TBS Age of Wonders: Planetfall - AoW gone to space

[Lacrymas]

Both Assembly 2 and Syndicate 2 are borderline unplayable. I get what they are going for, but they should've made the maps waaaaaaaaaaaay smaller.

in 4x games the only true victory condition is "i'm bored of wiping the floor with these enemies, let's start another game". maps smaller than the biggest size available shouldn't exist. ipse dixit.

Sure, but that doesn't work when the campaign has to keep going ;d I might just use cheats to skip Assembly 2 and Syndicate 2. Or only Syndicate because I want to play them in the last mission. Either them or the Vanguard.

 

[chuft]

To paraphrase the computer from War Games, the only way to win is not to play, by using cheats. I did to get past certain unfun scenarios.

 

[Lacrymas]

chuft why did you find the last map unfair? I'm on turn 25 and 2 of the 6 enemy commanders are already dead. The fact that CORE summons autonom armies towards you is a bit of a dick move, but since I'm synthesis and autonom armies are garbage in general it hasn't been much of a problem. The empress also swallows their capitols at one point and they neither make a new one, nor is any of their other cities as built-up, so they are easy pickings once you find their leader.

 

[chuft]

Maybe it's random or it depends on whose side you picked. In my case the empress, my enemy, was taking out my allies with those void nukes, not taking out my enemies. I was not Synthesis and large armies appearing in the middle of my empire made it impossible to campaign away from home for any length of time. The whole thing was an exercise in frustration.

 

[chuft]

By the way if you win the campaign you get a special bonus if you start an Empire Mode game. I used a cheat code to finish the campaign and get this bonus but it was not as good as I hoped, in fact it was rather lame since it let you get some augmented Paragon units. The problem is it looked like they had arc damage type so I started as Oathbound to get arc mods for them, but they really didn't in terms of what mods they could use, the arc effect was just a permanent buff, they really used Firearms, so my Oathbound mods could not be placed on them. So if you want to use them effectively start the Empire game with a race that uses firearms mods.

 

[Lacrymas]

I sided with no-one and all the other playable commanders are my allies. Mahina took out Eva Montinga with extreme prejudice and I took care of the Dvar.

 

[chuft]

LOL from Paradox forum

"But then CORE spawns four full stacks, so 4000-ish army power slap bang in the middle of my territory, with no warning or indication where they'd come in (previous incursions were significantly smaller, and spawned in the fog of war beyond my borders). All my armies are on the borders, minimum 5/6 turns away, and I'm already heavily committed fighting one of the Dvar opponents."

Sounds familiar.


I don't think I sided with anyone either but she kept killing my allies by turning their capital sectors into Void and those huge Autonom armies kept appearing in my territory as well.

 

[Lacrymas]

As far as I gathered, they spawn from neutral buildings, if you control them somehow they don't spawn. But since I saw it's going to be cheap, I keep an entire stack of hero + units in my territory to defend if needed and I have built both the turrets and militia buildings.

 

[chuft]

Yes even if you control a sector, if there's a site you haven't cleared they can spawn there in your sector. It was all very tedious given the time pressure caused by her eliminating my allies one by one with void nukes.

 

[cvv]

I don't think I sided with anyone either but she kept killing my allies by turning their capital sectors into Void and those huge Autonom armies kept appearing in my territory as well.

Are you playing or Hard?

Both AoW3 and Planetfall love to ambush players with these "AHA, gotcha!" moments but only on Hard it often means restarting the map if you don't know what's coming and you aren't ready for it. Which really sucks if you're 5+ hours in.

One reason I never play this shit on Hard, this diff. seems to be built for replays.

 

[Lacrymas]

So, I won fair and square on turn 68 -

Mahina was the real MVP for some reason -

I think Mahina was able to do so well because she had a T4 weapon, the one which deals AoE damage x3. I also had it on Shae Mara. All in all, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I suspect it's because the empress swallowed 2 of my enemies, Mahina defeated 2 others and I the rest. I took out Zarai's capitol while Mahina killed Zarai herself, though. There really should be a way to get more movement points in the higher branches of the tech trees. Most of the tedium of huge maps is getting to places and spamming that end turn button. The hardest armies to deal with were Givori Ardelli's stacks of Psynumbra T3s. I kinda think they are the best T3 units in the game, they have insane damage (basically one-shotting anything and that's with the shitty mods the AI tends to use) and are a bitch to kill. The Autonom armies CORE sends after you were never really a problem, but I anticipated they potentially could be if left unchecked, so I made sure to clear every spawn point and keep a defensive stack in my main base to take care of any stragglers. Their units only ever became scary once they started getting T3s like Justicars and Avatars, but the map was pretty much over by that point anyway.

The campaign itself is very meh, probably worse than AoW3's base game campaigns, but at least your heroes can't get as freakishly overpowered and solo the entire maps by themselves. Assembly 2 and Syndicate 2 were unplayable and I used cheats to get past them. I liked how your secret techs change depending on choices you made on the first map (with the exception of the Vanguard [and Syndicate?], you can't be anything else other than Promethean in the second map). The things I didn't like were the random nature of the maps, the honestly incoherent narrative (I still have no idea what was going on and that's not because I was playing in Spanish), the lack of conflict on most maps (it's good that you have a peaceful way to win the map, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be any wars going on, it just means you don't have to destroy another faction to win), the Amazons and how unnecessarily big some maps were. All in all, I doubt I'll ever replay it.

 

[cvv]

There really should be a way to get more movement points in the higher branches of the tech trees. Most of the tedium of huge maps is getting to places and spamming that end turn button.

100% yes. Jesus.

I really hope they'll do something about that shit in AoW4. It was already fucking stupid in 3.

 

[chuft]

The way to move fast on offense is send a flier stack to create an outpost or capture an enemy sector and split it off from its parent city, then convert outpost to orbital relay outpost. Then teleport your army in.

 

[Lacrymas]

I didn't know you can create an orbital relay in a sector with no city attached to it.

 

[chuft]

It's one of the later game techs. Advanced Relay Infrastructure in Society techs.

Forward Bases can be upgraded to Forward Relays.

 

[Nikanuur]

So, I bought this in the Steam sale. I was a fan of the original Master of Magic when it all began. Maaaaan, I've completely forgotten how intimidating that initial graduation-level amount of information feels in such games. Smack me in the head! But glory to the developers for those by-the-book pop-ups and several ways to get to the desired description. Neat!

Is there any reason to not omit the Paradox account? Is it good for anything else but synchro on different computers and cloud saving?

 

[cvv]

Is there any reason to not omit the Paradox account? Is it good for anything else but synchro on different computers and cloud saving?

In Surviving Mars I was using the Paradox account for downloading and managing mods a lot, the game has its own mini version of Steam Workshop, p. convenient. Not sure about Planetfall tho.