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Kohan for Linux
XarsonX writes "A demo of Kohan Immortal Sovereigns (a real time strategy game) is out on linux. The full version should be coming soon. News, stuff about the game, and the demo are available at www.timegatestudios.com." I hadn't heard much about this game, but the graphics are definitely impressive. Might be worth a download.
Okay.. I've owned kohan ever since Rich Laporte over at Gonegold (http://www.gonegold.com) raved about the beta version..
For a quick description, Think heroes of might and magic, masters of magic and warlords 1-3 combined, and then made realtime
But not realtime in the negative clickfest sense.. Very methodical and well paced real time
Mix in great cooperative multiplay, random map generation, a scenario editor, and at least for the windows version an integrated gamespy client, and you get Kohan
The entire game is structured around heroes(Kohan's), and "squads" of units.
So instead of controlling a zillion little units, you're instead controlling groups of units that you construct
Each group of units has a zone of conflict, and when zones of conflict overlap, the units will engage one another..
Combat is fairly passive, but still has an extremely large amount of tactical depth
There's also a really nice resource harvesting model.. Unique in the sense that it strongly discourages hoarding.. Any excess resources for a timeslice are discarded instead of stored..
Overall its a great game.. One of the best, if not the best rts game i've played this year..
And to top off a great product, the developers (Timegate) have done a great job supporting and updating the product..
They're very active in the community, and host tournaments every now and then..
Strange. I downloaded the demo last night and it ran very sluggishly. All the other Loki demos/games run well, as do Quake 2 and Quake 3. Perhaps it's something with the particular 2D rendering engine? I have an nVidia TNT2 with the latest driver...
--- witty signature
Wrong. XFree86 4.x with DRI is fast, fast, fast. Frame rates are at most about 1% (and usually less than that) behind Windows on my GeForce2. And if you're about to say "but not everyone can afford your fast new GeForce2" remember that you're the one complaining about 3D speed issues in the first place...
Of course, I can also do things with X that you can't with windows. For example, running a 3D-accelerated program like Morph3D or Sproingies in my root window as 3D-accelerated wallpaper.
Have you ever played, say, Q3A with DRI under Linux+X? Guess not. If you had, you wouldn't say what you just said...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Sam L. et. all have gotten the Linux implementation tight as . The gameplay and economic model ARE different from your standard total annihilation / warcraft /starcraft fare. (Well, those were the last time I touched a game under win32).
The economic model focuses on balancing lots of different resourcecs which can be generated by towns themselves. Takes a bit of getting used to, but it is much more interesting than "energy/metal" all harvested from "mines".
The unit play and tactics are also very interesting - morale, formation, terrain bonuses, flanking. Military historians should love this.
Oh, and they fixed that damnable "rush" tactic.
As of now, I don't miss bilzzard at all (well, that's a lie. I still kinda wanted to try DiabloII in my copius spare time).
And it has additional cool Loki - type features such as the "middle mouse map drag/scroll" that Win32 folks don't.
Check it out!
Kohan is a very good game
Kohan is considered a strong game among the RTS (real time strategy) gaming crowd, but it has not attained the popularity of Starcraft or Age of Kings. This is due in part because of having a new and inexperienced publisher, Strategy First. The publisher never marketed Kohan heavily. Strategy First was the publishing company responsible for the WWII online debacle - they don't have the best track record as a publisher. Members of the online gaming community will be very familiar with this.
Also, Kohan is lacking in the graphics department when compared to their peers. It doesn't look any better than Age of Kings or Starcraft. Some very good 3d RTS games are just around the corner, including Warcraft III, Age of Mythology and Empire Earth. Kohan is a day late and a dollar short in a department that is really a must among the people who really matter - the people in the middle of the curve who buy a lot of games and are not hardcore players.
For the hardcore player Kohan is one of the most unique and best RTS games ever. It is not a clone of more popular RTS games at all. The economic model is unique in a good way. Most other games have over simplied economic models (a good example being starcraft) or an economic model that requires too much micromanagement (a good example being Age of Empires series). The kohan model requires no micromanagement and is complex enough to be very rewarding. The military model adds in aspects of moral and costs of transportation. Slain troops are automatically replaced. This feature alone pushes the economic model to a class above all others. In stead of a static buy stuff/earn stuff model, there is a flow. Costs are higher than income, or costs are lower than income. In my opinion that puts a Kohan feature at the front of the future of RTS gaming.
