TBS Age of Wonders: Planetfall - AoW gone to space

[Edija]

The thing I mostly dislike about any newer 4x game is the inability of the devs to capture any of the mystery that is part of exploring space or new planets. The game that did it best certainly is Alpha Centauri, and one could argue that it was easier to achieve said atmosphere because it was, until the expansion, focused on a human viewpoint only. I like the game for the most part but I've been watching DasTactic more than actually playing it myself, but one cannot escape the feeling that the AoE 3 fantasy map you played on was just warped into Planetfall and spiced up with some technology; it feels samey.

The last 4x game that really blew me away and that had any semblance of the feeling I'm trying to describe was Distant Worlds, although I only really got into it when it was already heavily modded.

 

[cw8]

If you had one choice for either Planetfall or Fantasy General 2, which would you pick?

 

[fantadomat]

If you had one choice for either Planetfall or Fantasy General 2, which would you pick?

Elven legacy or Fantasy wars.

 

[anvi]

I still can't work out if I would play this. Some people love it and say it is better than AOW3, some people say the opposite.

 

[fantadomat]

I still can't work out if I would play this. Some people love it and say it is better than AOW3, some people say the opposite.

Does it really matter,being slightly better than shit or worst,it is still shit. Go replay the older ones.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i finally tried this, and i didn't like it. it's not like it's bad, but it feels very generic. confused graphics and an even more confused interface don't help.
a whole lot of micro is terrible for a game so focused on combat, and the region-by-region city expansion system also doesn't help but means that in war time something is going to be lost too, because it's not possible to cover everything and troops mobility is pretty high.
this is probably the kind of game which gives its best in scenarios with small maps. not my cup of tea.

 

[Alpharius]

If you had one choice for either Planetfall or Fantasy General 2, which would you pick?

If you're talking about camapaign, then Fantasy general 2 ofc. Prestigious wargame with decent balance vs popamole simulator with braindead AI and game journalist difficulty. Even the story in FG2 so far seems to have been written by non-retards(unlike planetfall), which is a great achivement in current year.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I tried playing a couple more scenarios and have fun, but dropped the game completely now. The entire 4X layer is a stonewall on the road to my enjoyment. The moment I think about moving units around to ANNEX SECTORS!!!!! to build one of the two possible buildings in them my dick retracts into my body and stays there. This really is more bland and boring than nu-civ... I dunno, I would like to insult it some more, but I think that's the worst insult I can come up with anyway.

Let's see in a year or two if they can do some paid dlc salvage job on it. It worked with AoW3, so why not here, right.

Edit: I just checked and it seems the game tanked heavily in sales and there are less people playing it currently than AoW3. No surprises there.

 

[Lacrymas]

AoW3 is a pretty good game all things considered, while this not only has an allegedly disappointing campaign (which is a deal-breaker to a lot of people), it's also not as polished, diverse or established as AoW3. Some people get turned off by the sci-fi theme (which I don't understand, but c'est la vie), and I think the aesthetic is disappointing and not an upgrade over AoW3. There are already a lot of compromises with 3's aesthetic, it's very plastic-y, almost cartoony and low/middling budget modern 3D (which I hate). Like I said, they should've made it 2D and it would not only allow for more alien locations, but also an immediate and visceral difference between it and AoW3. Perhaps if they work on Planetfall vigorously for a year or so, it might be salvaged, but I don't really see a reason to play it over AoW3 atm.

 

[Citizen]

AoW3 is a pretty good game all things considered, while this not only has an allegedly disappointing campaign (which is a deal-breaker to a lot of people), it's also not as polished, diverse or established as AoW3. Some people get turned off by the sci-fi theme (which I don't understand, but c'est la vie), and I think the aesthetic is disappointing and not an upgrade over AoW3. There are already a lot of compromises with 3's aesthetic, it's very plastic-y, almost cartoony and low/middling budget modern 3D (which I hate). Like I said, they should've made it 2D and it would not only allow for more alien locations, but also an immediate and visceral difference between it and AoW3. Perhaps if they work on Planetfall vigorously for a year or so, it might be salvaged, but I don't really see a reason to play it over AoW3 atm.

