Age of Wonders: Planetfall (
continued)
V1.200 - Tyrannosaurus Patch (18 February 2020) - Part III
Updates (continued)
AI Improvements
- AI players show more hostility during wars by attacking sooner and more frequently.
- AI players will now better prioritize tasks that are relevant to them; for example they ignore defending marauder units and quest units when planning an attack.
- AI players now handle threat levels from opposing stacks better; making it so they no longer stay defensive for a long time.
- AI players will now prioritize building higher tier units earlier in a game.
- AI players research prioritization has been tweaked to make sure they have the research available to suit their plans.
- AI players now mod their units more effectively and upgrade them with better mods once they become available.
- All of the above AI changes have been balanced around the new difficulty settings.
- When a single stack is attacked by multiple stacks, the AI will better handle focusing down one stack rather than splitting its forces
- The AI is less inclined to split up armies when all units in it are moving towards the same goal.
Interface
- Max number of heroes - Decreased default from 5 to 4. This will only affect new games.
- Renamed AI Difficulty Levels:
--> 'Very Easy' is renamed to 'Easy'
--> 'Easy' is renamed to 'Normal'
--> 'Normal' is renamed to 'Hard'
--> 'Hard' is renamed to 'Very Hard'
--> 'Very Hard' is renamed to 'Extreme'
--> 'Normal' is now the default level for the enemy AI.
- Safe Battle is renamed to Very Low Risk Battle (since occasionally you will lose units)
- When you lose your capital colony, you now get an emergency quest to make a new one
- All doomsday operation levels have had a text pass to make them easier to read
- Added type icons to the strategic operations in the Operations Overview
- There is now a tooltip that explains the success chance of sabotaging operations.
- Doctrines and Strategic Operations are now displayed under the same tab, with dividers to separate them
- Active and Priming Operations are now displayed under the same tab, with dividers to separate them.
- Added a dedicated tab in the Operations Overview that shows other players active operations.
- When targeting a player with a Covert Operation, there is now a tooltip that explains where the success chance comes from
- Added available operation count to the operations button on the minimap
- City name in the city header can now be clicked to change the city name.
- Updated the tooltips for annexing sectors, building colonies and building forward bases to make it clearer what they do and why they are different from each other
- Updated the descriptions on the sector exploitations and central structures to make it clearer what they do.
- Added a nicer interface to the event for completing an Empire Task.
- An icon now appears next to all hero items you get as rewards, so you can easily see the difference between a unit reward and a hero vehicle
- The “Metamorphosis” ability on the unit panel now lists what the unit will evolve into.
- Units that Evolve with metamorphosis now display clearly in the tooltip that describes what they get when they reach Prime Rank.
Interface: Strategic Map
- Sector borders are now hidden by default (Colony borders are still visible). You can view the borders of a sector by selecting a structure within it, or attempting to move an army into it. Sector Borders can be re-enabled in the World UI settings.
- Improved Unit Outlines to make them stand out more on the Strategic Map.
- Moved the 'Unit Outlines' toggle from 'Advanced Video' into 'World UI'
- Added some more color to the energy, food and research pickups to make them easier to see
- Imperial Defense particles are now only shown if the structure is a threat to the player.
- It is now possible to reject a hero who offers to join you. Moving a stack onto a recruitable hero now always triggers an attack, instead of opening the Recruit Hero dialog.
Interface: Overview Map
- Added Domain Fill to the Overview Map
- Exploited sectors now show an icon on the economic orbital view that displays their level.
- A pass has been done over the economy overview to add icons for all things that can give income.
- Icons in the economy overview have been updated in general to make it clearer what is what.
- Icons in the economy overview get a red outline if the income from the thing is blocked due to enemy forces (i.e. marauders have captured it, or you have yet to remove the defenders).
- Dwellings, Landmarks, Exploited sectors and Settlement icons are now 40% larger.
- Dwellings and Settlements icons are now shown on the military orbital view.
- The names of settlements are now visible on the orbital view.
- Imperial Defense particles in orbital view changed from green to orange
Interface: Tactical Map
- Events are now always visible in tactical combat (previously they were only visible in Controller mode)
- Added an event in combat for when you lose a unit
- Clicking an event for a combat operation being used will now open the tome of wonders explaining what the operation does
- Upscaled and centered the status/shield icon in TC unit banners.
- You will now see a popup when you put your units into defense mode or overwatch
- When playing with a controller in tactical combat, friendly units will no longer be listed in among the quick targets (unless free targeting is enabled) for damaging abilities. Similarly hostile units will not be shown for healing abilities unless free targeting is enabled.
- Combat speed of the AI turn is now remembered between battles
- Hovering over a unit in combat will now show if the unit is in defense mode or overwatch in the tooltip.
Multiplayer
- A cheat detection system has been added which will warn players upon rejoining when one player is found to be using software which modifies the game for an unfair advantage.
- Turn timer now pauses on dialog screens in multiplayer.
- Operations panel now closes when the turn timer ends.
Auto-Explore
- Extended auto-explore, after doing the high level exploration, it will now try and explore cells it hasn't explored yet.
- Camera now moves to the location of the pickup when it is collected.
- When auto-explore cancels itself, it now shows a popup explaining that no targets were found.
Tutorial
- Reduced the amount of text and duplicate information
- Upon completing the tutorial, the player is now directed to play on a 'Practice World', with all settings on Easy/Low Intensity, before continuing the campaign.
Campaign
- Empire tasks are now disabled in the three campaign starter missions (Leave-6, Arcadia Caeleste, Chimera Glacialis) to reduce the information overload and parallel questing for new players.
- NPC Faction quests, demands and invasions are now happening less frequently in the three campaign starter missions (Leave-6, Arcadia Caeleste, Chimera Glacialis).
- Merged or removed some of the quests from the Leave-6 (Vanguard 01) mission to reduce the text and tasks the player has to read and follow.
- Each campaign map now has a difficulty rating on a scale of 1 to 5