Cossacks: European Wars

The Good
Cossacks is the sort of game that lasts you for years. I’ve owned it since its release, but you never see my CD collecting dust. ;)

The most striking feature about the game is its size. Cossacks is a big game. Literally hundreds of technologies, 16 nations (all of which have their own repertoire of unique units and a different artset each) and a unit limit of 8,000. Previously, 200 units was considered an army. Now, it is a scouting force.

Another factor is the game’s realism. While it hasn’t added the factor of morale yet, it mirrors warfare in the 17th and 18th centuries grimly. You can’t destroy any random building with any random unit, a là Age of Kings. You need artillery (or specialised demolition units) if you so much as want to dent enemy fortifications. If there aren't troops standing guard, buildings, peasants and artillery can be captured and used by the enemy. Splinters and flying shrapnel from destroyed buildings cause havoc. Your units consume food. If they aren’t fed, they starve. Some units cost gold. If they aren’t paid, they rebel. When musketmen and artillery fire, they use up ammunition. Even the smallest nuances of gameplay have realism laid on with a trowel. When you train a pikeman, he doesn’t just magically pop up outside the barracks. You actually see him strolling out the door, down the steps, and then standing by awaiting orders. It is most supremely cool.

Although they are light years away on the graphical spectrum, playing Cossacks is reminiscent of playing Warcraft. Games are fast and furious. There is every chance that the game will be over by the five minute mark (compared to Age of Kings, when combat before ten minutes into the game is virtually unheard of). Strategic maneuvers, controlling chokepoints, flanking enemy pikemen with cavalry, the list goes on. Games in the 17th century are hectic enough, but when everyone advances to the 18th century, it means warfare enters a whole new age. Pun intended.

Advancing to the 18th century is hideously expensive, but worth it. You get access to the 18th Century Barracks (an improved version of the standard barracks that allows you to train several powerful units), a veritable repertoire of cavalry units is unlocked. Also, you are able to research Montgolfier, a technology which reveals the entire map. Some nations don’t have access to the 18th century (Algeria, Ukraine and Turkey), but they are much more powerful in the early game.

One of the most interesting features is the capture ability. Undefended peasants and buildings can be captured by any military unit, but the nation they belong to isn’t assimilated into yours. For instance: if I’m Prussia and I capture a Venician peasant, that peasant remains a Venician peasant, and is able to build a Venician town hall, a Venician barracks, and from that barracks I can train Venician pikemen. Essentially, you can control multiple nations at once.

GSC did a good job balancing the different nations units. Each one feels unique, but is equally potent. Unlike in many RTSes, there are no counter units, no attack bonuses, no defense algorithims to complicate gameplay. This helps balance rather than hampers it, strangely. There are general counters (for instance, musketeers are usually effective against pikeman), but there are some units such as the Ukrainian Hetman that seem to have no counter at all. Fortunately, these units are extremely expensive, and you’re unlikely to see large numbers of them in an average game.

Graphically the game is similar to AoE. It looks attractive, but it presses no boundaries. The landscape is 3D, but all the units and objects are pre-rendered sprites. Each unit is comprised of 18 sprites at different angles, while ships are made up of 258 different sprites so that they can execute turns smoothly.

Not to be left out is the multiplayer aspect of Cossacks. Modem to modem games have been scrapped, but you can either play via LAN or Direct IP. The official game server for Cossacks is hosted by GameSpy, but it isn’t free. The program can be downloaded free of charge, but a subscription fee of $20 is required to play. That isn’t worth it, in my opinion, since GameSpy is prone to freezeups, disconnections and if you use a firewall it has a nasty habit of blocking you from the server. It’s so bad that it has earned the fond nickname of “GaySpy” from many disgruntled gamers. At least you aren’t bombarded by banner ads and popups like you are on Battle.net and the MSN Zone. ;)

The Bad
If you’re someone who has never touched an RTS before, a word to the wise: don’t start with Cossacks. It is difficult, it is challenging, it is complicated, it is in some parts frustrating, it requires split-second reflexes and fast clicking and has over 100 technologies avaliable to research at the academy alone. Two and two. The learning campaign that comes with the game is a joke, it confuses more than it helps.

