About This Game
Pandora: First Contact is a science fiction 4X turn-based strategy game on a planetary scale.
In the future, factions have risen up from opportunities and ideologies independent of governments. Private corporations and religious movements have started wars over greed, ideology and power. Many have died and many lands lay in ruin. Planet Earth has been exhausted and colonial attempts on other planetary bodies have been in vain.
Finally, after decades of exploration, an interstellar probe has brought promise of a new world many light-years away. The most powerful factions have gathered their best men and women to send on a long journey to Pandora.
Far from desolate, the earth-like planet has been found to host a plethora of indigenous life forms. While the gigantic monstrosities inland and at the oceans seem relatively calm, human-sized bugs and fungus are threatening to stop mankind's expansion.
As the various factions strive to take control, each will research and develop numerous new technologies, discovering new weapons and industry, whilst opening trade agreements and forging alliances with other factions to gain a foothold. As they spread, they will discover ancient ruins from alien civilizations that will grant them advantages over their rivals.
Key Features
Explore a new world harboring a variety of eco-regions, from the frozen ice lands of the north, to vast deserts and lush tropical forests in the south.
Survive encounters with the planet's dangerous wild life. Deadly swarms walk the lands and agile predators fly in the skies. There is even talk of a giant creature in the oceans.
Live in harmony with nature or use it to further your cause. The indigenous life will react to your actions and treat you accordingly.
Discover ruins and artifacts, the relics of an ancient alien civilization long forgotten that can give you an edge against the planet life and other rivaling factions.
Found new cities to expand the borders of your empire. Manage cities by adjusting the tax rate, choosing production and assigning colonists to jobs.
Operate a fully globalized and pooled resource and growth system. Specialize one city to harvest minerals while churning out units in another.
Adapt your empire to pressing demand. Your colonists will migrate between cities based on factors such as pollution and living space.
Shape the landscape with terraforming, construct farms, mines, forts, and other improvements to increase the productivity of your colonies or to fortify positions.
Progress through a vast randomized research tree spanning dozens of technologies providing operations, buildings, units, weapons, and more.
Negotiate trade and research pacts with other factions for mutual benefits. Forge alliances to stand united against common foes.
Design your own units by choosing from a range of different classes, armors, weapons, and devices to maximize the strength of your forces.
Command vast armies across the battlefield against enemy factions, making use of the variety of terrain types to gain an advantage.
Unleash hell on your opponents with powerful military operations, ranging from drop pods behind enemy lines to black hole generators eradicating entire landscapes.
Prove yourself in multiplayer with friends or strangers and discover entirely new strategies.
Customize your experience through easily moddable XML data and well-known image and audio formats.
Changelog:
Added:
* Added better support for teams in AI's diplomatic behavior.
* Added a new algorithm for the AI to always try to land troops outside the vision of the enemy.
* Added mechanism for AI to process multiple loops for it's unit moving sub-agents so it can give a new command to a unit that has already moved but is left with movement points after all units have moved.
Changed:
* AI will now allocate its population differently when it is at war or when it is preparing for war.
* AI will no longer sign science treaties with those who are above average in research.
* Moves of human factions are now prioritized over moves of alien factions.
* AI will now prioritize enemy units in their territory as more important target.
* Allowed AI to use all unused ships for exploring.
* AI will now use a certain amount of artillery units in their offenses.
* AI will now use mineral sources with less than two minerals only if there's almost no other minerals available.
* AI will no longer build watercraft when it is at war with someone who only has cities with no access to water.
* When playing as Togra University the AI will now make use of Zak0r's upgrade strategy.
* AI decision when to make peace is now more in line with its decision when to declare war.
* When refitting the AI will now stick to the same weapon type to stay cost-efficient.
* AI will now always prioritize refitting their units over purchasing other things.
* If the AI is at war with someone and doesn't know any cities of that someone, but it has seen the border, it'll prioritize exploring there.
* Made sure that AI always uses their artillery units before its other units.
* When at war with another faction, the AI will be much less likely to attack native wildlife.
* AI will now rather upgrade its formers to amphibious than using harvest.
* AI is now more sensitive about whether it should perform a rush or prepare to defend against one.
* AI will now try to avoid getting its transports spotted by its enemies.
* AI will now value forests more for fighting pollution before it has Pandora Construction.
* AI will now prefer tiles that are most suitable for their units when approaching an enemy city.
* AI will no longer retreat heavily injured units to a city under the effect of an ion storm.
* Increased maximum amount of playable factions via advanced setup in a game from 9 to 13. Only makes sense with a mod that adds new factions.
