Ara: History Untold

[CivLuvah]

It's quite funny that most of us know more about civ7 now than about ara. Hopefully there is more info soon.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before in this thread, but I played the technical alpha (some things are still in NDA), and I echo @KayAU's sentiment that ARA has a lot of potential. it certainly gave me that "one more turn" feeling, and there are many mechanics that work well together. I'm personally more excited for ARA than Civ7 because of that potential.

My only complaint about ARA this early on is the marketing for this game. So much potential in a game and yet the engagement is so minimum. It's atrocious. I do trust that the devs are 100% confident about their game, yet aside from us within the technical alpha, and the dev diaries, there's no community engagement. I can understand that hyping up the beast that is a fandom is a very dangerous thing nowadays, but there are indie games that have only one developer that do better marketing than this game. As a result, unless you're a fan of strategy games, no one knows about this.

And I'm so tired of trailers from Civ competitors that are too much on the playful side. Humankind had this in their marketing. They were so tongue-in-cheek about it that in terms of engagement, it ended up cringe and flopping. Where are the grand statements about the flow of history - its personalities, the achievements, the failures, the march of time - and you as the player controlling that flow?

I mean, I could end up being harsh about it. The reason for the lack of marketing might be due to budget reasons, which is understandable. But seeing the marketing for Civ7 compared to ARA... the difference in terms of effort is night and day. I am going to pre-order ARA for my birthday; I just want to do it with hype, and there's none of that so far. /rant over

 

[Razpor]

I don't know if I've mentioned this before in this thread, but I played the technical alpha (some things are still in NDA), and I echo @KayAU's sentiment that ARA has a lot of potential. it certainly gave me that "one more turn" feeling, and there are many mechanics that work well together. I'm personally more excited for ARA than Civ7 because of that potential.

My only complaint about ARA this early on is the marketing for this game. So much potential in a game and yet the engagement is so minimum. It's atrocious. I do trust that the devs are 100% confident about their game, yet aside from us within the technical alpha, and the dev diaries, there's no community engagement. I can understand that hyping up the beast that is a fandom is a very dangerous thing nowadays, but there are indie games that have only one developer that do better marketing than this game. As a result, unless you're a fan of strategy games, no one knows about this.

And I'm so tired of trailers from Civ competitors that are too much on the playful side. Humankind had this in their marketing. They were so tongue-in-cheek about it that in terms of engagement, it ended up cringe and flopping. Where are the grand statements about the flow of history - its personalities, the achievements, the failures, the march of time - and you as the player controlling that flow?

I mean, I could end up being harsh about it. The reason for the lack of marketing might be due to budget reasons, which is understandable. But seeing the marketing for Civ7 compared to ARA... the difference in terms of effort is night and day. I am going to pre-order ARA for my birthday; I just want to do it with hype, and there's none of that so far. /rant over

agreed,they are not doing enough as far as engagement and marketing.

 

[Razpor]

I feel Ara is a better overall strategic game than most of the Civ games. For a variety of reasons..the scoring and advancement system, the simultaneous turns, significant choice making diversifying, etc.

It has a fantastic diplomacy and economy foundation, imo. My only worry when playing the game earlier this year was the war/combat aspect of it. But I expect much of my concerns have been addressed since then, can’t wait to see the finished product!

what are the issues with the combat?

 

[KayAU]

@CivLuvah
Yeah, I've been wondering about this.

I think on the development side of things, it has been very solid. They didn't go for early access. They have instead done three closed alphas. As far as I have gathered they had a large number of players for these, and it seems like the game has benefitted greatly from the input. I think it is interesting to contrast this with Millennia, which suddenly appeared with a somewhat promising demo, and was then quickly released in a state which to me appears to be what you would expect for an early access release. After release they put out a roadmap and started integrating player feedback. By comparison, I think the Ara team did it right.

On the marketing side though, I am surprised there has been so little gameplay released. We're a month out now, I would have expected to see streamers and YouTubers play the game and building up hype. The promotional materials also leave a lot to be desired. Go to the site, and you'll find a whopping 9 screenshots, which in my opinion are not really doing the game justice. This is odd to me. If anything, I would expect promotional screenshots to make the game look *better* than it actually is, not the other way around. The video updates they have been doing are fine, but they are not specific enough. I suspect outside of us alpha testers, no-one in the target audience really has a working concept of how the game is played. I do hope they have the sense to get some "Let's plays" out before release, so people get to see what the game is actually like.

