Age of Wonders: Planetfall by Triumph Studios

Yeah, I did try restarting the client, and nothing Validated files as well…

So…eh…
Decided to do the Starking campaign - And reloaded a quicksave. It has the correct name and turn time, but…Its not my game, but another game where I am an amazon.

This is going really well.

And now the campaign I am playing can’t continue past turn 133. It just wont start the next turn.

edit: This fixed itself by restarting the entire computer. Is this some sort of memory leak, then?

After playing a couple of games now, I’m starting to wonder about the game design balance between time spent in the tactical game and time spent in the strategic game, and how the two work together. I want to be able to play some games at higher difficulties before judging, though. I’m curious to see how different it is when the AI is putting up more of a fight.

Mine felt like something like that. My glitch happened after having the game running uninterrupted for a number of hours.

I’ve had to abandon my two Galactic planets. Their savegames were unsalvageable and kept not ending my turn. Luckily, my campaign didn’t do that.

Its fairly frustrating to play a 4 hour game, and then have it just not be winnable.

Yeah, it’d be frustrating to invest that much time and have it go sideways on you like that.

I wonder if the issues we’ve seen are connected to the update/DLC.

AFAIk running in debug mode logs everything in the game, which is why i thought it could help.

I’ve never had the game hang like you describe.

I have had it take a long time to resolve some animations in tactical combat, so the game appeared to freeze, but 2 minutes later the animation had resolved.

That is thankfully very rare.

This is after 15 minutes waiting a few times. Since turn times normally are a few seconds , or at least under a minute, I am certain that isn’t it.

Finally had a chance to dip back in for an Oathbound game this weekend and my goodness. You really want to use the Precognition doctrine and get the hero ability that essentially does the same so all your units start with 2 stacks of precognition each battle. Two attacks just negated (along with whatever status effects they may have applied) is a total game changer, especially when most of the nastiest enemies in the game rely on status effect applications to be truly powerful. And even the ones who don’t hate missing twice.

I’m doing better than I usually do, maybe because I’m taking more time to read all my unit abilities more closely. I haven’t lost a unit yet in tactical combat. I even have won a couple ‘impossible’ battles on manual, heh. I’m on Easy difficulty, but I still seem to need it – I’m behind my only AI opponent (the Dvar). (I chose a small map, 1 opponent, just to learn.)

So I now have the option to spend 8 turns building my secret weapon. I guess that can lead to a victory, but the world will presumably rise up against me. Is this a good option to pursue? The tech is a dead-end, so it’s a pretty big commitment of resources to this one victory type. Is the Unifier victory a better bet in a simple two-person game – just butter up the Dvar and win that way?

Yeah double-stacked precognition is great. Between that and the armor and shields, my guys often don’t have a scratch on them by the time they are in melee and ripping up the enemy line.

You need to build 3 of them, research the final operation, enact it, and survive 10 turns without losing any of them. This will be made easier by the fact that during those turns, the weapon counts as hitting pretty much everything that isn’t you or your allies. Just so you can make an informed decision :)

Cool, that helps; thanks! So it sounds like it’s a feasible way to go. I guess I’ll try it.

I went the secret weapon route in my last game. My ally stood by while my enemy kept on being an enemy. The game ended before the counter ran up because my enemy abandoned his capital (presumably to attack me I suppose), which made it easy for me to attack the capital and end the game that way.

Let me lay out some early game Vanguard theory crafting as an exercise in getting some understanding of the depths of this game. Vanguard is my go to choice b/c they are the easiest to get a handle on IMO.

First, a quick look at the units:

Tier 1, scouty drone thing does scouty drone stuff. Fine.
Tier 1, Trooper, surprisingly good glass-cannon style ranged damage, easily upgraded and useful for a long time. Due to it’s low cost, it should form the core of your early game armies.
Tier 2, stupid bike thing. Don’t like em. Ignore. YMMV.
Tier 2, PUG, robot that heals and refreshes other units once per battle. Decent support unit that is great with:
Tier 2, Engineer, support unit that can create a turret once per battles (but twice if you use a PUG to refresh it) - your PUG/Engi synergy will be a source of much early game winning if you use it right

So early on, a Hero with a PUG, an Engi and 3 Troopers is going to be your vanilla stack that can punch above it’s weight decently and can be modded a lot.

