Civ 7 and Ara: A Cross Comparison 100 hours in.

[Leucarum]

It is very central, and most of it can't be automated. I don't like the term "crafting mechanics", because it is something I associate with Minecraft-style item production, and Ara isn't like that at all. "Production chains" is the better term, and it is more similar to historical city builders. You see a resource on the map, you build something to extract it, you build a building where that raw material is transformed into something else. The production chains are vastly more complex than in those old city builders though, with multiple inputs and outputs for most things.

I really, really like this aspect of Ara. There is still room for improvement in the UI, but it is satisfying for me to gain control of a resource, and then plugging it into my production chain to reap the benefits. So for example, my city grows, I gain a new region which has Foxes, I build a Hunting Camp, and now my Tanneries can produce more Leather, which again speeds up my production of both Sandals and Books. If this kind of thing doesn't appeal to you, I suspect you will not enjoy Ara that much. You still have the other 4X stuff, like fielding armies, doing diplomacy, growing your empire and so on, but the production aspect can't really be ignored.

Thanks for that.

I suspected Ara wasn't the game I was looking for. I can see why production chain mechanics can be satisfying, but I tend to find them a little fiddly or tedious. The exception for me has been Victoria where the in depth simulation of a global market is really interesting to manipulate. But this sounds like it's more city building than that?

 

[KayAU]

Thanks for that.

I suspected Ara wasn't the game I was looking for. I can see why production chain mechanics can be satisfying, but I tend to find them a little fiddly or tedious. The exception for me has been Victoria where the in depth simulation of a global market is really interesting to manipulate. But this sounds like it's more city building than that?

No problem. I haven't played Victoria, although I have sometimes seen the comparison with Ara. Yeah, the production stuff is largely tied to city building, and you are dealing with individual improvements in cities, rather than macro-level economic controls.

 

[Leucarum]

rather than macro-level economic controls.

I hadn't thought of it like that but now that you phrase it that way, I think preferring macro-economics to micro-economics in a game neatly sums up my feelings.

Also probably explains Morgan Industries being my 2nd favourite SMAC civ...

 

[KayAU]

Also probably explains Morgan Industries being my 2nd favourite SMAC civ...

"Resources exist to be consumed, and consumed the *will* be." Which one was your favourite?

 

[ggmoyang]

Did they patch the Dwelling/Residence meta?

 

[Leucarum]

"Resources exist to be consumed, and consumed the *will* be." Which one was your favourite?

His polar opposite, EarthDeirdre. The mind worm gameplay was too much fun.

 

[KayAU]

Did they patch the Dwelling/Residence meta?

I don't know exactly what you mean, but there have been some changes. Dwellings/Recidences/Skyscrapers still give housing, and more housing if placed in the city center. But they now also give a +25% bonus to crafting and harvesting to improvements in the same region, so you are encouraged to spread them around a bit as well. I suppose the idea is that they improve access to labour.

 

[KayAU]

His polar opposite, EarthDeirdre. The mind worm gameplay was too much fun.

The Gaians were among my favourites as well, along with University, but you could probably already tell that. I also occasionally played as Lal. SMAC was amazing. I haven't played it in years, and still remember so much about it, like the leaders and their various quotes, the Wonder videos, and so on.

 

[ggmoyang]

I don't know exactly what you mean, but there have been some changes. Dwellings/Recidences/Skyscrapers still give housing, and more housing if placed in the city center. But they now also give a +25% bonus to crafting and harvesting to improvements in the same region, so you are encouraged to spread them around a bit as well. I suppose the idea is that they improve access to labour.

Spamming Dwelling/Residence and slotting basket/furniture to increase city production was the meta strategy in 1.0. It also distorts whole production chain mechanic because when you have like 500+ city production it's more efficient to make the end product rather than using the production chain.

 

[Leucarum]

The Gaians were among my favourites as well, along with University, but you could probably already tell that. I also occasionally played as Lal. SMAC was amazing. I haven't played it in years, and still remember so much about it, like the leaders and their various quotes, the Wonder videos, and so on.

The most immersive game firaxis have made by far!

 

[KayAU]

Spamming Dwelling/Residence and slotting basket/furniture to increase city production was the meta strategy in 1.0. It also distorts whole production chain mechanic because when you have like 500+ city production it's more efficient to make the end product rather than using the production chain.

I honestly haven't tried that, but I think it would not be too effective at this point. You can do it, and it would earn you some production, but I doubt the production would make up for the amount of space you would be wasting. City production is still important, but I think crafting is more dependent on accelerators now.

 

[ggmoyang]

Some production is a huge understatement. And no, it's not a waste of space, it's the best way to use space. (Or it was, at least in 1.0. But if they didn't patch the bonus production from basket and furniture, it should be still the same.)

 

[KayAU]

Okay yeah, that's a lot of production. I honestly don't remember what the values for baskets and furniture was back then, or if there have been any other changes which could alter the calculation, so I would have to go over all the changelogs to properly answer your question. What I can say, is that there have been a lot of balance changes since 1.0. But I don't know if you could still do this or not.

