So this is the game I was hoping to play back when I started a game diary on Planetfall! Basically, a 4X sandbox where I level up my empire by playing through different challenges, each of which unlocks tools to help me beat harder challenges to accelerate my empire’s progression. A gameplay loop built around playing Planetfall maps with distinctive set-ups and goals, using a stable of upgrades, unlockables, and leveling up heroes. Basically, this is a party-based RPG, but instead of dungeon crawling, I’m 4Xing.
I can play and win games normally, but I’ve been opting for “surgical strikes” to level up specific factions so I can start later games with their tools. For instance, the last two games I played were specifically to accomplish “secondary objectives” and then pull up stakes with a win on behalf of a specific faction.
The first game was a Vanguard request to defeat the two Spacer dwellings on a planet crawling with Spacers, who are the Mad Max NPC faction (they have “Witness Me” suicide troops, a Mad Preacher (aka doof warrior) truck, suicide buggies, and even a toxic avenger. But first we have to find them. My Vanguard hero landed, deployed a wave of OWLs to search the planet, and started building up an army. By the time we’d found the Spacer dwellings, I had three stacks, each with one of my faithful heroes leading: my Vanguard leader, my Dvar sniper, and my Assembly shock gunner, all leading troopers, gunships, and even a couple of tanks. Although the Spacer dwellings were pretty remote, I saved up the influence to simply “buy out” nearby settlements as forward bases. And by steering clear of any entanglements with the other factions – “I’m just here for the Spacers and then I’ll be leaving the planet to you!” I told them – I had no trouble taking out the dwellings and adding a planet called Tholian’s Folly to my empire. It even came with an artifact that unlocks all the Spacer units. Now I can field my own Mad Max army!
The game I just played was more difficult, and I confess to cheating to play it like a chess puzzle. The “secondary objective”, which lets you call an early win, was to defeat another faction within 20 turns. The twist is that the map is completely revealed, so you know everyone’s starting position.
The trick was to 1) accumulate enough of an army to take out a capital city, and 2) make sure it can reach that capital city within 20 turns. I screwed up a few times by trying to level up my starting army, taking risks, and then taking losses. But any losses screwed my chances of taking a capital city by turn 20! Hmm, okay, time to reload from turn 1. Like I said, it was a bit like a chess puzzle.
Normally, I guess you’d beat this kind of objective by sending in a faction that had leveled up and unlocked techs, so they could immediately start building higher tier units. That’s how the balancing works in Galactic Empire mode: leveled up factions get a leg up, but you need a leg-up for the worlds with the difficulty dials turned up.
I also had to figure out my tech choices, colony builds, and army composition in advance, since the timing was so tight. But I was using the Syndicate, pretty much on a whim, and they weren’t at all leveled up. It seemed like my only option was a bunch of cheap Syndicate troops with their pulse rifles, whatever meager boost they’d get from their starting mods, and the even more meager boost from having a Syndicate overseer in the stack. Not a ton of synergies available when you have to win by turn 20!
My army set out for the most accessible enemy capital and they brought along a colonizer, which was one of the first things I built. I deployed the colonizer around the halfway point so I had a city to provide closer reinforcements (this was also figured into my “opening moves” calculation). I managed two full stacks with heroes and was moving in for the kill – the actual war declaration would come at the last minute – when suddenly it looked like all was lost because of something I should have foreseen because I had just done it myself: my chosen target had just built a second city! Now I had five turns to take out two cities. And if I failed, I would be playing on a map where everyone hates me because I’m the guy who bum rushes a starting city without going through the normal diplomatic due process.
I didn’t have a single turn to spare. As you’d expect, his capital was mostly empty because he was out with his army doing other things. But I took some losses in the battle, and then scurried to his expansion city, where he had managed to retreat with an army big enough to make it a toss-up. On turn 19, I got lucky with the battle – these are all autoresolved – and seized the second city.
But nothing happened.
For a brief moment of panic I was sure I had run into one of Triumph’s long neglected game-killing bugs. Oh, wait, I probably have to cycle the turn. But, wait, then I’m at turn 20. I will get credit for the win, right? Sure enough, I just had to find the notification from the list and click it for a win and, voila!, now this planet is part of my empire along with a hefty dose of Syndicate XP. Man, I cannot get enough of these screens after a match:
For instance, that breaks down from the Spacer map the parameters, the goals, the xp I earned, for whom I earned it, how I earned it, and what I unlocked. Among the unlocks was this artifact, which will let me call in Spacers on later maps:
