Ara History Untold: Anniversary Edition

If you like to micromanage, this might be the game for you. I'm talking dictating what kind of product each factory in each city in your nation level of micromanagement. I'm talking printing individual gold coins for the realm. I'm talking thousands of turns waiting for horses every six turns at the beginning and managing herds in the midgame and then watching them become nearly obsolete at the widespread use of the car (which you make individually in your factories after producing their component parts at your other factories). If you like this idea, buy the game at full-price, you'll enjoy the crap outta this. Everyone else - consider very carefully, but my payoff has not been worth the investment. That said, I'm writing this after 241 hours, approximately my third attempt at a playthrough and around turn 1100. Anyway, I'm no where near a satifisfying conclusion though I suppose I could make war and end the game faster. Actually, war is declared on me every 20 turns by the same ineffectual neighbor before I finally decided to build siege weapons and be done mopping their attacks every new war. They became my enemy when I made an alliance with someone they were against or something. The diplomacy isn't exactly strong, you'll have to fill in most of the details of the talks yourself. The long and short of it is this game is slow, a bit boring, and endlessly bogged in minutia. I plan to try finishing this game by reaching the scientific era without skipping any tech because I made the opponents too garbage or something, so it's not a real race, so expect the hours to go up on my play, but I can't imagine a very large segment of the population enjoying this game. Which is a bummer, I was hoping for a major studio competitor to CIV to drive innovations and now I'm just hoping CIV doesn't copy this. Bright spots: The leader felt like it had a lot of advantages I could lean into and so agency through the avatar felt good. They did great with the diplomacy avatars having little videos and such, feels polished in that regard. Wonders or Great Works or whatever were a serious consideration when you have to designate all the farm land and all the skyscrapers and all the factories and you run out of space too quick - this kind of challenge was interesting but too predicated on the need for individual factory building and individual factory building queues. The fine granular lives of the visible citizens is beautiful. So far as polish goes, it has most the bells and whistles you expect/hope from a AAA game.

Das Spiel sieht wunderschön aus und hat interessante Ideen. Aber es verkommt im Mid- und Lategame zum langwierigen Inventarmanagement-Spiel. Es nervt, jedes Gebäude einzeln Güter zuweisen zu müssen, zu merken, dass jetzt wieder irgendwas zu wenig produziert wurde und man von +100 auf -400 Nahrungeinkommen in einer Runde gesprungen ist, weil zwei Städte gleichzeitig gewachsen sind und plötzlich alles vor die Hunde geht. Das Kämpfen ist sehr behäbig, langsam und gnadenlos. Von der schönen Grafik habe ich auch nichts, wenn ich 80% der Zeit in unübersichtlichen Menüs mir Gebäude und Waren zusammenklicke. Fazit: das Spiel ist mehr Arbeit als Spaß. Bleibt bei Civ.

UI is cumbersome and a micro-managing nightmare. I'd rather try to create a pivot table in Excel instead...It would be less expensive as well. Last, but not least, Eva Peron as Argentina's leader instead of General San Martin (or any of the other [i]actual[/i] nation leaders)? Too leftist/commie/Peroncho/Kircho/woke for me.

The UI is a nightmare, you're expected to constantly go into the different tabs of your buildings in order to add ammenities, tools, items etc but theyre displayed in the order they were built so if you just got upgraded tools the 4 workshops you have are scattered in a huge menu. It's micromanagement hell, the gathering resources and turning them into goods is a great idea, Anno 1800 does it but you don't have to be constantly updating every single individual building to make use of it all every time you research a new tech.

This is a solid 4x game that meshes traditional 4x concepts with a production chain system that enhances the experience. While not without its faults, Ara is a lot of fun and feels just different enough from other 4x games to stand out. I'll touch on the big topic for many players: production chains. Some players love them, some hate them. Personally I don't often get into production chain games, preferring colony sim and crafting games. I think Ara finds a nice balance between serious production chain game and standard 4x game. While there are a lot of things to craft and different ways most resources can be used to craft other things, I never felt overwhelmed. The different production chains gives you flexibility to determine how to focus each city and what to focus your empire on. The city expansion system feels well paced. As cities grow, you claim new regions. Each region claimed will generally contain between 2 and 5 zones with each zone being a building space for a single building. This means each growth gives you more than one building slot at a time. I generally feel like space keeps pace with demand as long as I don't neglect city growth. I also like the tech progress system, although progress is a little too fast in the mid and late game. Tech is organized into 12 Ages. Within each Age there are ~10-12 techs but you can progress to the next Age after completing ~4-6 of them. When you choose to progress to the next Age you lose the ability to go back and complete any research you skipped, but you can always choose to research everything in an Age before progressing. One thing I really like about the system is that many things appear under multiple techs in different Ages. This allows you to research it early if you have a need for it or skip it and get access to it later (but not everything is available multiple times in the tech tree). You can easily see this info in the tooltips when looking over research to make your decision. This makes for more interesting decisions in early game techs since you might be able to pick up some, but not all, of the things you miss by skipping a tech. Graphics are pretty. I don't get much into fawning over the details. It looks very nice. Taxing on my old 1080, late game lags for sure, but not unexpected. The AI seems to be pretty bad at war. Not uncommon for 4x games but still a bit disappointing. They constantly throw units into battle when they will surely lose. Overall I am really enjoying Ara. The production chain system is robust without feeling overwhelming and the core 4x concepts are well implemented.

TLDR: Changed recommendation to "No" because the game begins to hang and stutter at around 20 cities. This is on an i9 64GB RAM and 5090Ti graphics. Poor programming, which explains why they have such small maps. Its needlessly complex in some areas, shallow in others. Not at all intuitive, but it grows on you when it all starts to click. Graphics are great for a Civ-like until they hang in late game. Weird restrictions like one stadium for your entire empire, 3 ceramics, but unlimited factories. Secret military base comes at the same crammed 'future tech' level as CRISPR, mechs and arcologies? Combat is a serious PITA because all units move simultaneously, so when you try to intercept an enemy troop or bandit, they move out of a region as you move in to attack, and you end up chasing them all over the place. Enemy (and player) can waltz right into city and lay siege, you can't eject foreign missionaries, nukes take four years/turns to launch, etc. I do like the goods concept and city stats and related modifiers, and some other neat content in ARA. If Civ6 (not Civ7 AKA the dumpster fire) had its game, rules, building, combat, environmental, techs etc, but with ARA's fine details and goods management system, I would play that game forever. As it stands, Civ6 (esp with mods) is still far far superior than ARA. ................................................................ Graphics: Good attention to detail, randomized variety. Little minions running around, talking, carrying tools, working, etc. Very immersive. Interface: Sucks. Bad. Tutorial doesn't tutor well. Hard to figure out how to build things, how to make armies, how to increase production, which buildings do what. Its a bit of a mess. Hopefully it straightens out a bit. Technology: Follows the same dumb-dumb steps of Civ7, in that if you rush to the next age you can't go back to get older techs. "Great work on that trebuchet, boys! But how'd you tie it all together? Our scientists never did figure out how to make rope ...". Some of the new techs allow you to catch old techs in a way (you get rope from a couple different techs) but then certain research isnt as attractive, and you dont know which ones will be 'offered' again in later techs, so ... just really poorly done. Improvements: You start with an assigned zone which has 2-5 regions. Building affect a region, or the city, or the zone? Hard to tell. Improvements take up a region despite realism. Farmland and lumbermills are regional sure, but a bakery shouldnt take up 20 sqkm. Nor should the Effiel Tower take up 300sqkm (entire zone). Cities can make 50 goods that make life better for its citizens, but cant only apply 1-5 of them? "Well I say, that's a fine lookin horseless carriage there, Mr. Ford. Real shame we can't give to folks here; they're all full up on bread and cured meats ..." Start: Need options to start with a settler instead or zone assignment. Need ability to set more game parameters. Some are available, like how much ocean v land, how wet but not nearly enough. Also needs the ability to set victory conditions. Ending the game based on score or turns or whatever is blah. Little annoyances: Grammar and spelling errors like "Their graciously accept your gift". Looking out for "All your bases belong to us ..."

