I could not wait to explore all the new lands. I had high hopes of unlocking some power technologies and gaining some answers. I also had a feeling I'd be making some powerful enemies but at least for now, that has not come to pass. It’s always great when I can at least build some friendships with the other factions from Earth.

With unlocking the larger map it’s almost like playing a different game. Instead of exploring on foot, I was now traveling around a much larger map in a rover. This map also played a bit differently than the fog did around my base.

At least in the areas of the map I've explored so far random encounters are not so much a thing just for traveling through fog. Sure, on one occasion in going over quite a muddy spot of the map I was ambushed. Outside of that if there is trouble, I'm able to see it at a decent distance away and just move around it.

The map itself takes almost a week's worth of turns to go all the way to the edge. Making it a little tense if I have any incoming hordes to my base that I need to turn around and defend from.

There are also new means to collect resources. For instance, I can walk up to a forest and spend five action points to chop the forest down. While quite a few times so far it has yelled nothing. Other times I've gotten some food or seeds for my troubles. This seems like a great new way to farm for seeds.

I even noticed there are ore and power facilities around the center of the map. Once I go in and clear out any beasts that have them overrun, I can collect resources for them.

These new collect nodes are not forever mine, however. At random it seems beasts come and take over the facilities again. I’ve even had some bad luck with each one of the facilities that I had captured getting retaken over one after another, till, I had zero left under my control.

That part of a new way of collecting resources has been a bit annoying. There is also no way for me to leave some units behind to defend a position either. While I'm sure after losses after relearning these locations they are still worth holding. It’s been happening at quite a high frequency.

There are also quite a few dungeons. I ended up exploring one of them and the fight was a lot more challenging than I had been facing elsewhere. I’m somewhat shocked I even survived this battle.

I’m also dealing with new types of units in some of these fights. Such as in the fight above the single-unit clusters end up getting consumed by the larger ones. They then empower them. Once I defeat the larger units, they then leave them like a parasite and I have to destroy them.

These have not been the only locations to check out either. There are a couple of factions I get to interact with now as well. So far, they have been quite helpful. I was half expecting each one of them to be rather hostile to me.

It turns out since I have defeated the sky spider that I've gained some street credit for reaching this level of development on the alien planet. These places were more than willing to share a little information about things. Still not enough to fully understand what is going on.

I also wished on my first visit to each of the bases that I had spoken with everyone in them. At least on other times I would return I did just that. It turns out there were quite a few side quests for me to pick up. I even lucked out and had some of the things needed. Such as a certain type of fish this one person wanted.

I’ll admit some of these factions were just downright scary. These guys wanted a bunch of chips I was looting off the aliens I was killing while exploring around and going into dungeons.

In return for giving them sought-after items that they needed but I had no idea what I'd do with them myself. They gave me technology chips that allowed me to boost the energy, water, and food production of my base. That alone more than made it worth talking with everyone inside of their base.

Some of the combat situations I'd end up facing such as one of the factors whose base I entered decided to test me out. Would end up requiring me to understand all the different abilities these new types of combat run I had encountered.

I even lucked out and after showing I more than had staying power. They ended up giving me the technology needed to make some of the more basic combat units they use. I however prefer just saying with the ones I know for the time being.

Some of the newer units like the flying ones were spitting out adds and doing all kinds of things. They also had quite a few tank-type units up front. Making it quite a challenge to try and make it to the backline to start clearing up what was starting to become quite a buildup of extra units I'd have to take out.

I had also been out so long exploring the new area. I was not shocked when I got a notification that beasts were coming to attack my base. Just like that, I had to make the return trip.

Thankfully I was only a couple of days in my rover out from my base. As my army had become quite depleted, I needed a few days to restock on units. The next wave of creatures that attacked my base was not as challenging as I was expecting. That soon however will become but a short-lived memory of how easy things used to be.

Final Thoughts

It’s kind of nice the bigger map I now get to explore has some different rules of how things were from what I was exploring closer to my base. It’s kind of nice to not be in endless fights just to explore some of the fog.

I also like the idea of getting further resources by taking over different nodes. I kind of wonder if at some point I end up unlocking some further technology to expand on some things. There are some strange things at the bottom of the tech tree that I'm not quite sure make sense for just what is going on inside my base since I've already maxed out all my buildings up to this point.

I’m also rather glad for the most part the factions I've encountered can at least become somewhat friendly after getting to know me a little better. It seems like we have enough enemies to fight and attacking each other is not an ideal situation for anyone involved.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Xenowars (I don’t make anything from this tracking link).