Research in Age of Wonders Planetfall Age of Wonders Planetfall guide, tips
Last update: 16 August 2019
Research is one of the main mechanics in Age of Wonders: Planetfall. They determine what buildings, units or even operations can have access to, and this directly leads to success in fights with other factions. In this section, you will find information about the research mechanics as well as tips on how to speed them up.
Research - society and military
Research in Age of Wonders: Planetfall is divided into two groups - Society and Military. The former provides access to technologies that unlock new resource buildings, as well as technologies that increase production in the annexed sectors. Military research allows you to unlock new units and improvements to them, as well as numerous operations that can be activated using the world map, as well as during battles.
Interestingly, the studies of both groups are conducted simultaneously - the obtained knowledge points (described in "Resources and their acquisition" section) are used for both types of studies. Moreover, these researches don't slow each other down - military research does not affect the speed of society research. Because of this, the player has no dilemmas whether to conduct military research and increase the strength of their colonies or focus on society research to produce more resources and to expedite further development - both of these things can be done at the same time.
Conducting research
To open the technological research window, just click on one of the two icons in the upper left corner of the screen (world map view). There, you can find the mentioned military and society researches. Each tree contains several dozens of different projects that can be developed. Naturally, you won't have immediate access to all of them - you unlock them by going right, and to access the more complex projects you need to complete the ones on the left first (connected by white lines).
Once the research is selected for development, you must wait for a certain number of turns to complete it. The development time depends on the research itself (the number of points to complete can be seen in its description), as well as the number of knowledge points created in the colonies. If, for example, the study needs 300 points and your colonies generate 180 points per turn, the study will be completed in 2 turns.
Note - remember that the excess of produced points is wasted. If the research requires 100 points, and the colonies generate 300 per turn, 200 points are wasted.
Research - tips
In the end, it is worth mentioning a few tips related to research, namely:
- It is worth focusing primarily on research that you can use. It is especially important for the society research - it makes no sense to conduct research on bases that can be placed on the water when there is no water around you. It is better to focus on the development of technologies from which you can immediately get the benefits.
- Of all the society studies, it is necessary to quickly develop those that allow you to increase the level of Happiness of the colonists. First, however, unlock the research that unlocks Frontier Facilities.
- As for military research, it is necessary to develop several technologies that will give access to more advanced units first. This will allow you to significantly increase the efficiency of your early army and help in conquering the next territories.
- To increase the amount of generated knowledge points, you can annex the sector with the points generating this resource, capture points generating knowledge or place buildings that increase its production on annexed sectors.
- In a critical situation, when you need to quickly complete the technology or some colony doesn't have anything to produce, you can order that colony to process the production points into knowledge. These are not high numbers, however, a few dozen points per turn may allow you to finish the key study one-two turns earlier.