Tag: Anno 117

Union Update: Recapping a busy February

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

We have a packed Union Update with news for you today, so, grab some coffee or some posca and read on.

First: As some of you noticed, we currently have some issues here on the website with the login and comment feature specifically. We’re working on a resolution and hope to soon discuss Anno with you in the comment section again.

Beta sign-up and playtests

A few weeks ago we announced that we’ll be having beta tests later this year and opened registrations. You can still sign up for those playtests by following this link .

Since we have received some questions since: No, don’t worry, invites haven’t been sent yet. These beta playtests still lie a bit further in the future – you can be sure that we’ll let you know both here and across all our other channels as soon as invites have been sent (just so you know when to check your inbox).

 

Talking about playtests: As mentioned previously, we have already done multiple smaller scale focus tests and diary studies for Anno 117: Pax Romana in the past. These are organized in collaboration with the Ubisoft User Research Labs who are organising similar smaller-scale playtests for all Ubisoft games. We tend to look for a variety of player profiles for those tests and are organizing tests with different focuses. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, you can register here.
Important: This registration does not guarantee you access to any such future playtests but merely adds you to a “pool” of people that the User Research Lab may select candidates from for future playtests.

IGN Fan Fest

For those of you who missed, Anno 117: Pax Romana was at IGN Fan Fest last week! Manuel Reinher, our Creative Director, presented a new feature that’ll be part of Anno 117: Pax Romana – modular ships. We’ve already seen much conversation about this on Reddit and Discord, so feel free to share your speculations and thoughts about it there as well!

YouTube

YouTube has been deactivated. Do you accept the use of cookies to display and allow you to watch the video content?
Set Cookies

I acceppt Cookies

Devblogs

After our very obvious hint about diagonal roads back in January, last week we published the first DevBlog dedicated to the road system in Anno 117: Pax Romana, in which we give an overview of what changed from Anno 1800 and what that means for your gameplay experience.

If you like the DevBlog, then we’ve got great news for you! In the next few weeks and months, more DevBlogs will be published here on the Anno Union: the second blog on the road system topic, where we’ll dive deeper into the technical details and the challenges of the new road system; a devblog fully dedicated to the new modular ships feature, to follow up on the IGN Fan Fest showcase; another devblog dedicated to game design, and much more! So, watch this space if you don’t want to miss out on super detailed blogs on what’s going on behind the scenes here at Ubisoft Mainz.

What about modding?

From Anno 1800, we already know very well: some of you love to create and use mods. In fact, the Anno 1800 modding community saw a fantastic increase over the years, creating some absolutely fantastic, creative mods as well as a bunch of useful quality-of-life pieces. We’re very much aware of their contribution to the Anno 1800 community as a whole, and it was therefore something that we were happy to support in 2023 with official mod support and the collaboration with mod.io.

For that reason, we also want to provide mod support for Anno 117: Pax Romana as early as possible.
For release, we can confirm that a mod loader will already be integrated into the game.

Additionally, our colleague Jakob is happy to help you with information to adjust community tools to changed data formats.

 

There are more ideas and things we want to do but that’s not something we are ready to discuss yet. For now, it was important to us to assure our (modding-)community that modding support is very much on our radar for Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Island Contest

Annoholics, we have a winner! As you may have already guessed from our social post: Congratulations to Logan!  Your design will now become an actual island in Anno 117: Pax Romana and we’re looking forward to sharing updates on its progress with you in the coming months.

As usual, we would of course also like to thank you all for participating in this contest – which quickly became the most popular one of the three, with more than 140 valid entries! The team, especially Level Art, was super impressed by your creativity during the selection process: selecting only 5 entries was a hard task. We’ve put together a collage with all your entries (if yours is missing, apologies: they were A LOT and some of them might have been accidentally missed from this image).

Governor Edition Voting

As you might have guessed from our latest social posts and news, there will be a Collector’s Edition for Anno 117: Pax Romana – the “Governor Edition”. A couple of weeks ago we’ve asked you to vote for your favourite design for the case and the artbook cover of the Governor Edition. The voting was a very close one – today, we share the results here on the Anno Union with you all:

DevBlog: All roads lead to Anno

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

“The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.”

– Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Very few things in an Anno game would function without roads: they connect all the player’s buildings on an island, starting at the harbour and connecting lonely woodcutters, houses in the towns and every other little production outpost.

