(and Ahriman's Gift)
The immortal Kohan have awoken again on Khaldun, to lead the battle between generic fantasy good and evil!
Kohan:IS is a classic RTS game that is heavily macro orientated. You construct cities for your empire, which provide resources that go into making armies. Resources in Kohan do not accumulate (save for gold), rather they exist as income that is used up. Owning a lumber mill in a city gives you +6 wood, owning a company of footmen uses 6 wood, for example.
Units are not controlled individually, and rather are constructed as companies. Each company has 7 units in it: 4 front line soldiers, 2 supports, and 1 leader.
This is your recruitment screenFront line units may be infantry, cavalry, archers, etc. Support units are varied, and can either be front line units or specialized support units, such as wizards and necromancers. All companies are lead by a generic captain or by one of the immortal Kohan heroes that have joined your empire.
You command your troops primarily by telling them where to move, when they come in contact with any enemy force, combat begins and the only command you can issue is a retreat (so there is no micromanagement of any description). Companies can adopt several formations; one makes them move slower but gives them a combat advantage, others make them move faster at the cost of combat power.
Troops are also governed by morale, which depletes in battle, especially after losing leaders. If morale falls too low, your troops will rout and run to a nearby city to recover.
Each city has a defensive garrison, and you can also build forts and outposts that have defensive garrisons to defend your land. When a city is under siege, after a certain amount of damage it will surrender to the assaulting force and join your empire. Outposts and forts are merely destroyed.
Sometimes you happen upon neutral lairs full of hostile creatures that can be razed for gold, or a neutral city that can be captured. The wilderness is full of goodies, and horrible things like dragon's lairs that spawn unspeakably powerful monsters. Exploration is nonetheless exciting, especially when you find new technology or new units.
Kohan is playable with 8 players multiplayer online, or with 7 (surprisingly competent) AIs, or with some combination of the two. There is also a lengthy single player campaign, and a map editor. Kohan is also capable of generating random maps to play on.
Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns is the first game in the series. Kohan: Ahriman's Gift is pretty much the same game with new stuff and is the title I advise playing. However, if you want to see the whole campaign and story and such, start on Immortal Sovereigns.
Kohan 2: Kings of War is a pretty good game as well, just it's not as much of a nostalgia trip for me. Additionally, they made it so you can't just settle anywhere, you have to settle new cities on settlement points, which takes away some of the fun for me.
Kohan:IS, Kohan:AG & Kohan 2:KoW are $9 each on steam right now, so I suggest you either buy Kohan: Ahriman's Gift, or the Kohan War Chest, which is $18 and includes all 3 games. Note that this sale ends in a few days.
If some people pick this game up, we could play some large multiplayer matches. I like the politics of a Kohan game: treaties are signed, alliances formed, and broken, and what have you. Often times you fight your neighbor for so long and then the two of you have to work together to fend off a larger threat.
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/11141/
