Age of Wonders: Planetfall SG

[naufragar]

Just sent the save to Bob. These later turns have so much fiddly micro management. Unless we want to play on, we'll win a Doomsday victory in your next set, MJW.

I'll write up the report later today (I think...) but the gist is, we're almost to three Doomsday weapons and the final tech, and we're at war with the world, but everybody can batten down the hatches and play defense.

Edit: I forgot to add for Bob that we're at war with the Autonoms, so those Autonom units in our south aren't friendly!

[naufragar]

As in AOW3, your empire can contain cities of different races. The implementation of this in Planetfall seems bad to me: when you declare war on an AI opponent, you get a minus reputation modifier with that AI opponent’s race. If you absorb opponent’s cities, this reputation turns into a happiness/morale debuff for the cities and units. For example:


Any vanilla Syndicate unit we create from a captured city will have an automatic 20% chance to critically fail any attack. I haven’t found a good way to incorporate different races into my empire because of these crippling penalties, so the late game ends up with a lot of genocide… Perhaps my next game I’ll self-impose the “no removing old culture and replacing with your own” variant.

I declared war on the Autonom robot faction because we were going to drop into war from completing rival quests anyway. Every few turns they’ll send serious enough stacks from a random angle to invade us. Adds a little spice to the game. Independent armies aren’t as big as rival factions’ but they get free, powerful mods.


This Disintegrator mod is of the same tier as our incendiary ammo. It has a small but frequent chance to just insta-kill any of our units. Our AI opponents are not advanced enough to field stuff like this in any significant amount.

As you can tell from the mini-map below, our empire stretches across two continents. We are very weak on the seas. We don’t want to invest in ships and the naval barbs keep getting stronger. So we don’t have to make a hazardous crossing, I built a couple Orbital Transport stations.


The circle dropship is taking a stack from Cult Watcher’s Park to a base on the north continent.

I was apparently pretty lax about taking screenshots this round, so I didn’t document our Doomsday weapon attempt. For those unfamiliar with Planetfall, here’s how this works. In addition to other victory conditions like, say, conquest, Planetfall has a tech/econ victory condition. To do this, we must build three expensive structures in our colonies and research a tech at the very end of the tree. Then we can cast a very expensive Strategic Operation giving us some global advantages. (Voidtech’s Doomsday is a little weak in that it only helps Voidtech units and we have plenty of vanilla Dvar.) The world will declare war on us (not a problem, already happened), and if we can keep our Doomsday buildings intact for ten turns, we win. The only time I’ve gone for a Doomsday win, I was never attacked in those ten turns, so we’ll see if we get an exciting photo finish.

In preparation for this, I’ve pulled all our armies back, used scouts as sentry units, and put our colonies onto defensive buildings. Bob should be able to pull the trigger on the Doomsday spell, but the ten turn timer will end in MJW’s set, I believe. Defense in Planetfall can be tricky because of all the angles. Here’s a pic with a teleporter chain from the Vanguard opponent’s heart into our newly conquered South:



This is a thinner report, unfortunately, and it doesn’t capture the excessive micromanagement that Planetfall can entail. One can automate lots of stuff, including citizen management, so this is on me. Nevertheless, I felt obligated to go through all our cities every turn making sure they were working the right yields and choosing what to cash rush.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I get the save at start of turn 93, I believe. If doomsday win is only 3 turns away when that happens just play the rest of the game. Not enough to justify the handoff.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Okay I've reread the voidtech doomsday and the random teleport (super stack splitting!) and cash drain is a lot more powerful anyway. naufragar might think teleport might apply to own units but that isn't so. Your not effected by doomsday if you share the same secert tech and we obviously share the same secert tech of our doomsday weapon.

IIRC you can stop the DoW from annoyed npc faction by paying a prepostiously small bribe. more efficient to not be a war.

[Bobchillingworth]

The bribe goes up each time you kill one of their invasion armies (which get progressively larger). Let an NPC war get too out of hand and they'll invade you with several stacks of T3 and T4 units every 10 turns or so, and demand insane amounts of energy and cosmite for peace.

[naufragar]

Let an NPC war get too out of hand and they'll invade you with several stacks of T3 and T4 units every 10 turns or so, and demand insane amounts of energy and cosmite for peace.

Free rewards if you've got a solid defense.

MJW, I didn't realize that about the doomsday tech. Some units are labeled as class units either naturally or due to mods (so Vanguard troopers infected with Xenoplague mods get "this units counts as a Xenoplague unit"). I assumed wrongly that this was the tag the game was looking for.

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh, yeah, fighting the Spacers is usually worthwhile at least, since all of their units suck


The Psi-Fish are bastards though unless you're rocking laser weapons (the only damage they don't resist IIRC), especailly since you have to build a large fleet to actually capture their base(s). Never worth fighting them, IMO.

[Bobchillingworth]

T67:  Even with comparatively few cities compared with Civ, late-game turns in Planetfall take ages to play.  I spend the turn mostly trying to move our scattered armies to where they’ll be most useful for claiming sectors via conquest and defending cities.  I also try to get most of our cities on a positive happiness balance, for beneficial events.  


T68: I begin priming our doomsday op, 3 turns until ready.  I also destroy a 12-unit Automoton army, losing a single Trencher who ate a crit.  


T69: I eliminate some random NPCs for the Growth and clear a lair.  


T70:



One of our opponents teleports three stacks of mostly T1 infantry and Automoton units with basic mods onto our southern continent.  I have a powerful army nearby, but not close enough to counter before they can do some temporary damage.  


T71:



Okay, this might be a problem.  The Vanguard easily take one of our cities, and then teleport in two more armies; there’s now about 30 units invading our south.  Granted, we could lose the whole continent and it wouldn’t delay our victory, but I’d rather keep it intact regardless.  




In happier news, I cast our game-winning spell.  10 turns to victory.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually do much, as game-winning techs go.


I also realize that we have like a half-dozen defensive ops primed for some reason, so I start unleashing them.  


IBT: The Vanguard advance all of their forces, in three battle groups of two stacks each.  One attacks a production district where we have a cosmite node; they win, but I’m able to kill one full stack using the local militia.  


T72:

I recapture our cosmite-carrying district and wipe the remainder of the units who took it.  




I then use our best stack in the area to eliminate two more of the enemy’s; only two Vanguard stacks remain, each led by an hero unit.  


T73:



Last Vanguard troops removed from our land.  I recapture our city without further incident.  




Scouting reveals of ton of enemies, mostly Automaton, on one of the other continents.  I don’t think they’ll all attack us at once, though.


T74:

Not much happening.  


T75 (I think, this might actually be T74, lost count):

At this point I’ll hand things over to MJW to finish our SG off.  Things are currently fairly quiet, the Vanguard are gassed and everyone else is marching huge armies against each other.  We have three full armies in the south in case you want to have some fun getting revenge on the Vanguard, and close to four on our starting continent.  Just be alert for final attacks warping in, and it should be a fairly simple set.

[MJW (ya that one)]

got it.
will probably make peace with automons and not brother to attack anyone else. I will upload save where you just have to end turn for achievement purposes.

[naufragar]

Re: defensive ops, I like priming a bunch because if an army surprises me, I can usually defend a city just on the strength of those ops and a cash buy.

Gotta be honest, I'm shocked the Vanguard can still throw units at us. I killed some six stacks of their stuff in my set.