How to Play TA: Kingdoms Today

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms and its expansion, The Iron Plague, are still sold, in one pack on GOG. Cavedog's original online service is gone, but Core Prime has rebuilt it.

Where to Buy It

GOG sells Total Annihilation: Kingdoms and The Iron Plague together, without copy protection (DRM). GOG first added the pack on 24 February 2011. The pack also has extras: the manual, the soundtrack, a reference card and a map. GOG lists Windows as the supported system.

Steam sells the original Total Annihilation, but not Kingdoms. Core Prime's Get the Game page links to the stores for both games.

What the GOG Release Includes

The GOG install has the game and The Iron Plague campaign, so you can play all 5 houses. It also includes:

  • Cartographer, the map and scenario editor that came with the game in 1999;
  • Choose Renderer, which picks the graphics mode: software, Direct3D or Glide;
  • nGlide, a tool that lets the Glide mode run without a 3dfx graphics card, by turning its drawing into Direct3D;
  • the patch notes for versions 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0, in v4readme.txt.

The readme of the time says that some 3D cards can make Kingdoms slower, because the game draws thousands of very small shapes. If the game runs slowly in one mode, try another in Choose Renderer.

Playing Online

Kingdoms was built to play online through Boneyards, Cavedog's free service for matchmaking, chat, ladders and the Darien Crusades. Cavedog's own servers have shut down.

Core Prime is a rebuilt Boneyards service, and it supports Kingdoms. You register for an account at coreprime.net. To find out how to connect your copy of the game, or to find other players, see coreprime.net or join the Core Prime Discord.

The game's own multiplayer screen also offers direct games. You can host a game, join one from the list, or find a host by its IP address. The original readme gives a limit of 8 players on a local network and 4 over the internet.

Open Annihilation

Open Annihilation is Core Prime's free, open-source engine. It plays the original Total Annihilation on modern systems from your own copy of the game. Support for Kingdoms and The Iron Plague is on its roadmap, but it does not play Kingdoms yet.

Sources