2888

Use https://PlayNite.link and you can set your own backgrounds!

2889

You can in Steam too

2890

Thoughts so far?

2891

I was able to play the game for about five minutes the moment it went live at 9pm Monday night, local time. But I haven’t been able to play it ever since. I’m hoping to start a medium-map game vs AI this afternoon.

Since this race is amphibious, I wonder if they improved AI Player AI so that they’ll actually utilize oceans now days on continent and island maps. I hope so.

2892

I haven’t tried it yet, although I bought it. I don’t know why exactly but the feature list didn’t really grab me for this expansion. It’s probably just a mood thing on my end.

2893

I brought it too as part of the season pass but currently I’d rather play old world. :-)

2894

I’ve only played for 3 hours in a new campaign so a bit early to really say. I’ve not played in a long time so I went with a race I know pretty well, the vanguard. I’ve run up against the new race I believe as an NPC, had some really cool jumpy character that jumped behind my units and flank attacked three at once, that was impressive.

But what I really liked seeing was my contact with another race that went diplomatic. They reached out giving me a compliment. I responded in kind. Then offered non-aggession, bit later a defensive, and then after that they accepted an alliance and full view of each others territories.

So, with that alone this update has my full thumbs up. The one thing that drove me crazy up to now was diplomacy, I simply could not get it to work, in fact I never once got an alliance, not once. And here I’ve played all of three hours and I’ve got one.

So yeah, I’m liking it a lot.

2895

Awesome.

2896

So, following in the theme of testing out a peaceful (well, at least with the majors, not the NPCs) I’ve formed alliances with 2 of the 3 other races. The other one is hostile to the point there’s no making it work.

So, if I’m to pursue a Unity victory one of the requirements is “acquire friendly dwellings”. Just checking what this means, does this mean cracking open diplomacy and buying a couple provinces off one of my allies?

2897

It means acquiring an NPC faction HQ (not the AI Player, but the minor factions) by trading influence points for it after you’ve achieved Integrated status by doing stuff they like, such as quests and buying units/mods/operations from them.

You’ll see dwellings named Dwelling thisorthat on the world map, and you’ll see them available in the Integrated tier trade screens for NPC factions. In order to buy one you have to have a colony close by that can concurrently annex it when the trade is made, otherwise the trade will be refused.

2898

So if you want to do this, it pays to plan ahead.

2899

So this criteria is exclusively focused on NPCs? Why would you not include the other races? You know the ones I went to some trouble building alliances with. Why exclude them from this?

Because here’s the thing, I can be friends with NPCs, which will keep them at bay, rely on the alliances I have with the other races to have them leave me alone and simply doomsday this for victory. It’s simpler because it’s entirely under my control, I just do some more research and viola.

2900

I started a game when it launched and have put some time into it - it’s really cool, though so far the bits I’m enjoying are just the game itself as it’s been. However, my favorite thing is I finally met an AI player that didn’t instantly hate me for hero creation choices, which seemed to happen 100% of the time no matter what choices I made, everyone hated something about me, maybe that I started as a veteran or that I was a party guy. It was maddening. Now my first encounter was a Dvar that is cool and we’ve become allies already, while an Assembly player to my north is not happy with me and that’s great, it gives the random factions/heros a little “per game” personality you can latch onto, which is all I ever wanted in a game like this.

The new race, which I’m playing as, is a blast with some really awesome options. Once again the level of creativity @Lennart_Sas and the team has employed to come up with new abilities, mechanics, and ways the game can surprise you is incredibly satisying!

2901

How do you all feel about the campaigns ie. finishing them? I’m in the second Amazon one and though I want to find out what happens based on my past decisions, trying to slog through feels a bit more like repetitive work than fun. Are the expansion pack campaign’s a little better in this respect?

Did anyone finish all of them? or do you just play individual games?

Also, what difficulty are we supposed to be using now for the most balanced games? I thought I read something a while ago about them rebalancing the difficulty parameters.

2902

I have a long and non-storied history of only playing skirmish matches in my 4x games. Except for the tutorial Vanguard campaign, I haven’t, and will probably never, play the rest of them here.

2903

I finished the campaign from the base game all the way through on Xbox One. There were a couple of missions which were a slough. Most of the time because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to understand the objectives, or I wasn’t good enough at the tactical layer to reach the strategic objectives with enough force to win.

That said, the campaigns fill in the back story nicely. They have some amusing characters and moments. There’s a few inevitable betrayals and other tropes. Hard to complain about in a game with Space Dwarves though, isn’t it?

2904

Any impressions on the new Voidbring Invasion mechanic? Upthread someone posted it was a new victory condition and a replacement for the AOW 3 “Seals” Victory condition but in the reviews I’ve read it sounds more like just pumped up Marauder invasions.

Has anyone tried this yet?

2905

I have very little experience with them so far. I’m nearing the point in my second game where they will appear again, and I’m hoping to be better prepared this time.

Last time they showed up and flipped the table over and wiped the floor with me. Their arrival brought with it occurrences of random sectors terraforming into lava each turn, didn’t matter what was there before. All player alliances and other diplomatic standings were put to a blind test, in that the Voidbringers gave every race an ultimatum, join them or die. Everybody that joined became allies together, former standings be damned, everybody that stood against them became allies together as well. And I couldn’t figure out who chose what before I decided to tell them to screw off.

Then it was a race against time to wipe out several well defended key locations that showed up, and when that was done to take the fight to their main base. But I didn’t get the chance because they used a nearby teleporter to warp in a few tough armies to my HQ and ate my lunch.

I’m not sure what happens to the game once they are defeated.

2906

You win!

If you mean my post, well I said there is some overlap. I don’t think it was intended as a direct replacement for the seals victory!

I both like and dislike the Invasions mechanic.

I like that it forces you to change things up, and really puts you on the backfoot, and tends to arrive just when you are getting comfortable.

I dislike that fighting and securing your area becomes somewhat of a drudge.

I’m largely responsible for that with my habit of choosing the largest maps possible though. :S

Still, just as you clear one beacon, replace your losses, another one comes, and it takes a long time to be able to both defend yourself and go on the offensive.

Also, once you figure out a winnable pattern, battles against the Void Bringers don’t vary too much.

In one game, I was Assembly and I used their Constrictor tactical summon.

It “constricts” an enemy, immobilizing them and stopping them using any abilities, and you can drop it anywhere on the battlefield.

With an upgraded militia and a couple of those, I could hold off roaming VoidBringers stacks, but it required baiting the jellyfish escorts forward then dropping the constrictors on the jellyfish who tend to stay at the rear, then just occupy the escorts while the constrictors periodically constricted.

also, those constrictors do decent melee damage against the Jellies.

2907

OK, this is a feature I DO NOT WANT so thanks for that heads up. I am often OCD about developing my cities/sectors/planets in 4X games that’s the case in Planetfall. The idea of my awesome cities with their nicely upgraded sectors with carefully selected combos of bonuses getting lava-ed into oblivion would induce immediate rage-quit in me if it happened without warning. And with warning, I’ll be like “No Thank You.”

I think Planetfall is the best 4X of the last several years but the DLC has been weak IMO. Revelations did essentially nothing for me; I don’t care for the new NPC faction, or the new Secret Tech. I actively turn off the stupid Archeology system in my game set-ups. And the additional campaigns, well I pretty much only play skirmish. I got Revelations cheap on sale so no worries.

Based on the above info about the Voidbringer thing and my lack of interest in the Shakarn race, and my general lack of interest in campaigns, I’m going to pass on Invasions for now. I’ll probably pick it up when it goes down to less than $10 at some future point.