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TBS Age of Wonders: Planetfall - AoW gone to space

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
You can get the premium edition with all the DLCs for less than that bundle costs if you are only interested in Planetfall. But no, it never became good enough if the testimonies from people who actually played the game are to be believed.
 

Polanski

Scholar
Joined
Dec 19, 2015
Messages
142
You can get the premium edition with all the DLCs for less than that bundle costs if you are only interested in Planetfall. But no, it never became good enough if the testimonies from people who actually played the game are to be believed.
You can get the Premium edition for less than 15 euro? Steam has it at 90 euro.

I would not mind Prison architect as well, so could do the bundle either way. But yeah, the quality is the real question and it does not looks like it got there. :/
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
You can get the Premium edition for less than 15 euro? Steam has it at 90 euro.
Yeah, if you are only interested in "legitimate" sources, Gamebillet and IndieGala have it at ~14 Euro every couple of months (Green Man Gaming has it at 22.50 right now if you don't want to wait). If you are willing to go more shady, you can get it for even less than that.
 

DDZ

Red blood, white skin, blue collar
Patron
Joined
Dec 17, 2012
Messages
1,829
Location
Under the Gods
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Only buy it when it's on a deep sale, and even then, wait a minute and snatch up a key from a keysite for even more of a discount.

Paradox Interactive is such a scummy company, don't give them anything more than the absolute minimum.
 
Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Oct 2, 2018
Messages
17,897
Location
大同
I like space dwarves.
nWBFLxe.jpg
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
496
Having spent over 700 hours playing it, and I have not even gotten to random planets or the empire mode yet, I would highly recommend it. Someone here really dislikes it, that doesn't make it a bad game.

It is not a successor to SMAC. It's far less deep strategically. That is because the emphasis and fun is on the tactical battle board and fighting out the battles to get to use all the unique abilities of your different unit types, like in AOW3. It's a different type of game. A lot of what you research and pay for in terms of units and mods is useful only on the battlefield. I love SMAC but its combat sucks compared to a game like this. This game is more medieval in feel in that a battle is a collision of stacks and can determine the outcome of a war, so playing it out shot by shot is a lot of fun. It's the kind of game where an inferior force can beat a superior one due to tactics in the fight.

If you're the type of person who uses autoresolve of combats in games like MOO2, Sword of the Stars, or Age of Wonders, then don't bother. If you want a tactical battle generator with a campaign context, get Planetfall.
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
496
I did the main campaign up to the last scenario which I didn't like enough to finish. I have been doing the DLC campaigns since, which are much smaller since each focuses on one DLC's new race or new tech.

Basically they serve as a tour of various combinations of the races and classes (here called "Secret tech" rather than "Class") as well as NPC races and monsters, and features like the "anomalies" (you can tell Paradox bought Triumph here) that you excavate to find little stories and cool loot. They also reveal the lore. Some of them are rather difficult, others less so. I've been enjoying them.

Game overall has a very non-woke feel and sense of humor which I find refreshing. Fembots, making fun of vegetarians, furries which you can wipe out, etc.
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
496
Gave up on the campaigns, too difficult and puzzly for my tastes.

At this point my verdict is

AOW3 10
Planetfall 6
Stellaris 1.5 (tops)

Planetfall modding tools are terrible compared to AOW3. Some self-throat-cuttting here by Triumph. User content will not be forthcoming when your nodding tools are impenetrable.

Planetfall is worth some time if you like AOW3 but are tired of it. Eventually though it gets samey since terrain basically doesn't matter or play differently for different factions and melee sucks if you aren't in the top 1% of players and know all the exploits you found using Excel. Many mods are primarily valued because of their "+/-10%" whatever which is boring and mathy and smells like Stellaris or POE with their "win with the right math build" approach.

Focus fire with ranged is too easy (for both you and the AI) which gets annoying since there is no defense. This game shows why sci fi is worse for gaming than fantasy unless you are in space with starships fighting. You know, starships with shield facings so they can rotate a damaged shield away from an enemy.

Heroes are a footnote since "tactical ops" (combat spells) are always available at same selection and cost regardless of which if any heroes are there. Big step backward from AOW3 where it really mattered who was where on the map and what their class, level, skills and items were.

Doomsday weapons are a poor substitute for Seals victory conditions in AOW3.

Losing hero inventory takes away much of the fun of exploring and getting loot. Sector system finishes off what was fun about exploring and makes it a chore rather than something cool. Sector the city is in produces the same regardless of terrain so where city is doesn't matter. Sites are weak which makes cities basically all the same in terms of production, unless you're the type that gets an erection from "+1 armor". Lots of unit mods and abilities remove enemy armor per shot anyway.

