Age of Wonders: Planetfall is the sci-fi spin-off of the Age of Wonders series of turn-based strategy games with tactical combat. Leaving behind the fantasy setting, each session has players colonize a different planet with its own mixture of climate, hazards, neutral factions and terrain.
The base game includes six distinct races (Amazon, Assembly, Dvar, Kir’Ko, Syndicate, Vanguard). Alongside choosing and customizing the commander unit with different appearance, loadout and attributes, they can be assigned a “secret tech”, which includes a secondary set of technologies, support powers and units which supplement the existing arsenals of the given faction. Research is split to two branches – military (new units, support powers, gear) and social (economic bonuses, new colony buildings).
Units can be additionally modified for a fee with up to 3 upgrades and gear at a time, which are unlocked through research; multiple templates for such upgrades can be saved for the remainder of the match to keep them uniform. Hero units can additionally equip special items they come across through pick-ups or by completing quests, and gain various new traits as they level up, which range from statistics boosts to new abilities. The commander unit is represented by a special hero unit which automatically respawns after 3 turns after being killed, while standard heroes can only be resurrected after researching the appropriate technology mid-game.
Colonies (analogous to cities in the fantasy games in the series) are represented by a node in the center of a region, and can gradually be connected to adjacent regions as they grow in population size, with those regions’ nodes able to be assigned a production specialization (energy, research, food/growth, etc.). Those nodes also act as outposts which share the defensive forces with the main colony. Colonies are assigned to the race which first created them – if captured, they can be razed, converted to the conqueror’s race through migration at a reputation penalty, or absorbed as-is to allow the conqueror access to technologies of the original owner’s race and the ability to mix and match their own technologies and units with the newly conquered ones.
Support powers, named “special operations”, can support combat units on the ground, prepare them for a future battle, sabotage other players or defend against other players’ disruption attempts. These powers come at a cost of standard resources like energy or diplomatic influence, and have limitations on strength and quantity of uses which can be gradually raised through research.
Relations between players involve diplomatic communication, trade, waging wars, and covert operations. Neutral factions on the map can be either subdued or communicated with. Neutral factions will periodically task players they are at peace with to complete quests which involve researching a special technology or eliminating a stack of enemies, or demand a sum of resources, and will be angered by completing such quests for a rival faction unless integrated into the player’s own society when relations are good enough. Maintaining good relations with them allows players to purchase units and gear otherwise unique to those neutral factions. In general, the player’s reputation actively changes through the morality of their actions through the game, such as whether a war is warranted, peace is brokered, or atrocities are committed, this will affect the way AI-controlled players and neutral factions treat them.
The game contains singleplayer campaigns, offline skirmishes against the AI, and multiplayer both online and through hot-seat, with LAN being removed for the first time in the series. Also included is a map editor in a separate application.
