Nov 10, 2020 The Star Kings expansion has now been released. Original story follows.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall, the beautiful and creative sci-fi 4X game from Triumph Studios and Paradox is getting a third expansion – Star Kings. Packing a bit more punch than the previous content drop, this new pack will include everything from sentient mushrooms to new landmarks, and a brand new story campaign.
Due out next month, it will introduce The Oathbound as a new race: they feel like a cross between anime’s iconic Gundams and Arthurian knights. They’re made up of ‘Paladins’, who pilot what are essentially mech suits, and ‘Seers’ who can tap into some kind of supercomputer to see the future.
They will get their own story campaign where they embark on a quest to save mankind through the newly introduced landmarks – the Grail Configurations. These world map structures were created by an extinct race of crystalline entities that can be exploited for powerful, long-term bonuses. Opposing them will be three new types of wildlife, which include ‘evil’ Oathbound (Chaos Space Marines? Is that you?), vampiric rocks, and the Mycelians, who are basically sentient cyborg mushrooms.
Alongside the premium content will be a free patch, which is supposed to include the following new features, according to what we’ve been sent:
- Galactic Empire: Customise your own empire by conquering worlds with progress that carries over between play sessions. Combine technology from various races and carry over heroes between planets as you lay the foundation of an eternal empire!
- New worlds to conquer: New worlds to wage war on! Each world will have different traits and bonus objectives adding a ton of gameplay variety and extra challenges as you take over new planets to expand a growing empire.
- Tech requisition: Develop new strategies by adopting and combining secret tech from various Planetfall races. Wild combinations and unique tactics can be created that change up the battlefield in crazy new ways.
- Residential Sectors: Create Super Colonies by building beyond the city sector limit and use a variety of racial upgrades to maximize economic variety.
- Endless Research: Each tech tree now contains a ‘Future Tech’ skill that can be researched an unlimited number of times. Future Tech provides a random stacking bonus every time it is upgraded encouraging you to keep on researching forever!
The Galactic Empire feature is especially interesting, as it adds an element of persistence or ‘New Game Plus-ness’ to Planetfall. We hope it will come with some way of visualising it as well.
