3328

I think the absolute best bang for your buck is the tier 2 units honestly.

Tier 3 tends to come out quite late and be quite expensive, but is wonderfully strong. Tier 4 are real force multipliers, but generally not worth massing, even if you can.

But tier 2 are sufficiently stronger than tier 1 imho, and available enough, that they are absolutely worth massing and using.

I am talking things like massed Lancers :)

3329

Massed Siphoners with Crystals sprinkled in has been quite strong.

Upgraded my whole damn 2014-and-earlier system yesterday to a baller 3070 rig and my goodness, Planetfall just screams in ultrawide 1440 now. I didn’t think my performance was bad before (i5 3770 and 2x Radeon 480s) but it is smooth as butter now. I haven’t benchmarked anything but I’m guessing I am reaping some FreeSync benefits now on top of a generally higher framerate.

3330

Grats on your win, @Sharpe! Sounds like it was a fun game. Yes, I found myself relying more on Lancers and Harriers than Huntresses, but I don’t think I was using Huntresses optimally, as the earlier discussion here indicates.

Wait – do units develop new abilities at a certain level of experience? If so, I’d never noticed, lol. I don’t recall my Harriers having an AOE.

@BloodyBattleBrain @AdamB and everyone else – I’m also wondering about victory conditions. In my current empire game, one apparent condition relates to exploring one of the purple hero-exploration sites. (I love these sites; I guess they came with one of the two DLCs I just bought.) Is that a standard thing, or simply part of the Empire, or the DLC?

Another possible victory condition in my game is diplomatic. I’ve now bought two NPC faction home dwellings, and I guess that entitles me to run the Unity operation to win the game. Will that trigger massive wars against me?

Finally, I’m curious about cover. In his videos, Black Arrow Gaming’s Bob doesn’t seem concerned with using cover. At one point he said it didn’t matter much. Maybe I heard him wrong. Certainly when I shoot at the enemy, my shot gets downgraded because of cover, at least according to the tooltip.

3331

Some do. You can mouse over the XP tracker on the unit detail screen and see what they get at each level.

Archaeology is awesome, yes. I usually prioritize it if it’s available.

Cover really depends. It does literally nothing against melee, and later in the game enemies tend to stack so many +hit bonuses that its effect gets minimized. Plus there’s more AOE flying around blowing up the cover itself, and high-end things like artillery that ignore LOS. It’s still useful to some extent, but even early on it’s not the life-or-death matter it is in e.g. XCOM.

3332

Cover is a thing but I sort of automatically build my stacks to deal with it either via ways to blow it up or via +to hit mods. I always try to put my dudes in cover, but not at the expense of being a bad position overall - sometimes taking a good shot with a sniper for example outweighs the benefits of cover.

3333

Man, snipers specifically. I’ve gotten way better with them once I realized that they’re usually out of range of the bad guys anyway and hey, if they’re the honeypot that draws the enemy out to be shredded by the rest of the squad…well, mission accomplished. Even if they do get attacked it’s still from long range and at 1x or 2x.

I haven’t lost a sniper in a combat I otherwise won in a long, long time.

3334

Even I’ve been putting my snipers where they have the best shot, not where they have the best cover.

Also, how does this Unifier diplomatic victory work? If I start the operation, will people declare war on me?

3335

Well, never mind, I won the Unifier victory. One player did indeed declare war on me, and he did worry me a tad, but I managed to hold him off. My two allies only fought him once, but I’ll take it. So this bagged me a couple more achievements, as I also won my first victory as Assembly, a faction that’s very fun to play.

So in my last three games I’ve won with three different victory types: domination, doomsday, unifier. I guess that still leaves the Score victory, so maybe one of these days I’ll aim for that.

Next I might try the Shakarn faction, as I’ve played all the others at least once. I also think it’s time I increase the challenge, as I’m now 3-0 in my last three games. (I played on Normal difficulty but only a complexity 10 planet this last time.) I’m thinking I should choose a more “complex” planet or increase the difficulty level. Or maybe both.

Edit: I also dimly recall from AOW3 that you could also set up games where there are objectives that must be captured, which pretty much requires the players to fight. Also, I’m thinking maybe more complex planets have varied victory conditions? I’d enjoy more variety in goals.

