Tried out Ara last night. Incidentally I have been playing Civ 5 the past couple of weeks. I haven't played Civ 6. I get on these grand strategy kicks couple times a year, will probably lose interest in a few weeks...
TLDR: Overall seems interesting. I like the more in depth city management. Haven't been able to experience the fighting yet. I really don't like the random events they use for interactions with neutral tribes. UI is bleh, but might just need to get more used to it. Not a fan of the art style. I would pass until they patch it to get the CPU usage under control.
First, there seems to be some serious optimization issues with this game. Sitting at the menu screen it is burning 40%+ CPU. During gameplay it was at 90%+. I made some changes to the graphics and restarted it seemed to calm down a bit to about 60-65% CPU during gameplay, but still seems like excessively high CPU usage since it is almost constant with no fluctuations even when I am just idleing in the city screen. I have an i5-10400 and 4070. Few threads on the steam forums about this.
Gameplay I am sort of mixed. I only played a few hours, so cannot really get too in depth.
- Neutral tribes: I don't quite understand how this work. They seem to only be icons on the map with no way to directly interact with them. There are seemingly random events that happen which give you some short story then you can pick 1 of three actions which will impact you in some way on resources and your reputation with the tribe. If you bring the tribe to full reputation they join your city. When I encountered a tribe that was all the way in the red nothing really happened, just the same random event to bring up the reputation. Civ 5 city-states seem more interesting in that they are full neutral civilizations with borders which you can fight or trade with.
- City/Territoy mangement: this is a bit more involved than Civ5. Like Civ 5 a city will have several territories it will control. As the city grows you can choose a new territory to add to your city (this is better than the random expansion Civ5 does IMO). Each territory will have an overall resource generation, then is divided into a few plots of land within it. Some of the plots have resources like some plant, animal, or mineral. You need to build a specific improvement on that plot to take advantage of it (ex if you build a farm on a corn resource you get grain out of it). You can build different buildings on each plot which can generate certain things. For example, you can build a bakery which you can use to bake bread. You can then use that bread to give your city a perk which will increase the health of the city. There are other buildings which you can build tools which you can use to improve your other improvements. Some buildings can create raw materials to feed into other improvements. It seems like it can get pretty complicated.
- War: Maybe I just got lucky, but every AI in the game seemed pretty passive, so I didn't fight anyone. Encountered 3 other civilizations, they were all pretty neutral. Like the neutral tribe I again had some random events happen involving them.
- UI: confusing, will take some getting used to. Lot of nested menus you need to dig through to get to stuff.
- Graphics: The graphics seems OK, though I prefer the art style of Civ 5. This game is a bit too cartoony for my taste. You can judge for yourself from screenshots. The animation seems pretty mixed. On one hand the world has interesting details if you zoom in like flocks of birds flying around, on the other hand your unit looks like a 2D icon which you move around.
TLDR: Overall seems interesting. I like the more in depth city management. Haven't been able to experience the fighting yet. I really don't like the random events they use for interactions with neutral tribes. UI is bleh, but might just need to get more used to it. Not a fan of the art style. I would pass until they patch it to get the CPU usage under control.
First, there seems to be some serious optimization issues with this game. Sitting at the menu screen it is burning 40%+ CPU. During gameplay it was at 90%+. I made some changes to the graphics and restarted it seemed to calm down a bit to about 60-65% CPU during gameplay, but still seems like excessively high CPU usage since it is almost constant with no fluctuations even when I am just idleing in the city screen. I have an i5-10400 and 4070. Few threads on the steam forums about this.
Gameplay I am sort of mixed. I only played a few hours, so cannot really get too in depth.
- Neutral tribes: I don't quite understand how this work. They seem to only be icons on the map with no way to directly interact with them. There are seemingly random events that happen which give you some short story then you can pick 1 of three actions which will impact you in some way on resources and your reputation with the tribe. If you bring the tribe to full reputation they join your city. When I encountered a tribe that was all the way in the red nothing really happened, just the same random event to bring up the reputation. Civ 5 city-states seem more interesting in that they are full neutral civilizations with borders which you can fight or trade with.
- City/Territoy mangement: this is a bit more involved than Civ5. Like Civ 5 a city will have several territories it will control. As the city grows you can choose a new territory to add to your city (this is better than the random expansion Civ5 does IMO). Each territory will have an overall resource generation, then is divided into a few plots of land within it. Some of the plots have resources like some plant, animal, or mineral. You need to build a specific improvement on that plot to take advantage of it (ex if you build a farm on a corn resource you get grain out of it). You can build different buildings on each plot which can generate certain things. For example, you can build a bakery which you can use to bake bread. You can then use that bread to give your city a perk which will increase the health of the city. There are other buildings which you can build tools which you can use to improve your other improvements. Some buildings can create raw materials to feed into other improvements. It seems like it can get pretty complicated.
- War: Maybe I just got lucky, but every AI in the game seemed pretty passive, so I didn't fight anyone. Encountered 3 other civilizations, they were all pretty neutral. Like the neutral tribe I again had some random events happen involving them.
- UI: confusing, will take some getting used to. Lot of nested menus you need to dig through to get to stuff.
- Graphics: The graphics seems OK, though I prefer the art style of Civ 5. This game is a bit too cartoony for my taste. You can judge for yourself from screenshots. The animation seems pretty mixed. On one hand the world has interesting details if you zoom in like flocks of birds flying around, on the other hand your unit looks like a 2D icon which you move around.