Whoever coined the term "Real-Time Strategy" and applied it to all of the Dune 2 clones that currently saturate the marketplace sure didn't do his homework, methinks. The so-called "RTS" titles we've become so enamoured of - Starcraft, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires - aren't really all that focused on strategy, despite what the genre name would lead you to believe. They're all excellent, smartly-designed games, but their action lies more in the scale of pure tactics than the overarching management of armies and a war effort. That realm was better served by the turn-based titles, whose approach made tactics often tedious and unnecessarily time-consuming unless confined to strict scenarios. Well, better served until now: first with Europa Universalis, and now with Kohan, the appropriately-titled publishing act Strategy First has effectively demonstrated that the words "real-time" and "strategy" aren't mutually exclusive in computer gaming.

Kohan (subtitled "Immortal Sovereigns") is the fledgling effort of Timegate Studios, a newcomer to the RTS scene, although they sport staff with broad experience in the genre. Billed in half-hearted previews as "the thinking man's RTS," Kohan has been under the watchful eye of strategy aficionadoes looking for a new slant on what has become a very derivative genre. Surprisingly, Timegate has delivered the goods: Kohan really is a strategically intelligent game with a polished edge keen enough to slice through many jaded preconceptions about the future of RTS titles.

The premise for Kohan won't win any particular awards, but it works well enough: in the game, you are a Kohan, one of 100,000 immortals given life by the Creator and ordered to maintain and preserve the fantasy world of Khaldun. One of the Creator's assistants, in a fit of jealousy, created the Cataclysm and scattered the Kohan. Now, the immortals battle for control and the fate of the world. They have divided themselves into four overlapping factions: the democratic Council, who favors the liberation of the mortal races; the austere Royalists, who are likewise benevolent but seek to preserve the history of the Kohan; the fanatical Nationalists, who feel that the immortals should reign over all; and the spiteful necromancers of the Ceyah, who crave the ruin of the world. The game draws a lot of its terminology and lore from the Persian mythos, which at least legitimizes some of the more tongue-twisting names in the game.

Each side has a number of bonuses and a few distinct units outside of the core ones that it can develop. For example, the Council has a 20% reduction in building costs, and can build the storm-summoning Wizard support unit. The Ceyah, on the other hand, can build a variety of dead units, and have an extra building slot per city upgrade. Because the game focuses more on planning and war preparation, unit balance is less of an issue than in, say, Starcraft. In fact, battles (while spectacular) are resolved less by unit type and far more by *gasp* your strategy.

It does this in a number of ways, but the implementation's success lies in the abstractions at the core of its play concept. In this case, these abstractions are predicated by the idea that strategy and tactics, at a certain level of speed and detail, become too tedious and frustrating to deal with in tandem efficiently and effectively. Kohan deals with this problem cleverly, in the following ways:

Abstraction #1: Babysitting individual units is not strategy, and is totally counterproductive to maintaining a clear, overarching view of the war effort. Kohan, instead, lets you build companies comprised of a hero (or captain), four identical primary units, and two potentially different support units. Each unit represents 50 recruits, supposedly (and the hero unit represents the hero and his elite retinue). Companies are directed by your clicking, but when they engage in battle, you may only order a retreat or a rout. A retreat is a controlled flight to safety, and a rout is your last-ditch chance as a general to get your men the hell out of whatever sticky situation they're embroiled in. Timegate backs up this approach with good unit combat AI - infantry rushes in, as expected, and ranged combatants try to find convenient outlier positions to attack from. Even amidst a massive ambush, the units react as you'd expect inasmuch as the situation allows. Your level of control lies in how you compose your armies: if you're going after a Shadow Lord, for example, you'll want a Paladin in your support group to keep morale up and stymie any evil spells. Likewise, if you're going to explore, use Scouts with flanking Rangers for good speed in forests coupled with decent defense. And for God's sake, never leave mages out of a siege! Mix and match to find the perfect teams for a situation, and then group up to six companies into a massive regiment (which can be assigned a Ctrl-hotkey), for a dedicated fighting force. In Kohan, it's not the individual units that matter - it's how they complement each other for any given situation. This is strategy.

