TBS Age of Wonders: Planetfall - AoW gone to space

[Sloul]

Yes! AoW3 had cover and before it AoW:SM had cover and even friendly fire. So, nothing new actually. They just highlighted it with nuxcom-style shield icons in planetfall i guess from the screenshots

No. There wasn't any hit chance in AoW3, cover meant lesser damage (grazes?) for the receiving unit.

 

[Sloul]

Sectors. So I can't bottleneck shit with a fort or anything of the sort, since positions of cities and forward bases are hardcoded. Great.

You can make fort with any unit on strategic map using 30 influence (it also acts as road and watchtower).

As for the sectors, now that I understand the game better, the pro is that it allows city specialisation. You can't have everything in a city, its sectors will determine what kind of city it is.

 

[Citizen]

No. There wasn't any hit chance in AoW3, cover meant lesser damage (grazes?) for the receiving unit.

Yeah, you are correct. Still there was a proper cover system in shadow magic, affecting the hit chance (and possibly hitting allies standing between the shooter and the target)

 

[visions]

Yeah, you are correct. Still there was a proper cover system in shadow magic, affecting the hit chance (and possibly hitting allies standing between the shooter and the target)

This was the case already in the first Age of Wonders.

 

[Zalanthis]

Why do all the women in this game look like dudes? It's creeping me out.

 

[Raghar]

Why do all the women in this game look like dudes? It's creeping me out.

In future there is equality. A female gets additional muscles by genetic treatment.

 

[Norfleet]

You remember how AoW3 had upgrades that let you get so much more out of the map POIs? I'm yet to find anything like that here.

Keep in mind that this game has a developer that characterized raiding enemy resource nodes as "griefing". Yes, they actually failed to understand the concept of economic raiding in a strategy game, and think that we're just doing it to be assholes.

 

[Lacrymas]

In future there is equality. A female gets additional muscles by genetic treatment.

This ...actually makes sense. Why wouldn't women enhance themselves to be as strong as men when the technology is there? Seems perfectly reasonable.

 

[Citizen]

In future there is equality. A female gets additional muscles by genetic treatment.

This ...actually makes sense. Why wouldn't women enhance themselves to be as strong as men when the technology is there? Seems perfectly reasonable.

Why wouldn't they also give themselves nice feminine faces while they are at it

 

[Lacrymas]

They might, why not? In a warrior women society, the standards for female beauty might be completely different. Giving themselves "feminine faces" when what a "feminine face" is is defined by a man seems strange.

 

[anvi]

Why do all the women in this game look like dudes? It's creeping me out.

Equality of outcome.

 

[cvv]

They might, why not? In a warrior women society

Not a single one ever existed or if it did it darwined itself out.

 

[Lacrymas]

Oh, I'm sorry I didn't apply real world historical context and circumstances to a sci-fi setting where technological augmentation and cloning, and I'm sure artificial insemination, is possible.

 

[thesecret1]

Oh, I'm sorry I didn't apply real world historical context and circumstances to a sci-fi setting where technological augmentation and cloning, and I'm sure artificial insemination, is possible.

Are you suggesting that genetics should be discarded in a sci-fi setting?

 

[Lacrymas]

What?

 

[hello friend]

In the future all armies will be composed of gengineered transexuals who can massacre a village and give birth in the same day, all before breakfast. Standard issue military grade breast implants and neural implants.

 

[MilesBeyond]

I've been playing this game almost non-stop since it came out. I absolutely love it. I don't think I've had this much fun with a 4X game on release since the 90s. It sinks its hooks in and doesn't let go. Seriously, the last time I was this engrossed with a strategy game from the get-go was AoW1, HoMM 3, SMAC, etc. Is Planetfall as good as those games? IMHO no. However it comes much closer than just about anything else has since then.

First, the bad:

My biggest complaint is the overall story, atmosphere, etc. The campaign in particular is a let down. I think they've decided to embrace the fact that scenarios are (and always have been, IMHO, even in AoW 1) the real meat of the game, and so the campaign is mostly intended as a sort of introduction to game mechanics, factions, and lore. Most notably, for the first time in AoW history the initial campaign missions are easier than a scenario would be, and so the campaign is actually the best starting point for new players.

Here's the problem with the campaign: It's only 14 missions long, and really 13 because one is the tutorial. So it plays out as two missions per faction, with the grand finale at the end. Mission 1 for each faction provides a general introduction to the faction overall and puts the commander on a personal mission. Mission 2 sees the commander completing the personal mission and also tying it in to a broader, galaxy wide conflict between remnants of the old Star Union - the Empress Carminia on the one hand, and the CORE on the other. This culminates in a final battle between the two factions and anyone who chose to remain neutral.