Yes, I agree on every point. The worst thing about AoW3 for me was visual style and visual readability. Both tactical and strategical maps look very cluttered and ugly, it's hard to distinguish units and objects. I thought AoW2/SM were a huge decline from the first game in terms of visuals (went from clear and pleasant to prosper tier), but AoW3 managed to decline even further

 

[MilesBeyond]

You forgot what Planetfall did bad.
- City spam. Cities peaks at 4 regions max, thus there is not even reason to not spamming them.
- Units are easily replaceable. The difference between rookie with mods, and highly experienced with mods is negligible. When player isn't losing units, number of modded units rises easily which ends by all units modded.
- Numerical advantage has MUCH larger impact than in AoW3. When 12 unit army and 18 unit armies meet, the 18 unit army wins with typically 0-4 loses. Which is weird. Looks for example on real combat in war in Ossetia, when Russians and Georgians unknowingly to each other moved on two perpendicular streets. Then they met. The fight took about 30 seconds, then both sides moved quickly back into streets they came from. About 14 deaths in these 30 seconds.
It's SF settings. They have faction that uses BIG dinosaurs with laser weapons and they are basically short range laser peashooter, and melee unit. Compare to this.

See? BIG GIANT DINOSAUR WITH BIG FUCKING CANNON THAT CAN FIRE BEYOND VISUAL RANGE.

Taking a game and just change units to look like SF units doesn't cut it out. They need to update proper combat model to feel like proper ranged battle. Possibly intermixed with some melee.

Good call! I missed a couple things in my criticism post, though to be fair I've played the game a fair bit more since then so maybe they just weren't as obvious to me.

I honestly really don't mind the city spam but it's enough of a problem for others that I should have mentioned it. I think it's a difficult thing to solve. On the one hand, a lot of people do seem to dislike it. On the other hand, AoW is one of the only 4X series that's still doing unlimited expansion. Possibly the only one, these days. I remember city spam was a big issue when AoW 2 first came out, and that was solved through increasing the minimum distance between cities. I think a similar solution would work well here, but the sector system would have to be retooled. Not that I'm opposed to that - the sector system is the one area of the game that my opinion has cooled on since release. I was never really that excited about it but at this point I think it hinders the game's design more than it helps it.

The second one I'm not sure I agree on. Mods have a high cosmite cost and cosmite is a fairly rare resource - particularly given the amount of it needed to produce colonists and higher tier units. Even if you aggressively take as many cosmite nodes as possible you still won't be generating a ton of it. If you've got enough cosmite to mod all your units, the game's probably almost over. That being said, I do agree on experience. Medals tend not to have as large an impact as they did in AoW 3, and it seems to be a bit of a regression to AoW SM in this regard.

Numerical advantage is hard for me to comment on since I don't like to do auto combat. I will say it's specifically an issue with the Vanguard and Syndicate, who have such high damage T1 units. On a broader scale, I'm not totally sure, but like I said, I play manual combat where being outnumbered isn't as big a deal. I really hope they fix the auto combat AI for this game.

 

[Van-d-all]

City spam was patched by increasing cosmite cost for consecutive Colonizers quite some time ago...

 

[Raghar]

City spam was patched by increasing cosmite cost for consecutive Colonizers quite some time ago...

LOL. That wasn't a solution.

Rise in Cosmite cost caused both problems with realistic feeling as it's an arbitrary unrealistically feeling mechanism, but also didn't prevent negatives from city spam. AI can city spam at its leasure, and player can grab it as it wants and when AI is making city for player, player's artificial high new colonizer costs doesn't matter.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Fairly moot point, since the game is really only playable on smaller maps anyway. When you realize there's literally zero options for going tall and it's wide all the way then good luck with having 10+ colonies and

ANNEX SECTORS!!!
YOUR COLONY CAN ANNEX A SECTOR!!!
YOUR COLONY HAS UNANNEXED SECTOR!!!
UNEXPLOITED SECTOR IN YOUR COLONY!!!
HOW ABOUT YOU MOVE THAT UNIT TO ANNEX A SECTOR!!!
COLONY HAS BUILT A SECTOR SPECIALIZATION, ISN'T THAT AMAZING!!!
HOW ABOUT YOU CHOOSE ONE OF THOSE TWO BUILDING TO BUILD IN THAT SECTOR!!!
LOOK, THERES ACTUALLY A THIRD BUILDING DOWN THE RESEARCH TREE, MAYBE ANNEX MORE SECTORS TO BUILD IT!!!