Abstraction #2: Strategy, like good storytelling, is often about setting the stage, rather than pure acting. Success and failure in Kohan, especially in large-scale efforts, are explicitly tied to your preparations, rather than the composition of your armies. To this end, Timegate introduces the idea of zoning (not that it's a new idea to strategy buffs, of course. In the case of Kohan, we have 4 major zones, with the first and most important being the Zone of Supply. From every settlement and outpost, there radiates a Zone of Supply, where damaged companies may regain and rebuild themselves after battle. Park a company in a nearby Zone of Supply, and fresh recruits will come from all over to restore it back to fighting form. Of course, you can't resupply when locked in battle, no matter how deep in a friendly Zone of Supply you are - you'll still have to stage a retreat if you want to recover. Smart generals engaging within their own Zones of Supply will stage "rolling" sorties, retreating tired armies with low morale and bringing refreshed troops up to the front line. This is a very effective defense, as per the military truism that troops always fight better on home turf. Build outposts to extend your ZoS and make sure you have somewhere to retreat to, or face a morale-breaking scramble that'll guarantee a slow and painful death when the hammer falls. Besides the Zone of Supply, there's also the Zone of Population, which dictates where you may build. Each settlement (but not outposts) radiates one, like a ZoS, indicating the area whose resources are owned and consumed by said settlement. The Zone of Defense is the perimeter where intrusions will be detected and intercepted by the local militia. A Zone of Control, on the other hand, is radiated by each company; when two opposing ZoC's intersect, battle starts. Know your range of supply to ensure strong morale and healthy troops. Know your range of population to plan your settlements and maximize your control of the available terrain. Know your defensive ranges, laying down fortifications and outposts to make sieges as painful to your foes as possible. Know the size of your forces to engage in precise strategic maneuvers. This, too, is strategy.

Abstraction #3: Defense is NOT optional. Every city and outpost maintains a standing militia that kicks into gear whenever their Zone of Defense is breached by enemy troops. These stout men and women are not under your direct control, and are built automatically whenever a settlement is built/upgraded, or an outpost is established. Smart positioning of outposts is absolutely crucial to success against good players, and should also play a significant role in your offensive strategy not ONLY to extend your ZoS, but also for a few extra troops should the enemy get too close to nearby stationed armies. Besides the militia, camped armies gradually entrench, getting higher defensive bonuses the longer they remain there. The further ahead you can anticipate your enemies and prepare, the harder it will be to defeat you. As the famous general Sun Tzu would've said, if he'd played Kohan, "Duh!" In Kohan, moreso than ANY other RTS, the success of your defense is initimately tied to the amount of attention you pay to it. And keep an eye on the terrain! Forests are hell on archers, but provide a great defensive bonus for fortified troops. When attacking, remember that terrain is part of your foe's defense, and pick your approach - unless the sight of your Grenadiers routed by a few Footmen sounds entertaining. The worst units can stave off the best for quite a while if they know the lay of the land. Again, this is strategy.

Abstraction #4: Marching is hard work, and rushing isn't really such a good idea. Harder marches require different formations, and they tire your troops. To reflect this idea, Kohan gives you four marching options for your companies and regiments. The first is the Pressed March, which drives your troops at top speed in an irregular formation. You won't use this march often, thanks to its huge morale and combat penalties, but if you need to get cavalry to a beleaguered city, pronto, it'll suffice. The second is a Column March, which puts everyone in a straight column, and is especially useful for keeping companies togther in a regiment. It's fast, and doesn't really hurt morale, but its inflexibility will penalize your combat readiness. The Skirmish March gets no movement bonus, but the combat effectivity is high, and works great for battle on the open field. The last march, the Combat March, is a huge cloud of troops in loose formation, providing great morale and combat effectivity but a movement speed slower than molasses. Believe it or not, choosing the proper march can make all the difference - a column in a forest will be dead meat, but in a mountain pass, it's more effective than even a Combat March - the troops may be weaker, but they'll be better coordinated, in many cases. Strategy, sir? I think so!

