TBS Age of Wonders: Planetfall - AoW gone to space

[chuft]

Xenoplague melee is highly effective.

In fact a lot of melee is highly effective, the secret is to use it en masse, not send one guy up there to be focus fired to death while his friends stay back and plink ineffectively at enemies in cover. It ignores Shields which makes it very useful against enemies with shield-heavy defenses.

Amazon Light Bringer is, weirdly, a flyer. Normally Light Bringers are ground melee units that can teleport 7 hexes and land next to those ranged enemies and stagger them and put them in a melee overwatch ZOC.

https://minionsart.github.io/aowp/Pages/Units/CelestianUnits.html

Ironically by playing Amazon you are not going to see the benefits of a powerful Celestian melee unit like the usual Light Bringer.

You could still see it from using Lancers. Just be sure to give them (as always with melee units) good defensive mods, like the Amazon Grounding Harness, Advanced Instinct Controller, and Primal Awareness Amplifier, all low level and cheap mods. This gives them stagger resistance, status effect resistance, immunity to flanking, and +1 Armor and +2 Shields.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Melee is completely hopeless in a lot of match ups while ranged is always good. Not to mention that it's clunky af and unsatisfying and the typical boring PF shtick of "stick units in a ball for a bonus" is even more prevalent and easy to punish here than elsewhere. There's literally zero reason to go melee.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

but why would you do that to yourself when

Because this is the way

 

[Lacrymas]

Like mentioned previously, you *could* go melee, but it's just gimping yourself for no reason when ranged is always good and you don't have to babysit them so much.

 

[cvv]

Melee is viable for a beefy hero, buffed to the gills. Problem is why would you bother with it when you can get the same result with 10x less effort with anything ranged.

 

[chuft]

The PvP players in the Discord always mock people who think melee is bad, and they love to prove such people wrong in matches, but I don't have their level of skill, so I won't argue about it. You're missing a part of the game if you don't get proficient at melee use, but that's your prerogative.

However if you skip Xenoplague you are missing out on some serious fun.

 

[Suicidal]

I remember melee being useful if you gave them a ton of defensive mods and something that staggers (if they don't have it on their own). That way you can park your melee guys next to the enemy's shooters and if they have a repeating attack then they have to waste 1 AP to get away from you in order to shoot, which triggers an attack of opportunity, which staggers them draining 1 more AP and they're left with only 1 AP, which on a repeating shooter won't do much damage.

 

[Raghar]

Melee was interesting until they nerfed the gain action on kill special leader skill.

 

[Lacrymas]

Amazons - excruciatingly boring? Discuss!!1!1!!1

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Who isn't boring? Assembly had some potential, but yeah, they left it at that and the only good thing to be said about them is that they probably have the most "natural" synergy with secret techs. All the other races are zzzzz by default.

What are the interesting, not obvious and actually working race-secret tech combos, anyway. I played everything and I've noticed v. little. I always cite promethean syndicate in such discussions, but no-one ever gives any other examples that would go outside of "yeah, this mod is good when applied on that unit".

 

[Nikanuur]

graphics look bad

Same quality textures as aow 3 released 4 years ago

Xcom 2 looks better

This is 2018

?????????????

Alas, the outdating! I reckon, it must be the same tale as with the nearly obsolete Ride of the Valkyries or the retrograde joyrides in the Fiat 24-32HP. Only forward to the future, my Nazz fellow citizens!

 

[chuft]

I love Amazons because of the Tyrannodons, such a fun unit. Paired with Xenoplague, my favorite combo. The Aquaticas are also pretty awesome due to their summoning ability.

 

[chuft]

Who isn't boring?

The bitterness is strong in this one.

However it does remind me that I should go back and play some more AOW3, which really is the best fantasy computer game I know. Just been playing Gladius to death lately, exploring the different factions now that I don't totally suck at the game and can play on Very Hard.

 

[Lacrymas]

Who isn't boring? Assembly had some potential, but yeah, they left it at that and the only good thing to be said about them is that they probably have the most "natural" synergy with secret techs. All the other races are zzzzz by default.

What are the interesting, not obvious and actually working race-secret tech combos, anyway. I played everything and I've noticed v. little. I always cite promethean syndicate in such discussions, but no-one ever gives any other examples that would go outside of "yeah, this mod is good when applied on that unit".

