Ara History Untold: Anniversary Edition

If you have an RTX 50 series. You cant play. The map is full of dark regions. the developer blames a Nvidia driver update from LAST AUTUMN. This seems very strange when no other game exhibits this issue. My feeling is the developer is just misdirecting. Do not buy.

tl;dr - To summarize in a word, tedious; maybe 3/10. Much of the game plays similarly to Civ 3-6, if you removed the rock-paper-scissors element of the combat, if it were even more work to manage significantly fewer cities in the mid to late game, and the diplomacy were irrelevant. There are interesting concepts, and I think they could make for an interesting game, but they're still pretty nascent in this game. I got this game shortly after it released, and have played it on occasion over the last two years, for about 70 hours to date, adding a bunch of play time after each patch in hope that they address some of what seem to me to be glaring issues, because I want it to be good. There are several interesting concepts in the game that I think suffer from quite superficial implementations (the system for crafting+assigning amenities, culture+influence bonuses, religion bonuses, combat, diplomacy come to mind). The amenity system is the most pervasive example for how it affects how you play the game: * The several amenities are linear upgrades (in that, amenity X produced in early game provides low bonus and can be used to accelerate production of Y in mid game which provides mid bonus and is used to produce Z late game for high bonus; so Z is better than Y is better than X, and that chain of amenities is assigned into the same slot across several production buildings). * "mostly linear" because there are maybe 3 amenity slots across all building types (actually only 1 building type and its upgrades I can think of) where amenities provide different bonuses, the amount of micromanagement involved in taking advantage of that differentiation is quite excessive compared to the benefit (eg, 3 knowledge vs 3 happiness, times N instances of the building in the city, to maybe improve the happiness bonus to city production from 1.4x->1.6x). The "supply policy" system for amenity assignment (added after the game was launched) was a nice QoL improvement, but it works against those choices by overwriting them when a policy is assigned, assuming you even happen across that feature as it's pretty hidden. * Given that many amenities are linear improvements, I would expect assigning them to be unnecessary. Alas, the only avenue for that is the aforementioned "supply policy". For each building with amenity slots, and each of its upgrades (one for each Act), you must re-create essentially the same "policy", which you also must remember to do yourself because the game will not explicitly tell you it happened (because you built the first instance of an upgrade to a building, for example). Furthermore, there's no way to share these choices across games, so you get to experience the "fun" of re-assigning the priorities of "First Z, then Y, then X", for the same slot across 10 buildings, in each act, every game. * National production and prioritization to maintain target quantities of amenities (added in the 2.1 patch) is an impressive miss in terms of addressing the tedium of amenities, particularly because it INCREASES the amount of work involved because crafting accelerators must be re-selected when the amenity changes in each building * In the early game, there's a period of ~50 turns where the choice of what building gets an amenity is potentially an interesting optimization question (not actually, if your scout(s) have been collecting caches, but anyway), as there aren't enough to go around, but after ~10 turns, the problem is gone. Briefly discussing the other mentioned systems: * Combat - a city literally cannot be captured if an enemy can maintain a stream of one unit every ~3 turns into the city's space. I've yet seen a difference of force (20x bigger, fighting outside a city's territory, at the biggest difference so far) that reduced the battle duration to less than 3 turns, and the full stack of units in the 20x larger force came out with 75% health. Since combat strength evidently has little bearing on combat result, the bonuses from different formations are inconsequential, for formations don't end up serving any purpose. * Religion - City growth (in terms of literal population numbers) easily outpaces a missionary/oracle's ability to convert population (to which, I assume the solution must be to stack 10-15 of them, to be able to keep up with the growth of even a small city? fuuunnnn). All of that to be able to select one of 3 randomly chosen "religious verse" bonus, where most of that pool of bonuses are inconsequential. Further, I think the scale for achieving a religious verse bonus is logarithmic (a 1,2,5,10 I'd guess, possibly even slower), so verse bonuses are somewhat infrequent, particularly if your cities outgrow your opponents'. That (pop conversion, verse bonuses) is the full extent of the religion system in the game, AFAIK there are no other interactions. * Influence (gained by city culture) - City growth (in terms of granted territory claims) was made slower, I think it was reduced by patch 2.1. Reduced claim speed is augmented by the ability to purchase claims via influence, which competes with a pool of influence bonuses that can be purchased, with cost scaled by number of cities and bonuses purchased, which if you're lucky enough to roll a bonus in the same area multiple times, might yield a 5-10% bonus by the end of the game in that one specific area (I think this is the closest of these discussed systems to "balanced" in terms of gameplay effect, and it's still pretty well into "inconsequential" IMO). * Diplomacy - Relationship management for Diplomacy is a chore if you endeavor to do so, on easy difficulties the AI is rapidly dragged towards the lowest relationship level in the span of ~20 turns (of no interaction - no military presence, no denied requests/demands, just the default preference seems to be "be at war with the player"). An AI player can and will declare war from across an ocean with no intention (or ability, when also missing the required tech for ocean travel) of moving units against the player. The benefits and consequences of entering trade or research agreements don't merit consideration as the AI can and will break the agreements randomly (for trade agreements, the AI will change what they're producing, sometimes every turn, so what amenities are available are constantly changing), The relationship values for AI player can swing between 0 and 100 based solely on the actions of a different AI player; so the measure of control the player has over maintaining relationship levels is quite limited, and so the benefits of diplomacy necessarily are too. As reported by other users, I also experience the graphics issues (allegedly due to an issue in nvidia drivers, but as mentioned by other users, other games not seeing these issues make the developers look sus) where shading for most of the map is broken (mountains full black, most of the rest of the map is a flat color of the correct shading). The work around I've found dramatically reduces the graphics quality (setting shading quality to "direct shading"), but several models still render incorrectly (eg, mines render full-black), which AFAIK has been a known issue for >6 months now. Furthermore, when I initially bought the game, I played it on an Nvidia 2080 card, which did not experience that graphical issue, but did cause my machine to run hot and eventually crash due to tripping a heat sensor over the course of ~an hour of play (occurred consistently when playing this game, specifically). Lastly, I find requesting a review distasteful. Interrupting the game to request a review sucks, and in my view, is strong evidence the people making decisions for this game are making bad ones.