They enable the transportation of goods and visualize the delivery time and distance of said goods via transportation feedback units with carts or wagons. They play a key role in the city planning for players and help organize the different parts of an island.

And, lastly, all kinds of other feedback units (i.e. pedestrians, animals, etc.) spawn on them as well and make the world look livelier and more believable.

 

Importantly: They are sticking to the grid like everything else in the game. But… what if we expanded your options in the grid for Anno 117: Pax Romana?

In our two-part series on the Anno grid and roads, we first give you an overview of what changed and what that means for your gameplay experience. In the second blog we’ll dive deeper into the “how” and “why”, the technical details and challenges we faced in making this happen.

Roads in Anno 117: Pax Romana

To be perfectly honest with you, this was not the first time we thought about breaking up the usual 90° angle grid for Anno. Each time we ran into issues, felt that the solution would not quite live up to what we thought was important to Anno and/or decided that our time was better spent on other features, adding more value to the game and for our players. After all, one does not simply rework the Anno grid system.

Until now!

In Anno 117: Pax Romana the grid is reworked with additional functionality to allow for 45° angles of roads and buildings. This does help making both streets and anything connected to them look significantly more organic, and can certainly change up the look and feel of both building your cities and setting up your production chains.

 

We have also put work in making corners and street connections look smoother, creating automatically smooth curves instead of sharp corners. The streets also automatically adjust and straighten when buildings are placed near them (e.g. when players place a house directly in the corner in order to waste as little space as possible space) for a more appealing look.

As Anno 1800 veterans, you can otherwise expect similar behaviour as you’re used to: roads are adjusting to the terrain elevation, they’re creating bridges when you draw them over a river and change to a pier-style version when built on the coast. You can also expect different road types, with better versions costing more but providing some benefits.

A look under the hood

That was a VERY quick overview but how are roads working now, from a design point of view? Let’s get into the technical details with the support from Nicolas from Game Design, Christian and Johannes from Gameplay Programming, Tim from 3D Programming and David from Art.

The grid in Anno 117: Pax Romana is made of single tiles which are further divided into 4 sub-tiles, while Anno 1800 only had single tiles. This was a necessary change to allow for diagonal building, since we can now make any objects you place also correctly fit into the grid diagonally, see below:

Isn’t this now just much better looking than the zigzag from before? See below for a direct comparison when building a road from A to B:

Another change to support both diagonal roads and the improved visuals in terms of smooth curves: streets are now graphs, instead of being rendered tile by tile. This essentially allows us to render the entire section from one node to the next (see image below) which does make it look more coherent and takes any intersections into consideration.

One downside of this change is that it’s not possible anymore to build a road that covers exactly one grid tile. A road will always have to be at least two grid tiles long.

As a result of these changes and the increased number of ways roads can intersect, we couldn’t use the same way we handled road tiles on Art and rendering side in Anno 1800 where each possibility had its own complete version created by the Art team. Back then, we worked with sets of road tiles like this:

In 45° the number of possible intersections is drastically increased. Calculating that number is actually not trivial, because street intersections are not limited to one tile so they can overlap with other intersections creating something that can lovingly be described as a huge mess.

You remember the sub-tiles of each main tile? Based on them, we decided that Art would create a smaller subset of pieces which then would be assigned to the correct position (according to context) to form roads based on the code created by the 3D Programming team.

That doesn’t mean that this process is easy – this picture shows quite nicely what’s possible when building multiple pieces, curves and intersections close together – and all of that has to work and look pretty:

Building smoothly

Important for us was that players can switch between the “good old” 4 directions that served the Anno series so well over the last 25 years or all 8 directions we offer you now on the fly: you can enable and disable the option at any time.

This also meant that intuitiveness played an important role when we designed the update to the grid and road system: Despite these new options, our focus was to still make building roads as straightforward and simple as before, where a few clicks connect two points on the island no matter how they are orientated in the grid.

Accordingly, all buildings also automatically align themselves to the placed roads next to them, no matter if they are built in 45° or 90°. You can still manually rotate them to your liking, of course

On that note we’re sure you’ll appreciate another quality-of-life feature that made its way into Anno 117: Pax Romana from Anno 1800’s console version. Hovering with a road in build mode over any building allows you to build a road that surrounds the whole building with just a single click. This way you can quickly have a block of residences surrounded by a road – or a warehouse, like in the example below. Have a look!