So the problem is twofold - we don't really get much time to interact with or learn about the characters we're playing as, and the overarching conflict feels very tacked on, with very little information given about what each faction actually stands for or is trying to accomplish. It also has a similar problem to the AoW 3 campaigns where the entire story feels very intermission-y. It feels like it's maybe kind of setting up a further story for expansions? ut then the AoW 3 expansions also felt that way. It just feels like the entirety of Planetfall's campaign is setting up this mystery of "What caused this mysterious apocalypse? How is the Empress still around and what is she up to? Just what is the deal with the Kir'ko, anyway?" and then in the last mission it's like "Yep, those sure are mysteries, aren't they? Maybe someday we'll find out. Anyway, here's the victory debrief. Emphasis on brief, ha ha."

I will say that the actual campaign has interesting design. The missions are procedurally generated, with certain story-relevant sectors always being generated but placed differently each time. This means that the maps lose a lot of the hand-crafted feel AoW campaigns had in the past, but it also means that the campaign has a lot more replay value. Adding to the replay value is the decisions you can make - mission 1 for every faction (except I think the Dvar) will have an option to change your Secret Tech (this game's version of classes/spheres). Imagine if in the second mission of Julia's campaign in Shadow Magic, Meandor appeared and said "You see, sister mine, your people will only be safe once the Empire is laid low. I can give you the power to do that" and you had a choice, where accepting Meandor's help led to your spheres changing to Death for the next mission. It's a pretty cool mechanic. The last mission is also choice-determined: In the big, albeit sudden, showdown between Carminia, CORE, and neutrals, of the 12 players on the map, 6 of them are the protagonists from the campaign (one of which you choose), and which of the three factions they're aligned with is directly determined by the actions you took as them in the campaign - so it could be an even battle between three sides, or one side could have a sizeable advantage, all depending on your actions throughout the campaign.

This does make the complaint stick out even more, though, because it would e nice to have the story behind the choices given more detail over the course of the campaign. At the end of the day, you don't really know why you're choosing one side or another, and it can e hard to feel invested in it.

Another thing is that the choices are sometimes (not always) more organic than you might expect - for example, in the first Vanguard mission you get the option to switch your secret tech over to Promethean for the second mission. This isn't accomplished by having a dialogue box pop up to say "Hello would you like to change your tech." Instead there's an optional objective to explore and annex an old Promethean research facility - if you do so, your tech switches. Again, this is a bit of a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it's a very cool way to implement choices and add replay value, but on the other hand it means you can easily end up accidentally making decisions without even realizing it, or at least what the significance is.

My other main complaint at this point is the atmosphere. IMHO every AoW game after the first seems to have an increasingly difficult time knowing what to do tone-wise. Some unit descriptions or (in Planetfall's case) tech quotes give flavour, others are jokes. And there's two problems with the joke ones: First, it can be a little disappointing just because now there's this unit that you don't really have any flavour text for. Second, and far more egregious IMHO, is that it just often isn't very funny. I don't know, maybe it's just my sense of humour, but a recurring issue I've had with SM, AoW 3, and now Planetfall is that they try to be funny a lot more than they succeed in being funny. So you've got this thing where the tone is a little whip-lash-y and isn't as funny as it tries to be, and that undermines the overall atmosphere for me. I kind of wonder if part of why they leaned into the humour a little is because they knew that a planetary 4X with tech quotes will inevitably be compared to SMAC, and they were trying to say "Look, we're not even trying to go down the route. Flavour text is just that, fluff, so don't come in here expecting thought-provoking tech quotes."

In the grand scheme of things, though, those complaints aren't a ig issue overall. This post is way too long already so I'll come ack later and say what it is I loved aout the game. I wanted to get the negatives out of the way first ecause IMHO they are so few compared to this game's positives.

 

[kris]

In future there is equality. A female gets additional muscles by genetic treatment.

This ...actually makes sense. Why wouldn't women enhance themselves to be as strong as men when the technology is there? Seems perfectly reasonable.

One would then ask why the men wouldn't use the same technology to push themselves further and likely run further ahead of the women...

 

[Lacrymas]

They could, but it could also depend on the type of technology. Maybe it's mechanical and so it can be uniform. Maybe it's amazon technology and they don't want to hand it over to the men, so the men aren't stronger than women again, but the men want it obviously, so there's a fight. Maybe it depends on the amount of estrogen in your system.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

In future there is equality. A female gets additional muscles by genetic treatment.

This ...actually makes sense. Why wouldn't women enhance themselves to be as strong as men when the technology is there? Seems perfectly reasonable.

