@@Micsudi92 i'm not sure how to link this, i'm using the steam app, but it's a post where they talk about what they plan to improve and here the quote about upgrading unit : "Unit Upgrading - Working on this. Should be available fairly soon."
People want to play this game the same way they play civilization, then they get lost, they try to speed up the pace of the game, they ignore the details, but in this game every turn has to be played slowly, micromanaging your cities, turn by turn. You must play this game calmly, looking at the details. People are complaining about this game because of this, they want to speed up, but they should slow down. They go to the next turn without looking at the details and end up getting lost. You must stop to micromanage, analyze and move on to the next turn, as you understand the mechanics of the game you will play faster and so on, this is how you play games with micromanagement. In fact, it is a test for people who have a lot of anxiety.
and then they will whine that Civ needs more depth, but any game that is like that they dont like - and then they at first dont like some of Civ 7, but then with time, they start to come over. Its typically for current online culture. I am glad I am not a dev.
@@xBINARYGODx You're turning a lot of different folks with different opinions on different things into one easily dismissable group. Some players want more depth and micromanagement in civ, others want less supply chain management and granular decisions. I think it was maybe a mistake to present this game as picking a historical figure, you're definitely more of an accountant and supply logistics micromanager. None of these leaders were out there telling workshops to build a plow and then mailing that plow to a specific farm and telling the farm where to put it.
Personally i think the game pace is way too fast. Research tends to be so fast that, unless you have a city with high production, you're just gonna fall behind when it comes to actually developing your cities. Considering how intricate the production numbers can get, the whole materials UI also needs an overhaul. One should be able to see production numbers almost immediately. Having to ho through several UI layers to get crucial and detailed information is awful. Also, the rounding of numbers needs to go. Why in gods name did they think it would be a good idea to round numbers in some UIs when the difference between 0.1 production can be a huge difference? Overall, i love the concept of the game. It's a mix of Humankind and Age of Wonders and i love it. That said, it needs a lot of QoL changes and performance improvements.
@@tsunamie1015 all of the rounding is so suspect, why round prestige to 2 sig figs?? having the full number at like 2039 is not that hard to read lmao not having the ability to just bulk-set things is gonna be pain late game, it's got great systems but terrible controls it's not like factorio where sometimes you can just set up a factory and not give a fuck about it until 10 techs later, these chains are modified every few turns too.
I think Potato isn't paying attention to the differences between consumable supplies/amenities and those that are one and done permanent as long as they are assigned. A lot of the things he keeps asking about are on the tooltips, but he's just blasting through them so fast and not fully reading the tooltips that he's confusing himself. Edit: And right when I post this I get to the point in the vid when he realizes it. XD Remember kids, take the time to read the tooltips ;)
Yup. Fair enough given he has to keep the video moving, but just like Old World, if you don't research things deeply, it will cost you. Edit: Like, did you or Potato know that where you produce your soldier types doesn't change their power level. Instead it is where you put them into a formation and muster them. All of a sudden we can produce them in one city, but call them up in a city with super high security.
if he was clipping them out, but reading them, he wouldnt keep making mistakes, meaning he is not doing that, until the point the video where he realize he is not reading stuff and all that.
true. specially in this game. It is convoluted and not easy to keep track of everything as you would need to. they really need to give us UI features to keep track of it all with less clicks and more eye relieve.
RE: how often do cities just disappear? We (relatively) recently determined there were previously relatively large cities and population centers in the Amazon thanks to LIDAR, in what is now jungle. Prior to these findings it was thought uninhabitable for large populations, and all these cities pretty much just dissapeared, no external conquest needed
climate change of some kind is likely what happened, or maybe a disease - blah blah blah, its also know well by the relevant parts of the scientific community that current cities would get reclaimed by nature VERY quickly. Sure, 100 years later you can still see the skyscraper and etc - but 1000 years? 10,000 years?
The disappear mechanic is really new in the genre and interesting - Another feature that doenst push ear/conflict onto the player. That opnes up for a lot more Civs and playstyles.
Troy ... Gergovie... Palmyre... Chiang mai... And those are just the ones that comes to mind from the top of my head. Just because you don t know about lost cities on the euro asian continent doesn t mean they don t exist.
