ความคิดเห็น

• gamedeal user

  Sep 6, 2015

  12 years ago, I had an interesting 2v2 battle (online PVP). It lasted 9 hours. 9 FRICKING HOURS. Had to call in sick just to finish the game. ---- EDITED + CONTINUATION STORY, 10 Sept 2019 ---- So what happened? Well, in that particular PVP match, my friend and I had lost a large-scale engagement after a mis-timed assault, resulting in me losing most of my infantry, mercenaries, and cavalry. Sensing the end the match, our opponents gleefully taunted us (in-game text chat) and relentlessly fobbed themselves over an easy victory. Then came the now 'infamous' taunt - "Quitters are looooosssers....." My friend and I cussed loudly at the same time (we were on the phone so we could co-ord) and at that moment, the fire in our hearts turned our testicles into of balls of cold, hard steel. We were stung and wanted payback. But that would have to come later; I had to survive first. Our opponents were advancing on my base and if that was taken, everything would be lost. We decided that I should evacuate all my villagers to the safety of his town's stone walls (he was playing 'Poland' while I was 'Ukraine'), about half a map's distance away. Whatever infantry i had left took up fighting positions on the numerous small hills between my base and Poland's town, ready to fight a desperate rearguard action. Hundreds of villagers (4-500 est.?) streamed from farms and mines, merging into a column of while and yellow, flanked by my remaining cavalry. Seeing what was happening, our opponents sent a wave of fast, light cavalry to cut off my evacuation route. My cavalry escort unit was outnumbered 3-1; nevertheless they formed up and met them head-on. The battle was going to be one-sided and it almost seemed like a lost cause. Almost. The brave cavalry escort had bought enough time for reinforcements to arrive! Charging out of Poland's town gates came the winged hussars, feathers fluttering and sabers swinging, smashing into the rear of our opponents light cavalry line, cutting most of them down. By this time enemy infantry units had caught up and opened fire, killing my remaining cavalry. The winged hussars withdrew, but the job was done. Not one single villager had been lost and they were now safely behind Poland's walls. We had hope. A new hope. A flurry of activity followed. Farms, mines, barracks, stables, dwellings - everything had to be rebuilt, while the enemy bombarded Poland's walls with grenades (no artillery). Poland was now encircled and under siege. Our opponents outnumbered us greatly; the walls were beginning to crumble, and time was running short. So we decided to use a sneaky trick to regain the initiative. We were going to use the town walls offensively! One section of the wall was almost destroyed and that was where both opposing armies formed up, waiting for the final, inevitable showdown. I built 3 lines of palisades just behind the damaged wall section and placed half my Seljuks (really good shooty units) behind it. The rest of our ranged units were deployed on the left and right of the damaged section. At the appointed time, just before the wall section could be destroyed by our opponent's grenadiers, we blew the wall, showering the densely packed attackers with deadly shrapnel. As they streamed in by the hundreds we blew more walls, section by section, causing more casualties. What sowed even more confusion was, when the walls blew, enemy grenadiers and 18C musketeers automatically went into 'hand-to-hand' mode due to unit proximity. The wooden palisade behind the stone wall served its purpose, and the enemy infantry were cut down like chaff as they moved forward without shooting in return. In less than 30 seconds almost half of our opponent's infantry were dead. Now, THEY were desperate. Sending in their cavalry, they hoped to push through but were well received by Polish 18C pikemen. They could not break through! The assault was broken! Casualties were high on both sides but our opponents had come out much worse. They pulled back beyond musket range and reformed. A flurry of in-game text suddenly filled the bottom of the screen (one of our opponents hit the text-to-all i/o text-to-team, if i remember correctly). "My Base! Protect my base! No base raping!" "Your (sp. THIS i remember :P !!! ) cheating! No base raping!" Or something to that effect. My friend and I laughed at the same time. Evilly. Loudly. At 5am+ in the morning. Anyway, veterans of RTS games know that when combat starts some people get too focused and fail to keep an eye on the mini-map. My friend, being a sneaky and bastardy git (sometimes) likes to choose the colour purple because its the hardest colour to spot on the mini-map (if its a small amount of troops). When the walls were blown and the battle began, he sent a squadron of about 50 winged hussars on quite a journey, skirting the the map edges and into one of our opponents base, killing all its villagers and razing every building. No capture, no prisoners, just wanton decapitation and burning. It was a FUCKING GLORIOUS sight. Our opponents immediately sent all available cavalry to save what was left of a burning hellhole at the far end of the map. And that was exactly what we were waiting for. It was time for our counter attack! Blowing even more walls, our troops surged forth, cavalry on both flanks rapidly closing the distance with pikemen and musketeers following up. The opposing army, mostly 18C musketeers, were left without cavalry and the following battle was short and sharp. We took the field with minimal casualties. The guy who typed "Quitters are losers" quit. Anon. The game wrapped up shortly after, 6am-ish. Called in sick. Met my friend for breakfast (he skipped work as well), spent two hours chatting and laughing about the mad shit we had just gone through. It still brings a smile to our faces today. 18 years later.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 16, 2014

