Ara: History Untold News

v2.02 Update Now Available

[h2]The latest update introduces significant balance changes, tooltip improvements, and technical fixes.[/h2][p]View the Full Changelog Below
[/p][p]The latest update for Ara: History Untold, v2.02 has been released, bringing a variety of adjustments aimed at enhancing gameplay and stability.[/p][p][/p][h3]Culture & Traits Updates[/h3][p]Several Culture Traits have been rebalanced to improve their strategic distinctiveness. Key changes include increased influence for Field Distinction, as well as raised culture bonuses for Victory Parades and Solitary Brilliance. The Celebrated Empire trait has been adjusted, reducing its culture bonus. Other traits, such as Convincing Doctrine and Religious Authority, have seen increases in their Religion Spread Strength. Tooltip improvements have also been made, including fixes for the Celebrated Hardships trait and ensuring that Capital Pride applies correctly.[/p]

[p]Trade Production Balance Changes: Trade production bonuses have been increased for several traits, including Organized Merchants and Shared Routes, enhancing their effectiveness in gameplay. The bonuses for Confident Traders and Shared Plunder have also been raised, improving trade dynamics.[/p]
[p]New Tooltip Improvements: Comprehensive tooltips have been added to enhance the understanding of trade production calculations, detailing base rates, connection types, and modifiers. Nested tooltip navigation allows players to hover over and click on production values for a full breakdown by nation. Tooltips are now integrated across various UI panels and feature improved readability and localization for all languages.[/p]

[p] [/p][h3]Gameplay & UI Improvements[/h3][p]The update resolves an issue where starting a crafting project could unintentionally cancel building upgrades, ensuring that upgrades complete as expected. Late-game performance has been optimized, significantly reducing UI lag when adjusting crafters in the Improvement Panel. The Eternal Siege event has also been modified to provide a temporary security boost instead of unlocking City Walls.[/p][p] [/p][h3]Economy & City Management[/h3][p]Filter tags for Cured Meats and Salted Fish have been corrected to ensure proper display under the City Growth filter in the Amenity selection menu.[/p][p] [/p][h3]Technical & Stability Updates[/h3][p]This patch includes improvements to startup performance on high-end NVIDIA GPUs and fixes for a rare startup hang related to texture loading.[/p][p] [/p][p]Players can look forward to a more balanced and stable experience with the release of this update.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]v2.02 Changelog[/h2][h3]Culture & Traits[/h3]

[p]Rebalanced several Culture Traits to make each feel more rewarding and strategically distinct:[/p]
- [p]Field Distinction: Influence increased from 2 → 4[/p]
- [p]Victory Parades: Culture bonus increased from 20 → 25[/p]
- [p]Solitary Brilliance: Culture bonus increased from 20 → 30[/p]
- [p]Celebrated Empire: Culture bonus reduced from 20 → 10[/p]
- [p]Convincing Doctrine: Religion Spread Strength increased from 2 → 5[/p]
- [p]Religious Authority: Religion Spread Strength increased from 5 → 10[/p]
- [p]Cultural Exchange: Culture bonus per Trade Agreement increased from 1 → 2[/p]
- [p]Cultural Diffusion: Culture bonus per Research Agreement increased from 1 → 2[/p]
- [p]Monument Builders: Prestige bonus reduced from 2 → 1[/p]
- [p]Artistic Glory & Systemic Inquiry: Updated text to better describe their effects[/p]
- [p]Capital Pride: Now correctly applies only to Capital Cities[/p]
- [p]Fixed the Devotional Reach Culture Trait so it properly boosts Influence when your Religion is dominant.[/p]
- [p]The Celebrated Hardships trait now correctly appears in the Golden Age tooltip.[/p]
- [p]Ensured Grand Duke starts with a Culture Value in Cities as intended.[/p]

[p]Trade Production Balance Changes[/p]

[p]Organized Merchants: Trade Production bonus per City Controlled increased from 5% to 10%[/p]
[p]Shared Routes: Trade Production bonus per Alliance Maintained increased from 5% to 20%[/p]
[p]Respected Caravans: Trade Production bonus increased from 10% to 25%[/p]
[p]Confident Traders: Trade Production bonus increased from 20% to 50%[/p]
[p]Shared Plunder: Trade Production bonus after conquering a city increased from 50% to 100% (lasts 20 turns)[/p]

[p]New Tooltip Improvements[/p]

