ARA: History Untold Catch-All

Well, this game released today and it seems to want to make a splash, so here's a thread. Hot take? Fancy Civ for micromanagers.

Let us know what you think. I'm still in the tutorial and I have this weird sensation of *deliberation* in playing the game. There's a lot going on.

I am going to wait a bit on this one. Too rich for my blood at this point. I have spent way too much money on games this past summer.

Yep. Not sure about it yet myself. If they don't take the advice to make the UI and notifications better, they could end up with a game that - as per some reviews - bogs down in busywork mid-way through. But my bet was on their commitment to making something to really advance the genre, and the systems I've seen so far are very interesting and require a lot of thought.

Got a refund. It doesn't run really well, stutters and just not smooth and I'm on a high end PC.

Gonna wait for a deep deep sale. No marketing for this thing, so I doubt it will be long.

Huh. I'm not seeing the stuttering. I did have one song that seemed to stutter but that's it. 41 turns in. They are patching, next one expected this coming week I think.

I find the gameplay to be absorbing and decently complex, and it definitely has that "one more turn" aspect that has been missing from Civ games for me for, I dunno, 20 years or so. Having a good time with it.

However, there are a ton of fiddly details to be checked each turn. The UI makes that easi-ER, but not simple. Another thing they should be working on. For example... Each region is broken up into a number of districts, some with special resources, some not. Production facilities can be built in each district - and each production facility can make use of goods produced at workshops and "slotted in" to enhance production. These goods are gated by technologies, and you have to choose which ones to develop, using various resources and also if you like adding to those to accelerate them. So there is a production chain economy that's much more than "wood is used for buildings" in other games.

I'm enjoying it, but I totally get that others may have issues I am not seeing yet.

Yeah, as I mentioned in my initial impressions after 7 hours, it's definitely not for everyone. Players have to enjoy the management part of it and not miss the lack of tactical combat. I'm reminded of our very own Space Game Junkie and his undying hatred of the Endless Space games!

As for me, as I mentioned in that preview, I kind of feel like Ara was designed expressly for me.

Hmm. I finished a practice game last week:

- The design is unique with interesting ideas — I see it as a production chain game first and a 4X second.
- But the execution needs more work — it feels several UI/QoL and balance patches away from achieving its potential.
- I may return after a few updates.

Like Robear, I enjoy what the game is trying to do and it is satisfying to fiddle with my cities and industries. But as the game progresses, the empire grows, and more goods become important, managing them becomes a hassle with the current UI. For example:

- Where are all the buildings that consume X input?
- Where are all the buildings that produce Y?
- Where are all the buildings where I could slot Z?

This also affects pacing: each individual turn can become fiddly if I need to give build orders in multiple cities.

Then there are the variables that need to be tweaked. To pick one example, the city cap is fine for the early game but too low as the game progresses:

- New government types increase the city cap, but max out early on.
- The default map size is too big for the default number of civs.
- Over time the game will knock out civs at the bottom of the score chart. This would free up their land for the surviving civs to expand ... except the city cap is too low.
- And there is no "vassalise cities" or "vassalise civs" option to expand without falling foul of the cap.
- Net result, swathes of the map end up uninhabited.

The good news is, these issues are fixable with patches.

BTW, the game is available on Game Pass (which is how I played it). So, quite accessible without shelling out on Steam.

You have nailed pretty much every single reservation I have about the game.

For me, though, I am so in love with the way this game plays as a 4X that I am wading through all that stuff and still playing. I confess, I'm pretty sure that makes me an outlier.

BTW, I agree with that post SO much that I copied it to the official forums, where the devs appear to be actually paying attention. Left your identity out of it. Hope you don't mind! If so I'll yoink it.

I really think this game has a lot of potential, but yes, I'm going to go slowly with it and see how they adjust the game. Hopefully they don't regard it as feature-complete, and are able to make changes to the systems. If they do that, the hybrid gameplay will really shine, I expect.

Thanks, BadKen, glad you found my thoughts interesting! Yes, more than happy for you to share. I'll post the link to a tidied-up version once I post that.

No shame about loving the game, warts and all. I know how that feels!

Agreed, Robear. I think there's a lot of potential should the devs address these issues.

I've probably got around 12+ hours in on the XBG version. Still muddling my way through. Here are my thoughts based on my experience so far.

A playthrough is really influenced by starting position in turn having increased consequences because of lower city caps.

Food and city tier / level plus religion seem quite powerful.

Science seems plentiful and early ages seem to pass too quick, even on a long 1250 turn setting which is default. Often I'm in the Iron Age and nobody's built any "wonders". The AI gets around to them a bit too late as I can easily snipe whichever I want usually.

Although city caps feel too low initially, by the end of Act 1 (the first culling of the bottom 2 Civs) there's so much production chain management happening that 9 cities (7 I think from Empire government, 1 from Palace wonder, 1 from another accessible Bronze Age wonder) makes each turn stall.

Ok so the production minigame (perhaps the ultimate game) is complex. You are driven to treat each city like a Cities Skylines city in and of itself in how the Quality of Life attributes (divided into the various categories such as food, health, prosperity, knowledge, security, happiness) are maximised with more Amenities that can be activated with higher tier cities.

