TBS Age of Wonders: Planetfall - AoW gone to space

[BING XI LAO]

If a mechanic would further differentiate the performance of different abilities and units, that's a GOOD thing.

 

[Van-d-all]

Having such mechanics would only further disempower low tier units compared to higher tier, though, especially since higher tiers have higher defenses and higher HP. I'd actually agree if higher tier units get bigger maluses from damage received and the maluses for lower tier units are more negligible.

The system is already somewhat generous to low tier units, since the DMG calculations (actually all versus calculations) are logarythmic not linear, ie. even a STR 1 attack has around 3% vs STR 10 defense...

If a mechanic would further differentiate the performance of different abilities and units, that's a GOOD thing.

There's a thin line between complexity and intricacy. Having a number of possibilities and options is good. Having basic abstracted functionalities like unit abilities behave differently is closer to poor design, unless operating on clearly defined canonical negations, like heal magic damaging undead, because negative counterparts are reasonably easy to balance on behalf of having equal absolute values.

 

[Lacrymas]

If a mechanic would further differentiate the performance of different abilities and units, that's a GOOD thing.

The problem is not differentiation, but an imbalance in absolute power. Having mechanics which further disempower lower tier units is not good when one of the constant criticisms of the system is the power divide between tiers, especially T4 against basically all others. Yes, higher tier units should be more powerful, but it's a fine line between more powerful and overpowered to the point of lower tier units completely losing any kind of use and efficacy. There were efforts to narrow the gap in AoW3 by introducing hero auras and race bonuses that buff lower tier units relatively more than higher tier ones, but I don't know if it was very effective. The situation did get better, but it's only a band-aid on a fundamentally flawed system, and the issue is exacerbated by not having production overflow that enables the training of more than 1 unit at a time.

 

[BING XI LAO]

If a mechanic would further differentiate the performance of different abilities and units, that's a GOOD thing.

There's a thin line between complexity and intricacy. Having a number of possibilities and options is good. Having basic abstracted functionalities like unit abilities behave differently is closer to poor design, unless operating on clearly defined canonical negations, like heal magic damaging undead, because negative counterparts are reasonably easy to balance on behalf of having equal absolute values.

That's a pretty good point, I would like things to be intricate personally, but I can respect an approach that makes sures you never end up with a dozen fiddly 5% modifiers on everything.

If a mechanic would further differentiate the performance of different abilities and units, that's a GOOD thing.

The problem is not differentiation, but an imbalance in absolute power. Having mechanics which further disempower lower tier units is not good when one of the constant criticisms of the system is the power divide between tiers, especially T4 against basically all others. Yes, higher tier units should be more powerful, but it's a fine line between more powerful and overpowered to the point of lower tier units completely losing any kind of use and efficacy. There were efforts to narrow the gap in AoW3 by introducing hero auras and race bonuses that buff lower tier units relatively more than higher tier ones, but I don't know if it was very effective. The situation did get better, but it's only a band-aid on a fundamentally flawed system, and the issue is exacerbated by not having production overflow that enables the training of more than 1 unit at a time.

Isn't the problem of overly strong higher tiers basically an unrelated one? Like sure, casualties and injury mechanics would make it worse, but all the original solutions would still be available - multi-unit training with production overflow, straight-up making t4s more expensive, or adding a few more attacks which are especially effective against powerful targets.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's not directly related, but it's a system that will feel the effects more than any other. Introducing harsher maluses for damage taken in higher tier units is actually an interesting solution to the problem and incentivizes protecting your squishy T1s until they can get away with attacking a higher tier unit. It also presents a legitimate reason to want to try to get the first hit in while at the same time not devolving the entire game around that because only very high tier units are especially vulnerable for it. Outside of that, you can't rely too much on a single T4 unit clearing the entire map for you because its combat effectiveness shrinks relative to how many opponents you face in a given match. This means that classes which have very fast access to T4s will not have such a massive advantage anymore when rushing for T4s.

Actually, now that I think about it, it seems to be quite a good idea because it addresses a lot of issues. Power imbalance between T1s and T4s, T4 rushes, including neutral dwellings (*cough* fairies *cough*), incentive to protect your champion T1s, a would-be solution to retardedly powerful heroes (with a few other changes here and there), attacking first is a legitimate tactic against T4s and not a be-all-end-all of strategy, etc.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I know that this game is effectively dead and no one gives a shit, but a pretty big patch is dropping in a week and it looks like there are some actually good changes in this one.

The races will get individual bonuses and modifiers. It's the laziest way possible to make them feel at least a bit unique, but it's something. The weird thing, though, is that amazons seem to be getting huge boosts all over the board, but no one else does.

The starts should be a bit more varied as you will get a secret tech unit in your starting stack.