One would then ask why the men wouldn't use the same technology to push themselves further and likely run further ahead of the women...

If we're going that deep, it's them Amazons what have a hold on bio mod tech, so to speak.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

They fall as wheat before a scythe to Vanguard anyway.

 

[HeroMarine]

they knew that a planetary 4X with tech quotes will inevitably be compared to SMAC, and they were trying to say "Look, we're not even trying to go down the route. Flavour text is just that, fluff, so don't come in here expecting thought-provoking tech quotes."

It's still impressive how Brian Reynolds (not the MLB spic/hapa (?)) was the only person with a functional brain to have ever worked in a Planetary/Space 4x other than the Kerberos team when they made SotS (even if its still low-brow compared to SMAC - and their brain rotted by Sots II time).

Looking forward to play AoWP someday despite the mediocre lore/writing, maybe after a couple of game-enhancing DLCs.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Okay, now for what I think Planetfall did well (like two weeks later...):

1. Combat.

Combat has always been the cornerstone of the AoW series and every new iteration has improved on it at a fundamental level. Planetfall is no exception. I was a little skeptical as to how they'd stick the transition to a combat system that's very heavily focused on ranged weapons but they majorly pulled it off. Planetfall adds cover, overwatch (though only on some units), destructible terrain, and staggering. Again, this was something that before I tried the game, I wasn't sold on - I was concerned that combat would go from being the epic battles that define the series to just a big game of red rover. The good news is that the game provides ample tools for overcoming it, and tools for blocking those tools, etc. The net result is that you've got a lot of options, and combat plays out in a way that's more tactically fulfilling than any other 4X I've played. Cover makes your units more difficult to hit, overwatch allows your units to fire during the enemy's turn instead of your own, and staggering attacks knock a unit out of any activated modes (like Overwatch or various Defensive stances). So, for example, the enemy might have a sniper on a hill behind a low wall in Overwatch. Your guys need to kill him but the first one to step in range will get shredded, and the others will probably only have 30% chance to hit because of range and cover penalties. But maybe you also brought along a gunship, which as a flying, high-speed unit is able to maneuver around to the sniper's blind spot and launch a missile, destroying the cover and staggering the sniper out of overwatch. Now all of a sudden none of your guys will get shredded and they have a 70% chance to hit. Or maybe you're playing as the Kir'ko and have equipped one of your rank and file infantry with Tunneling Claws, allowing them to burrow through the ground, pop up behind the sniper, and stab him in the back. Or maybe you've got the Firearms weapon tree and so you can call down an AoE explosion. Or maybe you can summon a unit flanking the sniper. Etc etc.

You also have to be careful with cover because it's often clumped together (e.g. brush covering three hexes in a row), and AoE damage and effects are a lot more common compared to past games. So you have to be cautious - try to group all your guys behind cover, and half your army might be blown to pieces in one enemy turn.

Nearly every unit feels very different, and the amount of tools at your disposal means that even after sinking dozens of hours into this game, I'll still manually fight just about every battle, because the combat is just so much fun.

2. Modules.

This is Planetfall's big new addition, and man is it awesome. I was initially disappointed because it's not nearly as comprehensive as SMAC's unit customization - you're not creating new units, you're applying modules to existing units. I quickly forgot that, though, when I discovered how powerful modding was and how drastically it impacts the game. Take, for example, the Vanguard Trooper. It's the basic unit for the Space Humans, so it's more or less what you'd expect - repeating machine gun, overwatch mode, and a grenade. Very straightforward. But then mods come into the picture. You can give them lightning ammo that causes them to do more damage to mechanical units (which, being a scifi game, are quite common) and inflict a status effect. Or explosive ammo that turns their repeating attack into an AoE fire attack. Or you can give them improved sensors that increase their accuracy and allow them to detect concealed units. Or you can give them a jetpack, allowing them to jump around the battlefield. Or give them better armour that makes them stagger resistant. Additionally, every module gives a bonus to base stats on top of whatever else it does - so the one that turns your ammo into an explosive AoE attack also increases your damage by 20%.

So you can have three Troopers in a stack, each of them kitted out in different ways, feeling and playing like totally different units as a result. One of them is your marksman - you've given him mods that increase his accuracy and range, allowing him to deal death from a distance. Another one is your frontliner - you've given him improved armour and nanites that allow him to heal himself and increase his damage resistance. The last one is your trench clearer - he's got a jetpack and explosive ammo, allowing him to suddenly fly behind entrenched enemies and blast them and their cover away.

