I've fallen down the Anno 117: Pax Romana rabbit hole this year, despite the negative buzz around it. Steam reviews and the Reddit consensus hold that 117 is empty, dull, and generally just less than its predecessor, Anno 1800. I can sort of see why. Quite a few elements seem like they're waiting for future add-ons to come alive and wake them up. But I've enjoyed myself thoroughly, so when I saw the "mostly negative" reviews for Anno 117's first big DLC, Prophecies of Ash, I figured I'd give it a try, despite the haters. I'm glad I did. An inaugural bit of DLC can't fix every problem. But it solves some pretty big ones, and throws a welcome wrench into the usual flow of city building.

In the normal, volcano-less way of things, you reach the third population tier in Latium and just kind of keep going. That's when the Equites, or the Roman version of the upper-middle class, (if you're old enough to remember a time when such a class existed) join your population. These folks demand things you can't produce normally, like cheese, and so send you out to Albion to produce concrete and grapes and theatrical productions. It's a more complicated step in the logistics chain of building a major city, but it's also just another step in the logistics chain of building a new city. You get the Patricians (the rich folks) to live in your city after that and carry on with even more complicated problem solving.

That's still largely the process in the Prophecies of Ash DLC, but the new additions instantly shake things up and add some much-needed structure for the mid-game. None of the new stuff starts happening until you have 500 Equites calling your islands home, which either gives you incentive to make your population bigger and happier quickly, or lets you........

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