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.

Cossacks european wars zusmarshian