Please fix Nvidia black textures bug its really bad. I have RTX 5080 and i see black textures over the whole map.

dünya tarihi boyunca 1-2 yüzyıl bile tam bulunamayan sözde uygarlıklar, dönem karakterleri bulunup en az 2000 yıl boyunca dünyanın çeşitli yerlerinde bulunan Türklerin herhangi bir dönemindeki hükümdarı bulunmaması ,kasıtlı bir şey değilse şayet kesinlikle oyun yapımcıların tarih bilgisinin aşırı zayıf olmasının kanıtı

Oyun çıkalı 2 yıl oldu hala 1 tane bile Türk devleti eklemediler. Oyunun oyun oluşturma ekranı yetersiz. Kendi senaryomuzu oluştururken daha fazla opsiyonumuz olmalıydı. Muadilleriyle kıyaslandığında bu oyun benim gözümde 1 kere oynayıp denedikten sonra bırakmalık bir oyun.

Boring

This game looks great and has what should, at least on paper, be the makings of a good 4x game. However, there's a few glaring issues that diminish the quality of life. Everything is so clunky. You can't just combine units into a battalion, you have to make them individually, keep them in what is basically a card-hand, and then sort them into either squads (single units) or battalions (Multiple units), and then deploy them onto a city. The deploying process takes multiple turns. So the fun part of having someone declare war on you is that you have to wait upwards of 7 turns for your defenders to take the field meanwhile your improvements are being razed left and right. There's playable world leaders for some reason (though many of them being leaders is a stretch at best: Harriet Tubman for example), but they lack any meaningful personality, character, or other qualities that would make their presence have a point. They have no voice lines, and their interactions with you are limited to waving a hand, scowling, or smiling. Did there really need to be a 3D avatar of Cyrus the 1st to represent Persia if all he does is mean mug me? There's no meaningful diplomacy, no depth to interaction, and everything feels very bland. I mean, why even bother with leaders at all if a jpeg of the country's flag would functionally do the same thing? Overall the game just feels kind of bland. I mean, I get there's mechanics working behind the scenes, but nothing about it feels special? It lacks that quality that's difficult to define but I think everyone understands.

