Age of Wonders : Planetfall - Catch all

Can be easy to make a mistake with combat, I've noticed. Won't be another week until I'm home and playing some more.

I'm enjoying the campaign. I'm playing on advanced despite not knowing what I'm doing but I'm treating colony-sector expansion as I would the Civ6 wide style - put a colony in the tightest configuration unless you're land grabbing to secure a particular territory (usually with cosmite or specific feature like a location you can enter and clear an instance). Reading up on the Steam forums it seems players have found some really interesting synergies in unit and faction abilities. I haven't seen many though as I'm grinding the campaign and only on the second map.

Maclintok wrote:

This will sound blasphemous but is anyone on the PS4 version? The PC hardware requirements look much steeper than expected and I heard optimization is not quite there yet. I’d probably be receptive to some laid back console turn based goodness if they have made the right adjustments and concessions for the format (I.e. readable text, UI scaling options, etc.)

I’m on the Xbox 1 X version and everything looks fine to me. I did have to increase the UI Font size (as I recall) because of my tired eyes, but everything else looks fantastic.

I got back yesterday and snuck a few hours in. Is it just me or a campaign map takes forever to finish? I'm at turn 42 on the second mission and I've not explored the map entirely, I've barely researched the Promethean unit line (let alone mod technology) and haven't even unlocked any units in the Vanguard tree. It takes hours just to advance a dozen or two of turns. It doesn't help that the AI is really bad at auto-resolution for combat.

Wow, 2 months between comments? Game isn't exactly setting the world on fire yet, is it. I've run into the same feeling with Planetfall as the base game of AoW 3. It didn't feel like a completely fleshed out game til all the expansions were added; but once complete I frittered away over 1000 hours with it.

The good news is, first expansion (of three), Revelations, is out Nov 19!

It looks like this will feature soul-draining Space Necromancers with Egyptian and Aztec (the name Es'teq is on the nose) flair, which is fine and dandy with me.

Also, all-devouring bio-engineered Space Piglets.
More here.

Now on Xbox Game Pass. Having bought the season pass on pc though, I probably won't play the base game on console after the DLC arrives.

Thread Resurrection time.

I've picked this up in a sale (all the DLC included) and a couple of hours in I'm intrigued. It feels like one of the best 4x games I've played in years, while at the same time it's not as intuitive as I was expecting. Does anyone have a link to a decent let's play or guide on where to start? I've looked at a few online but really they all seem to expect a serious base knowledge of the game before you start.

Is it worth playing the campaign as an extend tutorial, or just going straight into a sandbox campaign and experimenting? Anything or anyone that could be recommended would be appreciated.

I went with the tutorial first and that really helped me figure it out. It's pretty tough, though, once things get going.

I usually ignore campaigns and prescripted scenarios in 4x games, but I ended up getting hooked on Planetfall's. It's pretty damn good!

I played the tutorial. Then the game advised me to play a practice world. I think I’m approaching a win state in the practice world. It’s taking forever to get there. Very tempted to quit out and start the campaign.

I have to admit though, I’m still learning things about systems that have been in place since turn one. I’m nearing turn 100.

I’ve currently played through the Vanguard, Kir’Ko And Dvar campaign modes. I’ll be honest they’re kind of fun, as far as a 4x campaign can be and it’s certainly getting me to learn the ropes. You can win them quite easily if you just focus on achieving the objectives. It could do with explaining its mechanics a lot better in places and I’m occasionally surprised at the size of the armies enemies can sustain when I’m grubbing around for energy to keep one barely half the size. Just as well the AI isn’t that great at using them strategically (at least at the level I’m playing. Tactically it’s not that bad)

All in all it’s not bad at all. L

Whoooh. Finished that practice world. I’m looking forward to starting the campaign.

I love sci-fi art, and this game does a wonderful job in that department. I was mostly choosing auto battle to save time, but then I would watch the replays so I could enjoy the gorgeous visuals. I had a bioluminescent King Kong, giant bees, and some techno-zombie-ish soldiers in my army. The rest were mostly space marines.

If the auto-battle gave me unacceptable losses then I would take the time to do it right. Usually though, auto battle was fine. One time I knew my team was getting wiped, but did manual battle just to hurt the enemy as much as I could.

Some beginner tips I put together for a friend. Might help anyone who gets it on the current sale.

General
- Apply habits from fantasy TBS games (other AoW titles, HOMM, etc). Send out your party to explore, defeat neutral monsters to claim resource sites and treasures, and grab independent settlements (buy them off or conquer them).
- Prioritise claiming resource sites that will fall inside your city borders, or that will feasibly be within your borders.
- The economy is a function of map control. Build lots of cities: there is no penalty to ICS. Individual cities max out at four districts (one for every 4 pop, up to 16) so you can space cities quite close together.
- In skirmish games, treat conflict with AI players as inevitable. This is a war-focused game and playing as a peaceful builder is not really viable. (This doesn't apply to the campaign: I won the two Vanguard campaign missions entirely peacefully by focusing on quests.)
- This is the first AoW game in which cities are defended by free-spawn militia. It's worth investing in at least the basic militia building, which provides enough defenders to fight off wandering monsters. Against other players, you will need a proper garrison, which the militia can supplement.
- When attacking cities, I find it's worth beelining for the city centre. Take the centre and all the districts will fall.

Vanguard-specific tips:
- Good mid/late-game research targets are the laser tank, the operation that lets you drop a Valkyrie (melee soldier with a jetpack) into battle, and the missile turret upgrade. The tank's armour and firepower make it a really solid base to build a stack around. The valkyrie complements the ranged-heavy Vanguard armies very well: she can disrupt an enemy formation and force them to either deal with her while your troopers shoot them up, or try to deal with a melee-overwatching soldier in their midst. The missile turret is a big step up from the default machine gun turret that engineers can deploy. Speaking of which...
- The engineer and PUG synergise very well: the engineer can deploy one turret per battle, and the PUG can recharge that ability. Add the missile turret upgrade, and that's two AoE turrets per battle - a significant force multiplier.
- Massed gunships are really fun as a quick response force, or for pouncing on lightly defended targets (such as a lone hero wandering around). Gunships are harder to hit the further they move in their turn, which means you can fly them right up to the enemy line and unleash a salvo of rockets.
- Troopers with the right upgrades are viable into the late game.

New expansion incoming!

Looks good! Glad it's a bit later in May, time to get into other games

Just playing through the tutorial missions. Anything that I really need to know?

Natus wrote:

Just playing through the tutorial missions. Anything that I really need to know?

Being a recent newbie myself, I think your most important choice to make is whether to do a practice world or just jump into the campaign. I did a practice world. It took forever, but I learned tons. Then I discovered that the first campaign holds your hand quite a bit. You might want to jump into the campaign and see how smoothly it goes for you.

This might be getting lost in the fall releases, but Planetfall released its latest DLC yesterday, Star Kings. The game also has been patched to included its Galactic Empire mode, which is a meta-strategic layer that sits on top of the game.

I fired a game up last night for the first time in a while, and yeah, I'm a total beginner again. The Galactic Empire mode seems pretty cool, although I'm just scratching the surface with it.

EDIT: WinGames Store is having a good sale on all the Planetfall stuff.