3336

Shakarn are tremendous fun as you go into their tech tree, but note that at the very beginning when you have literally no mods, they are very weak. You may want to either take a hero who can really fight or research at least one mod before you engage creeps.

3337

Thanks for the tip! Sounds like good advice.

3338

Seals victory, alas no more.

3339

Too bad about no seals victory. Maybe some of the Empire planets have something like it? One planet in my empire permits no colonizers, and I’m hoping that will change the flow of the game.

3340

Closing out quite a satisfying Kir’ko/Psynumbra win in my Star Empire. Couple fun things happened:

  1. Got a secondary for my hero off my first archaeology dig (I love archaeology!) that basically channels the Warp onto the battlefield and invites Khorne to feast on the flesh of the worthy. Range-seven huge radius nuke with side effects. My goodness.
  2. I had no idea your other Empire heroes can show up! So Beefmaster Shinypants joined Dubious Murderface on its quest to harvest blood for the blood god. Good times!
  3. I just out-grew the AI. So many bugs! Bugs in their cities, bugs in their brains. Bzzzzzz. The enemy commanders started complaining at me and it took me a minute to figure out that I was near/at the domination threshold.
  4. I love how different the Initiates are between races! The Kir’ko dudes have an absolute truck of a single-hit melee attack, while the Amazon dudes have an amazing ranged Dark Vine thing and a mediocre single-shot ranged attack. Makes them play quite differently.
  5. Man, I love the army design in Planetfall. You can do so much with your basic t1/t2 armies, and cosmite limitations mean you will by necessity, and it makes everything play out so very differently.
3341

They really did a phenomenal job of making all tiers useful at all times. Cosmite is a great equalizer and a primary driver for your expansion. You’re almost never just swimming in it, and when you are it’s probably because you’re on the threshold of victory.

The differentiation of Secret Tech units is something they’ve done over time, they used to be essentially palette swaps. I’m very glad they’ve done it, though, as you note there are some really satisfying differences.

The only problem I have with your other Empire Hero units coming up is that they’re affected by your relationship level to their race. If you get blasted with, say, the Shakarn’s propaganda operation, their morale will decrease. This might be “realistic”, but I don’t find it to be very fun: you’re part of my Empire first, you ungrateful jerks!

3342

I had a city churning out the kir’ko snipers with +15 accuracy from a structure and the mod that gives their attacks a panic proc. Those dudes were deadly.

3343

Especially annoying if it is your very first hero joining your new hero, as, in my mind at least, that very first hero is the leader of your empire…

3344

So has anyone played the new Oathbound faction much? I haven’t been able to figure them out so far. I get that Precognition is a really powerful defensive ability but I haven’t sussed out how to use their units offensively as yet. I tend to prefer ranged to melee but their ranged units are more support / niche type units rather than mainstay combatants like my preferred factions.

However, when facing the Oathbound run by the enemy AI they seem downright mean. I haven’t quite figured out what combos/abilities they are using but I just got my ass kicked in two different battles in two different games by the Oathbound. Both times my mostly mechanical armies got pwned by the arc damage of the Oathbound so that’s part of it but they just generally seemed more effective as used by the AI than by me.

3345

The AI benefits from passive and general abilities as opposed to specialised, niche abilities, even if the latter are stronger.

Oathbound have the former.

And the Ai is sure to get precognition up and running soon, and constantly, so in auto combat, you are literally wasting attacks on them, which is why they are doing so well.

Also, as they are melee biased, they tend to have more survivable units, and fewer glass cannons.

In my experience, Oathbound are the strongest AI faction.

3346

I think your view is correct BBB. Perhaps my difficulties playing the Oathbound myself are that I don’t embrace the melee and try to use too much ranged, which is not their strength.

I started a new game and I’m going to try a different approach with the Oathbound, focused on precognition and melee.

3347

Heh, this has happened to me in all three of my planet wins! I have a Dvar hero named Nik who’s never my first choice to lead my side, but I usually bring him in as a second or third hero. In every game, I’ve wound up fighting enemy Dvar, and ol’ Nik suddenly becomes grumpy. But I actually kinda like it. I could’ve seen it coming in a couple of the games, as the planet’s setup screen warned me about competing Dvar factions. But I might like it less if he actually deserted!