Your First Game of TA: Kingdoms

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms has only one resource, mana, so the economy is simpler than in Total Annihilation. Most first games are lost because mana sites stay empty, because the monarch waits with nothing to build, or because the army walks into the enemy a few units at a time.

The times on this page are at normal game speed, and the costs and build times come from the game data. The example house is Aramon, as in the manual. The last section shows what changes for the other houses. The quick-reference card puts the keys and the main figures on one or two pages that you can print.

Set Up a Practice Game

From the main menu, choose Play the Machine and add one computer opponent. Pick a small map for two players from the multiplayer maps. Each map's page marks its mana sites.

Look at three settings before you start:

• Fog of War: with it on, you only see enemy units and mana sites that your own units can see. You have to explore to find the sites.
• Monarch Expendable: this decides whether losing your monarch ends the game for you.
• Map Revealed: shows the whole map from the start. It makes a first game easier, because you can see every mana site.

As in Total Annihilation, there are two mouse layouts. In the left-click layout, the left button selects units and gives orders. In the right-click layout, the right button gives orders. You choose one in the Options menu, under Interface, and the controls page explains both.

The First Two Minutes

You start with your monarch and 5000 mana, which fills the monarch's own storage. Elsin has a build power of 10, like almost every builder in the game. The time a job takes is its build time divided by the build power of everyone working on it.

The monarch earns 10 mana per second. Each Lodestone on a mana site adds 10, 15 or 20, depending on the site, so your income comes from Lodestones. The first goal is a structure that trains builders, then a Lodestone on every site you can reach.

A mana site is a small round patch with glowing stars and standing stones around it. The game lets you place a Lodestone only on top of one. In the game files, each site has a rating of 1.0, 1.5 or 2.0, and a Lodestone earns 10 mana per second times that rating. Even on a 1.0 site, a Lodestone pays back its 280 mana in 28 seconds. It also raises your storage by 1000.

The mana ball in the lower-right corner shows your store. The number on its left is the mana coming in each second, and the number on its right is the mana going out.

Minutes 2 to 5: Grow Your Income

Keep the Barracks training. Archers and Swordsmen make a good first army:

A Barracks that trains without a break spends about 26 to 29 mana per second on foot soldiers. That is about two Lodestones on 1.5 sites. Once you have five or six Lodestones, your income is higher than one Barracks can spend, so build a second one. To make a structure train one kind of unit without end, Ctrl-click that unit. "+++" appears on its button, and a right-click on the button stops it.

Builders that work together finish sooner. To help, select a builder and click on the structure that is being built, or give it a Guard order on another builder. The manual notes that a guarding builder helps only with jobs it could build itself, so click a builder directly onto anything else. With Elsin and a Mage Builder on a Barracks, it takes 30 seconds instead of 60. The total cost is the same, but it is spent twice as fast.

Around the fifth minute, when your income is well above your spending, have a Mage Builder start the Keep. It costs 9204 mana and trains the next level of units, including the Acolyte, who builds the Divine Lodestone. One Mage Builder alone needs 152 seconds for the Keep. With a second Mage Builder and Elsin helping, it takes about 51.

How Mana Runs Short or Overflows

When you spend faster than you earn and your store runs out, everything you build or train slows down by the same amount. Nothing stops completely, but everything takes longer. If your income is half of what your builders want, they all work at half speed. The manual's advice is to keep your mana well above zero.

The opposite problem is just as common. Your storage is the total of the storage of everything you own: 5000 for the monarch, 1000 for each Lodestone and 100 to 300 for each builder or training structure. Mana that comes in when the store is full is lost. If the mana ball stays full, train more units, build another training structure or start the next tier.

Unlike Total Annihilation, Kingdoms gives nothing for reclaiming. Wrecks, trees and rocks hold no mana. The economy page works through the numbers.

Scouting and Defence

Send the Spyhawk out as soon as it is ready. It flies, so it crosses any ground, but it has only 20 hit points and no weapon. With fog of war on, it also finds the mana sites you have not seen yet. Every house has a flying scout like it.

Hills matter. The manual notes that a unit on a hill sees further, and that ranged units on a hill also shoot further. Put your archers and towers on high ground where you can.

Defend your Lodestones first, because they are what the enemy will try to destroy. A Lodestone has 5680 hit points. Losing one cuts your income and your storage. The Watch Tower shoots arrows from two weapons with a range of 500, but it costs 2751 mana, so build it where attacks actually come from. A few soldiers set to guard a group of Lodestones are often a better use of mana. Walls are cheap at 75 mana a section. To build a line of wall, click to place the first section, keep the button down, hold Shift and drag.