[p]Detailed Trade Route Tooltips:
Added comprehensive tooltips showing how trade production is calculated — including base rate, connection type (Land, Sea, Air), modifiers from traits and buffs, and total production per turn.[/p]
[p]Nested Tooltip Navigation:
Hovering over Production Per Turn now reveals a full breakdown by nation (e.g., “Korea +0.3, Egypt +0.9”), and clicking on a nation opens that nation’s detailed trade production tooltip.[/p]
[p]Integrated Across the UI:
Tooltips are now available on the Trade Agreement Panel, Diplomacy Screen (Agreements Subpanel), and Diplomatic Relations Panel (Receiving Section).[/p]
[p]Accurate Modifier Calculations:
Trade bonuses now display exact numerical contributions (e.g., Protective +220), ensuring full accuracy with internal buff calculations.[/p]
[p]Improved Readability:
Tooltips now feature clear visual spacing, color-coded values (white for base, green for modifiers), and icons for time-based information.[/p]
[p]Localized for All Languages:
All tooltip text has been externalized for localization, ensuring consistent and translatable presentation across languages[/p]

[hr][/hr][h3]Gameplay & UI Improvements[/h3]

[p]Fixed an issue where starting a crafting project could unintentionally cancel a building upgrade. Upgrades now complete as expected.[/p]
[p]Optimized late-game performance when adjusting crafters in the Improvement Panel:[/p]
- [p]Significantly reduced UI lag (especially in larger empires).[/p]
- [p]No gameplay logic changes — purely a performance enhancement.[/p]
[p]Eternal Siege event updated: the second option no longer unlocks City Walls (which previously caused stalled wars). It now grants +10 Security for 20 Turns, maintaining the defensive narrative without blocking progression.[/p]

[hr][/hr][h3]Economy & City Management[/h3]

[p]Corrected filter tags for Cured Meats and Salted Fish, ensuring they properly appear under the City Growth filter in the Amenity selection menu.[/p]

[hr][/hr][h3]Technical & Stability Updates[/h3]

[p]Improved startup performance on high-end NVIDIA GPUs.[/p]
[p]Fixed a rare debug startup hang related to texture loading.[/p]

[p][/p][p][/p][p][/p]

Ara History Untold 2.0 transforms the historical 4X with culture and influence

As the name suggests, Ara: History Untold 2.0 is a full-scale rebirth for the Civ challenger built by Oxide Games and Xbox Game Studios. The 'Revolutions' update is its biggest since launch, incorporating a full culture system with more than 40 unlockable traits. It also overhauls the way leaders and factions work to make each feel more distinct, and introduces some smart ways to strip out much of the busywork of city micromanagement. If you played Ara at launch, it's a great chance to come back, and if you skipped it originally but are looking for a historical alternative to Civ 7, now's the time to try it.

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Ara: History Untold's big Revolutions v2.0 update is out now, aims to improve "nearly every area of the game"

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.

v2.0 Revolutions Update Now Available

[h3]Ara: History Untold - The ambitious historical strategy game celebrates its first anniversary by adding nation specific units, unique leader traits, cultural conquest, AI updates and much more with the v2.0 Revolutions Update[/h3][p]View Full Changelog[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p] [/p][p]Stardock Entertainment and Oxide Games, in partnership with Xbox Game Studios, released Ara: History Untold – Version 2.0 today. The Revolutions Update is a massive expansion of new features and content.[/p][p]Informed by community feedback, the Revolutions Update adds a new Culture and Influence System, gives each nation its own unique unit, gives greater player control while simultaneously reducing micromanagement, improves performance, includes a major AI revamp and much more.[/p][p][/p][h3]Key Features of the Revolutions Update:[/h3]

[p]Culture & Influence Systems – Cities gain a new quality of life category called Culture. Culture generates Influence, a new currency used to acquire cultural traits and expand territory through claims. This creates meaningful alternatives to military expansion.[/p]

[p]Agitator Unit – Introduced with the Revolutions technology at the end of the Renaissance, Agitators can be sent into adjacent foreign regions to stir rebellion and, through Influence, bring those territories into your nation. This unlocks a second form of conquest in Act II: ideological subversion.[/p]

[p]Per-Nation Units – Every civilization now commands unique historical forces, from Mongol Horse Archers to Japanese Samurai, adding tactical depth and flavor.[/p]

[p]Leader Redesigns – Every leader has been reimagined with unique mechanics, traits, and abilities, ensuring more replayability and personality-driven diplomacy.[/p]

