Just three or four defensive towers will crush any enemy assault utterly, making the game unbelievably unbalanced and the battles exhausting and drawn out. The defensive structures in TA: Kingdoms are, to put it simply, ridiculously powerful.
This would have been fine, except for the defenses. Most units are melee, with only a few archery and mage units backing them up. TA: Kingdoms was a massive departure from the RTS mainstream, in that its focus is on melee combat, in a magical, medieval setting, rather than a science-fiction setting with firearms combat.
TA: Kingdoms was a massive commercial flop, most people see it as a big contributing factor in the death of Cavedog, which folded soon after releasing the expansion pack for this game. After the surprise success of Total Annihilation, it was hard to see how Cavedog would manage a successful follow-up.
