An officer and drummer keep troops in order. Once you start a match, you'll get to form alliances and trade resources with computer-controlled nations.
You'll have many other options too, like starting with peasants from multiple nations, which will in turn let you create an "international" force of sorts, composed of buildings and units from different nationalities. A replay feature will let you watch your battles again when the session is over. This will offer a host of configuration options such as land formations (like peninsulas or islands), predominant terrain (like desert or highlands), computer-controlled player difficulty, team orientations, and more. The most important new units will be the six or seven added warships, like Admiral Nelson's massive 100-cannon flagship or the French "Flora" frigate.Įach time you set up a new game, you'll have a wealth of options at your disposal, particularly with the random map skirmish mode. You'll also enjoy new units added to the already extensive mix, including the Bavarian 18th-century musketeer and the Prussian hussar. Maps will now be up to 16 times larger than before, for instance. With the expansion pack, the game's scope will become even larger. The original Cossacks was known for its large scope, with hundreds and hundreds of troops fighting and peasants toiling. Perhaps more than the new campaigns, missions, and nations, it's the new gameplay options in The Art of War that should make it appealing. New Ways to Play Game sessions offer numerous new setup options. You'll get to play out parts of the battles of Dunbar and Marston Moor from the English Civil War, the battles of Mook and Newport from the Dutch War of Independence, the battles of Wittstock and Breitenfeld from the Thirty Years War, and others. These interesting clashes are varied both geographically and temporally. In addition to the single-player campaigns and missions, The Art of War will offer a new multiplayer mode called "territory capture," online player rankings, and six new multiplayer historical battles. For both the campaigns and missions, you'll get to choose from four difficulty levels. You'll get to play out parts of the Thirty Years War, lead a group of North African pirates to glory (or infamy), and take the role of a 17th-century Polish knight defending his homeland from greedy neighboring states and internal strife. These large-scale campaigns will focus on a diverse group of nations: Algeria, Austria, Poland, Prussia, and Saxony. You'll also get five new single-player campaigns with around five missions each. Try your generalship in new historical battle scenarios. For instance, the Swedes, Russians, and Poles will wage war for the resources of the Baltic states, while the Ukrainians will fight off Turkish oppressors. You'll get six new single missions that will pit varied forces against one another. The game let you revisit conflicts you usually only read about in college history textbooks, such as the Thirty Years War and the War of the Austrian Succession.Ĭossacks: The Art of War will again bring European history alive, this time adding Denmark and Bavaria to the mix of nationalities at your disposal. You got to control obscure military units such as Xebecs, Serdiuks, and Spakhs from 16 nations such as Algeria, Saxony, and Portugal. Here, though, it was history that relatively few gamers in America, at least, were likely to know much about. Like other RTS games before it, Cossacks drew inspiration from history. Where Cossacks stood out was in its relatively obscure subject matter. The visual style, interface, certain unit functions, and a lot of the core gameplay of Cossacks felt very familiar to anyone who'd spent time with the Age of Empires series, though the armies in Cossacks were generally much larger. Cossacks was also familiar in the way it borrowed a lot from the winning formula of the Age of Empires games.
From your buildings, you'd generate and upgrade masses of new units for conquering your enemy. Cossacks' familiarity surfaced in its very traditional RTS formula: Peasants tilled the land, mined gold or iron, and erected new buildings. The original Cossacks offered both the unexpected and the familiar. Along with Bavaria, Denmark is one of the new nations you'll control.
Cossacks: The Art of War promises to offer plenty of new material, as well as improvements to the core gameplay. Cossacks received mixed reviews but generated enough popularity to warrant a full-blown expansion pack from its creator, Ukrainian developer GSC Game World. Released in the spring of this year, Cossacks: European Wars was a real-time strategy game that featured traditional RTS gameplay in an unusual setting: Europe in the 16th through 18th centuries.