engine, so support for AI upscaling is less predictable than in other recent titles; if the game includes FSR, the expected gain in a management title with a pulled-back camera is moderate compared to first-person shooters or open-world games.
NVIDIA DLSS
+18% FPSIf the game integrates DLSS, its greatest usefulness would be at 1440p/4K resolutions to offset load spikes in highly developed cities, though it's worth checking the game's graphics menu to confirm its exact availability in your version.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Prioritize a mid-range GPU over a high-end one if your budget is limited: in Anno 117 the real performance ceiling is usually set by the CPU in advanced playthroughs, not raw graphics power.
- •If your card supports DLSS and the game includes it, enable it in Quality mode at 1440p/4K to free up margin in panoramic views of large cities with lots of water reflections.
- •Keep Game Ready drivers updated; strategy/management games with proprietary engines usually receive specific optimization profiles after launch and the first major patches.
AMD
- •Invest in a CPU with strong per-core performance before the GPU: Anno 117's simulation of population, trade routes, and economic AI depends far more on the processor than on graphical rendering.
- •If the game includes FSR, enable it in Quality mode as an additional resource at high resolutions, though don't expect it to fix a CPU-caused performance drop in advanced playthroughs on its own.
- •Check that Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) is enabled in the BIOS; it can bring a measurable improvement in management games with a lot of city geometry on screen.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an SSD and make sure you have at least 16GB of RAM, ideally 32GB for long playthroughs with several large cities: Anno games accumulate a lot of simulation state in memory as the playthrough progresses.
- •In very advanced playthroughs, if you notice general slowdown that doesn't improve by lowering graphics settings, it's a sign the bottleneck is in the CPU processing trade routes and economy, not the graphics card.
- •Close background applications (browsers with many tabs, launchers, overlays) during long management sessions, since the Anno saga is especially sensitive to memory and available CPU cycles as playthrough hours add up.
5. Known game issues
Progressive slowdown in very advanced playthroughs
With several large cities, extensive trade empires, and thousands of simulated citizens, it's common for overall smoothness to drop over the course of a playthrough, a known pattern across the whole Anno saga where accumulated economic simulation weighs more than the rendering itself.
CPU spikes when recalculating trade routes
Adding or modifying complex sea trade routes, especially with many stops or simultaneous ships, can generate occasional CPU usage spikes while the game recalculates optimal logistics, translating into brief micro-hitches.
High memory usage in long-duration playthroughs
Some players report growing RAM consumption as districts, routes, and simulation data accumulate in many-hour playthroughs, which can lead to hitches if the system doesn't have enough memory headroom.
6. Frequently asked questions
Is Anno 117: Pax Romana more CPU- or GPU-demanding?▾
What setting gives the most FPS with the least visual loss?▾
Does it have DLSS, FSR, or XeSS?▾
Why does the game get worse the further I progress in a playthrough?▾
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Calculate FPS for Anno 117: Pax Romana →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →