Ara: History Untold
- Thread starter Morrandir
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- July 31, 2007
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I kept watching some reviews, but I'm not sure I want get another 4X game I follow and constantly get for myself but never play very much of. I think I'm fine with keeping it at just the Civilization games 
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2007
- Messages
- 9,253
Playing it right now and it's an interesting spin on the civilization formula.
I tried it too despite my initial promise. The game reminds me of Colonization in that it focusses more on the economy than conquest and expansion. The game has a long list of resources and amenities which you have to manage to win the game (winning is awarded based on points, not space race, cultural dominance, etc). As an example, you'll need cotton to produce fabrics which you'll need to make sails or furniture. Sails are used in ships, while furniture adds bonuses to dwellings (towns where people live in). Sometimes you can replace resources by money when crafting them, but not always. I like this system and it sets the game apart from Civ games - until a certain point. In early game it gives immersion of building up the economy of a nation. This is a nice addition as early game tends to be quite boring in Civ games. Mid- to late game, managing all the resources becomes a slog to a point when one stops caring about them, because the management has to be done one city and region at a time. The devs are working on fixing this problem (see the link below). Having everything in one screen is a start. I feel that one should be able to invent a technology at some point which would automatise most of this resource management once hitting later stages of the game.
Another thing the game separates from the masses are the detailed animated graphics. They look great in the beginning but eventually one gets used to them. Still looking at your citizens walking back and forth a single street throughout the 4000 year game-span can be a nice break from all the strategic thinking. If only they learned where their home was...
As I suspected from the reviews, this game was not released feature-complete and it makes sense to wait before playing it. The devs have many plans in improving the game as you can see from the link below. In its present state, the game shows a great promise - as the resource management and almost city-builder level city management are definitely improvements on the civilization formula when done right. If one added the pre-game tribal exploration from Humankind, the dynasty system from Old World, a bit more city-builder, and the general tested stable formula of Civ games, one would get the best civilization game to date. All of these games fall to the same issue, however: the AI, which is neither smart nor fun to play against. At least Ara has the management focus and it is not even possible to expand as in Civ games (the max city limit is somewhere around 10-12 cities) that makes it possible to mostly ignore the AI. In every Civ game I seem to lose my nerves with the neighbouring AI nations and annihilate them. The rest of the game becomes so boring that I often quit before the end. With Ara, I have tried just to tolerate the my neighbours while focussing on my economy and keeping a large enough military to defend my nation even though they keep on insulting me and bind my troops for a useless waiting game. No matter how angry they are, they seem not to attack when your military is stronger than theirs. In Ara the benefit of conquering AI cities is slim as most of the time one has the maximum number of cities anyway, so one might as well let them live.
news.xbox.com
Another thing the game separates from the masses are the detailed animated graphics. They look great in the beginning but eventually one gets used to them. Still looking at your citizens walking back and forth a single street throughout the 4000 year game-span can be a nice break from all the strategic thinking. If only they learned where their home was...
As I suspected from the reviews, this game was not released feature-complete and it makes sense to wait before playing it. The devs have many plans in improving the game as you can see from the link below. In its present state, the game shows a great promise - as the resource management and almost city-builder level city management are definitely improvements on the civilization formula when done right. If one added the pre-game tribal exploration from Humankind, the dynasty system from Old World, a bit more city-builder, and the general tested stable formula of Civ games, one would get the best civilization game to date. All of these games fall to the same issue, however: the AI, which is neither smart nor fun to play against. At least Ara has the management focus and it is not even possible to expand as in Civ games (the max city limit is somewhere around 10-12 cities) that makes it possible to mostly ignore the AI. In every Civ game I seem to lose my nerves with the neighbouring AI nations and annihilate them. The rest of the game becomes so boring that I often quit before the end. With Ara, I have tried just to tolerate the my neighbours while focussing on my economy and keeping a large enough military to defend my nation even though they keep on insulting me and bind my troops for a useless waiting game. No matter how angry they are, they seem not to attack when your military is stronger than theirs. In Ara the benefit of conquering AI cities is slim as most of the time one has the maximum number of cities anyway, so one might as well let them live.
Revealing the Invisible Hand Update (Version 1.1) for Ara: History Untold - Xbox Wire
Ara: History Untold is about to receive its first major update with version 1.1 and it’s packed with features aimed at enhancing the player experience.
news.xbox.com
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