The game is comprehensive in its coverage of the period. Your military units then can stay at home to protect your base of operations, or roam the map looking for conquest. The structures represent facilities needed to process resources, outlets for training and recruiting military units or focal points for investment in research. You control your peasants in the usual manner, directing them to work the land or build structures. There is the oblique aspect main map showing part of the game area, a smaller map showing the entire game space and various information boxes that reflect the game situation. More appropriately called continuous action strategy, these games with no turns have settled on a general set of conventions. With two expansion packs of its own, plus a spin-off game, American Conquest (which also has its own expansion), the Cossacks formula has certainly been well used and the engine now looks rather dated alongside fully 3D RTS games.īut if you're a hardcore strategy fan and a virgin to Cossacks, it's well worth investing five shiny coins for this.Ĭossacks is an entry in what has become known as the real time strategy genre. Also, unlike Shogun, Cossacks combines quite a bit of resource management, so you can create thriving cities full of peasants and gently ripening cornfields.

Unlike Shogun: Total War, these troops, which feature units like French Chasseur infantry and of course the Ukrainian Cossacks, can be moved individually as well as in large formations, adding an extra strategic element to proceedings.

For a start, it's a true epic, set between the 16th and 18th centuries and focused on thousands of troops engaging in mass slaughter across 3D terrains. Cossacks may seem like one of those games played by people who collect those Warfare Through The Ages -With Free Binder!' magazines, but there's a lot to enjoy about this historical based RTS.

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