Good evening, you are listening to Thruis Ahead, and I'm your host, Rob Zakene, here with freelance writer, T.J. Hafer. Hello, hello. We also welcome back, our friend Ian Boudreau. Hello. And finally, we have U.S. gamers, Mike Williams. Hello, hello, folks. How's everyone doing today? Not too bad. So today, we're going to be looking at Triumph Studios, Age of Wonders, Planetfall,

which is a new sci-fi 4-X published by Paradox Interactive. And I will be honest, at this point,

I feel like sci-fi 4-X, I'm never sure what to expect.

But I think I tend to be predisposed to sort of white-knuckle the armrests when I hear one of those is coming out.

But also a sci-fi-forx version of Age of Wonders also seemed like kind of a weird thing to be getting.

Mike, I know that you're into Age of Wonders a bit.

Can you tell us a little bit about like, what is Age of Wonders?

Because I feel like it's one of those franchises that's been around in the strategy discussion for a while.

But I don't think it's ever been front of mind.

It's never been anywhere close to that like civilization level, like awareness in the discourse.

Yeah, so it's a lot like civilization, but coming from the studio that it was coming from, it didn't have a lot of

visibility. So the 4x basic city builder aspect feels a lot like civilization or endless legend

in that you have cities, that you sort of expand, your influence, you have to build different

sort of improvements within each city.

But probably the biggest difference is that when combat resolves between your armies

instead of it being like, you know, two units fight, and then it's sort of taken care of in a dice

roll, and then it's done. You actually would switch to turn-based, like, overhead strategy

combat. And so it's sort of civilization meets XCOM is the easiest way to explain it to people.

But I don't think anyone realized it existed for a very long time.

Like it had a very firm community on Steam, but being brought under the paradox banner, I think, has helped with visibility this time around.

Yeah, I think that is definitely one of the things that sort of sets it apart.

And I think to be absolutely clear here, I think other series have tried to do that

...