Math of armor/shields/resistance is opaque and needlessly obscure.

Roll to hit sucks. Every battle is like fighting Halflings.

Note bene: if you redo a battle, you will get the exact same rolls, so do different moves or you will get identical results.

Jobs and anomalies are stolen from Stellaris and are predictably disappointing. In an AOW game parking your leader somewhere for five+ turns is just too high a price for whatever you find. Smells like a way to pad gaming hours. A leader is not a Stellaris scout, a hero stack is far too valuable to leave laying around for turn after turn hoping you find something decent (which you usually don't).

Of course leaders don't get spells so leveling them up isn't that important. You hardly care if they are present. But their stacks need to level up. Somewhat. Levels cap out much lower than AOW3 so unit power comes down primarily to mods which cost research, energy and cosmite aka rich get richer. No experienced hero stacks taking on the hordes here. Hordes will win.

Therians (furries) were a stupid idea, fortunately the random map generator lets you disable individual NPC races so you do not have to even see them. I recommend disabling them. N.b. hero resurgence in tactical battles is off by default despite being on in campaigns. Bad UI decision.

There is some cool art in the game battlefields and the Tyrannodon and Xenoplague units. Everything else is pretty meh and hard to get excited about. Strategic map is a huge step back from the paper map of AOW3. Unit coolness (other than above units) pales compared to AOW3. Higher tier units are underpowered compared to AOW3. Tier IV are hardly worth building due to cosmite upkeep.

I got my moneys worth but can't see playing this for years like AOW3 just to see the maps it generates. They really don't matter. Dumbed down for consoles and it shows. The "wonder" is absent from this Age of Wonders game. No underground layer either. Built from the ground up for city spamming and rushing. Cities grow way too fast. Incorporating other races from cities you conquer gets you a huge morale penalty so you just migrate everything. Dull. What you can build is based on research, not just buildings, so capturing a huge enemy city filled with buildings does not let you build anything good without another 40 turns of research into their racial units (and ignoring your own) and then the units desert due to morale problems.

The genericness and Stellaris-like mathiness left me disappointed in the end. Amazon Xenoplague is a fun combo due to dinosaurs and alien tripods. Everything else left me wishing I was playing AOW3.
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
496
I feel kind of heartbroken because there's so much cool art hidden throughout the game. For example when you find a Spaceport landmark (a site you have to clear that gives big bonuses and the ability to build a special building to a city which annexes its sector) you see this cool graphic


C8eXhF1.jpg



This is far better art than you see in a typical 4X game, especially for a map feature. It reminds you this is a relic of a fallen empire from the past, when normal people did things like be tourists, and it was not a 40K-like hellscape like it is now.

Sadly the strategy is to spam cities, hunt enemy leaders and kill them and then take their capitals before they can respawn, thus knocking them out of the game and giving you an insurmountable economic advantage. Kill one AI and you can probably kill them all. So different from Seals in AOW3. A real shame because Planetfall is a cool looking game in terms of a lot of the fixed artwork like this as well as the battlefields.
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
496
Some more art and examples of non-PC-ness:

Xenoplague related art

aI4YFFu.jpg



Succobot related art

nWfLuZp.jpg



8l63Bor.jpg



and a doctrine this site unlocks

CFL8HHh.jpg



Triumph is definitely more saucy than your typical 4X game maker.
 

coldcrow

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2009
Messages
1,650
So we can agree on the fact that AoW:Planetfall is huge wasted opportunity to deliver a good 4X?
 

coldcrow

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2009
Messages
1,650
It isn't even that good, but that's what I mean - they had the whole groundwork with their engine, but took alot of baffling decisions. Not having long and well-designed campaigns is a major one.
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
496
Age of Wonders games are much more focused around tactical combat than typical 4X games. The emphasis in Planetfall is researching both unit types and mods and customizing your armies to take a certain approach to how you will fight on the tactical screen. At heart it still retains the AoW formula of a medieval feel with fortified cities with a big army marching around, and the optimal strategy is usually to bulk up somewhat and then march on an enemy capital and have a big field battle to try to kill the enemy leader. Then you take the capital and that faction is out and you get all their stuff, which doubles your economic power. Very different from a game like Sword of the Stars or Master of Orion II where you really can't capture enemy planets, you just glass them, or Warhammer Gladius, where you can't capture enemy cities, just destroy them, so there is no power surge from knocking an opponent out. This is more of a "the Turks take Constantinople and now they're twice as strong as before." Like I said it feels ancient/medieval with the climactic field battle and then mopping up the cities.

