In addition to the standard gold, wood and stone resources, iron and coal must also be obtained. Provided a small number of peasants you must construct basic buildings, mine resources and provide sustenance by growing crops ¿ there are no sheep or wild boar to hunt. The initial gameplay, as mentioned earlier, is remarkably similar to AOE. The campaigns, while interesting, are sort of tedious and not nearly as much fun as the random map mode. A highly configurable random map generator allows you to select from 2 to 7 countries in free-form gameplay. There are also ten "what if" stand-alone scenarios. Each campaign is comprised of scripted scenarios, which are objective-based and told in a text-narrative fashion. There are 4 comprehensive campaigns, including a retelling of the thirty-years war that embroiled much of Europe from 1618 to 1648. Every nation has several unique units ¿ none are particularly overwhelming, but they do provide some good variety.Ĭossacks has a number of single and multiplayer game modes. However, the differences in the Cossacks nations are primarily aesthetic each bears a distinctive architecture (as opposed to the 4 primary styles of AOE), some are very visually impressive. Though just a personal preference, this is a much more interesting set of countries than those of the AOE series I can't remember the last time I met someone whose family heritage was Byzantine or Phoenician ¿ course, maybe I just wasn't asking the right questions. There are 16 nations present in Cossacks: Austria, Algeria, England, France, Netherlands, Piemonte, Portugal, Prussia, Poland, Russia, Saxony, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine and Venice.
The abridged timeline doesn't seem to have affected the technology upgrades however, which number more than 300 military and civilian varieties. Cossacks provides powerful line, column and box formations led by officer units, which provide considerable defensive benefits when combined with a "hold ground" command. This was a time of firearms and massive unit formations where tactics and posturing ruled the battlefield, rather than disorganized infantry rushes. In contrast to AOE, Cossacks models a much smaller slice of history, specifically that of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. But, and there's always a "but", a number of poor design decisions detract from the playability of the single player modes. But closer inspection of the units, their upgrades, the undulating terrain and the overall scale of the gameplay reveal a game of impressive depth and interesting potential. At first glance the graphics and early gameplay fully support that assertion. A host of online and print previews have generally dismissed Cossacks a derivative knock-off of the Ensemble Studios real-time strategy classic.
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