No not yet.
I sometimes will play with city founding off.
But beware this makes the early conflicts very high pressure.
Losing a city within the first 20 or 30 turns, without using it as a trap, will really mess you up.
It does mean that winning an early war is a huge advantage.
But with the larger map size, speed becomes a massive limiting factor, so wars become rather challenging to prosecute and conclude.
Limited resources, challenging logistics.
It can become a bit grindy though.
Hey @KevinC , what settings do you like for your Planetfall games (i.e. difficulty, research pace, etc…)? You also have played this one quite a bit and I’m interested in which settings have worked for you.
Oh, dang, it’s been a while and they’ve actually renamed all the difficulty settings (and tweaked some of them, IIRC) from when I played last! In most 4X games I set the research to slowest possible but that wasn’t entirely necessary here. I felt a little slower was good, but I played quite a few MP games with default research speeds and it was fine.
I didn’t like the settings that made the neutrals really hard as I felt it just bogged down the early game and unlike many other 4X games, I don’t find the early game too appealing here. I think things get more interesting once I start having more mods and units to play with.
I believe I turned up faction strength quite a bit. This would be in relation to the NPC factions like Psy Fish and Automatons, not the regular marauder “barbarians”. One dislike I had about the game before was the number of Covert Ops that would be used against you especially if you have a lot of players in the game and I believe since I’ve played they’ve added options to control this now.
That’s about all I can remember. They changed a lot about the difficulty settings in their latest update and I haven’t played since, so I’m afraid a lot of my experience might be obsolete!
For what it’s worth, the settings will vary from person to person based on how well they know the game, how well they’ve learned how various stuff works and interacts. Other folks’ settings won’t necessarily apply to you, because Planetfall is one of those games you play on too easy a difficulty to learn it, and then bump up the difficulty to actually play it.
-Tom
I still am learning, and I’ve not even finished half the races. I’m playing hard level, aggressive AI, aggressive spawners. The aggressive spawners is especially important cause it forces you to build up your military infrastructure to at least level 2 to keep your cities and bases alive. Otherwise I think turtling is the right strategy.
I’m impressed by the tactical AI, especially considering how many buff, and debuff options there are. Plus just the sheer difference of playing a defensive oriented race, like Vanguard or the Dvars vs a charge at them race like the Kiro-Ko. I stay about 1/3 of the them when I retry an autocombat I do the same or worse than the AI.
It also gives a lie to folks who say that doing a one unit per hex tactical game is too hard for AI, and makes me even more disappointed in how bad Firaxis AI was for Civ V, VI.
Also, thanks @tomchick I would likely not have heard about the Planetfall without your reviews and top 10 list. Planetfall has replace Gladius Gods of War as my favorite 4x game.
Which game is this? Do you mean Gladius, the Warhammer 40K game?
Total agree with you, although Planetfall is a little bit different in that it allows stacks on the strategy layer and only does 1UPT when ti drops down to the tactical level. Gladius is a good example of 1UPT working on the strategy layer on a fraction of the budget. Firaxis just never cared enough to make the design work or teach an AI how to play it and unfortunately it’s ruined the series for me at this point.
For sure, but if most people say “I started getting challenged on this level or I’m currently here after 5 games” then I’ve got a good baseline. I was also curious about the non-difficulty settings like research speed. I know that peoples’ tastes and abilities differ, but it’s a good starting point.
Yes, this game. Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War
Which has such a absurd title that’s it faster for me to google "Gladius game and cut and paste the title than try and remember what order the words are in.
QFMFT
In fairness, the problem space in Civ is significantly more challenging. Randomly generated maps and an arbitrary number of units are huge, huge deals.
In an adjacent space, when I was working on Ashes of the Singularity, map design was a huge part of keeping the AI from misbehaving. And that’s with (IMO) really, really excellent AI for the most part.
Yeah, that’s why Gladius is the better example. Gladius has randomly generated maps and an arbitrary number of units fighting tactically on the strategic map and the AI is great.
Fair enough! I’m a big Proxy fan from Pandora; I should spend more time with Gladius.
Triumph’s new social media profile photo:
🤗
Interesting.
Sweet!
Invasions expansion due May 26th.
https://twitter.com/APlanetfall/status/1250770923273064449?s=20
Tons of expansion info at the following link:
The Shakarn
Planetfall’s newest playable faction gives new meaning to cold-blooded. These ruthless lizardmen can deploy units from the Zardas caste with holographic disguises to mimic and confuse foes or deploy the brutal Domok to crush them outright.
The Therians
This NPC race of sophisticated warriors has accelerated evolution by fusing their DNA with that of animals. Under the rule of the mysterious Deer, this rogue militia has fled their home planet to colonize new worlds, but you won’t catch them in the headlights!
Voidbringer Invasions
Face the ultimate late-game challenge as the enigmatic Voidbringers use trans-dimensional warfare to rain down legions of enthralled soldiers across your empire.
World Events
Battles can now be spontaneously shaken up by over 20 different environmental catastrophes covering everything from pirate uprisings to superstorms to solar flares.
Yes, very cool! Thanks for the info/links!
I am pleased it’s out next month already, too. It looks like a ton of excellent new content.
The discord is freaking out over the cat animal people.