Siap Order !!!! Total Annihilation Kingdoms - 1 DVD
Story
The story involves four sibling monarchs in their struggle to dominate the land of Darien : Elsin of Aramon, Kirenna of Veruna, Thirsha of Zhon and Lokken of Taros, following the disappearance of their father, Garacaius.
A more detailed story and world was presented in Total Annihilation: Kingdoms than was in Total Annihilation. The missions coincided with the storyline that was presented. In one example, a cutscene describes that the side of Aramon obtains the use of gunpowder. In that mission, the player plays the side of Aramon where using a gunpowder-based unit is critical towards the success of that mission. The game booklet and a detailed HTML atlas of Darien also added further background information to the storyline.
Complexity
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms reduced the number of resource types from the two found in Total Annihilation (Metal and Energy) to one: Mana or magical energy.
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms also opted for fewer units than its predecessor. This was due, in part, to the added complexity of the models, animation and textures required for living creatures (versus the robots and machines of Total Annihilation), but also to allow the development team more opportunity to add unique, meaningful units over time. This may or may not have succeeded, since the smaller unit count was immediately seen as a drawback and the game itself did not remain popular long enough to see the creation of many additional units by Cavedog.
Units and sides
Where Total Annihilation had largely parallel technology trees between two similar sides, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms tried a more diversified approach. The sides were made to greatly vary from one another. The side of Aramon, had many "traditional" ground units such as knights, but also had a large number of heavily fortified buildings and defensive structures. Aramon weakness was that they had hardly any sea or air units. Veruna, on the other hand, had many sea units and several mobile siege engines. The side of Zhon (represented by animal-like beasts) has no structures at all (other than resource generation and one defensive structure), as all units were built by others, leading to huge armies that were constantly moving. Taros, a stereotypical "evil" race, had a number of powerful magical units that required a lot of micromanagement to use properly. The fifth race, Creon (added in the expansion pack The Iron Plague) had aspects of all the other races, but in particular had very destructive but overall delicate structures. Creon also had the most powerful unit in the game, the ghost of Garacaius, but such a unit took so long to build that it was rarely seen in the game.
Interface
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms did feature a number of refinements and improvements with its interface design. The design ethic and innovations started with Total Annihilation were expanded, including infinite production queues, non-linear/interruptible queues and a fully playable mini-map mode. Squad designations for groups of units was easier and more intuitive than it was in TA. TA:Kingdoms also allowed players to see translucent images of all unbuilt structures in a build queue.
Campaign trails
The idea of a campaign sequence for each side was eliminated in favor of a single linear path that alternates between the four sides: Aramon, Taros, Veruna and Zhon. This allowed the developers to put all of their effort into a single narrative and its associated artwork.