In some places, GSC seems to have been trying to make the game as user-hostile and inaccessible as possible –- such as in the names of the units. Pretty much everyone who has studied warfare in the Napoleonic age has heard of stuff like hussars and mamelukes, but some names are so vague they absolutely confounded me. Who except a rampant history buff has heard of serdiuks, bashi-bozouks, and sich cossacks? This also hampers gameplay. In Age of Kings, it was fairly obvious to anyone with a brain that spearmen are strong against cavalry, and that battering rams are good against fortifications. But in Cossacks, it isn’t nearly so obvious that roundshiers are strong against dragoons, and that xebecs kill galleasses.

The interface wasn’t designed well. There are barely any hotkeys, so you’ll need to do a lot more clicking than in interim RTSes. Unit control is also difficult…moreso since many units have multiple ways to attack. For instance: the grenadier unit has three attacks: he can shoot with his musket, stab with his bayonet, and throw grenades. It would have been good if you could just select “use musket”, or “use bayonet”, or “use grenades”, but you can’t. He automatically uses the weapon that he thinks is most appropriate – which usually isn’t appropriate at all. Often my grenadiers would charge the enemy with bayonets instead of firing with the much stronger muskets at a distance.

In the event that your troops ignore your orders and decide to take the course of the battle into their own incompetent hands (which they often do), good luck trying to recall them. Once they’re fighting the enemy, they don’t like having to retreat. You usually have to click several times before they obey your orders and disengage.

The game’s most lauded feature is its ability to handle 8,000 units per player on the map at any one time…at least in theory. In reality, in a standard game you will usually only ever make 1500-3000 units, possibly more if the game goes on for a while. The population limit is 8,000, but need housing space if you want to build so much as a single unit.

Each town hall that you build will provide you with either 50, 75, or 100 population, depending on your nation (and since some units in Cossacks train almost instantly, that really isn’t a lot). Since the cost of buildings increases the more of them you build, you can only afford about 5 or 6 town halls altogether. Building a barracks also gives you about 125 housing space, but since they cost more you can only build about 4 or 5. So, at the very best you’ve got just over a thousand population spaces. Great. If you want to increase your population even more, you must start building houses. And that’s where the frustration sets in. Each house (actually called “dwelling”, but I’ll just use “house” for the sake of convienience) provides 15 population. You’ll need to build them by the dozens. And since there is no hotkey for them, you need to point and click to build each house [sic] by hand. They are also depressingly easy to destroy, and can be captured if you don’t have any troops stationed by them. “House raiding” is an annoying but effective tactic. The real limiting factor is that houses increase in cost as well. By the time you reach 4,000 population, each new house will cost tens of thousands wood and stone. Even in a game on the scale of Cossacks, this is crippling.

I stress again: if you want to actually create 8,000 units, you’d need the patience of a monk.

The audio side of Cossacks is somewhat spotty. Some of the more exotic soundtracks are actually quite catchy, but they were all recorded at very low bitrates, and are overlaid by a thin, crackly sound. The recording volume is also a bit patchy, some sound faint, some are deafening. And some soundtracks are an affront to the human ears, a few minutes of listening to a discordant mixture of skirling bagpipes and random drums was enough to drive me to muting my sound. The cannon blasts and musket shots could have come from any RTS, and the single scream that all of your men emit when they die becomes irritating after a while.

I largely disagree with Jacques Guy’s evaluation of the game, but I agree with one thing. Whoever designed the single-player campaigns deserves to be tied to a post, blindfolded, and then shot in the head with a high-calibre weapon.

They are more frustrating than difficult, and you need countless restarts to beat them. For instance: you need to get to base but you don’t know where base is. You follow the road, until there’s a fork. You take the left path, you run into an army of murderous enemies, and you die. You restart, take the right path, and soon you arrive at another fork. You take the right path, die again, take the left path, and soon arrive at another fork. Et cetera.