To most turn-based strat junkies, this is all old hat. However, when taken into real-time, it's a revelation: Hey! It's not all about optimal build paths and orgies of precision clicking anymore, Ma! And best of all, you get a healthy chunk of the urgency and play fluidity that the best real-time games offer, netting you both excitement AND that vital sense of control. Congraturations! A winner is you! All of this facilitated by one of the slickest and most well-executed interfaces I have ever seen in this genre.

Whoever designed the interface at Timegate deserves not only a raise, but a new Ferrari, to boot. This interface is now my personal benchmark for convenience, efficiency, and overall intelligent design when it comes to the RTS genre. Information panels are always clear, and never obstruct the action. All of the significant options are never more than one level deep, and are clearly marked with bright, easily distinguished icons and graphics. Major actions have multiple methods of approach through the interface, depending on what task you are doing, minimizing the overhead incurred from UI management and letting you focus on the actual game. Building a company is a dream - quickly drag-and-drop the little units from clearly marked lists, and voila! You have an army. The manual, in this case, is almost irrelevant - you can easily figure out all of the major behaviors and most of the minor ones in a matter of minutes. Shigeru Miyamoto would be proud.

Of course, at this point, we have to admit that there's more to games than just the engine, and that a few of you want to know about the wrapping the clever mechanics comes packaged in.

The graphics are eye-pleasing, by and large, and the game has a very clean sense of aesthetics. The resolution is locked down at 1024x768 @ 16-bit color, so you'd better have at least a 4 Meg video card in the ol' beige box. I'm running a souped up Athlon 1.1 with an OC'ed FSB and 512 Megabytes of RAM, and, as expected, I've never hit a hitch. On my other machine, A Celeron 366 with 64 megs of RAM and a Voodoo Banshee, the game was likewise smooth, shuffling massive regiments amount with no significant scroll lag.

Not that the game is doing anything eye-popping (outside of looking clean and clear); you won't find any volumetric shadows or multi-texturing or whatever the kids are clamoring for in their FPS titles these days. The art itself is good, although the units can be a little hard to differentiate at such a high resolution, given their small size. The portrait art for heroes and units is well-drawn, and looks good at the chosen resolution. The maps are a little plain, visually, and the game's static pieces are only remarkable for their lack of splash and imagination. They're pleasingly functional, but that's it; there's not a lot of personality along the lines of a Starcraft or a Sacrifice. Admittedly, the game is selling itself on strategy and its real-time abstractions of previously turn-based features, but a few distinguishing touches wouldn't hurt, right?

Animation and spell effects are nice, and the game in action, especially when armies clash, can be impressive. One online Armageddon matchup featured over 40 player companies against an equally large number of AI ones, and the end result was a jaw-dropping scene of carnage. You don't get that with turn-based games, folks. Best of all, the game never stuttered or slowed down - the gruesome slaughter was as smooth and orchestrated, visually, as anyone could ask for. Timegate spent their money where it matters, in this case.

Sound - ah, here we start to see a few chinks in the armor. The background music is decent martial fare in the vein of Wardraft 2, but it quickly becomes repetitive and is soon turned off. The big problem, though, is the response voices: each hero has but two or so lines, and they speak them EVERY time you move their company. So turn 'em off, you say: well, until the promised patch is released, you CAN'T. It's amazing that in a game is otherwise brilliantly conceived and executed, an obvious problem such as this is overlooked. Come on, Timegate. No excuses, here. The voice acting for mission briefing and events ranges from decent (Roxanna, Darius) to fairly weak (Drauga leaders). Not a big detraction, mind you, but it sticks out like a sore thumb when the rest of the game seems so refined and polished. As Blizzard effectively demonstrated, never, EVER discount sound when trying to establish a "personality" for your game.

The online component is very stable, and I had one disconnect in all of the thirty or so Internet matchups I've played. Public internet games are facilitated though the built-in Gamespy client. Hosting a game is incredibly easy, and the game has a simple but effective lobby chat. There's no significant overhead whatsoever in starting and playing an online game, and lemme tell you, that makes all the difference. Deathmatching is a blast, but the best time is the co-op Armageddon scenario, which pits six players against a massive AI force. It's complete mayhem, with cities and gold being traded to support flagging players fielding massive armies, often culminating in forty or more armies being assembled for a monstrous northern push. The final showdown against the enemy's capital is always spectacular.