And finally, the important question: How does the team prefer to build their cities in Anno 117: Pax Romana? And which approach would they recommend players as default option – using all 8 directions or only the “traditional” 4?

 

Nicolas: “I personally like having different neighbourhoods (different cluster of residences, production) and each one can have different orientation.

I also like to orientate element based on the shape of mountains, coasts and rivers. It creates very dense and optimal clusters and still feel very organic.

One of my favourite aspects is have farm field with various shape. Bye-bye angular farm fields!”

 

Johannes: “I usually play in a manner, where I want to reach my next goal as efficiently as possible – and for me that works best when fully sticking to a 90° angle.

However, it’s a totally different thing when playing multiplayer. My focus then switches away from building efficiently towards building more interestingly looking districts. This takes more time and space but also feels rewarding when I can delight / surprise my multiplayer-partner with the more organic look.”

Outro

As you see: While Anno 117: Pax Romana stays true to the grid (that has become central to the series and makes everyone happy who loves building as efficiently as possible) we did introduce more flexibility on top of what you’re used to. Those came with their own set of challenges during design and development but also new opportunities to change up the visual style of your cities and islands, more freedom to build your islands the way you want. Despite the added complexity through the diagonal option, building roads in this expanded grid feels as intuitive as before.

Other features in the game use a similar functionality to the roads… more on that later. Completely unrelated: Did you know that the historical Romans built a ton of aqueducts?

 

We did mention “challenges” a few times throughout this blog, as well as implications for other parts of the game – more on this in the second part of this DevBlog in the coming weeks.

So, for today: We hope you got a good first idea of what to expect in Anno 117: Pax Romana. If you have any questions on the grid or the topic of roads, don’t hesitate to share them with us!

Union Update: Vote for your favourite Island Design

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

It’s time for the last phase of our third and final Community Contest dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana – voting for your favourite island design!

Back in January, we challenged you to design your very own Latium island and submit your creation for a chance of your design becoming an actual island in Anno 117: Pax Romana. Well, you clearly understood the assignment and sent us SO MANY amazing designs!

We would like to take this moment to thank each and one of you who submitted an entry for the contest, your creativity and attention to details always amazes us. We had an incredibly hard time to only select a handful of them for the voting, there were so many fun designs!

So, after diligently going through all your submissions, the Level Art team has chosen 5 finalists for this contest.

PLEASE NOTE: Entries have been annonymised for the voting. The content has not yet been adjusted to fit the exact realities of the game. That means that any landscape elements, features, buildings etc. mentioned in these designs that have not been confirmed by us are pure speculation by these authors. The winning entry will be adjusted afterwards if necessary.

Click on any of these images to open them in a separate tab if you want to take a closer look.

We know – it’s hard to choose! Once you feel ready, cast your vote by clicking on the button below! Your vote is completely annonymous.

You will have time to vote until March 2nd end-of-day. We cannot wait to see the results of the voting and celebrate the winner.

Thank you all once again for participating in this contest, it’s been amazing to see your engagement and excitement for the game, throughout this.

Anno 117: Pax Romana at the IGN Fan Fest

And, at the very end of this blog, we want to direct attention to Thursday: As part of the IGN Fan Fest, our Creative Director Manuel will also talk about Anno 117 and reveal a new feature.

Tune in on Thursday at 7PM CET/10AM PT for the IGN Fan Fest. The Anno 117: Pax Romana segment will likely start around 8:30PM CET/11:30 AM PT.

Union Update: Beta Registration & Collector’s Edition

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

let us quickly update you on two recent pieces of news!

Register now for beta tests

You can now officially sign up for upcoming beta tests later this year via this website!

We’ll have more information on the exact dates of these tests in the coming months. From all registered players we will randomly draw a certain number of people based on the goals of the tests.

These tests serve to both collect your feedback on the game and its features as well as test performance and stability on all platforms and different kinds of hardware configuration.

The Anno 117: Pax Romana Collectors Edition

Just last week we confirmed with a teaser a question that many of you have already been asking: yes, Anno 117: Pax Romana will receive a Collectors Edition: the “Governor Edition”!

YouTube

YouTube has been deactivated. Do you accept the use of cookies to display and allow you to watch the video content?
Set Cookies

I acceppt Cookies

You can register now via this link to not miss any future news on the Governor Edition. We’ll reveal more on the content of the edition later this year…

 

… but wait, we actually have a little sneak-peak already! In fact, we even need your input!

