Age of Wonders: Planetfall

Planetfall is tied (and likely exceeds) III as my favorite Age of Wonders game. Planetfall could easily be a desert island game for me.
I am quite saddened that Planetfall never gained traction or a sizable following...making a follow-up seem less likely or financially viable.
Age of Wonders 4 with its excessive focus on customization and lack of meaningful race/faction identities hasn't grabbed me as much. Each game of 4 feels very flat and similar. I'll keep giving 4 a try though.

By far the best 4X grand strategy game out there. If it's on sale, get it.
It does things better than Age of Wonders 3 (Heroes, unit customization, music, story impact, voice actors, damage types make more sense, looking better etc.) and even just crushes AOW4 in most aspects.
I recommend playing through the whole thing and then 100% the galaxy empire stuff, which is an meta progressing game mode where you level each race and technology separately to gain cross game currency and "upgrades". After that check out the interesting mods for this game which can completely change the way you have to manage your units.
It does have some flaws of course. Most important ones are the bad naval combat, stupid AI, unbalanced units, expensive DLCs (especially horrendous campaigns, I don't recommend playing these) and too few combat maps considering how many hours you can burn with this game and I did not play a single match online.
Even though I normally do not like sci-fi settings, this one is just interesting enough that I don't care.
Highly recommend, better than AOW4

Initially I could not afford the new AofW4 so I bought Planetfall instead. LOVE THIS GAME!
A unique and successful mix of turn based strategy, with civilization-like game and RPG - all my favorite genres together!
From the art, lore through variety of playstyles and replayability it is a well made game. I especially enjoy playing its biggest maps with the most AI players. Different factions of this game have different strengths and weaknesses, so a big game keeps you awake and challenged. Exploration is fun, expansion and conquest are rewarding. Love that taking over other faction's city gives you access to their tech tree, increasing your options for units building. This in return expands your options and styles in fighting battles.
The campaign in AoW Planetfall is just fantastic! You have a chance to play every faction and they way they are introduced makes you fall in love with all of them. And the campaign has multiple ways and outcomes to finalize it.
My first exposure to the Age of Wonders franchise and its overwhelmingly positive!

This is a good game. I bought it (along with all the DLCs) when it first came. At the time, it just never clicked.
After putting it down for several years, I picked it up again while on vacation. It's now a fun, engrossing game. I would say - it's like Xcom merged with Civilization. Definitely good for 40+ hours. There is so much depth. I have only scratched the surface on strategy and tactic. I am not sure how much of the improvement is due to the developers just working on the game vs the DLC. Bottom line, if you like XCom and Civilization, this game works for you.

After trying AoW 3 and 4, I can firmly say that this is the best one of the three. The maps all feel very different from each other, I always get the feeling that every city is unique, The combinations for race and secret tech give place to very interesting playstiles, and your troops feel endlessly customizable with the addition of mods. After playing for a while the other AoW games, I felt satisfied with them, but I never had the urge to someday return to play a game, unlike what I feel with this one from time to time.

I like the game, I played AoW4 first and enjoyed that too. I dislike some of the UI downgrades from having played the newer game but once I got used to it, I really enjoyed the gameplay

Simply fantastic. Every sci-fi movie element thrown in with a twist of space "fantasy". Endless fun. Plays like AoW4 in space - only better. I wish more historical games like Civ etc. would use this games combat system.