Age of Wonders: Planetfall

Maybe you're thinking of getting Planetfall instead of Age of Wonders 4 because it will be cheaper after that game launches, especially in a sale. You may see some of the negative reviews talking about "cheating AI," "tons of bugs," or that the game is just nebulously "missing" something. Let me attempt to give a recommendation for this game based in reality and say who this game is made for and what the game actually is. Buckle in, because this game is very complex and there is a lot to talk about regarding the game itself and what people are saying about it.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall has more in common with Heroes of Might and Magic, Total War, and Warcraft 3 than it does with Civ. If you're looking for a game where you slowly build up an empire with a huge economy, this isn't the game for you. The strategy layer largely exists as an excuse to make for fun, deep, and interesting tactical battles where a lot of different factors are at play which can honestly be overwhelming for new players. No sense denying that; there is a large learning curve to both this game and Age of Wonders in general, as you will need to understand things like flanking, morale, a large variety of different status effects, action points, overwatch, and there's even more than that, and the tutorial does a bad job of teaching you. So if you are looking to pick this one up, be prepared to have to spend a lot of time just learning, especially if you're unfamiliar with the genre.
The graphical fidelity is good, but the animations are AA in quality. I don't blame the devs for it, though, and you'll be playing the tactical battles sped up most of the time anyway.
For the strategic layer, some complain that it is too simplistic. This is intentionally so; this is a game about building units and using them to fight battles, which is the interesting part. No one plays Civ for the battles, everyone knows Civ's combat system is boring, but nobody cares because that's not the point of the game. You should think similarly about Planetfall's combat vs strategy layer: the strategy exists for you to have fun in the fun part of the game without the game being an unconnected series of battles like most wargames. It's actually an advantage that the economy is so easy to get a handle on, because it means you'll be taking more fights and thus be having more fun while playing.
As for the XCOM comparison, a lot of people will say XCOM is "Deeper." What I think they mean is that it's more satisfying, in large part because XCOM has a lot of "I win" buttons like grenades, double-attacks, high damage criticals, all with snappy cinematic animations and high lethality that gets you attached to your individual soldiers. Planetfall isn't trying to achieve that same goal; you're leading entire armies. I would argue Planetfall is more complex than XCOM, and deeper, too in the later stages of the game when you're juggling resistances, status effects and how to deal with them, and even the Stagger mechanic, which can shut down armies that aren't prepared for them. Adding to this complexity is the size of the battles; in XCOM you at most manage 6 squad members, while in Planetfall you will sometimes be managing 18 or even 24 depending on the battle, some of which have even more abilities and nuances to understand than XCOM's units.
Regarding a lot of the negative reviews: a lot of them, and I do mean a LOT of them are people with a serious skill issue problem, as I don't even play Multiplayer (and thus don't use their hyper optimized playstyles) and am still able to win the game on the highest difficulty against multiple opponents consistently. When you get good at the game, you need the AI to cheat so it can keep up with you, as you can manually resolve battles and the AI cannot, which I cannot overstate the importance of.
Another complaint people have is about the auto resolve being better than the player at fighting battles, and honestly this is just completely false. Autoresolving leads to you losing a lot of units early on, which can completely kill your momentum/tempo into winning a match. Again, this is a skill issue, and it's one of your biggest advantages over the AI, who aren't allowed to manual resolve and thus maximize their early game progress the way you are, even when they build and summon a ton of units from minor factions.
Planetfall has 8 factions and 7 "Secret Techs," which are supplementary tech trees that can radically alter your playstyle for a given faction- thus, there are technically 56 different ways to play the game just from tech tree choice. Your faction choice affects your Secret Tech units as well; for example, a warrior monk Light Bringer might be a foot infantry for one faction, but for another, it might be a flying unit with different abilities entirely to consider. There are also a ton of minor factions who you can ally with and use their units and upgrades, further making each run feel unique and different, and this is where the 4X part of Planetfall really shines I think. Again, however, the fun comes from training and customizing units, through a unit modding system that allows you to tailor units to encounters if you like at the cost of a limited resource called Cosmite, which you will be fighting tooth and nail for every source of it you can find. Unit mods dramatically change how a unit works, both by increasing their stats AND changing how the unit behaves, from giving them debuffs and resistances to giving them other effects like AoE attacks, chain attacks, armor melting, and more, so getting as many of them as possible is your strategic goal each game. Mods are also the key to using units both from your roster and from minor factions and secret tech, as you can mix and match mods from different sources to create different, interesting combinations.
Some people also say Age of Wonders 3 is a superior game. This is patently false; Planetfall fixes a lot of Age of Wonders 3's issues, including exploits like experience stacking on heroes to break the game, as well as design flaws like a lack of production and research overflow. Yeah, in Age of Wonders 3, if a unit costs 100 production, and you have 90 production in that city, the unit will always take 2 turns to make, meaning every production cycle you are 'wasting' 80 production. It's bonkers they never patched that. Planetfall's Cosmite resource also fixes AOW3's end-game issue where the only units worth training are deathstacks of your strongest units, while Planetfall promotes the use of combined arms by having a more economical frontline backed up by support units. The only thing AOW3 does better is offer a cheap power fantasy, and an actual fantasy setting. Don't get me wrong, I love AOW3, but Planetfall is just the better game at this point in time.
So... who is this game actually for? If you liked Heroes of Might and Magic's gameplay, I'd say it's worth giving a shot. If you liked Warcraft 3 and like turn-based games, I'd say to give this a shot, too. If you like Total War, and like turn-based combat, you will also feel at home here. I think saying this game is for XCOM fans might be a stretch even despite the superficial similarities in the combat system, and saying this game is for Civ fans is probably just foolish even though both are technically 4X games.
Really though, you should get this game if you like turn-based battles with a lot of complexity, choice, and systems to master. And that's all I can say since I've reached the character limit. Hopefully I've convinced you by now, or given an honest assessment at the very least.