And this is just low tier mods on the Token Generic Unit from the Token Generic Faction. The other races have even more exciting and interesting things (one of my personal favourites is that if your faction has access to Arc Weaponry, you can get mods that cause attacks to jump to enemy units, as well as stun them. Turn your Guild Assassins into snipers that shoot the Chain Lightning spell from AoW 1). It's also not even taking into account things like the extra mods you can get from your Secret Tech (this game's version of Class) and NPC factions.

The game has a lot less units than past games - in fact, each race has only two T1 units, and one of those is a scout, so really just one. But I end up not even minding because that single T1 unit can be modded into so many different units that actually play and feel different. It'd be like complaining that SMAC has less units than Civ. Granted, I think it benefits from the setting change in this regard - if it were AoW 4, I'd be thinking "I mean modules are cool but where are all the iconic units from past games?" but of course they aren't here anyway.

3. Tier Balance.

One really interesting element of Planetfall is that unlike past AoW games, T4 spam is nowhere to be seen. I really like the way they've got the army rosters set up - the single T1 unit I mentioned above is labelled as a "Core" unit, and that describes it quite well - your T1 units are intended to form the bulk of your army. The game design is based around higher tier units complementing and strengthening lower tier units, rather than replacing them. You'll have 3-5 T2 units, which vary based on faction, but will normally include some sort of high damage unit, some sort of support unit, some sort of flier, and some sort of ship. These can vary a lot, though - for example, the high-damage unit is a giant mech for the Dvar, both a sniper and a melee fighter for the Syndicate, and a speeder bike for the Vanguard. You'll have 2-3 T3 units, which are a lot more specialized. Then you'll have a single T4 unit, which normally functions as more of a capstone, and is generally geared towards something you'd only want to have one or two of in a triple-stack army.

This is mostly accomplish in three ways: First, as mentioned above, the module system ensures that T1 and 2 units remain powerful and relevant even in the late game. Second, modules and high tier units require a resource called Cosmite, and that resource is very rare. It can only be harvested from two sources - cosmite generators on the map and buildings that can only be built in your capitol - and each source provides 5 cosmite per turn. All T4 units have an upkeep of 4 cosmite per turn, which means that you've got to be cautious about how many you deploy, because you can easily burn through your resources very quickly. Third, high tier units tend to be more specialized, and as a result, even if you could afford to replace all your lower tier units with them, you might not want to. If you're the Dvar, building a stack of rocket artillery (one of your T3 units) would give you a very high-damage one-trick pony. In most situations, you'd be better off splitting up your rocket artillery and sending each one to support a different stack of lower tier units.

I will say that this has led to a different problem right now, where instead you're seeing a lot of T1 spam. The devs are working on it and it should hopefully be addressed soon, but particularly if you want to play multiplayer, mass-producing T1s is a very powerful strategy. It's still something I prefer over T4 spam but it's not quite ideal.


4. Races.

One big change that they made from AoW 3 is shifting the game to be more race oriented again rather than class oriented. Classes are still in the game (in the form of secret techs) but they're now doing a lot less of the heavily lifting when it comes to the options. Every race has its own unique modules, strategic spells, combat spells, doctrines (passive empire-wide upgrades), and other bonuses. I think this is a great way of doing things that finds a very happy medium - enough research has been brought over to the race side that each race feels more distinct than ever before, but there's still enough of the class side that even within a race you can get very different experiences.

This also adds an interesting element of synergy/complementary when it comes to pairing class with race. In past AoW games, synergy often wasn't great. If you were the Frostlings, for example, it might not always be advantageous to pick Water magic because then both your units and your magic are limited to Cold or Physical damage - big problem if you run into something with Protection to both those things (and if it's AoW 1 and a Wraith comes along, you're screwed). Here it's different - the basic unit for the Synthesis tech, for example, is the Hacker, who has a lightning gun. If you're a race that has lightning as a damage type already, then on the one hand, you're doubling down and leaving yourself open if you run into someone resistant to lightning. But on the other hand, it means you've got all these cool racial and weapon mods that you can apply to your Hackers. Other races can't do that. Meanwhile if you don't have access to lightning weaponry, then the Hacker's appealing because it gives you a new damage channel. So it's this choice between doubling down and limiting your versatility but making your units stronger (synergy), or picking a tech where there's less overlap with your race but in doing so you shore up one of your weaknesses instead (complementary).

As a longtime AoW fan, I also enjoy that the races feel a lot like classic AoW races:

Vanguard = Space Human
Dvar = Space Dwarves
Amazons = Space Elves
Assembly = Space Undead
Syndicate = Space Dark Elves
Kir'ko = Space Shadow Demons/Goblins

Some people might wish for more inventive races but I've played this series long enough that it makes me nostalgic. I've missed the Dark Elves, dammit, and being able to play their space version is great.