There are also a number of anachronisms, bloopers and logic holes. How come flaming arrows can so easily destroy a solid stone wall? How come artillery and firearms are so readily avaliable to the Algerians? Is there a reason as to why it takes archers three times as long to reload as it takes a musket? Since when did the Russians use oar-powered galleys?

Lastly, the Kiev-based GSC should consider hiring a spell-checker. The game’s long slabs of text are punctuated by frequent spelling and grammar mistakes. It is difficult to remain immersed in a game when you’ve got stuff like “your town hall have been destroyed” and “cost: 45 foods” appearing on screen. Some parts of the manual and online documentation haven’t been translated properly. No-one seems to know whether the nation Piedmont is actually called Piedmont, and not Piemont or even Peidmont. Yes, the game uses all of those spellings.

The Bottom Line
An absolute gem. If you have the slightest interest in the genre, get Cossacks.

The Good
Now this a chaotic game! If you think Age of Empires is a great game, this game makes it look like mud down the drain (though you may disagree after you read my review on the bad stuff of this game). If your looking for a never-ending war game, this is probably the closest thing.

Each nation (more than 15) has they're unique units and specialities (like AOE but more diverse), more than 300 different technologies.

I'll compare this game with Age of Empires (AOE) to tell you what makes this game a great buy:

1. Mass battles. Ever seen more than 100 units battling each other? Try 8000 units. Mass blood, mass everything.

2. Totally realistic. Some die hard, some die quickly. This game is a total violation of human rights! These are the realistic features of the game: a. Geography strategy: Yes, the higher the terrain, the longer you climb and further your guns and cannons can shoot. b. Impassible terrain: Some areas where you just can't pass, because of the geographic terrain. Very useful in war tactics. c. Cannons: Cannons are ever so usefull, and they kill a lotta guys too. Experience the grapeshot cannonball (mass death), Multi-barred cannon (first form of an automatic machine gun), Howitser: close range bombardment and the building basher: the Mortar. d. No ones perfect, but some are: Yes, it's not just about hitpoints, there are lucky shots (one shot one kill), and bad misses (especially cannons). e. Realistic economy: Well, almost. The prices of the market are also affected by time besides supply and demand. And they tell you what commodities are a profit or a loss. f. Food! Yes, they go down. Unlike AOE, your soldiers actually eat. Gotta get those farms working. g. Maintanence: Yep, walls need stone maintation, cannons and ships always need gold. Uh, don't know if that's realistic or not though. e. Ruins. After a building is bombarded to 0, it takes a while for the ground to clear. Irritating but logical. f. Splinters and cannon fire: Big cannons cause a lotta destruction. Try standing beside a building that's being bombarded and live through it. And don't try standing in front of a firing cannon, if the cannonball doesn't get you, the explosive force will. g. Generals and drummers: You need these guys to create formations. Logical enough.

3. No end of resources! Yes, no more running out of gold.

4. Mass unit communication: Although it needs a lotta fixing, you can mass command your units.
5. Mercenaries: Yes, you can hire foreign troops. They cost a lotta a gold, and are weaker than you home-made troops, but are so fast to create. Oh, and they need annual pay or else they will rebel!
6. No more making homes! The irritating part in AOE, is you need a lotta houses for your troops. Barracks and town halls have a lotta space.
7. Expensive buildings. The next building you make is more expensive than the last building. Very wise.
8. Massive unit level. I have reached the limit, but it seems to be a combination number between you and your enemies. But they don't say the number limit though (8000 maybe?).
9. Active repairmen: Your peasants thankfully after repairing one damaged wall, fix the next and so one. Unlike AOE.

There's a whole more, but I can't seen to recall. Sorry.

The Bad
The game testers MESSED UP BIG TIME on this game. If we're talking about user friendly, you still can't beat AOE.

For a strategy game, this is a very IRRITATING game. Thank you for that sudden burst of emotion.

It's very hard to control your units: They can't seem to walk a straight line between A to B. They like taking detours and sightseeing. This stupidicy by one of your units can provoke the a whole battlion to attack when your outnumbered. Word of advise: Don't higher tourists in your army. This game proves that point.