Originally, I wasn't going to recommend this game because it didn't meet my expectations as a Paradox game, or as a complex 4X game. If you're expecting a typical Paradox deep grand strategy game, this definitely isn't for you. DO NOT PLAY THE ENTIRE GAME USING AUTO COMBAT, OR YOU WILL HATE THIS GAME. That was my initial mistake.
Once I was able to manage my expectations, Age of Wonders: Planetfall is a very good game. So if it's not a grand strategy game, what kind of game is it? There are strategy elements, but most of the choices are no-brainers on that level. Just blob and grow as fast as you can, while ensuring you have a strong enough army to explore the map and defend your territory.
However, where the game really shines is in its tactical combat. Each faction uses its own units; each faction has its own heroes; each leader has a different secret technology (which customizes 1/4th of their military tech tree); each unit has its own abilities. If that's not enough customization for you, you can also research mods to kit out your soldiers. Even better, you can find special weapons and equipment specifically designed for heroes by exploring the world map. If you don't have hero weapons/equipment, you can outfit them with normal equipment available to your regular troops that you've researched in the military tech tree. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be nearly as much variety with the navies as there is with land units--although to be fair, if you consider infantry, vehicles, tanks and air force to be separate unit types then naval units have a similar level of diversity.
Units can also gain combat experience and improve their skills. Regular units improve base stats, while heroes can be customized when they level up.
There are dozens upon dozens of different combat maps. Each map presents different tactical challenges. Environmental objects can be used as cover, but they can also be destroyed. So if your enemy tries to hunker down behind a building, send a grenadier to blow up the building with a rocket! But be careful, because your opponent can do the same thing to you.
If you treat this game as a tactical combat game, more along the lines of X-Com than say, Civilization, Age of Wonders: Planetfall is a wonderful title that will provide you with a great many hours of entertainment.

A great game I should have tried earlier; Age of Wonders 4 led me here.
I avoided this game because it was so unlike Age of Wonders 3 - the whole sci fi thing didn't really do it for me so I didn't bother and kept playing 3. Now 4 is out with its 'everyone wins a prize - you can be whoever the f you want' I decided to give it a go.
Actual meaningful factions with diverse differences and restrictions. Actual interesting side plots and stories providing an overview of worlds (not so much the campaign though but I digress). Actual meaningful decisions. Age of wonders 4 is still ok and I still play it, but it's rather soulless. This is the game I now play when I want things to feel unique (truly unique and not in the 'everyone is unique just like you' way).
The game runs perfectly on Linux: i5 7600K @ 5hz, Nvidia 1070, 24 gig 3000Mhz ram. Settings at ultra with vsync and it never deviates from a solid 60fps.

Initially I skipped this one, because of the sci-fi setting. AoW for me needs magic, orcs and elfs. But I picked it up anyway because I was so hyped for AoW4, and I’m glad that I did.
With only 20 or so hours in PF and AOW4, I cannot yet make a really deep comparison, but superficially, the pros of PF are IMO:
- the ability to create unique builds (in AoW4 every player can unlock all tomes, making everyone the same tech-wise).
- the ability to create new units by adding mods. AoW4 has race transformations and unit enhancements, but they apply to all units, or at least all units of a certain type, and again, with no cap, so everyone can just take them all.
- campaign feels like an actually cohesive story so far, where I take my leader from one map to the next.
The one gripe I have with this game is the tutorial voice over, which I find quite annoying. Just don’t use it, you’ll be better off watching a random YouTube tutorial if you’re just stating out.
My 20hrs aren’t nearly enough to do justice to all the options that this game has to offer, and I’m not even using any expansions yet. Will be playing a lot more of this in the next year or two!

Playing AoW4 really helps you appreciate Planetfall more. The insane unit diversity, the voice-acted quotes when researching every technology (as opposed to having them only for tomes), even the campaign is better as Planetfall's take on "story campaigns" is actually pretty interesting for the genre, especially the original campaign - DLC ones are quite simpler.
The province system can be frustrating if you get a bad spawn but at least it makes population matter more and makes you think in advance about how you want to plan your cities, which is a good thing for a strategy game in my opinion. The AI is not amazing but still miles better than the one from AoW4 as of june 2023 - it will actually wage wars, clear map nodes and wonders, use higher-tier operations in battle, etc.
If you got bored of AoW4 already because of the lack of meaningful choices (every unit feeling the same, culture not mattering after 15 turns, etc.) but enjoyed the concept, I really encourage you to give Planetfall a try.

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

it's a shame that support for it ended so soon after it was published, there's really not a better sci fi world builder out there at the planet level. big stompy robots, alien dinosaurs, eldritch and cosmic horrors. decent diplomacy and a variety of ways to win both competitively and cooperatively. can't recommend it enough.