Right now, until February 21st, you can vote on your favourite design for the Governor Edition’s box, as well as the artbook that’s going to be included in the edition. Follow this link to the poll!

We’re very curious which designs you prefer!

Union Update – January news recap

Posted on by UbiCecce

Hey Anno Community,

While we’re in denial that January is already coming to an end – we’re still finishing up all the chocolate stockpiled during the holidays – we thought to have a small recap of the latest news in this Union Update.

Island design contest

Our third and last contest is up and running, Annoholics! Have you always dreamed to have your very own island design for an Anno game? Well, this is the perfect opportunity for you. In this contest, we challenge you to design an island for the Latium region, in Anno 117: Pax Romana. If you would like to submit your entry for a chance to see your island in the game, check the full rules here.

Since we received some questions on the topic of “group submissions” we updated the rules accordingly: two or more people can work together on a single island design.

An update on the Community Statue

Speaking of contests, we thought it was the perfect time for us to share an update on the Community statue! Last August we announced the winner of our first Community Contest – Design a Statue: the mighty Annocius, the god of the 9, created by HiddenMoon79.

A little disclaimer: this is a work-in-progress “highpoly sculpt” of the statue, it will still get texture and colours.

(Which also answers this recent question from Reddit)

Roads? Where we’re going, we… definitely need roads.

Last week, on a very fitting date – January 17th – we shared a little teaser on our social accounts.

And of course, you all at once spotted that something is different compared to previous Anno games. Diagonal roads! We have seen multiple questions on how the road system will work in Anno 117: Pax Romana but fear not: we have got a dedicated DevBlog coming in the next weeks. In the meantime, without too many spoilers on the topic, we would like to address some of the concerns we read in the comments.  

Q: Is this actual game footage or just part of a scene? 

A: Yes, this is a screenshot taken in-game by Oliver, our Community Developer, who diligently placed those roads for this teaser. We think he did a pretty good job, didn’t he?  

Q: What happened to the Anno grid? Did you get rid of it? 

A: No, we didn’t! For all the efficiency builders our there – do not worry, the grid will still be there in Anno 117: Pax Romana. Our dedicated DevBlog mentioned earlier will explain in detail how the road system works, and which improvements we did to the grid compared to Anno 1800 and previous Anno games. 

A wild Town Crier appears!

Yes, Annoholics! You have seen that right – a wild Town Crier has appeared in Anno 117: Pax Romana! You have already noticed how it recreates the scene from our reveal video, but will you see the Town Crier appear somewhere else? Who knows…

 

 

 

 

 

We hope you enjoyed our quick recap of the latest news, and the little teaser we sprinkled here and there in the past weeks. We’ve got more news coming, together with insightful DevBlogs on the new Anno… so, watch this space!

Community Contest – Design an island for Latium

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hello Anno Community,

It is time for the third and final Community quest dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana – where we ask you to use your creativity and imagination to create something that will make its way into the game.

Your third and final quest

From statue designing to quest writing, you have had quite some fun in the past few months! And we have loved seeing your creativity and imagination being applied to Anno 117: Pax Romana. This time, we challenge you to design an island for Latium, one of the twin provinces under your stewardship. Latium is close to the heart of the empire, a place of luxury and tranquility, covered in wheat and lavender fields. Cypress trees adorn paths and provide much-needed shade during the warm summers. With its beaches, open fields and breathtaking views, this province makes the perfect retreat for the wealthy.

  • General rules:
    • You have time until 9th February to submit your entry
    • Only 1 entry per person is allowed
    • Entries must be submitted to this e-mail address: anno-community@ubisoft.com using the subject “Community Contest: Island”
    • Entries must be digital, i.e. if you did a paper drawing, you will need to scan or photograph it and attach it to your email
    • Entries must not infringe on any copyrights of third parties
    • Entries that have been created using AI tools will be excluded from the contest
    • Two or more people can work together on a single submission

 