The patch notes for 1.4 alone are over 30 pages long.

 

[ggmoyang]

It was +1 production each. It doesn't sound much (and that's probably why you didn't try this) but it really adds up. And Dwelling improvement line had +3% production bonus too, which is a huge boost when you stacked good amount of base production. (BTW city production bonus was capped at +350%)

If they didn't patch this, devs are either:
1) Don't know how to balance the game
2) Does not care about the balance

I know it's a single player game, but there should be some balancing - as when a strategy vastly outperforms others there's no meaningful choice anymore.

 

[KayAU]

It was +1 production each. It doesn't sound much (and that's probably why you didn't try this) but it really adds up. And Dwelling improvement line had +3% production bonus too, which is a huge boost when you stacked good amount of base production. (BTW city production bonus was capped at +350%)

I see how that would stack up. They are now both +0.5 production, and there is no +3% production bonus in the residential building line. Residential buildings give Housing, +25% harvest and crafting production to improvements in the same region, and have a number of supply slots which mostly give boosts to QoL stats, although there are some other potential effects, including the mentioned production boosts from Furniture and Baskets.

 

[ggmoyang]

I see how that would stack up. They are now both +0.5 production, and there is no +3% production bonus in the residential building line. Residential buildings give Housing, +25% harvest and crafting production to improvements in the same region, and have a number of supply slots which mostly give boosts to QoL stats, although there are some other potential effects, including the mentioned production boosts from Furniture and Baskets.

Sound like the Dwelling meta was nerfed enough. IMO it was the most glaring economy balance problem in 1.0.

 

[VGT]

Was playing Ara recently and while it's not all sunshine and rainbows, I kind of like it currently.

At first, I probably came with too much civ approach. I saw few key resources at the top (Food, Wealth, Timber, and Materials) so I focused mainly on them and only after that tried to build other buildings from time to time trying to keep city QoL stats in the green. When it comes to resources, my first approach was to first get something from the map and once I was harvesting resource, I started looking at what it can accelerate and build appropriate production building. It felt wrong to try to produce something very slowly without any accelerators.

But I think this approach hurts me in the long run, because after some time I noticed that I'm producing small fraction of resources I am able to and they are starting to be needed as building resources, amenities, workshop tools etc. This way later in the game it was also annoying to manage, because once I went through the thought process of deciding what I will produce, I choose proper building for it in one of my cities, but then I had to remember that in couple of turns when it will be finished I have to choose this resource I spent time planning now. I wished at that point you would be able to choose resource when you start construction of a building, not when you finish. When those decisions started to overlap, it was a mess to keep track of.

Midgame I switched a bit, because I thought that it might be better to build production buildings as soon as I can, choose resource I'm not producing yet and have it slowly produced and be there when I'll see the need to figure out how to increase its production because suddenly there is a situation where I could use it. I can then scale production of a resource either horizontally by switching to same resource in other buildings of the same type or vertically by using accelerators for it. So in most cases I just choose a production building (especially those, that are in limited amount) and once it was built, I checked what it can produce, what I have and already am producing and here and then choice of what to produce next would happen.

City screen feels like a mess because of how many information it tries to give and at the same time still not providing some of them. For example, Buildings that can be upgraded are not showing any icon that would inform about it. You have to click on a building to see button for upgrade. Or for example when I need to decide if stable is worthwhile, I need to look through all resource icons on buildings to check if I have horses in that city, no quick way to see all resources city is producing. I'm seeing value of national economy screen here. If there was no good way to make city screen have all the info player would need, adding another view makes sense.

The overwhelming "factory" part is pretty overwhelming indeed. I love factory games like Factorio or Satisfactory so I don't have a problem with those mechanics on their own. But playing Ara feels like my brain is running on much higher gear and overloading. Funnily I had very similar feeling when trying Old World for the first time recently. There it was "crusader kings" part of game and keeping track of all those family members, relations that triggered overload. In civ I often had single sessions taking multiple hours. Here and in Old World I notice that I will play for an hour, then stop, because I'm quite drained of energy. But after a short break I will come back for another hour. And this cycle repeats.

So, game still feels micro intensive. Trying to imagine how it was when there was no economy screen, no automated assignment of tools to buildings and you had to do it manually for each building through the city screen - it must have been astronomical chore to manage all this. When I heard that game have this micro intensive tasks and me myself liking those kind of games, I was wondering if those complaint was coming from micro-intensive fans or "only" from more "casual" gamers. If it would be the latter, then I would consider those complaints as positive for me, but I assume that in early stage even micro-fans could've complain about it. Currently it fits my sweet spot for it I think.

But while there is overlap of civ and ara fans, based on above I assume that it's minority of civ players, that would find long term fun in Ara. Ignoring game setting I would say Stellaris or even Age Of Wonders 4 is closer to civ for me than Ara. So indeed - "civ killer" narration might've been harmful for this game.