Is AoW 3 better?

[24601]

I really want to love this game, it ticks all the boxes I look for in a game, but it's simply impossible to find any information from the UI. I can't tell if what I'm doing is annoying the AI factions before the seemingly unavoidable mass declaration of war, I can't really tell whether my sectors have ruins or rivers or meadows, etc etc.

Knowing what Paradox is like, is it worth playing AoW 3 for the time being until Planetfall is more finely tuned? Or is it bad by comparison?

[NINJEW]

kirko are a compatible race for the growth, since your units are all bio and you have powerful fliers you can mix with the bees. they're not a very good value proposition for, say, vanguard or dvar. you have better things to spend your influence on

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by NINJEW:

kirko are a compatible race for the growth, since your units are all bio and you have powerful fliers you can mix with the bees. they're not a very good value proposition for, say, vanguard or dvar. you have better things to spend your influence on

Why not? Tier 3 growth units have mind control on cooldown ability which is great no matter your race. And if you can't buy them, buy just whatever to reach required friendship level. The units don't need any support, they can have regeneration from own mod.

Ps. What better influence spendings do you mean?

[NINJEW]

well, every map has at least 2 npc factions on it default, energy theft op requires influence, early game you're going to be wanting influence to buy out neutral settlements, there's other influence sinks in the game than "the one growth dwelling you found," and any of those other ones are going to get you more value for your influence than spending it on the growth. if you're playing vanguard you can't use any of the growth mods and spending influence on another dwelling to get their t3 unit + mods you can actually use is just plain a better deal. why buy a select grade steak when prime is sitting right there for the same price? then you can clear out all those growth-defended resource sites without having to shell out ludicrous amounts of influence for it.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by NINJEW:

well, every map has at least 2 npc factions on it default, energy theft op requires influence, early game you're going to be wanting influence to buy out neutral settlements, there's other influence sinks in the game than "the one growth dwelling you found," and any of those other ones are going to get you more value for your influence than spending it on the growth. if you're playing vanguard you can't use any of the growth mods and spending influence on another dwelling to get their t3 unit + mods you can actually use is just plain a better deal. why buy a select grade steak when prime is sitting right there for the same price? then you can clear out all those growth-defended resource sites without having to shell out ludicrous amounts of influence for it.

Probably my question was not clear enough. What is that way of spending influence when there is difference between growth and non-growth for dvar/vanguard etc?
Of course buying settlements has higher priority than buying growth units as dvar, but it is true for all NPC and all races, right? My question is related to situation when player claims to sit on max influence every turn, I believe it is not optimal play. Buy settlements, mods, units, clear locations etc. Buying non-growth units can be better than buying growth units depending on race, but it is still a purchase of units.

[NINJEW]

I was saying they're not a good value proposition as some races, not that its worthless

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by NINJEW:

I was saying they're not a good value proposition as some races, not that its worthless

Ok, thank you

[Devin]

I think Age of Wonders 3 is better than this game.
Planetfall feels like someone tried to take 3 and make it more balanced, but forgot to make it fun.

[cadfan17]

The ruins versus meadows thing is solvable by clicking on the sector center. Over time you’ll get used to sector appearance and stop needing the sector venter tooltip.

The AI issue isn’t an issue. It’s a design choice that’s it is important to understand.

Here are the key features you need to know about.

1. Declaring war without casus beli creates a happiness penalty in your empire. This affects the AI too.

2. Building on sectors adjacent to the enemy gives them casus beli. So does trespass and a few other things. Generally, it’s the stuff that makes sense.

3. There is also a covert op that manufactures casus beli out of nothing. If it succeeds you won’t even know it happened. You can resist it by researching along the bottom line of the society tree, or running the purge counter op.

4. The AI wants to behave like a human player, not like an rpg character. This means it will declare war on you when doing so will help it win, just like a human. To be friends with an AI faction over the long term it needs to be far away, and you need to get it to ally status before you pass certain victory conditions thresholds. If you don’t it will reason that being nice to you will make it lose and you win, and go hostile just like a person would.

Age of Wonders 3 is a great game and many features are more polished or user friendly than Planetfall. But the key AI issues won’t change. The AoW3 AI wants to win, and if you want to be friends with it long term you need to ally and have joint victory enabled. If your friendship is just a tool for tricking the AI into leaving you alone while you win, it will terminate it and attack.

This is very important for understanding Triumph games, as opposed to many others. The AI is simulating a human player. Not an in character npc. And the human wants to win the game.

[Elliott]

I think the gameplay and mechanics of planetfall and more finely tuned than AoW3 I'm not sure if you will find it easier to play.

Personally Total War Warhammer has basically made AoW3 redundant for me. Meanwhile terrestrial sci fi 4x games are few and far between so its nice.

[sfbistimg]

No, No it is not.

[Thimple ThighMan]

In the first Kir'Ko campaign,and the first mission, you're told to "Hint: Annex a sector with the special 'Meadows' feature as a province..."

When you look up 'meadow(s)' in the help files it's a non-existent entry.

Sectors adjacent to the starting colony appear to be 'grassland'.

Is this supposed to be... helpful, a puzzle, a bug, a joke, or wtf to a newbie?

[BBB]

Not like you can't have both....

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by Thimple ThighMan:

In the first Kir'Ko campaign,and the first mission, you're told to "Hint: Annex a sector with the special 'Meadows' feature as a province..."

When you look up 'meadow(s)' in the help files it's a non-existent entry.

Sectors adjacent to the starting colony appear to be 'grassland'.

Is this supposed to be... helpful, a puzzle, a bug, a joke, or wtf to a newbie?

Agreed. While it's true that 'meadow' is a synonym for 'grassland', it's certainly not very helpful that they use the term in the campaign but not in the game help files. Not all native speakers know the term so it's even more unlikely that non-native speakers will make the connection. You should report it as it will catch out others as well.

[Blobby]

I have over 1k hours in AOW 3 and 70 +in Planetfall and must say that AOW 3 feels and plays for me better then this game. The KI here is bad, the biggest map is so small that you have in 10 turns on player max min 3- 4 enemies spottet, the online game are bad with the cloud system and give a lot of problems and the NPC factions can overrun the NPc enemies without problems and/or the teammate of the npc enemie trys to help him.

Have watched the last days the total player count on both games and for the moment AOW 3 have sometimes more players there the nin Planetfall. When they wan´t it to be as good as AOW 3 they must fix and change a lot of things.

[Thimple ThighMan]

@Blobby

In AOW3 the map sizes were given here:

https://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/map-size-revealed-s-m-l-or-xl-map/#post-29124

In Planetfall, even on Tiny, the map size is 73 x (49 IIRC), and 97 x 71 on Small.

So, is this a misperception of scale? As Planetfall maps are actually bigger?

Perhaps it's the lack of an 'edge' due to East West scrolling that reinforces the illusion, maybe?