  I still remember when I got the game, it was an accident... My friend gave me a demo cd with a bunch of games on it and cossacks: back to war was one of em. I kept play that one demo mission again and again... I think STILL this is the best strategy game of all time, it amazes me how you can control thousands, big cities and navy fleets. And it takes hundreds of hours to finish the game because there is so much missions in it and of course an editor too. And this strategy game is unique because the game mechanics are so different than most of the other strategy games, you dont have to rush for resources, there is always a few mine places around you where you can get the resources from. But it takes a long time to upgrade yourself and meanwhile you have to defend yourself too and thats why almost all of the missions takes 2-3 hours to finish, so this makes you feel like you are in a real hardcore war I think. I had so much epic battles in this game
• gamedeal user

  Nov 24, 2017

  Better than Cossacks 3
• gamedeal user

  Jun 17, 2015

  Better than Cossacks 2
• gamedeal user

  Jan 22, 2014

  Ignore the ridiculous metascore of 60, this game is incredible and I spent too many hours of my childhood mowing down people with strelets. This game is worth it for the sounds of the pikemen alone.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 8, 2014

  Incredibly good game. Been playing this for over 10 years with a friend and we're still impressed by it. -The game has an excellent balance between different unit types. -The nations are varied enough to keep it enjoyable for a long time. Some nations may be very slightly over powered though e.g. Poland and Ukraine -Seemingly endless single missions and enjoyable campaign. -Art style is good and will likely age very well over time. -Good resource ideas. -Good upgrade trees -One downsides is poor AI, which uses the same tactics constantly, just with increasingly larger numbers of units. -The blue and black team colors are difficult to see on the map sometimes, while the white color is easily confused with the unit selected color on the map. -The mine locator upgrade obsures your mines on the map making them difficult to locate ironically. -No options for reforging alliances after the game has started. -Multiplayer over internet is difficult to set up initially
• gamedeal user

  Nov 10, 2015

  It was one of my first computer games and it's still one of my favorites! -Amazing battles -Many possible strategies : mortars to attack from a huge distance, cavalry to attack the rearguard or to quickly pillage mines, officers and drums to make troop formations (up to 196 soldiers with one officer)... -Enormous battlegrounds filled with soldiers (up to 10 000 if I remember correctly)! -A lot of available countries with different architectures and troops -Possibility to capture citizens, artillery and buildings with only some simple soldiers (there are priests too but they can heal a bit) -Interesting use of ressources (to be able to fire you need coal, to keep mercenaries on your side you need gold etc.) so if your coal mines get captured for example you can no longer fire anything! (of course you can buy coal on the market but the prices can vary a lot depending on your behavior) -Pretty good soundtracks It's often really cheap on sales so if you enjoy RTS games, grab it!
• gamedeal user

