Since the enemy usually starts to run away when you turn to shoot, it means you have to turn back around, stop, turn to shoot, turn back around, and continue the 's a bit silly, really. You can also use boats, if you want to try that out, but sea battles can often be a one-way route to frustration apparently the captains of my ships are a little dim, because they have to turn around to move, and turn back around to fire their cannons. You can align your men into different formations to give them some order and strategy, and selecting the right formation can be the winning or losing decision in a battle. Your troops are generally pretty weak, unless in numbers, or have some kind of advantage over your foe. It's handy and innovative, and keeps things flowing nicely.īattles will be ferocious and difficult, for a number of reasons. You can trade as much as you want, whenever you want, as long as you have a market available. A handy little building called the market allows you to trade items you have for items you need. Or maybe the enemy came and destroyed your mine, and there's no way to get it back without a massacre occurring there. Planning is essential in Cossacks.Īnd then there will be times when you can't get to a certain area to mine a certain resource, but you're bringing in excessive amounts of another. There's nothing more frustrating than using up all your resources, and then only being able to store a small amount that you could spend quickly. And once you have a way to collect the stuff, you'll need some storehouses to keep it all in stock. Then you'll need peasants to collect the material - it's a good thing peasants are inexpensive, because they're very important. You'll have to set up a mine for each of the resources - except, of course, for wood, which is cut from the forests. Wood, stone, iron, gold, and coal can all be collected and used for different things.
Resource management is pretty neat in Cossacks. There's even a large selection of boats, ranging from yachts, to ferries, to frigates. Also here is a more than sufficient variety of units: peasants, pikemen, officers, grenadiers, dragoons, and swordsmen, to name a few. There are tons of buildings, each rather useful: stables, storehouses, churches, mills, markets, towers, barracks, shipyards, and more. It plays out like your standard real-time-strategy game, with the need to build structures, mine resources, produce infantry and peasants, and of course, battle. I took a huge sigh of relief when I found Cossacks to be, in fact, a rather fun game. Any way you look at it, there's a lot to do, and if you dig Cossacks, you're gonna be busy for a very long time. There's even a program included that allows you to create your own missions. The game offers a variety of play modes, including a range of campaigns, some nifty tutorials, over a hundred single missions, a random map feature, and a multiplayer mode for use on the internet.
COSSACKS EUROPEAN WARS REVIEW INSTALL
It's certainly better than paying for each title separately, and since they're all compiled into one disc, it's quite convenient to install and play. So, basically, you get all the Cossacks titles available in a nice little standalone package. Actually, Cossacks: Back to War is a compilation of the original Cossacks and it's two expansions: Cossacks: European Wars, and Cossacks: The Art of War.
They've certainly taken the Fun-Over-Realism approach, which is a great idea in my book.Ĭossacks takes place in the time of the Renaissance, with troops on horses, men with guns, cannons, stone walls, creaky old boats, and dozens of peasants tending the crops, among other things. Thankfully, the folks behind Cossacks seemed to realize this. Unfortunately, there are a lot of games that will bore the player to death while trying to advance through a timeline of events. Then we begin to wonder if they've sacrificed fun for realism. We begin to wonder how accurate the game is, and more importantly, how much fun it is. Historical strategy games are a type of game that's often bothered gamers.