Ara is now available for pre-order. I will give them credit for waiting until about 1 month from release for this, and for pricing it normally. Civ 7 is almost six months out, and you can already preorder it, as well as some future DLC...for a pretty steep price in my opinion.

Unlike Civ 7 however, Ara doesn't have an established fanbase, with 6 successful games and several spinoffs to look back on for reference. They need to get the word out now if they want it to get noticed in time for a successful release. As I have said, out of all the Civ rivals out there, Ara is the one with the greatest potential. It deserves more attention.

 

[CivLuvah]

what are the issues with the combat?

I think that's beyond their (our) NDA limit? The line is really blurry. Try watching the Combat dev diary on YouTube?

 

[xphantomx]

My only complaint about ARA this early on is the marketing for this game. So much potential in a game and yet the engagement is so minimum. It's atrocious. I do trust that the devs are 100% confident about their game, yet aside from us within the technical alpha, and the dev diaries, there's no community engagement. I can understand that hyping up the beast that is a fandom is a very dangerous thing nowadays, but there are indie games that have only one developer that do better marketing than this game. As a result, unless you're a fan of strategy games, no one knows about this.

And I'm so tired of trailers from Civ competitors that are too much on the playful side. Humankind had this in their marketing. They were so tongue-in-cheek about it that in terms of engagement, it ended up cringe and flopping. Where are the grand statements about the flow of history - its personalities, the achievements, the failures, the march of time - and you as the player controlling that flow?

I mean, I could end up being harsh about it. The reason for the lack of marketing might be due to budget reasons, which is understandable. But seeing the marketing for Civ7 compared to ARA... the difference in terms of effort is night and day. I am going to pre-order ARA for my birthday; I just want to do it with hype, and there's none of that so far. /rant over

Ara has released more videos about their game than Civ7 though. Don’t see how you can say Civ 7 is getting more marketing (it’s known brand is certainly making up for it though)

I only know of games like Old World and Humankind because of forums like this, not marketing or social media presence.

I think Ara is fine. It has most of Sept to make that big push.

what are the issues with the combat?

Yea I guess it’s true I can’t be really detailed about it. And to be fair, I was never able to experience later game combat either. It’s not a huge worry by me, I was playing an Alpha not a Beta, and in my short time with the game I was playing defense in terms of the combat system (which is usually my play style in Civ games too lol)

 

[Sephi]

It's a gamepass game, they do not need to convince anybody to buy their game. You can already pre-install the game on gamepass and I did today. Millions will try out the game when it comes to gamepass next month, don't worry.

A demo on steam would have been nice. Helped millennia to build up some hype. But the game has enough wishlists on steam that steam will do marketing for the game when it releases. Steam gets 30% of every sale, they have an incentive to push ara.

What leader/civ will you try out first? I think I try science victory with Confucius/China first.

 

[CivLuvah]

Ara has released more videos about their game than Civ7 though. Don’t see how you can say Civ 7 is getting more marketing (it’s known brand is certainly making up for it though)

I only know of games like Old World and Humankind because of forums like this, not marketing or social media presence.

It's a gamepass game, they do not need to convince anybody to buy their game. You can already pre-install the game on gamepass and I did today. Millions will try out the game when it comes to gamepass next month, don't worry.

Both are valid points though. Maybe I was a bit harsh, and I was kinda frustrated as I was tempted to compare the two. Civ is the bigger brand after all.

As for what civ to try first... I haven't thought about that haha
Maybe because when I was doing the technical alpha, I was focusing on how the different systems worked rather than what leader is optimal for my own strategies.

 

[Razpor]

I just hope the combat is interesting enough for a domination victory to be fun,so far the automated combat seems like a weak point.

 

[Filo90]

This won't be clearly a game that can be played focusing just on warfare, war will be just a tool for politic ambitions as in real world (aka winning the match in the game).

Having said this, even though battles are automated, warfare can be made interesting by managing war supply chains and logistic, formations, battle terrain, war support etc etc...

Let's hope they have made a good job on this together with players feedback.