Now a couple of things I'm ambivalent on:

1. Research.

The research is okay. There are two research categories, Military and Society, divided into seven tech trees: Race, Weapon 1, Weapon 2, Secret Tech, Doctrine, Economy, Covert Ops. Three of those are unique to your race and secret tech - Race, Secret Tech (obviously) and Doctrine, so those will be different just about every time you play. Two of them are semi-generic: Your two weapon techs. There are six weapon techs in total, and each race has access to two of them. Biological weapon tech, for example, is always the same no matter who you play, but you only have access to it if you play as the Kir'ko or Amazons. I like this system well enough. It's a bit of a shame that they're generic, but it also provides some commonality between factions. For example, Dvar have Firearms and Explosives, Amazons have Biological and Lasers, and Vanguard have Firearms and Lasers. So if I'm playing Vanguard, Amazon and Dvar cities are going to be more appealing to me because they have units I can kit out with my mods (when you conquer a city of another race you get access to their Race tech tree, but your two weapon tech trees never change and are set in stone by your starting race).

The problem comes in with the Economy and Covert Ops trees. They're completely the same for every faction and tech and frankly aren't really all that exciting. Economy is your basic Civ-style, third-X type stuff. It mostly unlocks buildings for your cities to increase their yields. Half of Covert Ops is just your casting points upgrades, which if you've played any AoW title in the past you know is a necessary and powerful research option, but it just isn't very exciting. The other half is overland spells like stealing another player's money or maps, which can be fun if you're geared for it.

The big issue with the boring tech trees, though, is that they're fairly essential to the way the game is structured. I can't really think of how to improve it.

2. Voice acting.

The voice acting in this game is very inconsistent. Unlike past games, where voice acting was only found in the campaign briefings, here it's everywhere - each tech comes with a voice-acted quote, and the game now has an "announcer." I find the quality to be highly variable. The Vanguard, for example, is horrible. It's loud and bland and weirdly enunciated ("Doctrine. ENACTED!"). I almost turned it off completely, but for whatever reason decided not to. On the other hand, the Syndicate is amazing. It's this ridiculous, over-the-top sneering aristocratic drawl that's just dripping with contempt. Dozens of hours in I still get a kick out of him icily saying "Serves them right" when I kill an enemy. The Dvar voice acting is similarly great, with exaggerated Russian accents. The rest don't stand out one way or the other.


Overall, I'd say that aside from a weak campaign story and a few complaints here and there, this is the strongest 4X release I've played in years. I even want to amend my previous complaint about the atmosphere, because it's much better in scenarios than it is in the campaign. Scenarios are more geared towards emergent storytelling, and that's where this game (like most 4Xs) really shines. The way each race and tech feels distinct, the more fleshed-out NPC dwellings, the excellent soundtrack (Michiel ven den Bos, so imagine his past AoW music combined with his Deus Ex music and you've basically got what this sounds like), and even things like picking your leader's background and training all combine to make each scenario easily slot itself into an unfolding narrative in your head - one that's a lot more satisfying than what the campaign gives you.

I do, however, have a complaint I forgot to lodge, and that's the AI. AoW has never had particularly good AI, but every installment has nonetheless improved on its predecessor. Planetfall is the exception. It's not all that terrible, it's just not an improvement on the AoW 3 AI. This is, perhaps, unsurprising - take any game and add in unit customization and the AI will begin to fall off just because it can't match players in how to best design units, or evaluating when certain modules are cost-effective and when they aren't. This becomes doubly true when the AI has to not only design all these different units, but also use them effectively in tactical combat.

There are also a few more obvious cases of bad AI but I expect those will be patched soon (the AI absolutely loves grenades and grenade-like attacks, for example, and will often use it even when it's highly suboptimal to do so).

That aside, I can't get enough of this game. It's got great combat with a ton of options and rewards creative thinking. It has its flaws and the world and story can sometimes feel a bit tacked-on, but if you can get past that there's so much fun strategy gaming here.

 

[Raghar]

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.

 

[visions]

This also adds an interesting element of synergy/complementary when it comes to pairing class with race. In past AoW games, synergy often wasn't great. If you were the Frostlings, for example, it might not always be advantageous to pick Water magic because then both your units and your magic are limited to Cold or Physical damage - big problem if you run into something with Protection to both those things (and if it's AoW 1 and a Wraith comes along, you're screwed).

This is a weird example. Enchant weapon is a cosmos sphere spell so you have a no-brainer way of dealing with wraiths in AoW 1, regardless of your sphere choices. Also, while the frostling shamans deal cold damage instead of magic damage, they still have Turn Undead I which can be used against wraiths.