I got ARA on release day and was immediately intrigued by the nice graphics and the interesting take on Civ-building. Then, I started playing... and it felt like wading through a thick swamp. In the initial versions I couldn't bring myself to playing more than a few dozen turns, as there was far too much micromanagement involved, complicated, unexplained systems and general slog. It felt like work, not fun. The looks were nice, but the gameplay was mediocre at best - which, sadly, seems to be par for the course as far as the release state of many similar games these days is concerned (Cough... Civ 7 anyone?). Frustrated once more, I was about to give up on ARA and hand in a negative review, but the developers seemed very committed to improving their game, so I held back. And I can say now that it was a good decision. With the interim updates - most importantly the most recent 2.0 one - the game has markedly improved in my view. The devs have been keenly listening to feedback and reworked / streamlined almost every aspect of the game. Economy, pacing, balance,... even the (already quite decent) graphics have been re-thought, overhauled and improved, with new content and gameplay systems (e.g., culture & influence) added for free. Having come back to ARA v2.0, I now find the game enjoyable at last and MUCH less of a chore, while still being a fresh perspective on empire-building. There are still a few rough edges remaining, and some areas need to be improved, most importantly the diplomacy, which is still far too opaque and feels generic. Also, some further optimization is needed - framerates are still too low even on high-end machines. But the devs are on a good path IMHO and I can just hope that they can keep up their pace... So, bottom line: ARA (v2.0) is a good game that has the potential to become truly great. Much more so than Civ 7 anyway. It's now worth the 40-50 bucks, even more so when obtained on a sale. I can now - finally - recommend ARA to any 4X fan.

I started Ara on Gamepass, playing well over 100 hours there. Then bought it here on Steam. So my playtime is longer that whatever it says here. :) Anyway, I've loved Ara since it came out. When I found Civ 7's reveal (and later release) to be so disappointing, Ara gave me pretty much what I wanted. It's like Civ in many respects. It goes from ancient times all the way to the future. But it does also change the formula in ways I enjoy. A few of them are: 1. Simultaneous turns. Unlike Civ, where you move a warrior to a tile on your turn, then another player can't move to that tile, your orders represent your *intent* to do something next turn. Moving a unit to the next tile will happen next turn. Crafting a building (and using the required materials) will start next turn. Response to diplomacy occurs next turn. On the face that may seem odd, but it works in a way I quite like; it removes the advantage the player typically has in Civ, where s/he always has military move priority. In Ara, if you and an enemy player both move into the same tile, they battle. It just seems fairer. The only time this gets a little cumbersome is when you find yourself trying to track an enemy unit around the map. But this has been rare for me. 2. Territories and zones. I love the whole 'living world' thing. Very vibrant and fun. Instead of Civ's hexes, the maps generate territories. These are made up of between 2 and 5 or so smaller zones. These zones are where you build stuff like workshops, farms, etc. In warfare you can pillage enemy zones specifically, giving different resources. Building certain buildings in the same region will sometimes yield benefits (sort of like district adjacency bonuses in Civ 6). There's also some strategy in determining which territories to select as you expand in influence. A triumph (wonder) takes up all regions in a territory. So it's best to build those in territories with few zones. 3. Crafting goods. You spend a good deal of time producing goods for all manner of uses including improvement on your cities' various stats (health, happiness, etc), building units, trade, and increasing productivity of other buildings. As other reviews mentioned, when the game came out, these could get pretty micro. But the devs have done a great job of allowing you to get as granular or macro as you'd like. You can now manage crafting on a national basis. You can use policies that will auto-apply. So you no longer have to tell all 20 of your workshops what to do unless you want to. There are also a ton of strategic and luxury resources to give each player some sort of edge. 4. The Prestige system. Instead of winning a science victory, economic victory, etc., all victories are essentially a score victory. This is kept track of with Prestige. It's an amalgam of all sorts of things, from standing armies to cultural influence to religious prevalence and so on. It's nice to play the game fully designed this way, and not around specific victory conditions. Basically just play the best game you can in whatever area you can. At the end of each of three acts, a player (or I think more if you set it that way) is removed from the game (you can set this to exempt humans). This opens the map to settle their former lands as they disintegrate into barbarian clans. Since release, the devs have done a lot of work. They've added cultural policies (like perks you can 'buy' with influence), vastly improved AI behavior, better trade and diplomacy, huge improvements in performance (especially late game), aforementioned tweaks to the crafting system, nukes (!), and even unique units for all nations. I wish there was a minimap, and I wish the maps could be larger. Would be nice to have true start Earth (currently it's not true start location). I'm hoping to see a major DLC that maybe adds more unique units, buildings, terrain types, maps, and triumphs, an espionage system, world congress of some sort, maybe some natural disasters. But all in all I really enjoy Ara and would recommend it.