Further, as each age progresses, I don't think it's explicitly shown but it requires increasingly higher tier Amenities to whet the city's demand for any particular QOL attribute. This makes sense ie preserved and canned foods should give higher food points but indeed each Age brings new manufactured goods and resources to integrate. On top of that, the socketed items to boost production have to be replaced as better tech is available, so you're constantly refreshing/upgrading existing production chains while also trying to bring new production chains online.

I still haven't figured out how to trade surplus goods/resources or to get my gold production in clear surplus.

Overall it's a real brain scratcher and seems to be far more complicated than the Civ 6 district placement minigame. I like it for the fact it's not trying to simplify the genre!

I'm up to 40 hours now, and I still have barely cracked the 2nd Act, and that only in my latest game. It can take a while to learn that your starting city position isn't super feasible, between the AI advance settling you and the huge swaths of useless land.

There's not much to the trade system, really. The trickiest part for me has been to get a trade agreement going in the first place. AI players seem mostly isolationist in the first Act of the game. When you do get a trade agreement, you can only select which items you want to import from the AI. I don't know of a way to easily get rid of extra goods or materials, other than gifting them. Gifting them often doesn't work in my experience. The AI wants something "more substantial" but the diplomacy system does not offer anything more substantial, at least in the first Act.

Wealth production is just a matter of grabbing high wealth yield regions (usually coastline, sometimes riverside), and building wealth-producing improvements like Trading Posts. City Amenities that increase prosperity will help with gold income, too (jewelry, coins, and tunics, for example—I couldn't find a list in the Encarta). Placement of experts can make a big difference, too. Adding an expert to your Great Hearth doubles the wealth income. Hunting Camps, Trading Posts, Inns, and several other improvements with wealth yields can have that yield doubled by an expert. The Encarta section on "Wealth" has a list. Experts appear automatically as your cities level up by growing.

Re: experts, a quick one I’d add is that slotting an expert into a stable will increase city production! City production boosts are so rare to come by that it’s worth setting that up in every city.

I finally gave up and trawled the internet for secrets.

Key points:

- ME's point about city production from stables is also true for slotting chairs and baskets in dwellings - one of the few global ways to boost production across all sectors of a city, making dwellings extremely powerful

- don't sleep on city happiness (huge boosts to city production) - hard to come by whole of city boosts so this is a priority

- general rule is to build 1 workshop in each region, then fill out with (usually) the same building (because they often only boost each other with some noticeable exceptions like mills and water wells) - the workshops accelerate the time to build an improvement thus at least one is desirable per region, and you can replace them once the region is otherwise filled in

- don't sleep on city health (can give bigger growth bonuses than amenities later on)

- when pushing city health, ideally run with the 1 workshop + 4 apothecaries (replace the workshop once you're ready) and you get a massive boost to city health and knowledge

- you just need > 0 local food in a city for it to grow, but surplus food in a city does nothing except accumulate in the empire surplus

- the region rating (e.g. 3 or 4 food pips, etc with wood gold and materials) at least seems to play into the productivity of food production (a very complex formula nobody has fully figured out yet) - i.e. a 4 pip zone seems well positioned to churn out lots of food than say a desert tile that has zero food pips - I can only assume this would also hold true for wood but I'll need to test tonight

- this Reddit thread has a handy summary of the buildings you should try to group together within a region

Just a reminder, too, that balancing is ongoing, so keep an eye out after patches.

So who would have thought metal pots, furniture and soap would have such a big impact on city growth

OH and don't sleep on docks which give a whopping 20% city wide production with specialists!

Marquess difficulty is a a little trivial with a decent start and slightly more optimised region layouts.

The November update looks pretty impressive.

Yes - I'm interested in more details about the UI improvements! Sounds like the game is moving along the right path.

Yeah the update will be welcome.

Playing my latest round with Nefreteti (Ramses' wife) the Egyptian leader and on Marquess I'm at about turn 338 and just ticking into the atomic age (Age 3). Everyone is in the Renaissance.

I thought having 1,250 turns meant the game would be marathon with scaling but not so. I'm going through techs in 2 turns. Big cities are everything; just hit a few cities with capped 30 population.

Bit sleepy to post more feedback but yeah the game needs a lot of balancing. Some resources are severely bottlenecked (steel and copper are good examples).

The way it's currently balanced, the more advanced your era, the less map resources exist to fuel your empire with the late game resources. I think it's to slow you down, otherwise you'd just completely outstrip the AI in a fraction of the time.

Fun as heck though. What a pretty spreadsheet game!

Just clicked through to my first victory at about Turn 400 or so. Could have finished slightly earlier but just got tired of endgame. Was 45k+ prestige to my closest AI opponent who had reached the Atomic era whilst I'd finished the research tree and did the final repeatable tech numerous times.

I can see now why techs and resources are capped and scarce; otherwise the game would become trivial very quickly (it kinda does by the Renaissance era anyway).