@@etienne8110 to be fair, Troy was destroyed via siege....7 times? The city was literally built on a hill that was actually the ruins of every previous Troy. It has a really bad record.
so from what I'm seeing, am I correct in saying that this game is actually Anno 1800 at its core mixed with a CIV style visual design and a victorian 3 UI? Like the core focus of the game actually seems to be supply chain management with the whole crafting system. Not saying I dislike or anything. I played Anno to the death and had entire spreadsheets dedicated to supply chain optimization, but just wanted to get myself in the proper mindset for playing this game.
Supply chain management is very core, but you still very much need other civilization like things like expanding towards resources, using military to gain and protect territory, generate science and culture, explore the world. Supply chain feeds into every system but from what I've seen from anno (never played it) this game has a bit more things to do. Which can be both good and bad. I'm in act 2 with just 5 cities (I can expand further but I don't want the additional work and I'm already double the victory points of the second strongest civ in my game) and I'm already skipping a lot of optimization because it's getting boring and unwieldy. I guess if the game was closer I'd be more motivated to tinker each turn
I'm starting to understand why the mixed reviews on steam. It reminds me a bit of Master of Orion 3, or Distant Worlds. 4x games that really lean in to the micro can really be hit or miss, because 4x typically doesn't do that much micro and people who are in to 4x aren't always that enthused by it... but I really hope this gets the support it needs to be a thing. Publishers tend to get nervous when innovation leads to less than all the money.
The game is slow but it is excellent, I’m playing on Normal and I’m 2200 prestige ahead. Few teething issues, performance is low but that’s kind of irrelevant in a turn based games. The resource management is great and the building combinations into districts is solid, it makes you think about what to prioritise
Re performance a fix now pre patching is set shaders to lowest option. Really make a frame rate difference. I was playing on low settings, now on medium with higher franerates
Game has promise but the UI is unintuitive and tooltips next to useless. Like Potato says repeatedly in the video especially @49:00. Also the crafting and supplies system is a micromanagement nightmare as you keep aging up and gain more cities. I like the game...mostly...but it needs some serious TLC on the actual UI instead of the gameplay.
sounds like at least some of that is just this game not being for you - the crafting other things have depth and need to be managed - oh well. This is not really Civ, it does some things differently, but for some things, it has way more depth.
Taking cities from the ai is the worst. The ai places buildings in the worst ways possible and then I gotta replace all the buildings. Razing is the only way. They need to streamline it by just allowing you to deconstruct buildings by placing new ones on top. That way there’s only one click in one interface. Maybe even give a production discount for replacing old buildings with new ones.
upgrading units button? like, i get that for realism it can't just be "oh they swap stuff immediately" but even stellaris fucking fixed this (auto-assigns the retrofit work to nearby starports) not having an overview where you can set defaults (what buildings use what, what do cities use as amenities) is a fucking nightmare, having to click into each and every building? nah i'd just play xcom UFO at that point btw it's not "hurr durr you don't want to spend time" it's "i want to have tools to actually use my time well instead of doing 10 rounds of checks before ending the turn" this game will benefit massively from UI/QoL mods.
i hope the devs add a mod like command for the micromanagement where you have a tab that says: command: "I want all baskets in all dwellings in all cities"; than the computer automatically puts that in all dwellings without you the individual manually doing it. that may help with that issue in a huge way.
It's a beautiful game, and the map generation is quite amazing, but it's soooo tedious to play it! There are so many resources I've gotta keep track of and those resources create different resources that are needed to craft other resources. Then you can apply them as amenities for the city or supplies for industries. It's just all... tedious
@OriGummie I love civ, but I also love the supply chain concept of games like anno. For me, this game is the almost perfect blend of city building, 4x TBS and supply chain. I think this game is a few developments away to become really great. 1. A better UI is the most urgent improvement, really necessary, where you can control all the supply chain from one screen. 2. Improvement on war and military units mechanics. 3. Improvement in diplomacy and AI
This game seems so full of micro I think I would be totally okay with not optimizing everything (nor being able to do so), especially at the beginning; that's a breath of fresh air to me, where I would usually be upset with myself for not having done that lol
1 hour into this video, I'm remembering how beautiful the game was in the beginning. Now it's like multiple pop-up menus and little resource icons all over the damn place
That s just how he plays it. I found one of the thing i enjoy is to zoom in a lot while planning in cities, just to enjoy all the cool animations and how my decisions affects the citizens. The animations in this game are just crazy. Playing it on the zoom out is a waste.