游戏是好玩的，但是我研究了半天都没有解决山谷和矿物贴图全黑的问题

Das Spiel ist meiner Meinung nach ein Early Access, so unfertig - unübersichtlich - einfach schlecht. Lieber ein altes Civilisation, oder Humankind oder Karten spielen mit Freunden. Es hätte gut werden können, die Ideen scheinen nicht schlecht, aber Umsetzung miserabel. Leider habe ich zu lange gewartet, ob die Rückerstattung noch durchgeht weiß ich nicht...lieber Investiere ich in Civilisation 7, und "ärgere" mich damit rum.

Ara is developing nicely. It's an addicting game once you wrap your brain around the crafting systems. I do enjoy that production isn't an arbitrary number based on terrain and population. Strategic and bonus resources speed production, and, based on your nation and the regions you occupy, determine to a strong degree what you can easily produce and what is more difficult to produce. Stacking bonuses, such as granaries with farms in the same region is a bunch of fun. I REALLY enjoy developing Science and Economic Districts, super fun. These are the game's strengths. However, combat really needs an overhaul. I do enjoy the different formations you can select, which is a nice touch. The animations could use improvement, and I would love to see more interaction during combat rather than just a short clip of the action. Field battles and sieges need to be differentiated as well. Field battles shouldn't last more than one or two turns, especially in Acts I and II. Perhaps as the game progresses into later eras, prolonged combat could be introduced, incorporating trench systems and fortifications. These would give compounding bonuses to troops that are fortifying over multiple turns while also rewarding the attacker against unfortified formations. A good balance between static and mobile tactics would be awesome. If the enemy digs in, go after their cities or pillage, some Sun Tzu simple mechanics, particularly if you're using cavalry, you get attacking bonuses and run the enemy down if they rout. The multi-turn combat makes sense for sieges, but that aspect could also use some refinement. It shouldn't be possible to destroy walls in just one turn using indirect fire. Instead, a siege should last multiple turns, with a progression bar that fills up based on troop type and the amount of siege equipment you bring. Additionally, having an engineering core attached to your army, along with an Engineering Paragon to expedite the process, would be a fantastic feature. You should then have the option to storm the city, with casualties incurred depending on the siege progress. Furthermore, for the attacker, a rising cost of unit maintenance could be implemented the longer the siege goes. Finally, Diplomacy needs to be reworked. I'll have an alliance with a country, but they won't accept a trade agreement? Doesn't make much sense. Merchants should acquire resources, but that should be negotiated for a like-for-like exchange. If I want horses, I have to give them something of equal value so both parties benefit from the trade, an alliance is formed, and relations are improved to maintain the relationship. Most interactions are just "Give me free stuff" from the AI. I get that as a tactic from, like, Shaka, wanting to start a war, but from Germany and Australia, too? Gifts are nice, but the AI can refuse, which it will, and is not a big deal, but it's all pretty underdeveloped. Roads can be a bit glitchy, a little ugly, too, and restrictive. I'd love some more freedom to develop and interact with Road networks and Ocean Trade. That all being said. Ara Is BEAUTIFUL! It's such a nice game and highly addictive if you like Civ & Anno. It scratches an - Empire building, Development, Economic Sim - Ich that I can't get from other games. If they come out with a Diplomacy & Military DLC, smooth out roads, and go more into Naval Trade & Combat, it would be the PERFECT game. 8.5/10 Definitely worth it.