  Oct 18, 2015

  Good old fashion war strategy game that has stood the test of time for me. I have played this game for years now without ever getting bored.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 4, 2015

  So basically this is the complete package of Cossacks 1, including both European Wars and Art of War. This game is dated as hell, but it was quite good when it was new. If this entry of the series interests you, then this version allows you to access all of the game's content. The best version of Cossacks 1 to buy on Steam! :3
• gamedeal user

  Aug 21, 2023

  Game is great if you're looking for something like Age of Empires but way bigger and more epic. You can have thousands of units and epic battles. On the downside, a lot of micromanagement. The AI is good for opponents but not for the player. Combined with the micromanaging and the game is rat race, constant chasing of one's own tail. Despite this, game is amazingly top notch everywhere else. Some might disagree about the AI. Is the AI good? YES. It plays very smart. But a human mind, with limbs, fingers, two eyes facing a 2D screen it must scan/pan around and enter commands with mouse and keyboard peripherals is at a disadvantage. For example, you can have a fleet protecting your shipyard and coastal buildings, but your ships just sit there and units just sit there if the enemy, say, blitzes through their ships, dumps it's units on your soil, who then proceed to massacre your workers and 'capture' your buildings. The game has a mechanic where it seemingly random units can capture buildings but you can only randomly capture them back. Isn't that stupid? Well, you're constantly flying all over the map babysitting every group of soldiers while the enemy swarms you in various directions. It's not much fun since the AI doesn't work well for you to balance the odds. it's unrealistic unless you want to constantly be pausing the game to see what's going on, and then send your moron units to chase the enemy around the map. It's endless cat and mouse. The AI will tend to keep a small base/city and spam units and project in areas relentlessly. This is great but also bad unless you don't mind pausing the game every 3-5 seconds to hand hold your unless units (their aggro range is so minute, if possibly non-existant, the enemy will capture even your defense towers and you can't capture them back, and then they will slaughter your idle forcers). The default game speed is outrageous so best slow down the game. You also have to baby-sit your economy in the fast-paced RTS warfare. If you run out of gold, your units will MUTINY and turn against you, becoming their own faction you must destroy. Total disaster if they do that. Kind of stupid too and never see the AI run into that issue lol. With that all out of the way...the game sound effects, plethora of units, and are design, and overall game design is fantastic. This game is far superior to the AoE series by far. There's tons of options from playing small maps, to epic maps on almost continental scale (just massive). It takes what AoE and goes way further, totally surpasses it. Play has a plethora of different countries. Play skirmish, play with teams (so all that stuff above, you could just add an AI player to your side to help balance things out until you "get the hang of it"), or have several AIs on separate teams going at it on a massive scale. The great thing is the game appears designed intentionally to handle massive numbers of units. You can march hundreds, thousands of units in formations and go musket to musket, artillery vs. artillery, calvary vs. calvary, or a mix of all that, and various ships against each other. I prefer to play on slow speed so it flows better, all kinds of battles/engagements, not all units are the same and fans of games like Starcraft where there different abilities might really like some of the rock/paper/scissors quality of it. Gunpowder units can lay waste to melee units, some gunpowder units can fire and have to retreat to reload, some ships only fire mortars are long range, but switch to cannons at close range. It's massive and it looks great, there is a 1920x1080 mode if you don't like the original 1080xwhatever mode. Great game engine for a great series, it's the main star and everything else they did is good. In the future, if I could play this game differently, in that if I could play it with my mind, full picture of the map, my thoughts to issue commands, and not have to mash keys and slide the mouse all over the place, pause/unpause, to get things done, then it would be a very, very interesting showdown with the AI. In the meantime, it is frustration you'll have to learn to overcome and adapt to. Take your time to learn the game, and try not to eat the whole cake at once, but take small bites, develop your palette for it, etc etc. and you'll savor the goodness.