There is also the opportunity cost of researching racial vs secret tech units/mods. Where the whole thing gets tripped up is that there is a choice between both of these things. Racial units by themselves are good enough 90% of the time on their own and don't need secret tech to make work, so you are essentially choosing what to focus on, which is compounded by the aforementioned opportunity cost. On top of that, melee not being very viable unless you specifically go all out on them limits potential combinations. Since I just completed the first Amazon map, the melee units they gave me at the start were dead weight in the vast, vaaaaaaaaaast majority of battles. Actually worse than dead weight because I had to babysit them in order for them to not die even when I specifically don't tell them to charge the enemy head on. There are almost no interesting racial/secret tech combos because they are good enough on their own, so there is nothing missing that needs complementing.

 

[chuft]

Protip: the campaign sucks. You will like the game much better if you do random maps, then Empire Mode once you feel at home.

 

[Lacrymas]

The campaigns are random maps with narrative elements, though. Why do you think they are so different?

 

[chuft]

I would call them semi-random maps. The early ones are ok to get your feet wet so long as you don't mind it picking your leader and faction/ST for you, but if you are a typical 4X player you will spend a lot of time building up your economy and the perfect highly modded tier III army for the big war, only to have the game suddenly end due to a narrative element, often while you are still at peace with most or even all AIs. Very annoying. And you don't want to skip the narrative because you think you are going to get some interesting lore from it (you won't). Some of the campaign victory conditions ended up being very tedious. You also get a lot of resource bumps and other rewards from narrative events which make the game easier than it typically is.

Just saying I ended up regretting doing the campaigns and wished I had cut straight to random maps. AOW2 or SM this isn't. Empire Mode is the icing on the cake.

 

[Reality]

The Quest Rewards in the Campaigns are biased toward your own factions stuff so it's less colorful doing than doing a random map and ending up with Laser Tanks as Kirko.
You can use Extreme / Very Hard AI which is above the AI's maximum in Campaign.
Empire Mode often features more extreme gimmicks than Campaign : Planets with voids instead of oceans, Pre-set computer alliances, Invisible Units for all players, Changes to the upkeep formula, Turn 1 NPC War, Free Combat Spells, Computers that start doomsday much earlier than normal, etc

I will say that Campaign Wise

Vanguard 1 - won through Alliance
Vanguard 2 - won through event chain
Amazon 1 - won through event chain
Amazon 2 - won through Conquest
Kirko 1 - won through event chain
Kirko 2 - won through event chain
Assembly 1 - won through Alliance
Assembly 2- won through Conquest* only killing the big guy
Dvar 1 - won through event chain
Dvar 2 - won through alliance
Syndicate 1 - won through alliance
Syndicate 2 - won through Conquest
Final - won through Conquest

Assembly and Syndicate were the only ones I ever had T3 in.

 

[chuft]

Final was pretty frustrating and I gave up on it. I don't want to spoil it but it was very hard in a particularly brutal and random way.

 

[Suicidal]

Who isn't boring?

 

[Lacrymas]

Syndicate > Assembly > Dvar = Vanguard > Kir'ko >>>>>>>>> Amazons (to the point I don't see myself playing them after their campaign ever again)

Change my mind.

 

[chuft]

If you don't like an army composed of Plague Lords and Tyrannodons, I don't know what to say. It's the coolest looking army in the game IMO, and the main units have both melee and ranged attacks.

 

[Suicidal]

Syndicate > Assembly > Dvar = Vanguard > Kir'ko >>>>>>>>> Amazons (to the point I don't see myself playing them after their campaign ever again)

Change my mind.

Aren't syndicate just vanguard with psy damage and slavery?

 

[Lacrymas]

Syndicate > Assembly > Dvar = Vanguard > Kir'ko >>>>>>>>> Amazons (to the point I don't see myself playing them after their campaign ever again)

Change my mind.

Aren't syndicate just vanguard with psy damage and slavery?

Also cooler aesthetics (they are basically house Harkonnen from Dune ;d) and the synergy between their units is more built in. Their lore doesn't make much sense, though. They talk like they are this great merchant house, but who exactly are they trading with to maintain their wealth? Everyone is either dead or scattered after the mysterious cataclysm (which still remains unexplained 80% into the campaign).

 

[Lacrymas]

I just played a random map as vanguard/voidtech and the AI loooooves to get out of defensible positions if it thinks it's stronger than the player. I never would've been able to win the battle for the Assembly's capital if they didn't march right out of the city and out of range of their defense towers. I researched 0 voidtech technologies and didn't feel the loss. Zboj Lamignat is absolutely correct in saying there's little synergy between race and secret tech, with a few notable exceptions.