Anyone play Cossacks?

[Seneca]

I bought this on the spur of the moment because the pictures on the box looked pretty (and it had good review excerpts as well).

It's an RTS game, and I'm not really sure about it. It seems you need loads and loads of peasants to get your economy basically functional (dozens of the buggers in the quarries just to maintain a stone wall).

The graphics look absolutely gorgeous, but too much boring economy stuff for my liking before you can get to the battle bits.

Any opinions?

[mactbone]

Yeah, I have it. It's pretty cool, and I like the era and everything, but it just doesn't have that 'fun' factor. It doesn't make me want to keep playing becuase 'if only I would've done this'. The campaigns are also ridiculously hard, with the scripting forcing too much action without the flow of the game determining much. Maybe we could set up a game between each other, I've never played Cossacks against anyone but the comp.

[Pco]

Greetings.
Certainly the campaigns are too difficult of winning, the very simple economy, but the time is very interesting and the battalions with official and drummers are a good detail.

[DinoDoc]

It's nothing more than a cheap AOEII clone.

[mactbone]

Yeah, and AOEII was just a clone of AOE

Cossacks has a dynamic economy, musketeers and various units with guns that make sense (slow reload rate until a looot of advancements, etc.) and a not so fun ai to play against. I still prefer AoK, but calling it a clone is basically me saying that all RTSs since Dune2 have been clones.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MacTBone
I still prefer AoK, but calling it a clone is basically me saying that all RTSs since Dune2 have been clones.

A lot of them have been. I'm sorry but I refuse to cut slack to a game that commits all 3 cardinal sins.

1) covers a well worn genera

2) offers nothing new (pretty guns! )

3) isn't fun

I can forgive the first two but the last one is unforgiveable and will earn my derision.

[tishco]

you end up constantly using resorses to keep peasants chopping wood for a small wall and the ai just zooms around in 5 minutes and kills you!

[Sarxis]

I have it- don't play it anymore.

I am waiting to see what the upcoming expansion pack will offer though.

[Immortal Wombat]

I have the demo, and am having a vast internal debate with myslef whether or not to get the full game. It seems that all that would add are a few more units, so I can't be bothered to splash out until the price drops, but from what I've seen so far, it is a very good game.

Though I can see how it is an AOK clone, it has 6 resources rather than 4 (so more peasants, more decision making etc) and also, much like I hope Civ3 will be, it can start wars over resources. The guns are more realsitic, formations are a stroke of genius, and once you have survived the initial onslaught of enemy grenadiers, building an army of 3000 ( ) and taking out the enemy is soooo much fun!

Stone walls are a waste of time anyway, they only get blown down, and restrict troop movement. Walls of pikemen are more effective, and fairly sustainable if you can handle a bit of RSI clicking on the barracks to build them all.

The AI isn't great, once you figure out how to beat it, but I've only won playing a 2 player game on Easy, so a 4 player game on Hard should be sufficient challenge