TBS Age of Wonders: Planetfall - AoW gone to space

[razvedchiki]

adding a campaign where you capture whole planets is nice and fitting with the setting but where are the ai empires?!!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

adding a campaign where you capture whole planets is nice and fitting with the setting but where are the ai empires?!!

I know right?

 

[Absinthe]

Some really important stuff in that. No tier 4 summons was so lame.

There were Tier 4 summons, but they were all secret spells you had to get from either a lucky ruin or the Sage empire quest from the Golden Realms expansion (or of course T4 summons from your class). Warlords could also effectively summon Tier 4 Krakens back when Global Assault affected summoned Baby Krakens as well, but those units are water-bound, unlike every other unit, so unless your map has heavy naval warfare they're worthless anyway. If you want to summon T4s you were either diving ruins for a rare spell like Summon Phoenix or playing a class with T4 summons.

In addition the alignment spec T4 summons really weren't too competitive with T4s. Fallen Angel has to deal with all kinds of immunities (blight immunity as undead, strong will, machine immunity to both spirit and blight channels, etc.) and the fact that everything has something like 12+ resist and high defense, turning its damage into a joke. It needs to flank (and preferably have Cursed enemies / Skin of Oil debuff) in order to do damage. Arch Angel's fine except against things with spirit immunity (like Strong Will) or high spirit resistance, especially machines (high defense and spirit immunity), so it sucks against Arch-Druid T4, Theocrat T4, Dreadnought T4, any stack led by a Warlord hero giving them Strong Will, and it still suffers from enemies getting to add both their defense and resistance scores to reduce its damage. Wild Magic Adept's Degenerate spell and Shield of the Faith can help though. Chthonic Guardian's probably got it best because it's pure physical damage so enemies don't get to reduce damage from defense + resist + elemental resists and Cardinal Culling destroys phys resistance.

I think we should probably take this conversation to the AoW 3 thread though.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Uh, all summoning-based classes have tier4 summons. Horned God and Eldritch Horror are both T4 and are both summons.

Edit: Ah, OK, you guys meant T4 from specializations.

 

[Raghar]

Ironically, I suspect the AOW3 system would have been pretty good for a WH40K game.

When I looked at videos of people playing WH40K there were soldiers hiding behind terrain. Big heavily armed tanks that were able to obliterate most things in theirs fields of fire, including necron infantry. And there were teleportations and artillery barrages.

The gameplay was about outmaneuvering weapon squads and fields of fire from heavy weapons to get tactical advantage. And the randomness allowed to show incredible feats which make it interesting. For example a hopeless charge of melee units against ranged weapon squad would be nearly hopeless, smug talk from enemy squad... charge where one soldier survived to get in melee. And then, well... Sometimes there was an one soldier with halberd, horde of enemy bodies, saying who has smug talk now?

Actually that small part wasn't captured in WH40K Gladius at all. Losing well done plan because enemy was lucky, or wining hopeless situation because troops somehow pulled through.


AoW3 system can't represent well fields of fire and automatic weapon squads. Or artillery firing from off map positions. They'd need to either move from arena system to something like shadow empire, or somehow integrate current fight system into global map to allow nearby not yet engaged armies to reinforce, or at least participate by long range fire. Also, it's about scale. For example space strategy game like Endless Space 2 would work better with combat that would use brigades instead of normal squads. Simulating squads works better in games like CoH, or Close Combat.

 

[Theodora]

Actually that small part wasn't captured in WH40K Gladius at all. Losing well done plan because enemy was lucky, or wining hopeless situation because troops somehow pulled through.

Gamers that aren't used to tabletop stuff tend to be pissy about bad luck (see, people playing Xcom), mostly because they don't understand the dice rolls, whether literally or just can't internalise them.

 

[Galdred]

Actually that small part wasn't captured in WH40K Gladius at all. Losing well done plan because enemy was lucky, or wining hopeless situation because troops somehow pulled through.

Gamers that aren't used to tabletop stuff tend to be pissy about bad luck (see, people playing Xcom), mostly because they don't understand the dice rolls, whether literally or just can't internalise them.

