Since the inception of the Anno franchise of city building and economy management games, roads have remained a grid structure, offering players only straight roads with 90-degree turns to deal with as they attempt to raise the heights of their empire. With Anno 117 though, the next installment in the franchise Ubisoft is building, a new type of road is coming: diagonal ones.
The developer had teased the arrival of this feature before, but today it gave a detailed look at this expanded building option.
"In Anno 117: Pax Romana the grid is reworked with additional functionality to allow for 45° angles of roads and buildings," explains the developer. "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."
There won"t be harsh angles for corners like in previous games either, with connections being much better looking now thanks to the game visually smoothing any curves it can for more organic cityscapes. Compared to the zigzag pattern that appeared when placing down diagonal roads before, Anno 117"s roads offer a much better-looking option for players.
The new eight-directional roads that players can place will be a new option in Anno 117, but it won"t be the only one. Fans will be able to switch between the classic four-directional roads and the new toolset at any point when playing, making for dynamic city planning.
"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," the developer explains further. "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."
Anno 117: Pax Romana is coming out on Steam, Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 platforms sometime in 2025. Beta registrations are now open across all platforms too.