Unfortunately, Kohan never took off on the windows platform. It deservedly earned rave reviews. It tanked among the online community and the typical community. It was marketed poorly and the graphics technology are below par for it's time. On mrfixitonline, soon to be rtscentral, a place for the most hardcore RTS gamers, our Kohan forums are near dead while after almost 2 years our Age of Kings forum is still rocking solid.
Ok, I'm going to give a shameless plug: I've been volunteering time for an RTS (real time strategy) gaming network for over a year now. mrfixitonline has really taken off. We do neat things like run tournaments and online gaming events, RTS news, expert strategies and forums. We don't make any money doing this. (The site loses a ton), but it is incredible fun.
It is nice to see Kohan make it to Linux. I am a gamer. I also love Linux. I have never played a Loki game in my life. I will buy Kohan when it comes out for Linux. It is as simple as that. If Loki games keeps coming out with strong titles and gaming hardware like soundcards and graphics cards are better supported, people like me will become converts. Kohan is a very strong RTS game. If any of you guys are interested in Kohan, drop by kohan.rtscentral.com and check out what we have to offer for the game. I hate to have to say this, but while still viewable, the Kohan site doesn't display properly under Moz. Grrr.....
While it posesses all of the features of the standard RTS, they're blended in a combination that works very well.
Here are the primary features of the game that I enjoy:
The economic micromanagement aspect that one normally sees (peons harvesting resources) is almost entirely absent, so economic growth is based mainly on the decisions you make, not how well you manipulate virtual slaves to hunt deer.
Units must be supplied with resources in addition to being purchased. Having to support your existing armies is a feature that hasn't really been tried in this genre (yes I know you have to make houses in AOE, but the cost is only noticeable in the beginning). The result is an interesting game dynamic, in that wiping out an army is only effective if you follow it up with some capturing of towns. Give him some time and the troops will be rebuilt and you will have gained little.
Experience for troops is excellent, careful management of your armies lets them effectively go up in level, getting somewhat more powerful(but not overmuch). This rewards the careful planner as opposed to the sloppy turbo-economy player who cranks out troops and lets them die.
Tactics are key, unit companies keep their artillery and leaders in the back (archers/mages and captain), so doing an end run around the front line and hitting the rear is absolutely crippling. It really is a game of how you use your troops, not what troops you buy.
Teamwork is heavily emphasized in that there are few obstacles to trading money or cities back and forth. Also, you can immediately see what your allies are doing (unlike AOK which requires tech research to expose the allied minimap). The result is that there is far more cooperation in the average Kohan game, perfectly accentuating the benefits of multiplayer gaming. Other RTS's often end up being a series of parallel 1v1 matchups on the same board.
The action is very quick. You are generally fighting something or someone within 5 minutes of the start, so there's no 15 minute SimCity game.
The network code works fairly well, disconnected players remember the IP address they were at and try to reconnect. A status indicator lets the whole game know if the player is gone, or attempting a reconnect.
I would recommend this game to any serious strategy gamer without hesitation.
All in all,
It has some nice new concepts which I haven't seen in RTS games so far. There are unit ZOCs (Zones of Control), and Zones of Supply. The supply concept seems to work quite nicely; units automatically regenerate when in supply zone. This makes defense somewhat easier. However, the supply zone disappears when the city is attacked, so it also makes a kind of siege possible.
The game is based on building cities. The cities automatically have a number of militia units, which is nice. The units can have four formations, each having different combat and movement penalty. That's very nice. However, some common aspects are missing, such as different ground elevations, etc.
Some of the fantasy elements such as "the leaders are immortals" feel rather silly.
The mouse was very sluggish on my screen, but I got it changed to hardware cursor with flags "-x -f".
The demo seems to have a multiplay, but it was empty of players. Actually, there was some player, but he was using a Korean version of the game, which was incompatible with mine. I'm not sure if the multiplay worked properly, because I tried to host a game, but when I opened a second Kohan window, my hosted game wasn't in the list.
The user interface is nice, but somewhat slow, especially the cursor. Even with hardware cursor, it occasionally uses software cursor, which is awful. It would also be nice to have more keyboard shortcuts to various unit functions, for example when you want to build an outpost with an engineer company.
Also, it would be nice to have a bit better UI documentation for the demo. There were many things which I didn't fully understand, such as the meaning of the various resources and trading. Units obviously require certain resources, but it doesn't seem to bother the units if the resources go negative. Well, I guess that it just means that you can't sell those negative resources, and thus can't get money, but how that works is not very clear.