I am not so sure: There has been a ton of vocal criticism about NuXCOM dice, but most of the attempts that tried to "remedy" this failed miserably.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I wanted to play this a bit in the empire mode to maybe write a final epitaph for it, but it seems horribly bugged after the big patch. My first game in the empire mode I ran into a bug where I can't issue a move order to any of my stacks and I cannot end turn. Never happened previously. Oh well.

 

[Raghar]

I wanted to play this a bit in the empire mode to maybe write a final epitaph for it, but it seems horribly bugged after the big patch. My first game in the empire mode I ran into a bug where I can't issue a move order to any of my stacks and I cannot end turn. Never happened previously. Oh well.

And that's why I don't play AoW.

 

[Citizen]

indeed

 

[chuft]

AoW3 system can't represent well fields of fire and automatic weapon squads. Or artillery firing from off map positions.

Learning the game now. Some intro units have Overwatch, with multiple shots and a player set field of fire. There are also tactical operations aka orbital strikes aka combat spells.

So I'm guessing you haven't actually played Planetfall at all.

One strange thing is a number of the entities in the game seem to have tardive dyskinesia, frequent minor convulsions, or at least major body tics, because they are constantly twitching, shuddering, quivering, jerking, or otherwise making small but unnerving movements all the time. Somebody put a lot of 3D graphics work into making half the creatures in the game look like they're going through some kind of withdrawal. Odd graphics decision.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

One strange thing is a number of the entities in the game seem to have tardive dyskinesia, frequent minor convulsions, or at least major body tics, because they are constantly twitching, shuddering, quivering, jerking, or otherwise making small but unnerving movements all the time. Somebody put a lot of 3D graphics work into making half the creatures in the game look like they're going through some kind of withdrawal. Odd graphics decision

ELEX withdrawal

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Funny thing is that, despite playing PF for way longer than I should've, I'm still not nearly 100% sure how overwatch and flanking works. There are often situation where I'm certain it should happen, but doesn't. Meh, despite there being abilities and skills for overwatch and whatnot you cannot really build your strategy around it so it's just another undercooked, superfluous feature.

I recently got back to AoW3 and it's both amazing and depressing how much better that game feels.

 

[cvv]

Meh, I like PF well enough. Now with 3 DLCs complete there's plenty of content and I'm having fun. The only problem remains the cluttered map. You can kindda get used to it but it's never as nice as AoW3.

I still haven't got around to playing with the DLC campaigns, I mainly tinker with custom scenarios, so I haven't even properly experienced all the races and mechanics. Looking fwd to it. All in all I'm having more fun than in any other modern SF strategy, including Endless Space or Stellaris.

 

[Raghar]

Funny thing is that, despite playing PF for way longer than I should've, I'm still not nearly 100% sure how overwatch and flanking works. There are often situation where I'm certain it should happen, but doesn't. Meh, despite there being abilities and skills for overwatch and whatnot you cannot really build your strategy around it so it's just another undercooked, superfluous feature.

I recently got back to AoW3 and it's both amazing and depressing how much better that game feels.

I think when you fire from cover at overwatching unit, overwatch isn't guaranteed to fire first. There might be similar shenanigans with overwatch as in XCOM.

I'm kinda pissed they nerfed that Spartan ability for leader. It's only leader ability it should be unique, and it allowed with powerful weapons to basically have equal to two strong units. On 20 city empire gameplay where multiple armies are fighting in distant places it's not groundbreaking, but it allowed the Spartan winning against all odds feeling. It might be one battle, but it's battle you didn't lost against numerical and technological superiority.

Naw, they used nerf hammer.

 

[chuft]

I am struggling with Planetfall primarily because of the UI. It's really bad.