Your units have a very active imagination: a too high artificial intelligence when you don't want them to do squat. I wish they'd just sit still. AOE still wins in this are on the "defend" (or guard?) command. Where they attack and approaching enemy and go back to their destined guard post.

Personally comment for the makers of the game: If you can't make it better, DON'T MAKE IT WORSE. Thank you.

The formations are very bad. Unlike AOE, formations can only be made by single unit types per 16 units: 16, 32, 64 etc.

You peasants can be captured, if not guarded by your troops. Probably realistic, but very irritating. Especially if they're reparing walls.

Oh, I just found out you cannot tell your TOWERS TO STOP FIRING. Why is this a problem? It is when they keep blowing up your wooden walls, thus letting the enemy in. Great job by the makers of the game in making this worse than AOE.

Word of warning, your units move like snails. A grandpa could walk faster with one leg as far as I am concerned. Although there are some units that specialize in fast movement, the "reinforcement" strategy may require a lot of praying to actually succed.

The Bottom Line
Here's my grade for the game:

Difficulty: A+ Warning only for experienced gameplayers. Oh, I only played the highest level of difficulty by the way. Easy and normal are for novices..hahaha Why I gave A+, despite the irritating AI, the hardest levels still give you a fighting change, doesn't actually mean you can win, but a fighting chance nevertheless. And campaigns (well most of them) are not just your easy going usual AOE types, they are actually quite challenging.

Graphics: B Not bad. A little more detailed in depth and colour.

Artificial Intelligence: D- Probably a little dramatic, but your emotions will agree when you find out everyone is going and doing this you didn't tell them to.

User Friendly: D Not enough short cuts, not enough creative actions. This is by comparing to AOE by the way and other strategic games. You would at least expect something new, but it didn't.

Historical background, manuals and stuff: D The manual stunk big time to my opinion. Not enough details on history and units. Most historical games I've played have complete details about the background and more. In cossacks, it seems they just needed a formal excuse to put something in writing.

Should you get this game: B Yeah, why not. I still consider it a good playable game with a LOT of gaming hours.

The Good
This game is Age of Empires through and through. Therefore any veteran of that game will instinctively know how to play it before they’ve even got it out the box. This isn’t bad by definition (see Bad section) as it is a very solid and popular system.

Finally buildings seem to be correctly proportioned to soldiers, and as a nice touch stone buildings can no longer be knocked down with fists and swords. Much besieging involves slaying the town’s occupants and capturing the buildings, which makes a welcome change.

Of course the main selling point of this game is that it is Age of Empires… but bigger! Much MUCH bigger in fact. Although the game quotes thousands of units you’re more likely to field several hundred, but the sight is still one for sore eyes.

The ship design and animations are simply gorgeous, and the water isn’t bad either- although the shorelines tend to be a bit too rounded for my eyes.

I really like the little painting of cossacks on the front of the box, but it's not an original for the game. So poo.

That’s actually all I can say.

The Bad
Allow me to overuse food as a metaphor for this game. I absolutely adore rib-eye steak, yet I’m pretty indifferent to cornflakes. If someone were to offer me a single perfectly made steak I’d be enthralled. If someone were to offer me a kitchen full of cornflakes I’d be less than amused. It’d be unwieldy and impractical, particularly as cornflakes are designed to be eaten in a small quantity anyway.

What am I trying to explain? This game is literally Age of Empires with an artificially boosted unit count, and it just doesn’t work. You have the ability to group your throng of men into proper units, which is actually the only way they’re at all effective. Yet (and I’m not sure if this was just me) I could never group units into the large squads I’m presented with in the scenarios. Also units seem to decay over time, simply becoming a mass of men for you to reorganise. Which was pernickety to begin with. Also I never figured out how to organise cavalry into squads, again making them useless.

