Kohan II: Kings of War Hands-On Impressions

The original Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns burst upon the scene in 2001 and introduced a new model of fantasy-themed real-time strategy--one that actually emphasized strategy and did away with unit micromanagement and large-scale resource gathering. The result was that you could focus more on the big picture rather than on the minutiae, and Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns was a breath of fresh air in a genre that was seemingly stuck in a rut. Now with the sequel, developer TimeGate Studios faces the challenge of improving on the original and broadening its appeal without losing the elements that made the original great. We've been putting an early version of the game through its paces, and the good news is that Kohan II is shaping up to be a worthy successor.

This is going to get bloody.

Like the original game, Kohan II is a fantasy-themed RTS built around the ideas of cities and companies. One of the most valuable resources in the game is a city, which can start off as a tiny village and can evolve into a town, then a city, and then, finally, a citadel. Cities are the only source of gold, plus they're the only place where you can muster companies, so naturally they're the linchpin of the game. Whoever can seize the most cities will most often win, and indeed, the goal of the game is to usually wipe out your enemy by capturing his cities. Cities are also important because they exert a supply radius, which signifies their surrounding influence. But, more on this later.

There is no traditional resource gathering per se in Kohan II; you don't have to send out dozens of peons to run around the world to pick up ore or wood. However, there are resources and they do play a critical role. The most important resource is gold, which is used to purchase everything in the game. Then there are four other resources: stone, iron, wood, and mana. While there are a handful of resource nodes on the map that you build mines over to enhance your income rate for these resources, the most common way to generate these resources is by constructing the appropriate building in a city. If you require iron, create a blacksmith, and if you want wood, you need a sawmill, and so on. The key is that you want a positive income rate for each resource. Now, each military company you form requires a certain amount of resources for upkeep; for example, archers use a lot of wood, swordsmen require iron, and magic users need mana. If your wood income is +8, and then you build an archery company, your income will drop down to +2 because the archer company requires a constant supply of six wood. As long as your income rate for a particular resource is positive, you're fine. But if you start to use more of a resource than you can generate, the deficit will be taken out of your gold supply until you can address the issue, and this can cripple your gold income.

Companies are the military units of the game. Instead of having to micromanage dozens of individual units, you form companies of engineers, pikemen, swordsmen, and the like. Each company is composed of between four to six units attached to a captain or hero. This automatically organizes your forces into logical military formations, allowing you to commit dozens of units into battle by just giving orders to a few companies. One thing to keep in mind about companies is that they can gain experience and level up. All companies start off as basic recruits, but if they can survive a few battles they'll become veteran units and gain offensive and defensive bonuses (typically a +1 for defense and +2 for attack). If they can survive more battles, they'll be promoted to elite units, doubling their previous bonuses and making them extremely lethal on the battlefield. And in a fight, it's preferable to have a few elite companies rather than a lot of green ones.

Be careful of that big guy in the middle, or else.

You can also research numerous technologies in your cities that will increase the lethality of your companies by enhancing their defense, attack capabilities, and morale. The latter item plays an important role, because if a company is facing annihilation, the surviving units will break contact and attempt to fall back on their own. As long as a single unit of a company survives, the company can reconstitute back to full strength if it's in the supply radius of a friendly city. Part of being an effective commander is knowing when to pull your forces back to regroup, because if you wait for them to panic, they'll be extremely vulnerable to pursuing forces.