  • Island-creation rules:
    • Design a single island for Latium, the Roman-inspired province
    • You can design your island on any medium you prefer (paper drawing, MS Paint scribble, 3D model, etc.,) and anything from a quick sketch to a detailed model is fine
    • Your island should be clearly visible, and its shape must be clearly defined in top-down view
    • The shape of the island should strike a balance between being interesting to plan and build a city in while looking visually appealing. A balance of a central, cohesive space together with more fractured or narrow spaces. Try to use natural elements like the coastline shape, rivers or cliff lines as your tools to define the space.
    • The island should feature at least one large, cohesive space that is suitable to start building a city in. That space should have a connection to a beach.
    • It should feature at least 3 mountainous elements that could believably host mines.
    • The island should have at least 1 river and up to 3 in total. Rivers may branch.
    • The island should use elevation in large, smooth gradients rather than a high frequency of hills. Mountains should believably support this elevation.
    • Forests should be well distributed across the island – in both smaller and larger formations.
    • Clearly mark all these terrain elements such as mountains, hills, as well as beaches and rivers; keep in mind that if something is not marked as a beach, it will be counted as a cliff-side

If you feel the need to add notes, descriptions, gameplay ideas behind your concept – feel free to do so.  

Here is an example of how such an island design could look like, created by one of our Level Artists back in the days for Anno 1800: 

Once the submission time is over, we will review your entries and select our favourite island designs with the help of the Level Art team. The finalists will then be published in the Anno Union, and it will be your turn to decide the winner of the contest by voting for the island that will make its way into the game. Voting will start in late February.

We hope you are as excited as we are for the last Anno 117: Pax Romana contest! Have fun designing your own Anno island – we cannot wait to see what you create this time! In the meantime, for any question feel free to comment or reach out on our social channels listed below.

*We reserve the right to make adjustments to the winning island design for it to fit the Anno 117: Pax Romana level design and balancing.

Union Update: Happy Holidays 2024

Posted on by UbiCecce

Hey Anno Community,

What a year it has been!

Unbeknownst to you, we were all nervously preparing for the announcement of our new project – Anno 117: Pax Romana! Are we good at keeping secrets? YES. Prior to the reveal, whenever we noticed comments in chat during livestreams or full discussions on Discord or Reddit about a “Roman Anno”, we would secretly cheer inside. So, how often do WE think about the Roman Empire? Every. Single. Day.

It was a proud moment for us to see Anno 117: Pax Romana on the big Ubisoft Forward screen back in June, but seeing your reaction felt even more special.

Immortalising your omnipresent hope for a Roman Anno throughout the years, was also a big highlight for us – together with the help of the beloved Town Crier!

YouTube

YouTube has been deactivated. Do you accept the use of cookies to display and allow you to watch the video content?
Set Cookies

I acceppt Cookies

Not too long after the reveal, we jumped into the Community Contests dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana. Seeing your creativity in action was a blast, both with the Statue design and the quest writing. A big shout out to all participants and the winners of the two contests, once again! In January, we’ll have a first look at the Annocius statue for you and will later also update you on the “Weapon from the Stars” quest, when the team has done some more progress on the topic.

Last but not least, during our End of Year stream, we confirmed that Anno 117: Pax Romana will be available on Steam from Day 1! For a more detailed update on the game and what we’re currently working on, you can check out this blog.

2024 also marked the end of development for Anno 1800, with the release of the last three Cosmetic DLCs: we started the year with Steampunk vibes, then sailed through the high seas with some Pirates ornaments, and ended the year with sparkles and unicorns for the End of an Era. We’ve discussed at length how bittersweet this feels in last week’s blog, so you know that this game will always hold a special place in our hearts.

So, without getting too emotional (again), let’s celebrate this special moment with some new Anno 1800 wallpapers to complete your collection! Here you can now find the artworks for the Steampunk Pack, the Pirate Cove Pack, and the End of an Era Pack.

Every end of year, it’s a tradition to go through your Anno 1800 achievements. So, let’s see what has happened since 2019 by updating an old image from the week after release with new numbers – and comparing the two!

 

And then, five and a half years later… look at those numbers!

A look into 2025…

Alright, that was 2024 – what about the next year?

As you might know, good things always come in three – of course we’re talking about the Community Contests dedicated to Anno 117: Pax Romana! So far, you’ve excelled at the tasks you were given, but will you be up for the third and final one? To give you a tiny hint… the screenshots we recently shared might be a good inspiration! The live date for this contest is still not final, but we’re planning for early 2025, around January. Therefore, watch this space if you don’t want to miss out!

We won’t stop there, of course: You can expect many more news on Anno 117: Pax Romana next year. This is when we’ll deep-dive into the game, expect:

  • Many DevBlogs
  • Trailers
  • Livestreams
  • Playtests
  • Events
  • … more?

