Kohan Ahriman's Gift

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 5:22 pm

http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/data/12636.html

Would you believe no FAQ for any Kohan game prior to Kohan II? And me without my old PC Games by Title hive mind.

So I'm going through my backlog and this one won out over Moonbase Commander, Shadow Watch, and Europa 1400. I'm finally giving Ahriman's Gift a try, and am not yet far enough along to know what it is I don't currently know but should learn before I end up with bad habits. It's definitely a new way to play RTS games, and one that I like. But what sayeth you, OOers? What tips should I know before I end up in a world of hurt.

I'm *not* afraid of slowing down or liberally using the pause button, and I refuse to play a RTS where I feel overwhelmed. Talk to me straight here...

~Neal

Dirt · Post by **Dirt** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 5:28 pm

It's great. I finally finished the one where they try to resurrect Javidan. Now I'm playing the one where you're a Slaan'ri. The campaign is a bit harder than the first and the maps bigger.

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 5:47 pm

Yeah, I'd heard these were tougher than the original. I never played that one, so this is my Kohan starting point.

~Neal

SuperHiro · Post by **SuperHiro** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 6:17 pm

Timegate's official forums are a great source of information. Still a decent amount of diehard KAG people.

Dirt · Post by **Dirt** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 6:19 pm

The Meal wrote:Yeah, I'd heard these were tougher than the original. I never played that one, so this is my Kohan starting point.

~Neal

I would highly recommend going back and playing the first one. It's a great game too.

Biyobi · Post by **Biyobi** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 6:56 pm

Build Banks. Income is very important. With a good economy you can go negative on resources (sometimes drastically) and still be okay. Your better units require more resources to maintain and you can seriously gank yourself if you don't have the econ to back you up.

Of course, I've only played MP and skirmishes so I don't know if this applies to the Campaign as well.

Eel Snave · Post by **Eel Snave** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:11 pm

See, I don't understand what bearing resources have on the game. Do you actually need to worry about them, or just your gold? If it's just your gold, that simplifies things a TON.

Meghan · Post by **Meghan** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 12:07 am

Mr. Fixit Online has a site for Kohan but not K2. I love the info at MFO.

http://www.rtscentral.com/kohanHome.asp

Eel, check out the Overview section - it outlines the economy pretty well. Basically, resources are generated automatically so you don't have spend your time babysitting your lumberjacks and farmers.

Daveman · Post by **Daveman** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 9:52 am

Eel Snave wrote:See, I don't understand what bearing resources have on the game. Do you actually need to worry about them, or just your gold? If it's just your gold, that simplifies things a TON.

You do have to focus on all the resources, but the eventual bottomline is gold. You need gold to buy and build things. You need wood, stone, metal, and mana to maintain certain troops and buildings or you'll have to pay gold to cover the difference. Going into the red in lots of other resources can put in a serious dent in your gold production.

The only "odd" bit about the Kohan system IMO is that being in the positive in the non-gold resources is pointless. In fact, I'm sure a good Kohan player would say that if you're ever notably in the black on any resource you're doing something wrong. You either need to build units to use up that surplus, or you've built too many carpentry guilds, blacksmiths, etc. and that money should have gone somewhere else.

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 9:53 pm

Thanks for the link Meghan, I'll be off to check that out now.

The non-gold resources were definitely a confusion to me, but this thread has helped me out a *ton*. Thanks for clearing that up.

I'm playing the AG scenario first and I had to start that second mission about fifteen times (on Easy!) before I finally got the right combination of economy and early defense in place (build resource-related "buildings" {sorry, still not yet hip with the lingo} and build a settler-unit right away to go off and build a second town -- then throw together a "junky" initial army and when upgrading the first city focus on temples and barracks, while making the settled city more of the economy-based town). Are the scenarios typically "puzzles" in this sense -- trying to figure out what order to build things, or is there a pretty straight-forward "build new things in this order" that I need to figure out in general?

Thanks for the advice and help, everyone.

~Neal

Det. Dave · Post by **Det. Dave** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 1:54 am

Think of the non-gold resources like cell-phone minutes. If your plan is for too many minutes they just go to waste. If you need more resources than you have available, you automatically buy them with gold. (very expensive just like going over your limit with your phone).

You want to increase your non-gold production to allow you to support more units/buildings and increase gold production to buy more units/buildings/upgrades. You can never have too much gold. There is always something to buy sooner or later. And the gold just piles up. If you are too positive in non-gold then you are wasting stuff. You can upgrade some of your buildings to provide more gold instead of the resources.

Just don't sacrifice materials production too much in favor of gold production or you won't be able to support the new companies you can now afford.

Eel Snave · Post by **Eel Snave** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 6:10 pm

I see, said the blind man, as he pissed into the wind and said, "It's all coming back to me now."