The following are my top two flaws of the Kohan series. While I don’t know exactly what happened to Timegate, I also suspect that the fact they were not fixed by the time KoW was released is a significant reason Timegate is no longer in business today.

#2: A greatly appreciated feature which distinguished the Kohan series from other RTS games was the random map generator. However, components in settlements were so effective regardless of location that they largely insulated the economic aspects of the game from the random map. To overcome this, they could have made the mines a lot more effective, and components a lot less effective. Alternatively, they could have made the map more like a Civilization map, so that the resource icons near a settlement are the resources that settlement gets, period (implemented well enough, they could also have used this to give players sufficient reasons to place settlements non-equidistantly from each other, instead of forcing players to do so by having only predetermined, random settlement locations, which would have reduced a lot of complaining about Kings of War as well).

#1: Perhaps the most touted distinction of the Kohan series was that it reduced micromanagement compared to other RTS games. While this can be considered largely true for single-player, for multi-player, it actually increased micromanagement, because there was always someone willing to increase the risk of getting carpal tunnel syndrome by constantly moving and clicking between the map and the retreat button (or using the hotkey) so they could individually retreat their companies into enemy ZOC tiles during combat, basically using the retreat command to maneuver freely within the combat zone, and to great effect. A simple fix to this, one which would have made the retreat command more what players rightly would have expected it to be in the first place, would have been to make retreat possible only into a friendly ZOS tile which both did not contain an enemy ZOC, and was not under siege (and maybe keeping a delay of some kind between retreat commands to the same company).

The Kohan franchise was my favorite of all-time regardless of genre. My favorite iteration was Kohan 2: KoW. Therefore you can say (and it is true) that K2 was my all-time favorite game. Just a little background so you know where I am coming from with this post.

I don't think it was the Kohan series that killed TimeGate; it has gone out of business. I think it was the coming not being happy enough with the profits RTS game can generate so it decided to go into FPS games. That didn't work out the way they wanted and that cost the company.

Your first point about mines I am neutral about. I think mines worked well enough as designed and implemented. They helped a lot to offset company upkeep and they were vulnerable to raiding if discovered. A Iron Mine or Wood mine could easily pay for a front-line of Archers or Anvils, either allowing you to produce a crucial extra company or produce more gold income whether through Exporting or a Market.

Your second point I don't agree with. Why? Because to do what you say heavily penalizes that company with a severe and rapid loss of moral and combat efficiency. If you go around retreating a lot (not just once) when you do engage in combat your troops are very likely to route quickly or they will take a beating since their combat "power" will have to increase back up to 100%. These were designed into the game to punish that play from Kohan 1 (KIS/KAG) and the penalty was increased in a patch.

This is why I felt Kohan 2 was superior to Kohan 1, especially when you consider the work the community did on the random map generator seed, the AI, and awesome Race/Faction aspects.

I enjoy both Kohans greatly, considerably more more than any other RTS game, and enjoy them about the same. However, the original won many awards, while KoW won none, and KoW seemed less popular with fans of the series as well. The phenomenal success of the WarCraft III line at the time of KoW's release further suggests that RTS still had plenty of market. So I always assumed that Timegate switched to FPS because they shut themselves out of RTS with the release of KoW.

My experience with multi-player was that, if you had expensive, very vulnerable support, and your opponent did not, then it was worthwhile to your opponent to retreat into that support. Then you either rapidly lost your support, or retreated a bit; the best option for you was to retreat a bit. Then both players enter a chain reaction of micro-retreats, with both companies losing combat value.

i personally like kohan 2