Oh and how do you train those hundreds and hundreds of men? You click. Forever. This is made even worse as you have to train a specific number in order to make a squad. The sequel introduced a training toggle (e.g. click to train units indefinitely) but why not simply have you train whole squads at a time? You often find yourself with a ton of superfluous men standing around waiting for three more to enlist and allow them to make a whole team.

This aspect is amplified by the presence of mercenaries, who you often find yourself relying on as they’re dirt-cheap and train almost instantly, whilst proper units (particularly cavalry) take frikkin decades to appear. But they’re completely useless. I’d amassed a hoard of mercenary cavalry that literally filled the screen. I sent them off careening towards the enemy, synchronised sabres flailing. And they all died almost instantly. Rubbish. Grenadiers can be hired there as well, but I never could get them to use anything but bayonets. Bayoniers maybe?

This “bigger is better” ideology is applied to the research tree as well. Now I appreciate that the time period was one of great technological achievements and progress, but that isn’t what you’re doing here. You pick from a stupendously vast list of researches, each of which improve something in an unnoticeably tiny way. It’s not clear if any of them have any affect on the game, but you just learn them anyway. Why not have the age advancements cover all of these improvements?

By far and away the most glaring problem with cloning Age of Empires is that the game’s setting simply doesn’t fit. Every battle you turn up with a bunch of peasants and build a small town in order to raise an army and defeat the other nearby recently raised town. But the wars of the time were fought between established towns and countries. No army in the English Civil War built an entire new town before attacking! Even Age of Empires III corrects this with its colonial setting, the previous two being set in times of settlement and expansion.

Cossacks seems to use the same A.I as Age as well, especially evident in skirmishes. The enemy has a habit of sending this constant stream of weak soldiers at you. It really loves its gangs of Mortars, which are hilarious as they literally fall apart or are captured if an opposing unit comes anywhere near them.

Something I’ve become attached to following the swish and sparkly games we have nowadays are pixels. The pixelated characters of Age of Empires, and particularly Red Alert 2, lend them this gritty, rough-edged look that’s hard to achieve with 3D graphics (check out Command and Conquer Generals).

However Cossacks has this horrible plastic look to it. Units look like mannequins and move like Autons. Battle animations are hilarious, pikemen look like they're raking the lawn. Worst of all the scenery is this flat monotonous green, undulating and yet homogenised like the never-ending football pitch of Naboo. Indeed the whole environment looks like a Subbuteo mat.

The game even fails technically. You needn’t worry that your huge army fills up the entire screen, thus rendering it a pain in the proverbials to select. As soon as they come up to an obstacle, or particularly when they engage the enemy, the whole lot condenses into a single model. I’m not sure if there’s a technical term for this but every unit has an insubstantial quality to them. Make a hole big enough for one man to fit and a whole army can squeeze through like an octopus. The grand sweep of military formations splodges into one lamely animated soldier. Arg!

Also I have yet to find any evidence that archers of the time period dressed as clowns, or were even used at all for that matter.


The Bottom Line
This is an ugly lame duck of a game that has a bizarre cult following, possibly owing to the uniqueness of the setting. I honestly have nothing to recommend about it. Actually I would rather eat an entire room full of cornflakes- or maybe just play Age of Empires.

The Good
Wow, a real manual, more than 200 pages long! You flip through it and the article on the 18th-century Polish cavalry catches your eye: Winged Hussars. Perhaps you have never heard of them, but my grandfather's seven-volume encyclopedia, printed in 1900, had them. With the two tall curved poles stuck in the back of their armour, adorned all the way up with feathers, they looked a splendid cross between a mounted samurai with his twin hatazao fluttering in the wind and a noble Indian warrior crowned in eagle feathers. Those "special feathered wings" says the manual, "protected his back from sabre blows." Splendid. We are going to learn something about warfare of the the 17th and 18th centuries, this is going to be deeply interesting.

Install the game, fire it up, pick "Campaign". The first three campaigns are tutorials. Wonderful.

