Which is exactly what happened to Planetfall, although modders will hopefully make the game improovements (how it sounds not how it is spelled) that the more elaborate players would like to see implemented. The companies take over game ideas and convert them into cash cows, because they 'dumbdown' the game mechanics so that they can get a lot more players to join in and pay for the product.

As terribly as it is to see a wonderful game idea being converted into something for the mainstream, it seems to be the general rule of gaming companies nowadays. New company taking over the project however always means completely new direction.

Unfortunately I can mainly only say negative things about AoW-Planetfall. Beyond that, planetfall basically does everything better. Other than that, I find the hero creation system to be a poor substitute for AoW3's specializations. Most of this is because the secret techs themselves are somewhat nebulous and don't directly contribute a lot of thematics to whatever race they're paired with. One thing I would say against planetfall is that I don't feel the race+tech system establishes as strong a narrative identity as AoW3's race+class system. Colony building is also a lot more involving than city building was in AoW3, with a lot more choices involved and a lot more variation in the final result, instead of every single city having basically the same buildings (minus POI-specific buildings). Planetfall has a much more robust diplomacy system, and a lot more stuff you can interact with on the map. Planetfall has more developed gameplay, plus or minus the sector system depending on whether you think it's better or worse than the AoW3 system. Also planetfall has actual accuracy stats, and it's possible to miss attacks instead of it just reducing damage. For the most part planetfall has all the mechanics and concepts AoW3 had, but changes a few areas to fit the different theme, like the regions, as mentioned. They're more similar to each other than they are to any other franchise, even factoring the differences.

Age of wonders 3 honest review