Cossacks is a historical real-time strategy based on events of XVI-XVIII centuries in Europe when nations and states were created and demolished, gold was turned to numerous armies, and neverending wars shed seas of blood. It was the time when new regulations were developed in armies, and commanders' mastery was polished to perfection. The new era began… with cannonade thunder and bullets' whine…
Cossacks is a strategy game that allows becoming aware of historical events' large scale. So grandiose battles of up to 8000 units may be conducted on single or network game maps. One can carry out lingering city sieges, wage guerilla wars, capture commanding heights and arrange ambushes, deploy landing forces on enemy shores and conduct sea battles.
The game system is arranged to reduce per-unit control and resource micromanagement and to turn to global goals of powerful economy formation, science development, new lands capturing, defending boarders, and, of course, war against you enemies.
Economy depends on six resources: food, wood, stone, gold, iron, and coal. Wood is extracted from forests; food is grown in the fields and procured from the sea. Stone is extracted from quarries, and gold, iron, and coal are mined. Gold, iron, and coal are infinite at their deposits, and extraction is proportionate to mine workers' number. This allows reducing the time-consuming resource management and bringing up the strategic role of deposits. At the market one can sell, buy, and change resources, but the prices can change depending on the amount of resources at the market. All units in Cossacks consume resources, some military forces are to be paid in gold, and artillery and handgun shots spend iron and coal. Thus, it is not enough to spend resources for buying soldiers, cannons, or vessels. It is necessary to possess some economic potential in order to maintain your army and support its battle-worthiness. Exceeding your scope results in famine and army riots. Many units and buildings become more expensive while their number increases - this allows avoiding the situation of the whole map encumbered with towers...
The game inventions' tree numbers more than 300 upgrades divided in two time periods - XVI-XVII centuries and XVIII century. Upgrades allow turning quantitative categories to qualitative, and also obtaining some new unique possibilities, units, and buildings. Science development allows increasing resource extraction efficiency, improving units, increasing artillery power and range of fire, improving towers' rate of fire and buildings' durability. Also upgrades allow building battleships, multi-barreled cannons, etc. A sort of uncommon invention is aeronautics. Having invented that, one can launch balloons and reveal the whole map.
One of war balance peculiarities is that stone structures can be demolished only with artillery or grenadiers. So when the front line is reinforced with fortifications, playing with small forces will not lead to the situation change: to capture defenses one need major forces and some artillery. Another important feature is possibility of capturing undefended enemy peasants, artillery, and some buildings. This allows vast possibilities of waging a guerilla war, while having captured enemy peasants one can build constructions (and consequently units) of enemy's type.
Following military forces are represented in the game: infantry, cavalry, artillery, and navy. Nations use their unique units along with units similar to other states. Thus, within each nation a player has all military forces needed to wage land or sea war. At the same time each nation's forces are unique as for their features, abilities, and equipment. Units can be arranged into military formations: column, rank, or square. A formation includes an officer and a drummer, and units' abilities increase in a formation.
The game landscape is full 3D, so it is an important strategic element. Thus, capturing predominant heights provides with great advantages and often wins a battle; also one can arrange ambushes in canyons. Real physics modeling also introduces many interesting issues into the game. Thus, units climb hills slower, and they see and shoot farther at a height. Explosions become much stronger in a rocky landscape because of rebounds, while in a swamp they are damped. Artillery and handguns possess shot dispersion and expectancy of hitting the enemy by the first shot, etc. The fog of war closes after a unit in some time.
The game utilizes sprite graphics that allows obtaining beautiful and high detailed pictures, while common drawbacks of sprite graphics (unit animation jitter and lifeless landscape) were overcome due to the new graphics compression algorithm. This algorithm allows using numerous animated movements for each unit pre-rendered in up to 64 orientations (in 256 orientations for vessels), so this provides very smooth movements and turns. Background elements are animated, too: flags flutter at the buildings, wheat rolls in the wind, windmills' fans revolve, waves go over water surfaces, and tides wash the coasts.
Following FX are used in the game: smoke, explosions, fog, buildings' burning, particle systems, water waves and flashes, traces in water behind moving vessels, splashes and ripples in water from cannonballs and splinters, etc.
A single player game comprises Single Missions, Campaigns, and Random Map mode. Missions' and campaigns' scenarios recreate real historical situations, while a player has freedom of choice to achieve the goal. Objectives are varied from habitual development (your town building, defense and fortification, resource extraction, territory exploration, forming armies and front lines, etc.) to mission accomplishment with limited forces.
Multiplayer game supports up to 8 players via modem, local network, or Internet, and comprises Historical Battles mode and Random map mode. Historical Battles are precise reconstruction of real ones. They were reconstructed up to trivial details, such as real historical landscape and map; enemy troops disposition, stuff, structure and even number punctually coincide with historical facts. In this game type a player is expected to lead any party he chooses, to carry out the battle, and to confirm or disprove its historically recorded outcome.
In the Random Map game, players are able to choose landscape type and the map, resources, etc. Also we have developed a random map generator. Along with vast game variety of 16 rivaling nations with their advantages and drawbacks, and a huge technology tree of 300 upgrades, this will make the network game of a long-lasting interest.
We have represented more than 85 large-scale wars and battles of XVI-XVIII centuries for single game and multiplayer. The most noteworthy are: Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the English revolution, the English and Dutch wars, the War for Spanish Succession, the Northern war, the War for Austrian Succession, the Seven Years War, the Ukrainian independence war (1648-1657), sea wars against pirates, etc.
The game contains much historical data, and the full version will include a spacious encyclopedia about wars, battles, nations, technologies, armies, and units having been used in Europe in XVI-XVIII centuries.
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