What's the closest thing to "Total Annihilation: Kingsdoms"?

[DArtagnan]

I was a huge fan of Kingdoms (after the patch that fixed performance) - and I'm looking for a similarly "epic" RTS in terms of scope and pace.

I'd prefer something fantasy-based - and I'm not really interested in the Supreme Commander games.

I want an RTS where you can really spend a lot of time building your base and researching stuff.

Anything like that out there?

[JDR13]

Heroes of Annihilated Empires was epic in the ways you're looking for... at least what I played of it. Unfortunately the game isn't very good overall (imo), and the sequels were cancelled due to poor sales. (It was planned as a trilogy).

I recall there being a playable demo.

[Fnord]

Have you tried Armies of Exigo? While not identical to TA Kingdoms, it is quite good, has an epic feel to it, and it even looks rather nice, even though it is a game from 2004.

Plus, it is cheap (http://www.play.com/Search.html?searchtype=allproducts&searchsource=0&searchstring=Armies+of+Exigo) (free shipping to Denmark)

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Perhaps you might try "Heroes of annihilated Empires" ?

I have it, but I have never played it.
My impression has always been of something like ... Age Of Wonders as an RTS game ...

[SirJames]

I was a master at Heroes of Annihilated empires online using just a hero. It's a bit old and needed more polish, but was kinda fun for a while. Pity it didn't get more development and hype time.

Armies of Exiago is one for me to check out. Missed that one somehow. :D

Theres... ummmmm... Spellforce 2? That could be a good one.

GPG is working on Age of Empires online at the moment, which I have not played, but its keeping them from finishing Kings and Castles, which I was looking very forward too. It was attempting to do the TA:kingdoms (easily the worst of the games he made, too, dunno why u like it lol) thing again only better and more like an evolved warcraft3 with supcom resource style in magic form. This would have been the ideal game for you. And me, probably. :(

Speaking of age of empires style, Age of Mythology you might like? I prefered it to AOE.

Also, you should try Majesty 2. Its interesting because you don't give units direct orders, you place an amount of gold as an attack order and if your townfolk think its worth their while they'll go do it for u and take the gold.

Theres some Lord of the Rings RTS games from a recent decade with pretty nice graphics. I did check one out once, but didn't play it online or anything.

Theres a bunch of fantasy Warhammer games too. They could be cool!

Rise of Legends, I didn't get into it. Maybe I didn't give it a chance.

Gee, thats about enough for now. xD


TL;DR
Wish they'd finish Kings and Castles.

[Fnord]

Armies of Exiago is one for me to check out. Missed that one somehow.
Almost everyone did, and I do not understand why. It should have had EA's marketing machine behind it, and considering the quality of the game, it feels like a game that they spent a lot of time and money on, yet it seem to be almost unheard of. The game plays a bit like a mix between Starcraft & Dragonshard, in a good way.

Also, you should try Majesty 2. Its interesting because you don't give units direct orders, you place an amount of gold as an attack order and if your townfolk think its worth their while they'll go do it for u and take the gold.
While Majesty 2 is a good game, I found Majesty 1 to be better in almost every way. (except for the graphics, of course). Majesty 1 had more heroes & spells to choose from, you had to make more interesting choices in game, the heroes had more in the way of personalities (in Majesty 2 the difference between a rogue and a paladin in the way they act is not huge, in Majesty 1 it is). This made Majesty 1 a lot more charming, and it made you care more about the lives of your heroes (apart from those stupid lazy monks). Majesty 1 (+expansion) is also a lot cheaper (http://se.gamersgate.com/DD-MAJESTY/majesty-gold-edition). It should be noted though that while Majesty is an excellent game, it is not at all similar to TA:kingdoms.