All the pointless "shrine of +5 to dick length for the next battle" landmarks will become more meaningful. Still waiting for bringing it back to AoW3 level and factions having unique strategic map upgrades for certain landmarks, guess I shouldn't be getting my hopes up.

More options to tinker with when it comes to scenarios, it's now possible to make minor factions not mutually exclusive for example.

Lots of smaller things as well. No news on expansion, but it's confirmed that it will have a new faction, although that was already rather obvious.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

I know that this game is effectively dead and no one gives a shit, but a pretty big patch is dropping in a week and it looks like there are some actually good changes in this one.

The races will get individual bonuses and modifiers. It's the laziest way possible to make them feel at least a bit unique, but it's something. The weird thing, though, is that amazons seem to be getting huge boosts all over the board, but no one else does.

The starts should be a bit more varied as you will get a secret tech unit in your starting stack.

All the pointless "shrine of +5 to dick length for the next battle" landmarks will become more meaningful. Still waiting for bringing it back to AoW3 level and factions having unique strategic map upgrades for certain landmarks, guess I shouldn't be getting my hopes up.

More options to tinker with when it comes to scenarios, it's now possible to make minor factions not mutually exclusive for example.

Lots of smaller things as well. No news on expansion, but it's confirmed that it will have a new faction, although that was already rather obvious.

Where's the patch info? It's nowhere to be found on steam store page or steam forums.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

That's because they're dead. Paradox Planetfall forums have the info, but the detailed patch notes will only be released when the patch hits.

 

[Citizen]

I just want some good mods for it, like empire building for AoW3

 

[exe]

Is there really not a single custom scenario out? This game isn't that bad to be this dead.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

After a (small) bit of post-dlc surge the game is back to having almost twice less players than AoW3 on average, the steam forums are pretty much a couple of 'tards repeating how the game is awesome and inclined and the paradox forums are a (mostly empty) echo chamber too, so... yeah. It's dead, Jim. Of course there is always a possibility that the console port sold millions and all the userbase is just spamming threads on playstation forums or whatever, amirite.

And I'm not sure if the game even supports custom scenarios in a classical meaning of the word? Even campaign doesn't, it's just rmg with different presets.

 

[AdamReith]

Mixing AOW3 with the "Endless" design methodology was such an awful idea. The one possibility that it got me excited for was the potential of a Dune style game, feudal houses in a high tech future. Instead they seemed to go with space trannies and (shitty) laser-dinos.

Just remastering AOW1 would have been a far superior project for them.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I wouldn't want those faggots to poz AoW1, which btw doesn't even need a widescreen mod it just automatically stretches to any window size in windowed mode.

 

[AdamReith]

Yes but I can't alt-tab from it without it completely borking itself.

Otherwise, yes it's actually fine.

 

[thesecret1]

Is there really not a single custom scenario out? This game isn't that bad to be this dead.

I tried to like the game, but it just made me want to play AoW3 every time. It has a couple good ideas, but a mountain of shitty ones, along with significantly less content. It just makes little sense to play it when you could play AoW3 instead.

 

[Silly Germans]

There might be more people like me that are waiting until all dlc's are released and it goes to sale.
I hate the way Paradox handles the release of games so i won't be buying it until it is really finished with all content
out. Until it is in that state i won't touch it even if it might be a decent game. Neither does it help that they went
for the worst kind of Sci-Fi design.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Yes but I can't alt-tab from it without it completely borking itself.

Otherwise, yes it's actually fine.

In windowed mode that doesn't happen, certainly not for me anyhow.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

There might be more people like me that are waiting until all dlc's are released and it goes to sale.
I hate the way Paradox handles the release of games so i won't be buying it until it is really finished with all content
out. Until it is in that state i won't touch it even if it might be a decent game. Neither does it help that they went
for the worst kind of Sci-Fi design.

This game is not following standard paradox release-dlc model at all. The full-edition roadmap has one smaller dlc (already released) and two expansions planned, so same as AoW3. Considering its lack of popularity, it would be pretty optimistic to expect anything more. Normally I would say there's a high risk of expansions being low-effort due to lack of audience to sell them to, but I still kinda have faith in triumph to be professional and passionate about their game.

Based on the first dlc, I don't think the plan is to just sell pre-stripped feature for cash. I think they genuinely thought the changes in Planetfall are good, but at the very least they're not completely stubborn as the patch shows that they do acknowledge some the most obvious problems the game has.

 

[AdamReith]

Looks like this planet... Fell.

 

[vota DC]

Just remastering AOW1 would have been a far superior project for them.

Wouldn't release the source code been enough? Modding is poorly supported unlike aow3. We just need a way to introduce new skills and spells, many remasters just mess with graphic and Unit design of aow 1 is perfect.

