Ara: History Untold

[Pistol90]

Looks really good if you ask me.

I dont care how leaders look, i care how map and gameplay looks ... and from what I can see -> looks really promising.

Now, its questions about victory types-progress-war-economy-religion/culture ... which will decisive.

If they dont do something stupid and play it safe (copy Civ formula and enhance it) ... I'm really looking forward

 

[pokiehl]

Looks really good if you ask me.

I dont care how leaders look, i care how map and gameplay looks ... and from what I can see -> looks really promising.

Now, its questions about victory types-progress-war-economy-religion/culture ... which will decisive.

It doesn't look too interesting to me...what do you think looks promising about the gameplay? Map to me is just ugly unfortunately.

I think they are still accepting people to their "Insider" program to playtest, so you can consider signing up for that if you're interested.

If they dont do something stupid and play it safe (copy Civ formula and enhance it) ... I'm really looking forward

Not sure what you mean here. Did you mean that playing it safe would be stupid, or playing it safe would not be stupid?

 

[Pistol90]

It doesn't look too interesting to me...what do you think looks promising about the gameplay? Map to me is just ugly unfortunately.

I think they are still accepting people to their "Insider" program to playtest, so you can consider signing up for that if you're interested.


Not sure what you mean here. Did you mean that playing it safe would be stupid, or playing it safe would not be stupid?

This,

Just give me Civ 4 with some enhanced things ... nothing crazy

 

[pokiehl]

This,

Just give me Civ 4 with some enhanced things ... nothing crazy

Oh, got it. Yeah, I agree with you in some ways. On one hand, I just want a very well executed and presented "typical" Civ experience because I know I'd like it. On the other hand, the innovations of other games can be really fun and clever (I think Humankind, for all its flaws, has some great concepts Civ could borrow, like Influence and territories).

 

[blackbutterfly]

I think Humankind, for all its flaws, has some great concepts Civ could borrow, like Influence and territories.

HUMANKIND's Influence is much better than Civ VI's ludicrous Loyalty

I mean Sphere of Influence is kinda well known thing after all

Its implementation of Civics (i.e. laws) is also much better.
It's an enforce/repeal system like IRL that costs influence.
Not B/S policy cards

BTW re: ARA - they have an insider program that anyone can sign up for if anyone is interested.

 

[Leucarum]

Their "big idea" seems to be the chapter system. It divides the game into three bundles of eras and the civs who make the least progress through the chapter are eliminated. Game play is sketchy, but their marketing focuses on players determining their own game progress which could indicate multiple ways to gain progess and mechanics to change your focus, perhaps by changing leaders.

Honestly that doesn't sound too innovative - the weakest civs are usually the ones eliminated regardless of an artificial elimination schedule in these sort of games...

I kind of like the map from what they have shown though. The cities look pretty, and the sprawl doesn't look as samey as Humankind.

Currently overall opinion is 'meh' - but there's not that much which we've seen yet, so my opinion may improve with a few more delegations.

 

[Dale]

I think they are still accepting people to their "Insider" program to playtest, so you can consider signing up for that if you're interested.

Insider program doesn't give you access to anything at the moment. They had two limited alpha tests, last year and early this year, and nothing since.

If they dont do something stupid and play it safe (copy Civ formula and enhance it) ... I'm really looking forward

I said it earlier in this thread. They are not trying to replicate Civ. ARA is more like a Paradox Grand Strategy with Civ city building on top. There's a few other things, but those are the two main ones.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

I personally like the way the map looks very naturalistic. I'm not sure what people want to see.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this game so far. The simultaneous turns system where we see the outcome of actions and decisions on the following turn sounds interesting. And the 3 Act system seems like it would also make for a different kind of experience.

City building gives me Sim City vibes. This is a level of detail I've been waiting to see in Civ.

I'm very interested in hearing more about how the tech tree progresses. Sounds like they are going for a balance between historical accuracy and a certain level of randomness.

 

[The_J]

The developers have now also released a video where they talk about how battles work in Ara.

 

[The_J]

The developers have now also released a video where they talk about how battles work in Ara.

We also have a thread in the "all other games" section here, and I'll merge these 2 threads in the coming days, FYI.

 

[InsidiousMage]

That was a weird video. Like, it just laid out the high level concepts of how war works (basically like you think it would), provided no in-depth examples of anything related to the mechanics, and generally acts like you've already bought into the game. It felt like the presenters in the video assumed you had played technical alpha but, if you did, I don't see what this video provides. I still don't have any idea about what the game is supposed to be about beyond historical strategy game but the video just kinds of assumes that the viewer does despite being their first video about the game in any detail. Its literally the third video on their channel with the other two being the original trailer and a video about their second technical alpha. The whole role out for the game has been really strange.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

On one watching and some note-taking . . .

