I’ve also been revisiting Planetfall after getting fed up with Age of Wonders 4. And by “fed up”, I mean resigned to waiting for the year plus it’ll probably take to come into its own. At which point, I bet it’s gonna be pretty good! So why not revisit Triumph’s previous game, which has had plenty of time not only to come into its own, and hopefully to get the quality control it deserves?
And right off the bat I’m confronted with what’s missing from Age of Wonders 4: a reason to do things I wouldn’t otherwise do. A game started with a specific goal in mind, and specific tools brought to bear!
In my current game – Galactic Empire mode, of course – I’m on the planet New Haven with two Dvar factions swirled in among five other factions, myself included. The two Dvar hate each other and will naturally be at war. My job is to ally with both of them, at which point I will have met my victory condition and I can call it a win and collect my imperial favor. Basically, the Council or Overlord or Emperor or the Ruling Party or whomever is sending me to the planet New Haven to wrangle two unruly dwarfs. Who wouldn’t want to wrangle dwarfs?
Of course, the empire offers me a secondary objective as well, which is to cultivate six food provinces. So, take to task a couple of cantankerous dwarfs and get some farms going! I can do that. In fact, those are two of my favorite things to do in videogames! Let’s see who to bring along…
I’ve got a ton of Vanguard and Promethian xp, so those are my strongest facets. I guess I could bring a Dvar faction, because to befriend a Dvar, it takes a Dvar, right? However, to cultivate food on an icy planet, maybe someone with green-ish terraforming options? How about the Amazons? I’ve only got a little Amazon xp in my empire, and if I’ve got to relearn Planetfall, might as well learn a new faction while I’m at it. I bring along some extra units, some operations, and some mods from my collection. You know, stuff from my collection of unlocks, stuff to buy with the imperial favor I’m going to earn.
Unfortunately, two problems from the get-go. The first is that I’ve landed in an icy mountainous area of New Haven, which means there aren’t a lot of options for good food provinces. It also means I can’t spread my Amazonian forests until I expand into temperate and non-mountainous areas.
The more pressing problem is that it takes me forever to scout out the stupid dwarfs. By the time I find them, they’re hopelessly tangled up with the other factions. The honorable dwarf is making friends left and right, which bodes well. But the dishonorable one got his ass kicked in the early dwarf-on-dwarf violence, and now the dumbass is fighting wars against a nearby assembly cyborg faction as well as a syndicate faction. By turn 30, the dumbass dishonorable dwarf become a cyborg vassal, who is then defeated in another ten turns by the syndicate.
And because you can’t ally with a dead faction, that means I’ve lost the opportunity to meet my imperial objective; now if I want to win, I have to do it one of the regular ways. Which means it’s time for Oblivio Mundi. Did I mention my Amazons were Psynumbra? Well, my Amazons are Psynumbra because I sort of randomly grabbed that one because I didn’t really remember how the secret techs worked or why I would want any one over any other. So my Amazons, who are Psynumbra Amazons, are now chasing the Doomsday victory condition called Oblivio Mundi. If we can’t make these dwarfs friends, well, the empire has no need for them and we’re gonna wipe the planet. It’s the only way to be sure.
And on the gameplay front, I’m finding so many things I had missed in Age of Wonders 4. For instance, I’ve been autoresolving all the battles as a way of watching and appreciating the AI, which does a fantastic job using all the tools I give it in battle! But one of the things that bothered me in Age of Wonders 4 is that I didn’t quite trust the AI when it came to spellcasting.
Well, check this out in Planetfall:
You can tell the AI certain spells are off-limits during combat! Since my goal is to equalize the AI during tactical combat, this feels a bit like “cheating”, since I know the enemy AI has no such filters being applied. But using this makes it that much more like Dominions.