 

[AdamReith]

Just remastering AOW1 would have been a far superior project for them.

Wouldn't release the source code been enough? Modding is poorly supported unlike aow3. We just need a way to introduce new skills and spells, many remasters just mess with graphic and Unit design of aow 1 is perfect.

Yeah but I suppose I'm thinking in terms of revenue generation. A fully moddable version of aow1 would be of far more value to us of course!

Pity that doesn't seem to count for shit these days!

 

[Galdred]

They still seem to be working on it:

Spoiler

Greetings, commanders!

Over the last few months we have been working hard on the “Tyrannosaurus” update and it definitely does its name justice! Based on community input and findings, some major changes were made to the game. Here we highlight the biggest features and changes; for the full list of change notes, check the bottom of the post. But first, check out this sweet trailer!




New Features

Game Intensity Controls

A number of settings have been added to the game setup options to control the amount of push back the world gives to the player. These options can be used to make enemy players, NPC factions and spawners more passive to give a more relaxing game experience, or more active to up the game’s challenge.

These options can be edited separately under Advanced Settings, or are controlled under a master Game Intensity setting in the main setup screen.

No Colonizer Mode

An old favourite from previous games in the franchise; No Colonizer Mode blocks the ability for all players to build colonizers to create new colonies (a limited number of colonizers can be gained from the settlements pre-placed on the map). This leads to a game with much smaller empires, where the focus is more on the game’s military aspects than its economic ones.

Exploration Sites

A number of locations, primarily Visit Sites which would give temporary bonuses to the armies that visited them, have been reworked, remodelled and rebranded as Exploration Sites. These sites are heavily guarded and each has its own unique interior combat map. Once captured, each site has a unique buff it grants to units produced in the colony it is linked to, as well as giving a powerful economic bonus.

Fleeing Enemies

In order to reduce the number of battles the player needs to fight, weak enemy stacks will now occasionally ask for mercy, allowing players to claim their location without a combat encounter. Additionally, stronger stacks will sometimes allow players to bribe them to leave.

Economy Changes

Streamlined Terrain Interactions

The terrain in Planetfall gives boosts to the economic structures built within them, for example a Forest sector gives bonuses to Production and Food bases. The update changes these bonuses to always apply, rather than requiring the player to research and build special colony upgrades (i.e. a food sector built in a forest sector will now immediately go to level 2, without requiring the Forest Exploitation technology first). This makes the system much easier to understand, and allows players to experience the bonuses from terrain much faster and more organically.

Since these terrain bonuses also affect the strength of the special upgrades that can be built in sectors, those also become more interesting and useful to the player.

Rebalanced Economic Research

The streamlining of the terrain interactions has meant we could remove a number of techs from the economy tree, which was generally felt to be overloaded. To take this further, a number of other techs have been removed and the tree has been rebalanced in order to make systems more useful.

Simplified Colony Economy

We’ve gone through the various economic bonuses the player gains from various sector upgrades and re-arranged them to make them easier to grasp. At the same time, a number of upgrades have been rebalanced to make them more useful, and less reliant on micromanagement to make the most of them.

Razing Colonies and Sectors

The player now gains resources of various types for razing enemy colonies and sectors. This provides more incentive for defending players to actively defend their territory rather than hiding in their cities. It also incentivizes players to destroy captured colonies, rather than keep them, leading to smaller empires which are easier for the players to manage.

Factions and Secret Techs

Racial Starting Bonuses

In order to make the differences between the races more well defined, each race has been given a short term bonus that is immediately active from the start of the game, and a long term bonus which affects the race for the duration of the game.

Secret Tech Starting Units

It was felt that players had to work too hard to get any benefits from their secret techs, since they often didn’t unlock any units from their secret tech until turn 20-30. To fix this, each player (except for Xenoplague players) will now start the game with a tier 2 secret tech unit which they can immediately start using. This adds more variety to the early game, and makes the secret tech choice more immediately meaningful.

Xenoplague Streamlining

The Xenoplague secret tech now allows players to start with a Pustule unit and start spreading the plague from the first turn. Previously, this defining aspect of the tech was locked behind research, so the player was forced to get particular techs before they could enjoy the main feature of the Xenoplague.

Amazon Animal and Forest Gameplay

The Amazons have unique world map gameplay mechanics based around capturing wildlife units and spreading forests, which we felt were underperforming. The operations for creating forests have been made cheaper, and more bonuses have been added for the player to research that improve the bonuses forests grant. Amazon controlled wildlife now gain an inherent stat buff to make them more useful, which can be strengthened through research.

Also, the many types of wildlife now evolve, allowing the player to capture a weak unit early in the game and watch it evolve into a more powerful one as the game progresses. A new, end game operation has also been added allowing the Amazons to control the powerful end game wildlife that was previously unavailable.