They talked about 'mega-battles' and multiple types of units (melee, cavalry, archers, trebuchets, swordsmen, specifically), so we can be pretty sure that armies are using some form of stacking to get all those into the same district/region to fight. Apparently you can also add other 'armies' (Stacks) as Reinforcements while a battle is going on so I would be interested in seeing what kind of limit they place on numbers of units in a region or are they resurrecting the old SOD?

Unit types (Anti-Cavalry was mentioned specifically) have apparently a Rock-Paper-Scissors relationship: A counteracts B which counteracts C which counteracts A sort of thing. As a military historian, I will be interested in seeing how they handle individual unit/weapon types that Override that system, like the flintlock musket and bayonet combination that superceded ALL previous infantry types because the troops had firepower, shock power and anti-cavalry capabilities and so made previous matchlock muskets, swordsmen, halberdiers, pikemen, etc all obsolete. Even more complex is the 20th century Infantry company/battalion/regiment/division, which starts in 1900 - 1914 as a bunch of riflemen with some light artillery support, but by 1945 has a massive suite of machineguns both within the smallest infantry unit and as separate (heavy machinegun) supporting elements, mortars, antitank weapons, light, medium and heavy artillery and antiaircraft weaponry, and combat engineers - all integrated in the 'infantry' units.

Their brief foray into Diplomacy actually had a bit more information while being annoyingly vague about specifics. They said allies can 'cooperate' with you in war, but didn't address whether their troops can join the same battle you have started, as reinforcements or whatever.

They did show a 'diplomacy screen' which showed three diffferent Diplomatic States:
Trusted - which allows Alliances
Friendly - which allows Agreements (Trade? Movement?)
Neutral - which allows Trade Routes between the two factions.

Changing Diplomatic States, based on the lower part of that screen, apparently involves sending 'gifts', or managing borders (shown as either Open or Closed, so no nuances there!), and Connections, which is indicated as having a Road between the two states. No indication of how a Connection is established over water, or whether that is even possible.

In all, while they showed some battle screens from the earlier video, and talked about giving you a gritty glimpse of what was happening in the battle, and talked about unit types interacting and 'formations' modifying combat effects and reinforcements being possible, they said absolutely nothing about how any of that is actually accomplished, or how and what kind of control the gamer actually has on anything that happens in the battle, which apparently all takes place within a single region - the Ara equivalent of a Tile (the smallest discrete element on the map)

Also notable is that while they talked about terrain and Improvements/walls and unit types and reinforcements as modifiers to combat situations, they never mentioned Generals or Leaders having any effect. Possibly they simply couldn't cover everything in 10 minutes, or the exact mechanics are still in development, but if Generals and Leadership are simply left out I would be extremely disappointed, both as a gamer and as a military historian. While 'Great Generals' are what everybody (at least in Civ) thinks about, Bad Generals have far more extreme effects and, frankly, are far more common - almost ubiquitous . . .

 

[Civinator]

Also... what is 'Ara'? American research association? Accident reconstruction analysis?

I second this question. Is it now cleared what ARA means ?

 

[Patine]

I second this question. Is it now cleared what ARA means ?

Armenian Revolutionary Army, to tie to my guess on the provinence of the symbol in the screenshot?

 

[AntSou]

The important bit from the latest video:

"In Ara there's no actual fight button that you can click. If you're at war with another nation and you're in the same region as the enemy army, you're fighting". [...] "The following turn you see a report with the results and a cinematic of the battle playing out in real time".

From what I understand the system is akin to something like Crusader Kings 3, where you set up an army composition and then you send it to a region and the battle auto-resolves. The difference here is that they also include some sort of cinematic to go along with the battle.

They talked about 'mega-battles' and multiple types of units (melee, cavalry, archers, trebuchets, swordsmen, specifically), so we can be pretty sure that armies are using some form of stacking to get all those into the same district/region to fight. Apparently you can also add other 'armies' (Stacks) as Reinforcements while a battle is going on so I would be interested in seeing what kind of limit they place on numbers of units in a region or are they resurrecting the old SOD?

Most likely solutions:

- A hard or soft limit tied to the army itself (Stellaris allows this limit to be increased by researching more advanced technologies);
- A supply limit tied to each region, which causes attrition to armies when above the supply limit (which is how CK3 handles it).

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Armenian Revolutionary Army, to tie to my guess on the provinence of the symbol in the screenshot?

Just to be clear, this is the symbol you were talking about?

 

[Patine]

View attachment 670931
Just to be clear, this is the symbol you were talking about?

Yes, it looks like a variant Armenian symbol. It's even in Armenian national flag colours.

 

[Krajzen]

The marketing for this game is very strange - it got announced a long, long time ago, along absolutely no info, and suddenly we get some video about one particular aspect of the game we know almost nothing about, no big picture at all.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Apparently Geoff Knorr wrote the music for Ara

 

[Civinator]

I had a look at the site of Oxide Games in the hope to find here some explanation about the name ARA. I didn´t find such an explanation, but an interesting article by Andy Cataldo. Many of the studio´s team served as key developers on the landmark strategy title Sid Meier´s Civilization V (and Civ VI and XCOM).