Hey Potato, I'm sure you've already figured this out, but in your city view, click the pulldown for "ZONES" on the right hand side, select one of the other categories. This view will show you not only supplies, but if a building is upgradable, it's yield, and it's assigned experts all in one list. Really easy at a glance to see if your buildings are supplied without clicking through every one of them in the ZONE view. Hope that helps!
As someone who has put an alarmingly high number of hours into Civ considering I still don't understand it really and truly, I gave Ara a bash last night and found myself really falling for it! It is likely because I'm terrible at Civ but it seems to have a lot of the good stuff but with it being easier to digest. I found managing cities and upgrading them to just make a ton more sense. So I'm not a good source of info but from my ignorant perspective I've really enjoyed it. The fact it went on pc gamepass was ace as well, so there was no reason to not try it.
I can think of a half-dozen razed/abandoned cities on Eurasia off the top of my head, and that's not even touching the massive number in the Americas. And I have no clue but assume Africa is no stranger either. The idea that just destroying a city is 'not done' is really just our modern sensibilities clashing with the reality of history.
I dislike the UI. I feel like it's too much. It could use some slimming down and simplifying. I also feel like the map itself could use little bit desaturation, just a little bit. It feels vibrant like a children's game in a bad way right now.
Im honetsly loving watching the growing pains coming along with this game. Dont get me wrong, I love watching Potato just go absolutely ham on CIV with super streamlined gameplay. But its, humanizing I guess, to see that i had figured out a few gameplay aspects in much the same way as he. Fact is, this game is definitely much more of an economic simulator with CIV like aspects and visuals, than it is a CIV-like with a more in depth economy. Every building you place needs to be optimized, every workshop needs to be monitored every few turns to ensure youre not overproducing anything you dont actually need (no need to produce more of a supply item than youre actually going to use). Building projects which require certain items other than timber, materials, and production, take planning to set up a new or shift an existing supply chain to provide the required items. Im just approaching the end of ACT 1 and i almost want to just restart knowong what i do now. Definitely a much different experience than what I, and im assuming most people were expecting. Not that the marketing really did a good job explaining any of these new statems. Ofc they just made it seem like it was much closer to CIV than it is.
It’s interesting but there is far too much micro in terms of manufacturing goods for short term buffs and almost every single improvement requiring long term fiddling with it. I played a bit through PC gamepass and just found it very frustrating. I liked both Old World and Humankind for what they did differently from Civ but this one just isn’t it for me.
Instead of the bottom tier civilizations disappearing - it would be more interesting if they got knocked back to their capital or all their non-capital cities became independent.
This game seems built for a personality type that is about 10% of the population. I have seen enpugh people call it rubbish yet show they truly are incapable of understanding the level of depth here. This isnt because they are dumb, but because they don't process data and information in a way this requires to truly manage it deftly. My brother is one of those and it is absolutely insane how deep he plays this game. Civ, in contrast, is actually quite simple. People can understand the systems and dynamics, and they aren't required to manage giga loads of data and manage it simultaneously. I play Soulmasl with him, and the system of base and resource management is not inly something he deeply enjoys, but is ridiculously complex. Yet over time, he has "programmed" our tribesman to manage each system in the base independently, but then adds another layer of merging two different systems using the two independently "programmed" tribesman. U won't lie. I just stand around and ask him to tell me what to gather or kill. So same as this game, if people can't recognize, let alone interact with intelligently, then people say the game is rubish. In short, check yourself before trashing a game, you might just suck at ut and can't accept that fact.
@@Mhantrax this is definitely what's going on. Seems like this is Civ with another level of complexity so that the production tree isn't so formulaic. It required a lot more planning, but that isn't a bad thing if you desire a deeper experience than Civ can offer
It goes to show you that players don't actually know what they want - ignore the AI complaints, many people want more complexity in everything, but any game that does have more, even if it's not by much, they ignore or say is too deep or just claim its rubbish. This is why the initial reaction to Civ 7 was what it was - it was different, so it was bad - then, with no REAL improvement to the level of information you can get about the game, people watch more interviews, and suddenly they come around more and more. Some say it's not good to let everyone know about your game early, but I would argue being more transparent IN TODAY'S ONLINE CULTURE is the way better move. you SORT OF have to spoil your game or you are playing Russian roulette (unless the publisher/console/developer is "the right" one then you can get away with murder).