[p]Priority & Quota Crafting System – Micromanaged production queues are replaced with smarter stockpile and priority controls, freeing players to focus on high-level strategy.[/p]

[p]Adaptive AI – A more dynamic and personality-driven AI responds to player performance, making diplomacy, warfare, and resource management more challenging and believable.[/p]

[p]Map Generation Overhaul – Realistic natural resource clustering plus new exclusivity rules modeling historical trade and competition.[/p]

[p]High DPI UI & Visual Update – A sharper, scalable UI built for modern displays, with new accessibility and customization options.[/p]

[p]Performance Boosts – Major engine optimizations deliver faster turns, smoother framerates, and reduced CPU usage.[/p]

[p]Ara: History Untold offers a fresh take on historical turn-based strategy where players can build a nation that spans all of human history. Heavily inspired by player feedback, the v2.0 update delivers new and refined features that make the game more approachable for new and existing players.[/p][p][/p][p]"We're thrilled to introduce Culture as a gameplay element in Ara: History Untold," stated Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock and Oxide. "The importance of 'soft power' is immense. Although military conquest is the most straightforward method for territorial expansion, we aimed to provide players with alternative strategies for asserting their influence over the world. This becomes particularly significant in the late game, when exploration and expansion have already reached their limits."[/p][p][/p][p]For the latest information on updates, community initiatives, and future content, visit the official website at www.arahistoryuntold.com.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p]

Dev Journal #9: A Guided Tour of the v2.0 Revolutions Update

[h2]Welcome Back[/h2][p]First, apologies for breaking save games. We even had to break the Preview save games to add the new map generation system for 2.0![/p][p]Second, wow! I hope you guys like what we’ve done here. Since the original Sid Meier’s Civilization was first released in 1991, there have only been a handful of strategy games that have attempted to take the player through all of human history. It’s hard. I bet you, reading this right now, know something of this. Ara: History Untold not only shows off how military technology progresses, but also how the quality of life of people changed based on what Goods were developed over time.[/p][p]It was how Goods were produced in this game that was both its biggest differentiator as well as its most polarizing feature. Specifically, the user interface for controlling the crafting of goods involved a great deal of micromanagement. Addressing this was our top priority for version 2.0. We wanted to ensure players had total control over their economy without them having to micromanage it. We think version 2.0 nails this with the switch to Quotas and Priorities.[/p][p]Version 2.0 is a big update. It is, by far, the biggest update to a game I’ve ever seen in my career. It’s not a totally new game of course, but let’s just consider a few high-level changes as an example:[/p]

[p]The aforementioned complete redesign of how crafting works along with the corresponding AI changes to use it well for the computer opponents.[/p]
[p]A revisit of all 40+ leaders in this game to give each nation its own unique unit as well making the leaders and nations play much more distinctly than before.[/p]
[p]The Culture and Influence system that lets users add new cultural traits, buy new regions, and steal regions from other players.[/p]
[p]What amounts to a rewrite of the map generation system. Not just the inclusion of truly randomly generated maps (which is why we had to break the save games), but how resources and biomes get distributed.[/p]
[p]The new UI rendering engine so that icons and text are now essentially “vectorized” to be super sharp at any resolution[/p]
[p]Optional AI management of city improvements and amenities[/p]
[p]Optional Adaptive AI where the AI difficulty can go up or down to help make sure your 8-hour game doesn’t become an unchallenging slog.[/p]
[p]Under the covers, the AI was largely rewritten for v2.0. This expresses itself not just in better economic management but also, we hope, more intuitive diplomatic behaviors.[/p]