Your First Attack

Somewhere between the sixth and the tenth minute, gather 10 to 15 units: Swordsmen in front, Archers behind them and two or three Catapults. Select them and press Ctrl+1 to make them squad 1. In Kingdoms, pressing 1 alone selects the squad again.

Catapults are for structures. A Catapult does 1250 damage per shot and has a range of 750, so it can hit a Watch Tower (range 500) from outside the tower's reach. It cannot fire at flying units. The manual points out that some targets can only be attacked by certain units: if the attack cursor does not appear over a target, the selected units cannot attack it.

Move the army together, then attack one target at a time. To attack everything in an area, press A and drag a box around the targets. Go for the enemy's Lodestones: each one you destroy lowers both their income and their storage.

Use Elsin's spells, but keep him out of the front line. His Lightning costs no personal mana, and his Meteor costs 200. His Earthen Wave costs 900 of his 1000 personal mana, and at 20 points per second it takes 45 seconds to refill. The spell buttons run from the weakest and cheapest on the left to the strongest on the right.

To send new units straight to the front, select the Barracks, click Move and click on the map. Every unit that leaves the Barracks walks to that point.

Essential Keys and Mouse

Players coming from Total Annihilation should note one change: the number keys alone select squads, and Alt with a number makes a formation. The controls page lists every key.

Common Mistakes

Empty Mana Sites

Every site without a Lodestone is income you do not have. Put Lodestones on all the sites near your base in the first few minutes, and send a builder to claim the rest.

The Monarch Has Nothing to Do

At the start, the monarch is one of your only builders. Queue its next jobs with Shift so that it never stands idle, and use Ctrl+M to find it.

The Monarch at the Front

The monarch's spells are strong, but in many games losing the monarch means losing the game. Thirsha is the most at risk: she has 9244 hit points, against 16,000 for Elsin and Lokken. Keep the monarch behind the army.

A Full Mana Ball

When your store is full, the mana coming in is lost. Spend it on another training structure, more units or the next tier.

An Empty Mana Ball

When the store is empty, everything slows down together. If your spending is always higher than your income, train fewer units at once or build more Lodestones first.

Builders That Work Alone

A Keep built by one builder takes 152 seconds. Give your builders Guard orders on each other, or click them onto the same job, so that big jobs finish in time to matter.

Siege Work Without Siege Units

Swordsmen are poor at destroying buildings: in the game data, their swords do much less damage to training structures and forts. Bring Catapults, which hit for 1250 a shot, and remember that they cannot fire at flying units.

Looking for Mana in Wrecks

In Total Annihilation, wrecks give metal. In Kingdoms they give nothing. Your only income is your monarch, your builders and training structures, and your Lodestones.

What Changes With Each House

Each house starts with its monarch and builds up in its own way. The times are for the monarch working alone.

Aramon is the house the manual teaches with. Its Barracks trains builders, foot soldiers, cavalry, Catapults and a scout, so one structure covers everything a first game needs.

Veruna fights from range. Its Enclave trains the Crossbowman, and Kirenna can also build the Sea Fort for ships. The Priestess builds and heals, so keep one near your army.

Taros has the cheapest fighting unit in the game, the Zombie at 156 mana, and the most magic. Lokken can build the Cabal, the Abyss and the Temple himself.

Zhon has no training structures at all. Thirsha summons the Beast Handler, a mobile builder that summons the units and also builds Lodestones. Protect it, because Thirsha cannot summon fighting units herself. Zhon's Lodestone is the most expensive, at 492 mana, but it has 15,680 hit points. Zhon builds no walls.

Creon comes with The Iron Plague. Its Mana Refinery works like a Lodestone, and nearly all of its fighting units have ranged weapons.

Where to Go Next

The Book of Darien starts with three Aramon missions and brings in the other houses one by one. The economy page explains mana, storage and build power in more detail. The build trees show what each builder can make, and the house pages describe how each house fights. The Build Planner times an opening before you play it, and the mechanics pages give the exact rules for mana, healing and veterancy.

Sources

• The Chronicles of Darien, the Total Annihilation: Kingdoms manual: How to Play, Working with Resources, the game options and the information bar.
• Game data from the GOG release: unit costs, build times, build power, hit points, weapons, build lists and mana sites, as shown on the unit pages and the map pages.
• Core Prime's analysis of the Kingdoms game engine: the starting mana, the Lodestone and site ratings, storage, overflow and how building slows when mana runs out.