 

[Infinitron]

 

[LESS T_T]

https://af.gog.com/game/age_of_wonders_planetfall_revelations?as=1649904300

Revelations sets in motion the return of the entombed Es’Teq dynasty, whose Heritor descendants aim to use ancient technology and reincarnate billions of followers across the galaxy, establishing divine rule. The Heritor wield strong Entropy weapons that are effective against machines and can awaken ancient Es'Teq minds. Claim ancient secrets or succumb to their power in a new campaign with tactical combat and in-depth empire building.

Anomalous Sites Mechanic:
Explore 30+ mysterious sites filled with traps and powerful enemies to reap unique rewards and uncover great secrets. Encounter unique choices based on each faction or Secret Technology.

Additional Campaign Missions:
Experience the awakening of the Es’teq dynasty and the rise of their Heritor descendants with 10+ hours of new content across two campaigns.

New Secret Tech: Heritor:
Use ancient Heritor technology to drain the essence of enemies, fueling the opportunity to use powerful abilities, create strong Entropy weapons, and summon new units.

Tomb World Scenario:
Challenge yourself to complete this deadly new Scenario, where Heritor enemies create an onslaught of destruction. This scenario also includes a new multiplayer questline to allow more players to join in on the action.

‘The Forgotten’ NPC Faction:
Broken, insane, or otherwise unfit for Heritor’s utopian society, The Forgotten were never meant to be resurrected.

Threats to Your Empire:
Reapers are robotic assassins created long ago to destroy those who were friendly to the Heritor cause, but now hunt all who walk the planet. Equally deadly are the Megasow and Piglets, bio-engineered wildlife gone rabid after the fall of the Star Union, which will devour anything in sight.

Locations, Pick-Ups, & Mechanics:
Visit an Essence Gash or Es’Teq Well locations to supply new combat effects or abilities to your units. The Holopad pickup provides diplomatic rewards and additional influence over allies and enemies. Take over Imperial Defenses like the new Soul Beacon, Cluster Mine Launcher, or Firestorm Missile Silo to aid in combat.

Free Content:
All players will gain the ability to take over the new Imperial Defenses, unlocking Operations that boost the combat effect of your colonies. In addition, the Orbital Relays mechanic boosts your empire’s infrastructure to allow for nearly instant unit transportation between sectors - but beware of sabotage interference by enemies!

 

[Valky]

How does this compare to the other games in the series?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Uh... read the posts?

Combat-wise it's AoW3, but much more focus on ranged combat, unit customization through mods (which is pretty deep and interesting) and racial units are slightly more varied + classes are replaced with secret techs (although they give much less units than classes in AoW3 did).

Strategy-wise they obviously tried to make it the first proper 4X in the series, but, amazingly, this part is more plain, basic and boring than AoW3 was. It's still "spam as many cities as you want as fast as you can", but the game doesn't have anything that would spice it up and a lot of stuff that was already in AoW3 is completely missing (underground map, race xp, strategic empire upgrades, constructor units, ability to annex and upgrade independent faction dwellings etc.) and the sector mechanic is an utter abortion. The strategy layer just drags the game into the dirt currently, but I'm not saying it can't be improved, although that first dlc doesn't sound like it will do much in this regard.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Lacrymas]

Ugh, it almost makes me feel like learning C++ just so I can infiltrate the enemy and change it from within.

What's UX? I might learn that because it has 2D before it.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

UX?

User Experience, I wot.

 

[Naraya]

What's UX? I might learn that because it has 2D before it.

User eXperience. You know, that thing that Windows 10 did backwards.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

So apparently their brilliant idea for making the map exploration more interesting are stellaris-like event chains when your stack just sits in place for many turns and you're "playing" a cyoa segment every couple of turns to maybe get some reward. Or not. I'm still willing to wait until at least the first proper expansion with new race, but I get the sinking feeling this game is already dead in the water.

At the very least you can now ANNEX SECTORS!!!!! without moving units into them.