A year on from its debut, would-be challenger to Civ’s 4X strategy throne Ara: History Untold has gotten what looks like its most substantial overhaul yet. So substantial that its developers are hailing this Revolutions update as the arrival of Ara version 2.0, in the same tone of voice you might use for someone who’s gotten a swanky new hairdo.
While the base version had a fair few hangups, the Xbox folks who’re keen to see Ara stand the test of time have pushed plenty of updates and tweaks for it since then. Current developers Stardock Entertainment and Oxide Games, aimed to wipe out a number of the biggest gripes earlier this year, and this latest update aims for plenty of further refinement.
As detailed in a Steam post, the update introduces the likes of new culture and influence systems designed to provide an alternative to conquest as they do in Civ, unique historical units for every civilisation, and another unit that’s just really annoying. No, seriously, at the end of the Renaissance you can now unlock an “agitator unit” that can be deployed to sow rebellion in other nations and engage in a bit of ideological subversion. We’ll see if they’re just a slightly less Bondy version of Civ’s spies, but colour me intrigued.
Beyond that, leaders have been revamped with “with unique mechanics, traits, and abilities”, there’s a new priority and quota crafting system to ditch some of the micromanagement that’s long plagued Ara, and the AI’s been improved with a view to making more realistic moves. The interface, map generation and performance have also been tweaked as part of the update, to round out its main bits.
It certainly looks like a big enough overhaul to make it worth dipping your toe back in if you’ve previously bounced off of Ara, even if just for a brief fling ahead of Civ 7’s next update.
