The Dominions of Khaldun

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Sadly, KAG performs worse on my laptop than Kohan 2, Kings of War.

Big fan of the lizard campaign. Slss'tok, was it?

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Slaanri! That's what I'm looking for.

[Potatoman]

Yeah, Slyss'tok. He was quite a powerhouse! Too bad for him that the Slaanri themselves were so bottom-of-the-barrel compared to all of the other independent troops.

I'm not sure when you stopped playing Nikolai, but zone of control dancing (keeping a unit of scouts or shadelings engaged with you to sap your morale and keep you from hitting buildings, but always having them run away from combat) grew to become pretty much THE dominant skill. At some point it became more about dancing than everything else (similar to how last-hitting rules DOTA), and the resulting gameplay became flat and boring (my opinion only ).

[CUnknown]

Are you guys talking about pressed column dancing? Or simply engage/retreat dancing? Pressed column dancing is basically an exploit, and it is agreed that it shouldn't be used. People don't do that so much from what I remember. You could always ban people who do that.

Engage/retreat dancing is perfectly legit, though. You just have to deal with it.. although calling it the 'dominant skill' is an exaggeration, isn't it? It takes micro-managing to do that, and that means your attention isn't being focused elsewhere, like on building new cities.

Perhaps you ran into some people who were just really good at the game.

The main thing Kohan has going for it over Dominions is the 30 min - 1 hour game length, imo. I love Dominions, but if you could finish a game of it in an hour, I would never ever stop playing, ever!

Kohan is amazing for the amount of strategy that is packed into that 30 min of gaming. Other RTS games can't hold a candle to it. It's really too bad the sequal was as bad as it was.

[Potatoman]

In my mind, the problem sprung directly from how people decided exactly what was allowed in online Kohan and what was not. The engine, while great at doing so many other things, had many unintended quirks that people learned to exploit over the years, and they did. Unfortunately, the same engine quirks that are used mostly for innocuous things (engage/retreat dancing summoners to get more than a single golem per fight, for instance) could (and would) also be used for evil. This made any kind of "exploit" label subjective, because for any new trick a precedent for something similar would already exist.

Pressed dancing with a shadeling is illegal (it was outlawed way, way back), for instance, but engage/retreat dancing with the shadeling (a much more recent discovery) is permissible. The actual game effect of these tricks is identical; only the technique and the micro required is different.

Kohan: Ahriman's Gift is still leagues ahead of any other RTS though. I'll always treasure my copy .

My Kohan alias was Setsuna, by the way.

[CUnknown]

ORZ! We played together some. I was UnknownSuX.

[Tuidjy]

I have played with you guys. I still have a recording of an allied win with
UnknownSuX. :-) I kept it because we managed to almost rotate around the
game map... both teams were winning east and losing west.

But I mostly enjoyed 1x1 or 2x2, and most games used to be 3x3 or even 4x4.

[Niarg]

Played KoW and loved it. I was never so keen on KAG but if we can leave the whole KAG vs KoW away from these forums then I'm up for a game.

I've only got the demo at the moment but hopefully it shouldn't be too long before my full copy arrives. I'll leave picking a race until I know more abouit all the races.