i really want to like this game but its sooo micro managey that it starts to make my skin itch. constantly have to think about what needs this. please just give upgrade all button
they need to refine the UI a bit, I wish they'd categorize, in collapsible menus, the improvements menu by building type rather than location and it just being a big mess by the iron age (not even mid game!). I've only played that far and it's starting to get annoying, I hear it only gets worse as your trying to add metal tools to all blacksmiths/ workshops or plows to all farms, but end up having to scroll through all of your city menus just to do it. like I don't need to go over all of my stone kilns or w/e you can't even enhance them (except with expert maybe) so why not just collapse the list! otherwise I feel that it's a perfectly cromulent game, really enjoying it r/n.
This game would benefit massively from more organized and intuitive menus. I feel like most people get turned off by how hidden the information feels. It takes like 6-7 clicks to get to some things and they're not easy patterns to memorize lol
Clearly the game is geared towards people liking to micromanage. It s more a factorio/anno than a pure grand strategy 4x. I still feel it s a good mix of gameplays and a nice change of pace. The game is meant to be played slowly while chilling, enjoying the cool animations on close ups of your cities.
see....^^ thats a problem. But my guess is that stuff will be learned from our side and optimized in terms of UI etc from the DEVs side. Would like to have larger overviews witout much scrolling or clicking...still nice game
I like the idea crafting amenities, but the implementation feels weird. By plugging clothes into one city but not another, does that mean that people don't have them ? My country can make beer, but only one city can drink it ? I think a simpler and more believable system would have been to make it so that when you acquire a new resource or amenity, it creates a demand value based on your population size. If you don't produce enough to meet demand, then you only receive a percentage of the benefits of the resource/amenity, depending on the shortfall. You could make it so system prioritises the producing city, or it could just applies them empire wide. End result: you get the same fantasy, less micro-management.
Thats more CIV like and that system was problematic in itself as it was only implemented to keep city spam in check as they said multiple times themselfes. I like the system - it need a better overview though. Thats true
This is gonna be a long one but im just jumping on the video to comment and boost engagement: I had seen yours and a couple other smaller RU-vidrs videos on this game and Civ 7 and was debating if I wanted to actually spend the money on Ara while I wait for Civ. Finally pulled the trigger 3 days ago and already have 13 hours into my first save (just entered the 3rd age). I didnt watch any tutorials and most of the gameplay I saw I watched in the background while feeding my kiddo. So when I started it up I was so confused even when following the tutorial that I was at risk of being kicked from an AI game because my prestige was so low because I didnt know what to do. I quit night one and went to bed and something just clicked. I came back the next day and went from 2nd to last to 2nd overall in my 2nd session. Things started to click and now im almost done with my first play through (random selection, Japan) and im sitting at around 16k Prestige while second place is sitting at around 10k. Its crazy how easily you can spiral a lead. There are a few things I would like the game to change like better explaining war (prestige loss vs gain), or fixing AI with higher prestige getting kicked out (had a 7200 prestige AI get booted and a 4800 prestige AI stay even though they bother entered the era at the same time) and some other things. But overall totally recommend the game its very worth esp with all the different maps you can play on and the crazy amount of countries you can play as. Thanks so much for bringing my attention to this game!
Oh, civilizations dissapear a fuck ton! Like, to this day, it's still a mystery how in the world the Indus river valley civilization ended, it ended so suddenly. The Cretan civilization went the same way, so did the Hittites and the Mycenaeans, arguably the original Egyptian civilization was subsumed by invaders, the Celts, which had once spanned from Anatolia to Iberia to Scotland, now only exist in Ireland and the corners of France and the Uk, with just about none of their ancient cities actually remaining anywhere they once were. I could say more about tons of other nations, like the Carpathian Avars, the Goths, the Huns, hell, even the ancient Germanic settlements don't really exist any more lol
17:16 throughout history, razing cities and military conquest in general meant mass depopulation and death. The Mongols were infamous, but it’s a recurring theme. The Assyrians would forcibly resettle conquered peoples throughout their empire. When Caesar conquered Gaul, by his own estimates he killed, enslaved, and left behind the population in equal parts. The Americas saw 90-95% native population decline as a consequence of contact with Europe.
Am I the only one that plays this game like I'm on speed or something? I never stop clicking shit, constantly. I never read. I'm always queueing stuff.
