Ara has been negatively reviewed exactly on this aspect.
Some reviews on Steam points out the constant barrage of clicks that the players must do, when having to deal with tile with multiple slots, that also can not be automated, and certainly has not any automated worker like OG Civ... 1: Now let's say you have 5 cities each with 3 farms, and you...
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Now let's say you have 5 cities each with 3 farms, and you have 15 plows to place in them. To do this, you have to click on City 1, switch the city menu to display all Harvester buildings, find Farm 1 (which could be somewhere on a long list), click on Farm 1, click on Slot 1 (if you remember that Slot 1 is for plows), click on Plow 1, close the Farm 1 menu, repeat for each farm in City 1, close City 1 menu, repeat for each City. This is just one example, but these issues are present in every aspect of the UI. The game also does not display important reminders and does a poor job of letting you know that entire windows (such as trade) exist.
The incorporation of resources in a city list, and eviction of the OG workers, sweat, pebbles and roads from the alchemy, will bring this terrible consequences I'm afraid.
It's not just a question of military overview of all the networks in the game, which SIMPLIFIES the oprganization for any player
that approach the game. That anyone can interact with what is on the map. Each level of QUANTIZATION of the OG process, like making the resources always connected, and then remove the workers,
does indeed the opposite effect in practice. The Steps are bigger, you have less steps, so it feels like it's easier tasking. But Its not. Its an Illusion.