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.