Will this require prior knowledge?

Koby said:
There wouldn't be any reason to make a new zoids that required watching older series from that far back. Plus most of those were all stand-alone series as well.

So you should be perfectly fine going into this series as your first Zoids entry.

It's not like the past series really had a lot of detail or anything that would be required. If you know what a Zoid is, you're good to go.