Special Operations

Rebalanced Covert Operations

We’ve taken a look at the covert operations tree, rebalancing the operations to make them more useful as well as adding a new cosmite stealing operation to make the end game more attractive. The distribution of Operation Strength/Defense bonuses in the tree has been rearranged to give players who focus on covert ops more of an advantage.

A tooltip has also been added to the covert operation targeting interface that breaks down the chance for the operation to succeed as well as providing information on what the player can do to increase that chance.

Rebalanced Doctrines

The doctrines in the game have received a balance pass to reduce the cost to deploy them. The tech tree has been re-arranged slightly to make the racial and secret tech doctrines more attractive to the player, by adding shortcuts allowing the player to unlock high level doctrines by doing economic research (previously the player could only unlock high level doctrines by researching all the lower level ones first) and allowing the player to earn doctrine slots by researching doctrines (previously doctrine slots could only be unlocked by researching a separate area of the tech tree).

Operations Interface Improvements

The operation launching interfaces have been rearranged to make it easier for the player to see what they have available and what they have active. This was achieved by merging several tabs, so the player can see everything on screen at once without needing to flip between different lists.

Diplomacy

War Coordination Improvements

The system the player uses to coordinate attacks with their AI allies has been rebuilt to make it more responsive and transparent. AI players can now be directed to attack and defend specific locations, and will send more messages to give feedback to the player about when they complete or fail their tasks.

Trading and Diplomatic Offers Rebalancing

In order to make certain trade deals and diplomatic offers more worthwhile for both the player and AI, many of the trade items have received balancing. The prerequisites for peace deals and vassalage offers have been tweaked so it makes more sense when they occur.

Interfaces and Readability

More Readable Units

We have done a number of tweaks to how units are rendered to make them pop out more on the world map and in combat. This is to address issues that units were often hard to see when they stood on certain types of terrain.

Clearer Overview Map

The overview map, which is viewed by zooming out to the max level on the world map, has received a pass to make the icons that appear on it more consistent and useful. Economic icons now receive a red outline when they are occupied by the enemy, to make it clearer to the player where potential issues with their economy lie.

Owned sectors are now fully colored, instead of only showing the borders, giving a clearer overview of each domain on the map.

Clearer Level Tooltips

The text tooltips that described the effects of doomsday weapons and leveled sector upgrades have been given a pass to make them clearer, shorter and less overwhelming, making them much easier to read and understand.

Strategic AI

Better Army Compositions

The strategic AI is now better at building higher level armies of more varied units, and is less likely to create monotonous armies of low level units. When reaching a certain phase of a game, they are now more inclined to create higher tier units as well. Additionally, the unit modding process for AI was improved to ensure the AI players upgrade units that already have mods with better mods once they become available.

Prioritization Improvements

AI players would often prioritize attacking independent armies and become overly defensive when opponents built up their military. With the update a lot of these weaknesses have been tackled and the AI has become a lot better at setting clear goals that result into more interesting interactions with players.

Other Improvements

Tutorial and Practice World

We have done a pass on the game’s tutorial and the early campaign maps to address complaints that they were overwhelming for newer players. Upon completing the tutorial the player will now receive a suggestion to play a curated Practice Game before jumping into the campaign, since we feel that the early Campaign maps are simply too much for a new player to attempt directly after the tutorial.

Lots of Balance Changes

The update contains a HUGE number of balance tweaks to units, operations, and unit upgrades. These have been based on feedback from the community, with a focus on improving the balance of the PvP aspect of the game.

Fixes Fixes Fixes

Like any update, this Update contains a large amount of bug fixes. Thanks to the community for reporting the issues so we can continue improving the game!

For the full list of Update notes please visit: Age of Wonders: Planetfall - Update: V1.200 'Tyrannosaurus' Patch Notes

Thanks for the continued support, commanders!

Patch notes

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Downloaded the patch, run the game, got bored after like 30 minutes. Meh. I really want to like this game after how much I liked AoW3, but it's just meh, meh, meh.

 

[AdamReith]

For some reason I get Rise of Legends vibes from this game. They had one really great fully realised faction (steampunk with clockwork men and rifle men) and then two really half assed factions composed of panthers with laser beam eyes and various monkey cheese mish mashes with no real binding theme.

This game seems like that minus the steampunk.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Mixing AOW3 with the "Endless" design methodology was such an awful idea. The one possibility that it got me excited for was the potential of a Dune style game, feudal houses in a high tech future. Instead they seemed to go with space trannies and (shitty) laser-dinos.

And Soviet Dwarves, comrade. Don't forget the Soviet Dwarves.

Spoiler

Still on the fence as to whether I should buy this game or not though.