Some tech and resource requirements feel strangely ordered. Like I would discover something only to find it wasn't producible to the next Era.

Then later on, city security is so hard to come by, I had a six unit mix of tanks, modern ground infantry / antitank units and they lost to a Barbarian unit of horsemen and catapults. Such a weird result, because they nerf cities heavily once they hit 25pop.

Anyway, I will probably take a break and try it again after the next major update.

Could definitely use a rebalancing.

Oh and yes the game absolutely crawls on my 3070 card by turn 300+

Update 1.0.5 dropped yesterday, with a lot of nerfs (?!)
Still looking forward to 1.1!

Release Notes

General

  • Medium game length changed from 750 to 800 turns.
  • Long game length changed from 1250 to 1500 turns.

City Management

  • Many types of resources are visible at the start of the game to provide players with more strategic options.
  • Smaller cities provide less tax income to encourage taller gameplay.
  • Smaller cities provide less production to encourage taller gameplay.
  • Larger cities consume slightly more food to compensate for lower food maintenance on improvements.
  • Starting cities are more likely to start in a fertile area.
  • Starting areas are more likely to spawn an interesting resource nearby.
  • Map generation adjusted to start players in more fertile areas.

Improvements/Triumphs

  • General increase in maintenance costs to tighten the late game economy.
  • Factory wealth maintenance increased from 5 to 10.
  • Foundry now has 1 material, 5 wealth maintenance cost.
  • Crafting Guild materials maintenance is reduced from 5 to 1.
  • Trading Post provides +10 prosperity to the city.
  • Forge wealth maintenance increased from 1 to 3, now has 1 material, 1 wood maintenance cost as well.
  • Refinery wealth maintenance increased from 1 to 5, now has 1 material maintenance cost.
  • Bazaar provides +10 Prosperity to city.
  • Grocer district happiness buff reduced from 5 to 1. Grocers are great but not generally a source of joy.
  • School knowledge buff reduced from 15 to 10 to make the supplies of them more impactful.
  • Pub wealth production per improvement reduced from 5 to 1 to emphasize the quality of life benefits.
  • Stonehenge Knowledge buff reduced from 25 to 20.
  • Foundry craft rate buff increased from 5 to 10.
  • Docks maintenance increased from 1 to 5 wealth.
  • Drydocks maintenance increased from 2 to 10 wealth.
  • Naval base maintenance increased from 3 to 15 wealth.
  • Dwellings line now has 1 wood, 1 material maintenance cost.
  • Industrial and Irrigated farms cost 1 material to maintenance.
  • Reduced flat wealth bonus from certain improvements:
  • Inns now require an expert to provide money.
  • Mint now provides a 15% buff to city Prosperity rather than 5 wealth.

Amenities/Items/Resources

  • Shoes amenity Happiness bonus reduced from 15 to 5 to bring happiness more in line with other QoL stats.
  • Shoes amenity Prosperity bonus reduced from 15 to 5.
  • Gourmet meal Health Amenity buff reduced from 15 to 5 to balance it with other amenities.
  • Meteors now provide Metal Ingots without the need for smelting.
  • Obsidian is more common.
  • Tobacco does not provide as much money as before.
  • Treasury Bonds and Law Books are correctly consumed 1 every 10 turns.
  • Looms now correctly provide 100% Craft Production as an Amenity.

Techs/Research

  • Based on community feedback with a preference to slower default pacing, we have increased the tech costs slightly.
  • Antiquities research cost increased from 400 to 500.
  • Early Middle Ages research cost increased from 600 to 700.
  • High medieval age research cost increased from 800 to 1000.
  • Renaissance Era research cost increased from 1200 to 1500.
  • Enlightenment Era research cost increased from 1500 to 1750.
  • Machine age research cost increased from 1800 to 2250.
  • Atomic age research cost increased from 2100 to 3000.
  • Information age research cost increased from 2500 to 4000.
  • Singularity age research cost increased from 3000 to 5000.

City Management

  • Many types of resources are visible at the start of the game to provide players with more strategic options.
  • Smaller cities provide less tax income.
  • Smaller cities provide less production.
  • Larger cities consume slightly more food.
  • Starting cities are more likely to start in a fertile area.
  • Starting areas are more likely to spawn an interesting resource nearby.
  • Map generation adjusted to start players in more fertile areas.

Events

  • “Decor & Devotion” now triggers correctly for Askia Muhammad.

Localization

  • We are continuing to update all localized languages.

Units/Combat

  • Most first Act units have 1 material maintenance cost in addition to food cost.

I think the nerfing was probably needed as it seems relatively common for people to end a playthrough at turn 400 or so.

Some buildings have expert yields that are just too good. These are city production and craft production. Stables, docks/drydocks, sawmills, these are perfect examples.

Hmm. Not sure about the increase to game length. Ara already takes more turns than other 4X games.

I wonder what, if anything, the devs might buff, either in terms of resource availability or production throughput. Bfgp’s example of steel is a great one — IIRC there just wasn’t that much iron on the map when I played earlier. Then add the rather arbitrary restrictions on some of the production buildings.