Ara: February 2025 Status Update

[Tandis]

Greetings!

Last week we released version 1.21. Version 1.3 in in QA but team is looking at a March release currently for it so that there more opportunity to promote it. It's a big update, much bigger than 1.1 or 1.2. It deals mostly with Diplomacy but there's some pretty big stuff in there that we don't want to spoil.

We are also hoping to publish a public roadmap of what we are looking to do with Ara over the next coming months.

Some of the areas on our "list" include:

* UI/UX for easing managing your nation.

* Warfare. This is going to be a pretty big focus. Ara isn't a war game but we do want to military power, both land and naval (and especially naval) and its effect on history to be better expressed. This also involves concepts like supplies and other elements that make use of our supply chain system.

* Maps. So one of the big changes we've made is that we have been gradually reducing the size of the regions. We were able to do this without reducing the # of zones in a region. But by doing this, the maps have more room for maneuver. This also needs to be done as part of our long-term goal of being able to make terrain have greater effect across the board.

* Map Generation / Resources. 1.3 does a lot with map generation but one area we want to get into is improving deployability by having more resource specialization. While 1.3 improves diplomacy and trade a great deal, in the longer run, we would really like to see trade become a pretty major element of the game, i.e. outsized from what you normally see in the genre.

* Speaking of replayability, a lot of uniqueness between the different nations are on our roadmap. This isn't about special units (at least not only) but also (mostly) in terms of unique recipes so that some nations are really good at making certain types of goods (like Coffee. Wonderful, magical, coffee). I can't emphasize enough how important that each game feel different.

* Revamps to the religion, masterpieces and paragon system based on your feedback. We want to connect all these things together more tightly and more intuitively and have their benefit be more tangible than prestige.

This is, by no means, a complete list. Some of the bigger things on our list we need to keep back as a surprise.

We are also really grateful for the support and just positive interactions the community has given us. It's a real treat to hang out on Discord or read your suggestions.

If you have any questions, please comment here and we'll do our best to respond.

[Filo90]

thanks for the update, I really like what you're cooking in the oven!

[Falsted]

Thanks for the update!

[frog_gamer]

Thanks you for the information. Can you please (Tandis/frogboy) do a leader mod so that we may do our own?
And please do not forget to correct 2 annoying little bugs: "Continue Game" and the flamethower icon.
Again thanks for continuing the development of this great game!

[Sgt. Barnes]

Yes nations and resources need much more work. Honestly only resources you need now is those giving money (gold, incense, tobacco). Few horses and grain in the beginning, maybe even some flowers now since cities now use more luxuries early. But most of it is just senselessly piling up. Nations have little difference. Egypt now maybe has some potential to be good in diplomacy, Xerxes has few more armies, but with bigger cities it really goes down quickly anyway. Coffee and Chocolate for Belgium is more like a meme than a real thing now. Number of zones should be shown without need to fly over them with a settler which you may not even have in some cases. Overall UI now is quite good, after 1.0 it feels hundred times better. I still do few thing old ineffective way but mostly getting used to new features :). It is also would be great to have leader speak something at least in english, because they all look like those guys in small screens on TV programmes to help hearing-disabled people understand. Even if it will be 10-20 short phrases in english it would be so much better. Even if it will be Jeanne D'Arc speaking. Seriously. It was a good thing in civ 5 they spoke even dead languages. But it is 100%. Just english will be 80%. Just face emotions is 10%.

[Theoretician]

Love the military supplies idea, that should fit perfectly with the game's resource management mechanics. Also love differentiating the civs more.

[Ruzen]

keep at it. Ara is a smart game. all it needs more time and dlc