The tactical UI is bad. The white line weapon ranges don't show up on the all-too-frequent arctic white terrain. The various hues of blue-green for the action point ranges often disappear on certain terrain. Unlike AOW3 you are not guaranteed any actions, if you move your full move you get none, not even going into defense mode. So having the movement range colors vanish is really annoying. I was just in a battle where there was a flat rock area. In some hexes I could move over it, in other hexes it was cover, in others it blocked LOS completely. The only way to know which was which was hover awhile and tooltip in each hex. Visually they all looked the same height and were part of a continuous shelf of rock.

The strategic UI is bad. The arrows to go to your next or previous army or hero have been removed, for God knows what reason. This means you can't scroll through your heroes for example to see if one already has the skill needed to use a particular piece of equipment. The terrain is pretty but overly subtle and washed out for actual features, so open terrain is hard to tell from terrain which slows you down. This is a major flaw. There is a new terrain type, "ruins," which slows you as much as wetland but which looks like fertile plains with scrub. Mountains everywhere. You can't build roads either. Roads are automatic inside your sectors between your cities and sector bases, but there is no way to build them to the frontier or between noncontinuous sectors. The result is it is painfully slow to go anywhere in the game other than shuttling between your cities behind friendly lines. In a sci fi world with mechanized units and planes, travel should not be so slow.

Overall it seems the artists were in charge, not the game designers, because for actual gaming purposes, the game is very hard to play. I wish it was uglier and easier to read.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

The game looks ugly as sin, though. Especially the strategic map. And lets not get started on animations and the vo. Worst music in AoW game by far, too.

I never encountered the issues you're writing about, but UI is bad, yes. I avoid using flying units pretty much for the sole reason controlling them is a huge pain.

 

[chuft]

Did I mention your armies do not show up on the minimap nor on the strategic map when you scroll out to the sector view, or whatever you want to call it? What would have been the paper map view in AOW3. Really ridiculous UI decisions.

 

[cvv]

I'm playing through the campaigns now and I wonder - is there any way to end a war without straight up nuking the opponent? Coz once a war starts there doesn't seem to be a way to get my reputation up enough to sue for peace, it stays permanently at -800.

Dunno, maybe it's a campaign thing?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Random maps: Get your army strong enough in relation to your enemy and they'll take a truce.
Campaign: Varies from opponent to opponent. Sometimes it's the same as a random map, sometimes they're scripted to fight you to the death. If you see -800 it's the latter.

 

[tindrli]

sadly i cant play it.. i have GOG version and i have black screen issue. after initial loading black screen appears with music and i can see mouse cursor. i can click with it as well but its all black. ALT ENTER does not help as someone on the web suggested. i have radeon card and i didn't tried with older drivers.. fuck

 

[cvv]

Is it just me or is melee screwed up in this game? It's been years since I played AoW3 but I don't remember melee being so bad there. Or maybe I'm doing something wrong, dunno.

Seems to me the only marginally useful melee in Planetfall are high-level heroes in a beefy tank with high armor/shields that still have to be additionally buffed or obscured. And they still don't survive for long in any tougher battle. Maybe it's because due to a multitude shield-bypassing mechanics or maybe because ranged in Planetfall is overwhelmingly more beefy and frequent than in AoW3 (understandably so). That said I've used maybe two melee units in the 30+ hours I've put in this game and eventually I've retired both.

 

[Raghar]

Is it just me or is melee screwed up in this game? It's been years since I played AoW3 but I don't remember melee being so bad there. Or maybe I'm doing something wrong, dunno.

Seems to me the only marginally useful melee in Planetfall are high-level heroes in a beefy tank with high armor/shields that still have to be additionally buffed or obscured. And they still don't survive for long in any tougher battle. Maybe it's because due to a multitude shield-bypassing mechanics or maybe because ranged in Planetfall is overwhelmingly more beefy and frequent than in AoW3 (understandably so). That said I've used maybe two melee units in the 30+ hours I've put in this game and eventually I've retired both.

They killed close combat when they nerfed Spartan.

 

[chuft]

Using a Deploy Valkyrie (melee unit) Tac op next to enemy ranged or support units in the back is my favorite tactical operation.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Opinions on the Empire mode that they've added - just a gimmick or does it improve 'replayability' as it were (as opposed to just playing multiple single scenarios)?