Theres… ummmmm… Spellforce 2? That could be a good one.
I agree. Again, the game is quite different, but Spellforce is a nice series of games. I would recommend getting "spellforce universe", because that contains both spellforce games plus their expansions. That is a lot of game time. And it is also rather cheap (http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/14819689/SpellForce-Universe/Product.html?searchtype=allproducts&searchsource=0&searchstring=Spellforce+universe&urlrefer=search).

Theres a bunch of fantasy Warhammer games too. They could be cool!
They are! Dark omen in particular is a good game. All of the WHFB games are nearly pure tactics games though, not strategy games. Mark of chaos is quite buggy, and the campaigns are not all that well balanced, but I enjoyed it. Shadow of the horned rat is brutally difficult and it does not play nice with modern OSs, dos, modern hardware or drivers that are too new. I've managed to get it to run, but not well in a virtual machine. Oh, and while the game should, in theory, be playable in Win 3.11, don't try to install Win 3.11 in dosbox and then run the game, as the game is incredibly unstable in Win 3.11.

[ilm]

As for 'epic' games I thought Empire Earth was just fantastic (played it a lot on lans). It is actually just Age of Empires, but then more 'epic' (same man behind both I think). You had 13 ages, from the stone age, romans, medieval, world wars, modern age, ..., to the far future. Lots of fun, not really fantasy though (no elfs ;) ).

Empire Earth 2 is quite different, but also lots of fun.

[xSamhainx]

I'm in RTS mode right now.

I have to report on Kohan II, it's ten bucks pretty much everywhere. Fantasy squad-based rts w/ heroes and all that. You should play it. There's a decent little community still playing it, and some nice instructional videos up on youtube to help a little w/ the weird econ/army system. Once you get it tho, it's fun as hell and easy to control.

Save often tho, I've been suffering a few crashes lately =\

If you havent played Dragonshard, the D&D RTS i suggest you give it a try. It's even cheaper and a lot of fun.

[DArtagnan]

Thank you all for the interesting suggestions. I'd forgotten about some of them, and I never tried Heroes of Annihilated Empires.

I'll check 'em out and see how they play :)

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Just remembered this game with the odd name of "Hinterland" ...
Have never played it so far ...

[xSamhainx]

Good suggestion Alrik, there's one off the beaten path. You may want to check Hinterland out for something different, Dart. http://www.tiltedmill.com/hinterland/

It's pretty good, me and fiancee played it for a couple weeks. It's an action-rpg w/ an open map of resource and creature nodes. You hire people who come to your city to settle and build various buildings. They can work in your town, or join you fighting, and will defend your town if it's attacked. Levels, loot, city management, all in one nice package.

I liked it a lot, sorely underrated game.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

.. Never knew … Just found out that there's even an expansion to it : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001LW033U/ref=nosim/vivafusion-20/

Uh. How do I find out whether this expansion is already in the German boxed edition ?

Or is this like the original Majesty game, that the expansion is never sold within Germany ?

Edit : Question answered already ! : http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26312

[Fnord]

Or is this like the original Majesty game, that the expansion is never sold within Germany ?
That is a real shame. The Expansion for Majesty 1 added a lot of interesting missions to the game. Missions that were not only more challenging but also more involved, and better balanced. If you can, I would recommend checking out the English version.

One strange thing about the expansion was the total lack of marketing. I only found it because a store had ordered a single copy of it, but that was the only place I ever did manage to find the expansion, no other store carried it. The original game did reach a larger audience though, and it even had a small marketing campaign behind it.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Paradox re-released Majesty 1 for cheap shortly before Majesty 2 came out - and "of course" without the dd-on ... Even worse, the game did not only come without any handbook, there was even no handbook in PDF format there !

I once found that add-ons are generally much harder to ind than the full games : The full games are re-released every now and then ... - But not the Add-Ons ... (current example : Sacred 2 ... )

[Fnord]

I thought the re-released the gold edition (they did at least do that over here). That contained the expansion. As for the game manual, the original game's manual would not fit into a DVD-case, but they really should have included it as a PDF at least.