The first tutorial teaches you the basics. How to select units, give them their marching orders, and so on. It is all very familiar, if you have played WarCraft (who hasn't?). The next two are more of the same, only much less interactive. You just click from one screen on to the next, which gives you advice without you being able to test it by selecting units, giving them orders and whatever. But you have been given sensible advice, like how advantageous it is to have your artillery on high ground. Oh, this is going to be good! So you are keen to start. Start!

The Bad
Pick the first scenario: Bermuda. You are an English captain, sent there to establish a colony.

The screen lights up, showing three frigates and a "ferry" (their word) and about 20 peasants landed on shore. Oh, and this message too:

"You have landed on the north-eastern island. Unfortunately, it is lean in resources and too small to start a colony here. You should replenish your food and water supplies and continue your quest."

Stupid me, believing the message, sent my peasants looking for food and water. All they found was trees to fell, but nowhere to store the timber, for want of a town hall. And you cannot build one, because you need stone for that and you have none and there is none on the island. So you go exploring. North, and you meet pirates who promptly dispatch you to oblivion. South, and meet a Dutch-colonized island whose cannons and towers sink your pitiful fleet. Start again. Start again, and play carefully, as if this were WarCraft. That gets you to wipe out the pirates (and lose two frigates), but still no island worth settling on, and you get warned that there are more pirates around.

No hope with your depleted forces. Reload, and try south instead, towards the Dutch settlement. Soon a message: "There's a Dutch yacht ahead! Hey, they're fleeing! It's no good, they'll be going to fetch help! We should sink them or get out of here!"

What would you do? Follow the advice and sink the yacht? Good luck to you! A yacht (from the Dutch jagd, "hunt") is a very fast ship, much faster than a frigate. You're wasting your time and your cannon balls, while the Dutch cannons on shore are shooting at you and scoring hits. Glub... glub... glub... good bye, captain, see you in Hell. Reload. Forget about chasing the yacht, remember good old WarCraft tactics, and take out the cannons and the towers... er... glub... glub... glub... good bye captain, see you in Hell.

Oh, all right, never mind, let's try something else.

There you are, you and a score of peasants in the middle of nowhere, with some food, timber, gold, and stone in stock. You set your peasants to build a town hall, then to chop wood, then... hey! the amount of food is going down at an alarming rate! You remember how, in the tutorial, you were shown how to send peasants to harvest wheat, but there are no wheat fields about. Uh? What to do? You remember WarCraft, and frantically try to get a peasant to build a farm. But "farm" is not on the menu. In despair, you pick "mill". They build a mill, and, lo and behold and deep relief... wow! wheat starts growing around it! Er... why wasn't that in the tutorial? Bit fundamental if you ask me (or is it hidden away somewhere in the 200-page manual? Well, I looked for it, but I gave up at page 41). Oh anyway, you wipe the sweat off your brow: "Wow, I've made it to square one, let's keep on playing now!" Then a squad of hostile pikemen turns up out of nowhere and claims your settlement. End of game.

You start again, and this time you are careful to build barracks (you need a blacksmith first, though, and that was not in the tutorial either). And... suddenly you remember your aborted Bermudan stint, the "ferry" carrying the peasants. It had oars, oars poking out of its sides. It plain English, it was a galley. When did the British Navy ever send a galley across the Atlantic pretty please?

The pretence at historical accuracy is a sorry farce.

Next you think of the mill. Why in deep hell and high heaven do you need to build a mill, and it was a windmill too, for wheat to grow in the fields?

The logic of the game is a sorry farce too.

And then, you go back to the manual, and, page 119, you read: "Archers. These fighters were armed with bows and arrows [thank you, I'd never have known] ... snip... These savage [what?] warriors terrified enemies through their brutality [what??] and rapidity. However, like all irregular armies [uh???], their lack of discipline made them unreliable in a battle." My blood boiled there. Haven't the miserable sods, responsible for this parody of a game, heard of Agincourt? Who lacked discipline if not the French knights? Who showed splendid discipline and courage if not the English longbowmen?

Indeed, this game is nothing but an abysmal parody of true war games.

The Bottom Line
Stick with WarCraft, at least they've got a sense of humour, they don't take themselves seriously, and they are not gamer-hostile.