When you tire of the sole campaign, and don't feel like playing with the other kids in the on-line sandbox, there's a host of skirmish modes and maps for your play. A random map generator is one of them, and, believe it or not, it actually generates pretty playable maps. It always seems to place starting cities in "safe" locations, nestled in corners or mountains. The AI is pretty good, although I've seen a few exploitable flaws. It often spends more time and resources on settling, and fields more engineering companies than high-grade armies. Even on Hard, it rarely gets many powerful armies afield, although it does a good job in defending key cities. When it DOES attack, it uses fairly unorthodox tactics (for an AI): I've seen pincer attacks that use the fog of war effectively, and I've seen rolling defenses on the very perimeter of supply zones. Really, if it fielded large regiments more often and made better choices when targetting cities (it spends more time attacking perimeter settlements and "bait" outposts than major cities) instead of splitting them up for isolated skirmishes, it'd be quite a bit more difficult.

Still, despite all of the glowing praise I've heaped upon Kohan, there are some issues that need to be raised. First of all, the main campaign: the adjectives "short" and "uninspired" come to mind. I blew through the solo campaign on the "Normal" setting in under 15 hours, and many missions provided very little in the way of a challenge. I'd like a little more meat, please; I don't always want to play generic skirmishes, and I do appreciate a healthy chunk of story. Hopefully, intriguing campaigns and new heroes will be provided in the future.

Second, and this is a total nitpick, many co-op scenarios don't let you use heroes under their pre-set rules. Come on, the heroes *are* the Kohan, and reviving a medal to see who your hero is gonna be provides a flash of Christmas-morning glee - well, until you get Moggok instead of Leila Javidan. Also, I'd like to see more heroes in general, just for the variety.

Third, a little more distinction among the factions in terms of units is always welcome, even if it's purely visual. Outside of unique building structures and economic bonuses/penalties, I don't really feel like I'm the Royalists, say, instead of the Nationalists. It's all Grenadiers and Archers to me. That said, being able to use the units of captured neutral cities is a nice touch.

Lastly, the manual is total crap. Now, I know I've mentioned that the interface is so well-conceived that the manual isn't necessary, but that's no excuse - a good manual for a good game gives me some great post-dinner rumination material. In a strategic game, a manual should at LEAST provide well-organized content, especially in the form of tables and statistics. The Kohan manual does but the bare minimum in this regard. I don't WANT to be forced into purchasing the strategy guide just to get a list of technological bonuses or hero specialties, alright?

The best games are those that take a simple, elegant interface and let the player uncover technique as he/she gains experience. Like Virtua Fighter 2, Kohan appears simple at first - it doesn't deluge you with ten trillion unit types or scads of features. But as you learn to use each of these features in the many, many contexts this game provides, depth opens up in ways that'll amaze you. The Zones mentioned above seem simple - but what you can do with them if you use strategy is incredibly complex and - dare I say it - realistic. Kohan is a very smart, very polished title that lures the user in with elegance and absorbs them with possibility. While there remain a few rough spots in Kohan's overall execution, there's no doubt in my mind that this game is second only to Europa Universalis in taking the genre away from click-happy exercises in tactical babysitting and placing it in the playpen of intelligent STRATEGY. It's not gonna win over the Red Alert crowd and their fetish for explosive action, but for those of us who wanted to use more of our brains and less of our motor skills, Kohan is a godsend.

Overall: With the one-two punch of Europa Universalis and Kohan, Strategy First has effectively put the "Strategy" in "Real-Time Strategy". Kohan rethinks many of the genre conventions to create a slower-paced, more cerebral title that de-emphasizes unit micromanagement and rewards sound strategic planning, without sacrificing the efficient interface design that makes the genre so accessible. If you're willing to look outside of the Warcraft mold for something that's a little different, you'll find Kohan: Immortal Soverigns to be one of the most refreshing takes on a stagnant genre to date.