Hey @BloodyBattleBrain, do you know if it’s a known issue that the terrain generation options in game setup are busted? In my MP games we were getting a little tired of starting out cramped together and with a ton of mountains, so I dropped the default value from 70ish all the way to 1. Still a ton of mountains. Turned it to 0, still a ton of mountains. It doesn’t seem to be having any impact at all.
EDIT: Correction, it seems to impact the map, just not the area near the starting cities. We had mountains around us, but the rest of the continent is completely devoid of them.
Alright, I’ve been lurking this Thread/Forum for a while but I figured it was a good time to jump in.
@KevinC That is correct, each Race has a set starting area. Amazon always will spawn with some Arcadian and Forest Sectors, Assembly among Ruins Sectors and Dvar with Mountain Sectors for example. Next to that, IIRC, there is always a guaranteed uninhabitable sector, usually a Mountain.
One followup on the start locations. Do you know if the game has to make sacrifices when playing on 3-player teams in terms of terrain bias? I know what you’re referring to in that Amazons have forest/arcadian etc, but I notice when I play Kir’ko in SP I always have a lot of fertile land. In those 3-player team MP games, I’m often times stuck in the desert or arctic at the start. A typical setup would be:
6 players
3-player teams
Medium, Pangea
And speaking of this kind of setup, I love that in Planetfall the game does a good job of clustering allied players. I find it strange how it divvies up the land placement, though. For instance, on a Pangea map it will oftentimes place one cluster of three in the center of the landmass while another team will be on the eastern edge of the continent. Whether a team-based game or a FFA, wouldn’t it make more sense to space them out more evenly on the available land?
Whew, so I asked the guy that worked on the RMG and he had the following to say:
Do you know if the game has to make sacrifices when playing on 3-player teams in terms of terrain bias?
Not based on players or teams, but possibly on geographical location on the map (i.e. By default there is arctic towards the poles and more desert towards the middle). To change this default, check out the ‘Theme Layout’ setting in advanced settings menu.
For instance, on a Pangea map it will oftentimes place one cluster of three in the center of the landmass while another team will be on the eastern edge of the continent. Whether a team-based game or a FFA, wouldn’t it make more sense to space them out more evenly on the available land?
Yes, agreed. 3v3 uses the 1v1 player positioning template (since it’s still 1 team vs 1 team). Modding that template to have larger relative distance between teams could already yield better results, but it’s hard to say from the top of my head what the exact implications are.
You are now able to retry a battle in manual combat once after seeing the results of an auto combat. This can be disabled in the Advanced Setup.
There were a number of units that had 24 movepoints instead of 32. These units now have 32mp, and the Cumbersome property, which causes them to move more slowly in tactical combat.
The Combat Retry is really an awesome feature. It could cut down on the repetitiveness of the battles without resorting to quicksave, try autobattle then reload.
Did they release when this is coming out yet? It may be time for me to play some more when it does.
Edit: It’s coming out Nov 19th.
These new features might get me playing again. Thea 2 uses something like Combat Retry to great effect; I’m glad Planetfall is trying something similar.
Also, there’s this new feature. I hope this means we’ll be better able to defend against sudden AI incursions? As someone mentioned upthread, the AI is somewhat omniscient; a feature like this could mitigate that.
New feature: Orbital Relay
Added a new sector Exploitation: ‘Orbital Relays’. Orbital relays function akin to teleporters, letting you transport an army through a relay to any other accessible relay in an instant.
Forward Bases can be upgraded to Forward Relays, allowing you to connect them to the Orbital Relay network
It is, but the all-seeing AI is still incredibly annoying. To me, anyway. It’s obnoxious to fight multi-front wars where the AI knows at all times where your armies are (and are not).
I especially don’t think it’s needed here. As @BloodyBattleBrain usually mentions when this is brought up, you have garrisons, you had strategic operations to provide vision, etc. If there’s plenty of tools available to scout, that means the AI can take advantage of them. Just giving full global vision at all times feels like a cop out in otherwise solid AI.
I’ve had AI players from across the continent show up at my city with 9+ units at like turn 15. Given the distance, it means the AI basically beelined all his troops towards me right at the start of the game and it knows precisely when my army moves out to deal with another threat. If I have a smaller army to compliment the garrison but not a match in the open field, the AI knows to walk around them and head to an interior city which lacks defenders. If I move back my main army to deal with that threat, than the AI on the other side of me knows that border is open and moves in for the attack.
None of that is insurmountable but I sure do find it tedious and aggravating.
The only “defence” I can offer is that you can see them coming, and they can’t ninja you with a single scout like they used to.
It is something I also don’t like and I have flagged up, namely that the AI has this habit of sending just exactly the forces required to take a cirh6, even though you might have an army near the city.
I find what works very well is to manual the fights when they attack your city, and inflict maximum damage.
And then counter attack.
If you lose the city don’t worry, it takes a while for them to absorb it, and for some reason they never just burn them down.
If the AI is ping ponging you then it means you are signalling extreme weakness to them.
I can’t confirm for sure but it seems once you take over one AI, the rest treat you with considerable respect.
