Age of Wonders: Planetfall – Dev Diary #1: Welcome and Premise

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LennartGS

Managing / Game Director @ Triumph
Paradox Staff
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Jun 12, 2018
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Hi there! and welcome to the first Age of Wonders: Planetfall development journal. From here on, the team at Triumph will be giving you weekly updates on our progress and revealing details of the game along the way.

Join us at the Paradox Forums:
First a request to the AoW3 community: we kindly ask you to join us here on the Paradox forums, as the old Age of Wonders ones will be closed down later this year. This way Triumph can spend more time making games and less on fighting spam-bots. Please create your account here.

Inspiration:
By Gandalf’s beard - A sci-fi Age of Wonders? Yes - It’s been a long-standing wish from many of the team to do something with our love of sci fi: Starwars, Dune, Fallout, Starship Troopers have all been an inspiration in one form or another. We feel our beloved war-focussed 4X game formula is a great fit for sci-fi themes - and futuristic weapon arsenals. At the same time, nothing gets the creative juices flowing like a new setting.

Premise:
As one of the heirs to the shattered Star Union, you emerge from a cosmic Dark Age to craft a new future for your people. You travel to one of the many lost worlds of the old empire, where you will find marvels among the remnants of this once great civilization. You will need to develop / rediscover technologies and social doctrines for your colonists to thrive on these hostile worlds, for you are not alone here. Other houses compete with yours to rebuild the Star Union, and you will need both a carefully crafted arsenal, and a firm grip on diplomacy if you are to have a chance at victory.

Our Goals:

  • Build a new setting filled with lore and new gameplay opportunities.
  • Transform the melee centered fantasy battles to new ranged sci-fi clashes with cover, overwatch and destructible terrain. Hit chances are back. It’s familiar and vastly different at the same time.

  • Develop Planetary Empire building: Compared to AoW3, we want to added new layers of depth to the economy and diplomacy systems. Sessions now play on wrapping planets which are procedurally generated.
  • Roll out the fourth generation of Triumph’s Creator Engine, which is 64 bit, has a PBR renderer and a new toolset. This allows us – and eventually you through modding – to create a better looking worlds, that contain more content, more efficiently.
There is nothing that reflects the fusion of the gameplay and the setting better than the unit line up. So here is one in pre-alpha state for you: A Vanguard Liberator with Flechette Ammo and Jetpack mods called the Screaming Eagle. How would you name this unit variant?

BonanzaDevDairy1.jpg


Next week we’ll tell more about the setting and its central element: the galactic empire called the Star Union.
 
I like how a simple Tier 1 unit already has two ranged attacks - I presume the Assault Rifle will hit up to three times like in prior games, while the Grenade will be AoE. Should make for some nice diversity!
 
Nice to see the dev journals starting and on a weekly basis no less!

I'm also very happy you keep mentioning the lore and setting. The setting and story of the original AOW are what drew me in in the first place those many years ago. No matter how good the combat mechanics are, if the story and setting are lacking I'll never get hooked to a game. So I'm looking forward to next week's blog and hopefully many more on the story and history of the setting and all its races!
 
Thx for the DD. Great to see AoW in space.

Let the spice flow
 
I would call them the Flying War Crime Squad.
But seriously I like modability in my troops arsenal, so this looks good...
 
I see a level indicator of 'recruit' and an xp indicator of 0 out of 4 (before he will level up i suppose).

That makes me happy !

Troop progression is one of the most rewarding aspects of modern 4x games -and aow3 did this better than most.

No cap on max lvl. please. Even if champion lvl. 27 is mostly cosmetic, its what makes it that much harder to cope with loosing a faithful companion unit :)
 
For all those dissapointed it does not involve magic, look at it this way, sci-fi is like fantasy in space, where advanced tech is like magic.

As for the unit name, screaming eagles seems very appropriate, i cant think of anything better.
 
Yes people get attached to individual units. We see the importance of leveling next to the ability of adding mods and giving them names. A personal little wish is logging feats for individual units. "Killed a hero" "Protected the Capital" etc. Maybe we'll get to implement that one day.
 
Oh, really nice to see the first DD is already here!
Love the concept of giving basic units those mods. That should make for a lot of variety.:)

As for naming... hmm...
First thing it reminded me off is my good old jetpack lemming back in the Lemmings days. Those things were so hard to fly, yet so much fun.

Sceaming Eagles is acutally quite fitting I think.
Spraying Sparrows?
Howling Gunners?

Ah well, hardly any inspiration.
 
I really like these graphics. With the political-historical quote it has even some kind of Dune-flair. The concept of unit mods seems to fit extremely well too.

+1 to logging feats :)
 
Will a name like "Screaming Eagles" be assigned automatically because of the mods it uses? Or is this meant as an example of being able to (re)name units yourself? I am assuming the former and that is also the reason it has this little eagle icon.
 
Yes people get attached to individual units. We see the importance of leveling next to the ability of adding mods and giving them names. A personal little wish is logging feats for individual units. "Killed a hero" "Protected the Capital" etc. Maybe we'll get to implement that one day.

That would be amazing, another thing that I would hope/wish for would be some sort of memorial building that allows you to see your killed Heroes and maybe even who or what killed them.