 

[KayAU]

On the topic of combat: Again, it's painful to not be able to speak freely, but I went back to a dev diary from 11 months ago to check what they have said publicly.

So, as has been noted, Ara has a type of army system, where different units are combined in formations, and battles are resolved automatically based on a number of different factors, including unit combinations and terrain. You also get a (skippable) cinematic of what happened, as you can see from some of the preview material. It is somewhat similar to Stellaris I think. My personal impression when playing it during the last alpha, was that the system at that point was pretty decent. There were a couple of aspects of it I didn't care for, but they may very well have been adjusted since. It seems I will neither know, nor be allowed to discuss it concretely until release. Overall though, I thought the system worked well enough, and generally, it does what I want from combat in these types of games: allow me to group units together as armies, and strategize over unit army composition and deployment.

I do also tend to like tactical combat...but only when it is done well. I liked tactical combat in AoW and Fallen Enchantress, but not as much in Humankind, and definitely not in Endless Legend. I would rather have a decent auto-resolve than poor tactical combat, and in either case you need the option to auto-resolve for more trivial battles.

As @Filo90 pointed out, you may not be able to play it as a pure war game, but from my own experience, you can not ignore your military either. I found that out the hard way. This is a point where I wish I could speak more freely, because the lesson I was taught highlights a detail of Ara's combat system which I can't recall seeing in other Civ-style games, but which is both interesting, and relevant to how things work in reality. Oh well. Just a month and a day to go now.

 

[CivLuvah]

As @Filo90 pointed out, you may not be able to play it as a pure war game, but from my own experience, you can not ignore your military either. I found that out the hard way. This is a point where I wish I could speak more freely, because the lesson I was taught highlights a detail of Ara's combat system which I can't recall seeing in other Civ-style games, but which is both interesting, and relevant to how things work in reality. Oh well. Just a month and a day to go now.

Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about haha
But of course, NDA

 

[Filo90]

So the Gamescom show off was really nice and the game looks extremely beautiful.

We also know that you can play with up to 36 nations and you can set the map in many ways.

Unfortunately we don't see anything about warfare and crafting system, I hope we get some more detailed YouTube review from those who played at gamescom.

 

[KayAU]

Ah, I hadn't seen the Gamescom demonstration! :-D I found it here:

I haven't watched it myself yet, but will do so now. The first thing I notice after a couple of minutes though: you can set the planet's axial tilt for map generation.

 

[The_J]

Also a new article about Ara here: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/a...90/?ftag=CAD-01-10abi2f&utm_source=press.coop

 

[KayAU]

Good to see some publicity coming out of Gamescom. Looking at the article, I am again impressed by just how good the game looks.

I honestly don't get those who say Ara doesn't look good. The level of detail is just baffling to me. You can zoom in very close, and you will see people and animals moving about. Trees, and houses are plotted into the game's unevenly shaped regions in a way which looks organic and convincing. I don't think anyone should underestimate the amount of work and skill that must have been put into the game to make this work.

 

[CladInShadows]

I've gone from not much interest to very excited about this.

I've been a 4x fan since the original Civ but really hate how most recent games all seem to involve tedious 1UPT or tactical battles. Why would the leader of a nation be getting involved in telling individual units where to stand in combat?

A Stellaris-ish approach where success is more about army size and composition is exactly what I have been looking for.

 

[djvandyke]

They confirmed you play as the same leader and nation throughout the game. Thas the most important thing for me.

 

[djvandyke]

With map sizes big enough to accommodate 36 nations, has there been any news on a real world TSL map?

 

[KayAU]

One feature I've been thinking more about, is the "culling" that happens at the end of an act, where the least remarkable nations are "lost to history", and removed from the game. I really like this idea from a gameplay perspective. If you are one of the nations being removed, you are probably too far behind to win anyway, and being eliminated might be a mercy. For the remaining nations, it opens up new opportunities, and might even shake things up a bit, depending on who has easier access to the resources being left behind. I think it goes especially well with Ara's large maps and high number of players.

In some way, it again reminds me somewhat of Stellaris. It's not that Stellaris has the same system, but it is another 4X in which major events can shake things up a bit mid game, and maybe even more importantly, in which the exploration and expansion parts of the game lasts longer than in most others. This is usually my favourite part of the game.

Imagine exploring the world, and finding an island with the remains of a lost civilization.