* Improved AI behavior in city defense.
* AI will no longer try to heal units other than the necessary defenders in a city that is under siege by artillery units.
* The percentage of trade and research pact income as well as the Ambassadors parasitic trait now dynamically adjust to a players share of global population. On average the treaties will be about 35% less powerful.
* AI will now consider food less important when looking for city locations.
* AI will now consider minerals more important when looking for city locations.
* AI border expansion will now consider if additional food tiles are needed or not.
* AI will offer friendly deals less frequently in order to not annoy the player. The frequency is about 10%.
* AI will no longer declare war on factions it hasn't scouted yet.
* AI artillery units now prefer the device that allows them to attack multiple times a turn over other modules.
* Population lost by using the "Raze" button will now include migration from takeover.
* AI will now use a more dynamic defender count.
* Lowered number of scouting units for the AI once it has a contact to not be caught off-guard with a significant amount of troops away from home.
* AI will no longer waste precious scans on hives.
* AI will no longer try to surround cities with too complicated surrounding geography like canals or peninsulas that make surrounding really hard and take long.
* When needed, the AI will now switch between first tier automatic and first tier missile weapons since this doesn't cost anything.
* AI is now much less likely to sign or request open borders treaties.
* Added more diversity to AI unit-designs to make it harder to hardcounter them.
* Improved AI spy handling by allowing them to preposition for an operation next turn instead of just going straight ahead and risk ending up with no movement left.
* During peace the AI will now try to position unused units in the way of incoming spies.
* AI shall no longer attack aliens or sieging units when the success chance is 100% but the attacking unit might die in the process.
* AI now does a much better job considering pollution when calculating its worker distribution.
* AI is now much more likely to backstab its neighbor when he is at war.
* AI spies will no longer steal research when the AI has all technologies.
* AI will now reduce its food production in order to fight overpopulation once it does not find any more spaces to colonize.
* AI will now rather expand than produce buildings or advancements that do not combat unhappyness when it is unhappy.
* AI will now always run the highest tax rate when there are no technologies left to research.
* AI is now aware of circumstances where certain buildings and advancements are so useful that it should get them even if it would want to build military.
* AI will now use formers as a last-resort defense.
* Increased Agent production cost by 33 % and reduced movement by 25 %.
* Success chance for infiltration missions is now directly deduced from infiltration attack/defense power and can't reach a 100%.
* Different infiltration missions now provide a bonus or penalty to the infiltration attack power based on their difficulty.
* Agents now lose health when performing an operation.
* Agents can now complete or fail their mission independently of dying. The chance to lose an agent is now equal to half of the operation failure.
* Adjusted advancements, buildings and devices that provide an infiltration attack or defense power bonus.
Fixed:
* Fixed a bug that prevented AI from realizing it cannot heal in water fungus.
* Fixed game pace not affecting the duration of temporary tile modifications like the ion storm cast by the Messari.
* Fixed an issue where AI units could get stuck when they targeted something they could not see.
* Fixed AI not using as many units for defending as it should.
* Fixed AI artillery and sniper units not always attacking targets when they should.
* Fixed a bug that under certain circumstances led to miscalculation on city growth when using the growth project.
* Fixed AI not caring about their new cities for the turn they are founded.
* Fixed a bug that swallowed the majority of diplomacy messages sent to the player by the AI.
* Fixed Ambassadors leeching from pacts not actually being added to their income.
* Fixed an issue causing AI land units to try and pillage improvements inside lakes.
* Fixed waterborne artillery units of the AI not acquiring targets further inland.
* Fixed an issue where morale was not properly applied to credit income from non-tax sources like gold deposits.
* Fixed an exploit that allowed you to interrupt AI formers by stepping a unit onto them when you had open borders.
* Fixed the algorithm that determines whether a tile is a chokepoint.
* Fixed an issue where automated formers would always consider aliens always as hostile.
* Fixed Terra Salvum's Ecologic trait not working on water fungus.
* Fixed purchasing from the economy panel not always working.
* Fixed water fungus not appearing in territory hints.
* Fixed issues with Steam overlay on Linux.
Download.
Open file.
Choose install location.
Install. (The installer closes by itself.)
System Requirements
Minimum:
OS: Windows XP SP2 / Vista
Processor: Intel Core 2 or equivalent
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: OpenGL 2.0 compatible with 256 MB VRAM (NVIDIA GeForce 6600 series / ATI Radeon 9500 series)
Hard Drive: 1 GB available space