Of course on higher difficulty levels it can be entirely different because you might be getting attacked from all sides, which prevents you from concentrating your forces in one spot and delivering a knockout punch.

If you are autoresolving major battles you are missing the point of the series. It's a tactical battle generator.

Planetfall does add jobs and sector development which tends to give it more of an economic dimension than AOW3. However it also makes all the factions feel the same strategically, like they do in Civ, because they all have more or less the same relationship with the physical environment. No more morale differences based on terrain etc. No differences in habitability based on race like in an outer space 4X. An energy sector is an energy sector no matter what faction you are. It is possible to micro the build order and the jobs to increase your economy and research speed and pop growth, and maybe it's necessary at the highest difficulty levels. For me that's not the point of the game, I prefer a lower difficulty level and just enjoying the cool fights and exploring the sites, getting unique weapons and mods, etc.

For me the magic combo is Amazon Xenoplague, which lets you get both laser-firing tyrannodons (which are just incredibly fun) and Plague Lords (which look like a cross between the Dunwich Horror and a Martian tripod from War of the Worlds). These are fun cool looking armies. The Xenoplague aspect, like being a Necromancer in AOW3, makes you want to infect enemies before you kill them so you get more/better Xenoplague units, so the battles become a more interesting dance than just "focus fire to kill." A lot of the other factions/techs left me kind of lukewarm.

Some of the environments are kind of ugly (like Arctic, but this is true in AOW3 as well) but many, like Arcadian or Fungal, make for really cool looking battlefields.

Ultimately it is not a game about microing your empire, it's a game about tactical fights. The emphasis is much more on range (though the expert players lecture me about how good melee is in competent hands) than in AOW3, but it still is a giant army moving around to take on the enemy giant army and then take the fruits of victory - very much pre-gunpowder in feel. It rewards aggression, knocking out an enemy is a much better way to increase your power than building up your own carefully groomed cities.

If you want to fiddle and fuss with your own empire like in SMAC to the point where you can win from just turtling, it's not for you. In theory you could do it in PF using Doomsday Weapons, but I am not sure what the point would be. The fun is in the battles. Unlike AOW3 the battles feature a ton of status effects so much of the battle will be inflicting 4, 5 or more continuing effects on enemy units (not an exaggeration) while trying to dispel the ones they inflict on you. "Stagger" is a crucial aspect of the game. Remember those Throw Curse attacks in AOW3 where even if you resisted, you lost an action point? That is a mainstream effect now in PF, and a lot of the game resolves around inflicting Stagger on your opponents so they lose action points/defensive modes, and adding Stagger Resist to your own guys to try to avoid this happening to you.

There are different defenses like shields (ignored in melee) and armor (ignored with psychic attacks) and resistances to certain damage types, and a lot of mods/attack types/"spells" whose purpose is to lower these enemy defenses so they take more damage when hit. This is actually pretty interesting on the tactical battlefield and in unit design - with 3 mod slots per unit, which ones should go to defense and which to offense? The problem is all races and factions pretty much have the same set of concerns - maximize your defense while eroding theirs - so like the economic game, it creates a certain genericness. This biochemical mod melts an armor point per hit. So does this laser mod. Are they really different mods?

If you play Amazon Xenoplague and you like cool units you will have a good time. Any other combo - it might be quite effective, but it won't be as fun or cool, IMO.
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
496
One other thing that is actually quite significant - the map wraps around horizontally, unlike AOW3, but like SMAC. This makes it impossible to set up a safe position in a corner. You can always be attacked from multiple sides and there is no "map edge" on the east-west axis.
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
496
I have not tried that (Empire Mode) yet. It seems to be how most single player types play the game though since you can carry things over from game to game and each planet has its own attributes, and you can choose which ones to fight on, and bring heroes of your own creation instead of getting random ones, etc. as well as having techs from more than one race at start.
 

chuft

Augur
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
496
As I understand it, Empire Mode is a series of random map games connected with mechanisms that let you progress and carry over things from game to game. It's not a space 4X where you are fighting an enemy space empire. Rather you are conquering planets one by one and each can have a variety of different opponents. I think once you win a map (planet) you're done with it. It's really just a way to link different games together, like a WW2 game that lets you progress through France, North Africa, Russia etc over time with increasing quality of troops and equipment. You never go back to a previous campaign.
 

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