Tier 3, Laser Tank. LASER TANK. Nothing fancy. Lots of armor, lots of HP, lots of range, lots of damage. LASER TANK.
Tier 3, Walker thing, it’s better than I first thought but I keep mistaking its icon for a Drone Carrier. Useful if you are already rocking out with Laser Tanks.
Tier 4, Drone Carrier, not as sexy as most other factions Tier 4 but actually packs a mighty combat wallop due to the fact that it’s three drone abilities have separate timers, thus allowing you to pump out 3 drones and keep them up. Usually comes very late but can be the crusher to break big enemy wheels O Death or tough adventure sites.

Midgame, I transition to modding my Engi/PUG/Trooper stacks and then adding Laser Tanks to replace the fodder Troopers as I go. Very later I will add some walkers or Drone Carriers to taste.

But the core of PUG/ENGI synergy plus ranged damage persists.

(Part 1 of 2)

Part 2 of 2:

Let’s look at the military tech tree.

Top branch will be your faction, in this case, Vanguard.

The first thing you can research gets you something I don’t remember and the Nanite Injectors mod. Nanite Injectors is a one time per battle heal of 15 plus a short duration defense buff, and a permanent armor buff for the low cost of 5 cosmite (for tier 1 units). It’s a “leave one point” action which means you can use it and still do a “single action” or a single attack. This doesn’t look like much at first glance but its cheap and early and will increase the survivability of any Vanguard unit that you want to take a hit. So don’t use it on your cheap troopers, but it’s great on your PUGs/Engis and Laser Tanks.

Second thing on this tree gets you the Engi, which you do want.

Third thing on this tree is the Gunship, on which I will do another post later (properly modded Gunships rock forth, but they are tricky to get right).

Fourth thing is Laser Tank. That will be enough for most games.

The vanguard branch has some sub-branches. Of note, see the one that gives your Engineers a Missile Turret instead of a Gun Turret. This may not seem like a big deal but the Missile Turrets are AOE and they demolish cover. Engis with missiles rule.

The two branches below Vanguard are your weapon types, Laser and then Firearms.

In Laser, you will see the tier 1 adds a Burning debuff to your laser attacks, which stacks nicely with the Promethean special tech. Laser techs are mostly generic IMO except for the Precision Lasers (which adds damage, to hit, and range) and the Disintegrator one (very late but very mean).

In Firearms, on the second step you will see Rail Accelerators which costs the low low price of 5 cosmite for a tier 1 unit and adds damage, to hit and range to your attacks. This is your friend, for Troopers and Gunships especially, as well as firearms hero. Range is good. It’s “one longer”. There is another Firearm mod later on that reduces the penalty to hit from cover and units in the way which is also very nice. I think there’s a Stagger one as well and Stagger is good.

The bottom branch on the tech tree will be your special tech. It’s a good idea early to look at the early special techs and try to see the synergies with the other stuff you have going on. For example, Synthesis has a tier 1 tech that makes all your mechanical units (like Engis, PUGs, Tanks and Gunships) get the Synthesis Integrated bonus. Or, Promethean has a mod that does extra damage to stuff that’s on fire, which works with laser mods, etc.

These are just some examples of how to look through the tech tree and try to see what works, what goes with what, etc.

I cheated b/c I picked the Vanguard which is easiest to grok. I still have no clue on several of the other factions.

I’m obliterating all kinds of silly things in my current game with Paragon Heavy Soldiers (almost identical to Vanguard Walkers) modded with Rail Accelerators, the mod that turns firearms into AOE fire damage, and the Paragon +hit/+dodge thing. They nasty.

The Paragon have two of the best mods in the game IMO, the Combat Protocol Implants you reference and the Smart Bullets for Firearms which are just nasty. I’m also a fan of the Self Repair Systems from the Autonom.

In terms of units from the NPC factions, I think I like the Plant dudes best b/c they have weird plant creatures (is that a thing?).

@Sharpe, great write-up on the Vangaurd! Thanks for that.

You bet!

-Tom

Those pictures warm my heart! I’m playing the Amazons with the biohazard secret weapon, so I’m all about green goo. I think one of my recently-developed techs uses a mysterious substance named Soilent Green.

So I can annex a sector that has an Orbital Defense Uplink that’s guarded by my “friends” the Autonom. The Uplink is described as a hazard, but will it hurt me if I annex the sector and let the Autonom continue to own it? Or am I better off just bypassing it?