2025 is going to be a big year for Anno 117: Pax Romana. We know you’re excited to see more of the game and we’re very much looking forward to showing you… everything! More or less 😉

In the meantime, if you haven’t done it yet, don’t forget to wishlist Anno 117: Pax Romana on Ubisoft Connect, Steam, PlayStation and Xbox.

And with that, we’re saying “goodbye for now”: We wish you Happy Holidays and will take a few weeks of rest ourselves as well.

We’ll be back in January and can’t wait for what 2025 will bring.

The Anno Team

Union Update: It’s the “End of an Era” Pack Release Day

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

It’s the End of an Era! – The release day of the “End of an Era” Pack that is. Our newest Cosmetic DLC is available now!

As the name very subtly hints at: This is the very last Cosmetic DLC for Anno 1800, and the very last piece of content we have planned for the game.

Accordingly, the “End of an Era” Pack is all about celebrating Anno 1800, its citizens and you and your achievements: decorate houses with colourful lights, hold festivals of light on your public plazas and invite your people to a show they have never seen before.

Oh, and don’t forget the fireworks!

If you want to have a closer look at the contents of this final Cosmetic DLC, check out last week’s Twitch livestream with Laura and Jannika.

You can also get a detailed look at all the new skins and ornaments and learn about the inspirations for this cosmetic pack in our DevBlog.

 

The “End of an Era” Pack Cosmetic DLC is now available on all platforms for 4,99€ or your regional equivalent.

Creative Festival

Finally, let’s not forget the “Creative Festival” is still ongoing until December 8th! Join other Anno 1800 fans in sharing your best, favourite or simply wildest screenshots of the game using the DLC and CDLC that were released since 2019.

Which ones are your favourites? Share them on any platform (Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Instagram, …) – we’re looking forward to seeing your creations!

Anno 117: Pax Romana Updates

We’ve also published a few updates and news on Anno 117: Pax Romana very recently!

Check out this blog for news on Steam as well as some first screenshots of the regions Latium and Albion! In addition, in the same blog we’re also sharing a more general development update for the game including some of the topics we have been and currently are working on.

Community Spotlight – Advent Calendar

A very short Community Spotlight for today: On Reddit, user announced their video advent calendar for Anno 1800. Every day, you can expect a chill video with some Anno 1800 beauty building footage on their YouTube channel.

We love the idea! Why not head over to their channel and check it out?

DevBlog: Anno 117 Project Update November 2024

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

Not too long ago we’ve released a DevBlog on the first months of our work on Anno 117: Pax Romana, how we tackled starting a new Anno project and creating the vision. If you missed it, you can find the blog here.

 

But how are things looking like on Anno 117: Pax Romana right now, development-wise?

While – as communicated before – you will have to be a little bit more patient until we show you our “baby” in action, we nevertheless want to give you an update on the current state of the development today.

What happened in the last months

Over the last months, we have made very good progress on the game and recently reached an important milestone which, of course, demanded to be properly celebrated with cake.

Having implemented the vast majority of features, with more content being added each milestone, we wanted to put the game in the hands of players once again and organised our largest playtest yet (a one-week diary study) in September.

We very much appreciated the input from all participants who – in this very much still in-progress version with certainly not final balancing – provided us valuable insights into topics like the progression, various UI elements (e.g. trade route setup or the location of the game speed options) and the age-old question of island size.

 

So, what are some of the most recent additions and improvements for Anno 117: Pax Romana?

  • We have made large steps in regard to the islands and terrain, having recently overhauled many of the island designs as well as trees and rock textures and – going by the feedback from the last internal presentation – reached “I want to go there on vacation” territory.
  • Since a few months, there now also are work-in-progress versions of NPCs and the diplomacy system to deal with – no more “I can grab any island I want” situations in the playtests. Time to build more Triremes and protect those trade routes!
  • The life of your citizens has always been an important aspect of Anno, and Anno 117: Pax Romana is no different. Reason enough for our animator to add a completely new set of feedback units (people and animals) to the game. Plus, we went and did some motion-capture! More on this in a future DevBlog.
  • We’ve also made great strides on the topic of controller support, building on the learnings of Anno 1800’s console version. Providing the best experience for each platform without negatively impacting another remains one of our key principles.

Let’s take a look at some islands!

We have just mentioned that we made significant progress on the islands in the past months. So, as a little (early) Christmas present, we’re excited to give you a first small look at the world of Anno 117: Pax Romana with some early screenshots of the two provinces: Latium and Albion!

