Microsoft's answer to Civilization looks, well, a lot like Civilization, but has twists like simultaneous turn resolution

Ara: History Untold maybe could've used a better title—it makes me think of a Las Vegas show, like the Luxor hotel's King Tut Experience—but it's interesting: a historical grand strategy game from Microsoft-owned developer Oxide Games (maker of Ashes of the Singularity) with ambitions to deliver «an evolution» in the genre.

A lot of what we saw in an Xbox Developer Direct presentation today is very Civilization-ey, so I'm not quite convinced by the «evolution» talk yet. Ara's «Prestige» scoring system, for instance, just sounds like another way to frame the classic Civilization victory conditions: culture, military, science. Also mentioned were «Triumphs,» monuments like the Great Pyramid of Giza, and leaders with special traits, which are also Civilization staples.

Ara does get granular about production in a way Civ doesn't, though, with a «crafting» system that has players turning natural resources into goods like boots and weapons. 

«The crafting system in Ara encourages thoughtful advanced planning,» said design director Michelle Menard. «It rewards players who can see the strategic outcome of all their collective decisions and not just the individual ones.»

It also includes wildlife. Apparently, mountain lions were found to be too aggressive during testing—«I think we ended up in a good place with the overall threat level of mountain lions to a player's citizenry,» joked lead designer Michael Califf in the presentation. I'll be curious to see how much of a role ecological considerations play in the decisions Ara presents us.

What appears to be the biggest difference between Ara and Civ is that Ara resolves each player's turn simultaneously—both in singleplayer and multiplayer—with «generally speaking» little downtime between turns, Califf said.

Ara: History Untold is scheduled to release on PC this fall. It's got a Steam page, and is also going to be added to PC Game Pass. If you're curious about its take on grand strategy, Oxide has been publishing dev diary