[p]Now, all that said, let’s talk about things we hope you notice right away:[/p][p][/p][h2]Things we hope you notice right away[/h2][p]If you’re coming from version 1.x, the question is, what changes will you likely notice right away? These aren’t necessarily big features, just things you will likely notice.[/p][p][/p][h3]#1 It’s sharp![/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p]Text and UI elements are super sharp now.[/p][p]You’ll probably notice the new loading screen first, but you will probably notice how sharp and crisp the UI is. Text, icons, etc, are all now super clear.[/p][p][/p][h3]#2 It’s faster[/h3][p]Whether it was moving the map with WASD or with the mouse, the performance is vastly snappier. The moment you drag the map, you’ll immediately notice how much faster the framerate is. And I don’t mean a little faster, but massively, drastically more responsive.[/p][p][/p][h3]#3 The map generation is better[/h3][p]This is especially true if you choose one of the new Map styles at the start (Terra or Random).[/p][p]The natural resources spawn in ways that feel better, are more satisfying, and just make sense.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Many resources that get clumped together only get clumped in that one spot in the entire world, making them rare and valuable (Coffee for instance). Note that this screenshot is atypical. If you get this good of a start, beware. The game balances a lot more than just resources (like in this case, the Mongols were placed as my neighbors).[/p][p] [/p][h3]#4 Crafting is just a lot better[/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p]You can place items as accelerators in advance of having those items now.[/p][p] [/p][h3]#5 Unique units[/h3][p]You may not notice the new units in the UI, but you will probably notice that there are new units out there. The computer opponents like their unique units (because they’re awesome).[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]#6 A new quality of life item[/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Some sort of harp? Sort of! It’s CULTURE![/p][p]Culture. Your cities have a culture quality of life now which generates influence.[/p][p] [/p][h3]#7 Influence Stat[/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]That scroll = Influence.[/p][p]Influence is generated by your cities and is buffed by the culture quality of life and cultural improvements. It lets you buy claims, cultural traits and eventually lets the agitator steal regions.[/p][p] [/p][h3]#8 I can see subregions[/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p]You can see subregions on the map as dotted lines.[/p][p]This is a small thing, but you can now see the sub regions on the map a subtle dotted lines.[/p][p] [/p][h3]#9 Region info on the map[/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]What region the mouse is over will be displayed at the bottom center of the screen. Particularly handy when on the city screen.[/p][p]Mousing over a region shows who owns it, its biome, and its tile yield.[/p][p] [/p][h3]#10 The City List[/h3][p]At the top left, you will probably soon notice a new notification:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Clicking on it brings up the new City List panel.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]This tells you which cities need your attention. Experts available, amenities need updating, etc. It also provides information on all your stats and what the cities are doing.[/p][p] [/p][h3]#11 The Tooltips aren’t annoying you[/h3][p]A lot of time was spent making sure the tooltips are jumping in front of things that you care about. You may not consciously notice this, but you will probably soon notice that you’re not fighting tooltips covering up other things you want to know about.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]#12 That pleasant chime: You have enough influence![/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]#13 You can upgrade your undeployed forces[/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p]Forces no longer need to be deployed to upgrade them.[/p][p] [/p][h3]#14 Way less micromanagement[/h3][p]At some point you notice that you’re not being bugged about idle crafters or having to figure out how much you need for what.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Here we see Fabric is being crafted. It’s 2nd priority, but my quota on rope was 5 and I have a stockpile of 16. If for some reason I run low on rope, it will automatically switch back.[/p][p][/p][h3]#15 Prestige matters again[/h3][p]Even if you have Culling turned off, there are other reasons to care about prestige: You get rewards at the end of an Act based on where you finish.[/p][p]The City Cap is now a soft limit which means you can now build as many cities as you want, but if you go over your cap, you start to take accelerating quality of life penalties. However, prestige, triumphs and other things can raise that cap. We greatly reduced having techs and governments simply raise your city cap.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Your prestige tier at the end of an act is a major way of gaining additional city slots.[/p][p][/p][h3]#16 Pacing feels…better[/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p]Takes about 100 fewer turns to get to Act 2 and yet…it took slightly more turns to research a tech.[/p][p]Hyper specific techs were removed and their benefits given to other techs to make them more meaningful and turns required slightly increased.[/p][p] [/p][h3]#17 Tooltip Explanations[/h3][p]Because we moved the tooltips further away from the mouse, it was important that we communicated to players that you can hold the SHIFT key to lock them in place.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]#18 The computer players play…much better[/h3][p]There’s a new series of screens that lets you see line graphs of lots of stats. So, you can easily tell how you’re doing versus the other players.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]You will likely need to turn the difficulty level down at least a couple notches because the computer players run their nations so much better.[/p][p][/p]

It’s in your hands now

[p]We are already working on the next roadmap. 2.01, 2.1, 2.2, etc. The scope of that next roadmap is going to be based on the player count of 2.0. As this journal is written, Ara: History Untold has a 24-hour peak count of around 200. Millenia is at 50. Humankind 800. Civilization VII 6,000, Civilization VI 36,000, Civilization V 36,000. Civilization IV 700, Old World, 400. If you like what you see, please help us spread the word. The more people playing this game, the more we can do![/p][p]In the meantime, let us know what you think! We read the forums, Discord, Reddit, etc. Hopefully 2.0 demonstrates that all those suggestion posts and comments were read and looked at with care and consideration. Cheers![/p]