Keep in mind these screenshots have been taken from a work-in-progress version of the game and do not reflect the final quality of the game.

This is the province of Latium, close to the heart of the Empire: wide open areas, sandy beaches, lavender fields and cliffs to stand on and watch the sunset from.

“We took strong inspirations from the beautiful Amalfi coast and the bay of Naples. Our goal was to create the typical warm and welcoming Anno feeling. A place that delivers on the fantasy of a game set in this era. It’s sunny, you feel a mild breeze – it’s a place where even the rich Romans in ancient times liked to spend their vacations.” – Manuel Reinher, Creative Director

The province of Albion, much further in the north, has its own visual design: rocky landscapes with high cliffs and mountains, marshy areas, fog and rain – a significant change in scenery.

“We wanted to create a striking contrast between the provinces and the mystic Celtic Albion is perfect for that. It’s the most alien place within the Empire. It’s wet, misty, full of marshland – a place far from home where no civilized Roman wants to be. You will face new challenges in this province, but also new exciting opportunities that these wetlands and the local people unlock in your adventure as a governor.” – Manuel Reinher, Creative Director.

 

These are the lands our dear Towncrier wandered through back in June in our reveal trailer (Build it!), as you might remember. We’re sure he would also really, really enjoy wandering through these lands in-game…

Anno 117: Pax Romana on Steam

In further news: We’re pleased to confirm that Anno 117: Pax Romana will be available on Steam from Day 1 when it releases in 2025 together with all other platforms: Ubisoft Connect, the Epic Store, Xbox Series and PlayStation.

Wishlist Anno 117: Pax Romana on Steam now by following this link: Steam Wishlist.

We can’t wait for you to get your hands on the game next year on the platform of your choice!

A look into the future

For the next months we have plenty on our hands, including – of course – the feedback points from the latest playtest, all the while planning our communication for 2025.

There’s work to be done on the character portraits and the quests, but also on the music side of things: it wouldn’t be an Anno game without a fantastic soundtrack!

As mentioned above already, we’re also busy working on the UI elements for the many menus that help you with your tasks , as well as the general user experience, the look and feel for Anno 117: Pax Romana.

And there’s the topic of incidents: it wouldn’t be an Anno game without the occasional fire, for example. How often and in which way these appear and how players can act against them, however, are topics the team is still exploring further.

This topic of course also plays into the general topic of “difficulty”, which we touched on above when we talked about the recent playtest.

We will continue to give you the occasional more general development updates like this in the future and – next year – will be able to show you gameplay and impressions of these topics as well.

Until next time!

Union Update: Results of Narrative Vote & end-of-year stream

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hello Anno Community,

It’s November, going outside is becoming increasingly uncomfortable and 2024 is slooowly nearing its end. Before that, however, here are some updates and announcements from us for the end of the year: Let’s talk about the two previous Community Contests and the upcoming livestream.

Quest Design Contest

We’re excited to announce the winner of the second Community Contest.

You have spoken, and with a small but decisive lead, the “Weapons from the Stars” quest concept (link) took first place! (30% of the votes, followed by In Vino, Veritas with 24%) Clearly, the hunt for special metals to forge something unique for the people of Albion grabbed your attention.

A round of applause to its creator, Nathanael, and a big thank you once more to everyone who sent in their stories for the contest.

 

So, what’s next? – Our colleagues in the Narrative Team will take the winning concept and might start making some adjustments to make it fit the constraints of the game. We’ll also reach out to Nathanael in case of questions or before we would make any bigger changes to the quest structure.

The quest will then be implemented in the coming months to be ready for Anno 117: Pax Romana’s release in 2025.

Statue Contest Update

We also want to use this opportunity to give an update on the first content we held back in summer.

You might remember, “Annocius” by HiddenMoon79 won the community voting. Since then, our Art Team has been working first on a concept and then the 3D model for the in-game statue. The 3D model actually is finalized already, but misses some polishing. We’ll have a screenshot for you in the next Union Update.

End-of-year Livestream

As mentioned in the intro: we are planning one last livestream for the year – both as a way to recap what happened in 2024 as well as to showcase Anno 1800’s final Cosmetic DLC.

Community Developer Oliver is joined by two returning guests for this adventure: Artist Laura and Game Writer Jannika, who both poured their creativity into this last cosmetic pack.

Join us on Thursday, November 28th, at 5PM CET / 8AM PT / 11AM ET over on the Annogame Twitch Channel.