I feel like Jumbopixel does it right with this review, its a badly performing game with way to much micromanagement and not worth 60 euro. However, it does have good bones. But why do we keep paying for early access or even alpha version of a game at top dollars?? Wierd isnt it.
I'm a "marathon" player of Civ games. I hate to play quick rounds, simply too fast progression. Not having an option for something like that in Ara is highly disturbing for me. My biggest draw back at the moment with this game, otherwise I like it and more so step by step when you figure out how things work. Have not played beyond Iron so far, always start new, because I figured out something. But it is also a flaw of my gameplay, because I hate the quick progression of a game like that. Millennia had also an option for a slower game, so I have some hope for Ara to get it as well, but I fear it might not.
Sea issnt interesting? Easy boost for early meat production and if you can get the wale ressource....its really helpfull to boost production mid game. Those clams can get you gemstones that are quite nice (cultural side of things). But i wouldnt fight wars over it i guess. Cassus Belli´s is handled really interesting in ARA. Not as easy to pull off wars that are always net positive at the end. Rare that such games are not really war efficient from the get go (Wars are usually the easiest win con by miles). The fights are odd but there is enough depth that can be expanded on in patches even further (would help with balance). But i can say - i am positvely suprised - there will be a lot of fun hours to come :D
17:17 I guess razing a city and the city continuing to exist are not mutually exclusive. So, like during the thirty years war, they absolutely destroyed the city of Magdeburg. It. was so bad that they coined the term Magdeburgification. But the city was rebuilt. Cities tend to grow at locations that are good for settling, so these locations get resettled rather quickly. I guess it is more common that cities are abandoned and never resettled than cities being razed and never rebuilt.
I think the combat looks a lot more interesting than most 4X games. It is auto combat, which I like, and it has more depth with the formations and stacking of different troop types. The visual combat animation is just a nice to have as well.
I love that you can stack production queues- build ten leather, build ten shoes, build ten leather, build ten shoes, and then it alerts you when it's idle. You're not bound to make the same thing ad infinitum.
This game is going to tide me over until Civ 7. It has good bones but there are a lot of QoL and UI improvements that could still happen. So far a good start I think.
Really liking the insights into this game and making me more and more interested to try myself But am I the only one who was slightly annoyed by the "Your mom" religion-? I had the video run in the background and it was throwing me off whenever it was mentioned; an unnerving joke in my eyes Otherwise great video, looking forward to more!! :)
If you don't enjoy the micromanagement, then this game is not for you. This reminds of people who just repeatedly place WoW in any MMO that permitted it, even if loosely, then blame the game for being just the same (and if it didn't have that, they wouldn't even bother).
I found your recent live video quite insightful and I still think your conclusions at the end of it are where I land--this game needs to be simplified. There is good stuff here but way too much baroquely unnecessary complexity.
That depends on who you are. When you watch a person who lives in the encarta, is able to store and integrate that level of depth, then apply it in huge, copious, amounts, then the game becomes a freaking dream for certain types of people. Probably the inky person I have seen do this is Tacticat. His level of understanding of the systems and how to manage, even exploit them, is an entire level altogether. I recognize it because my brother is the same. Simplifying it to make it like Civ will remove what makes this game what it is. And what it is requires a deep level of abstract interaction. Some people simply can't do that, so don't recognize what is happening, then call it rubbish.
If we're talking about where capitalism was born, then it was born out of mercantilism. So it is not fair to say, "feudalism, that is the step before capitalism." Though obviously not every society goes through each economic model as if they are rungs on a ladder. Nor are all economic models mutually exclusive, the free market economies of the west and the command economies of the east were both heavily intertwined with industrialism.
@@brooklyn560 HK was actually a great game I never played Ara just watch live steams and other gamers playing it doesn’t look that exciting maybe I could be wrong I’m still going to buy it when it comes out
Yeeeeah, Millennia definitely does production chains way better than this game. This game is just…a frustrating mess 🫤. In Millennia, 1) the product ratios are clean integers, massively simplifying the mental modelling. 2) Products exist in the city where they are created instead of inherently being empire-wide, creating an organic and satisfying internal trade system. 3) There is a city-level view which abstracts away what is happening on each individual tile, so you can do a lot more micromanagement of your economy without drilling all the way down to the very bottom level.
