Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars Impressions

We got a brief look at Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars at E3 2003. The upcoming strategy sequel will, as its title suggests, follow the career of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his campaign to conquer Europe and North Africa.

Cossacks II will feature an all-new 3D engine that will allow for weather effects (such as rain and snow) and 3D terrain. This terrain will actually provide tactical considerations such as height advantage for ranged units on high ground and additional defensive bonuses against grapeshot for units entrenched in forests. Cossacks II will feature 10 single-player campaigns that will take place all across Europe and some parts of Algeria, and just like the previous games, the sequel will feature huge battles between enormous regiments of soldiers. In fact, the new game will be capable of displaying a whopping 64,000 units onscreen at once, though as we saw firsthand, you'll still need to carefully consider tactical factors such as morale.

Just like in the previous games, any number of extremely demoralizing factors, such as a devastating direct cannon salvo in the middle of your ranks, or the death of a squadron's commanding officer, can cause your troops to break ranks and flee. In addition, Cossacks II will keep track of your soldiers' level of fatigue. Once your troops have marched a certain distance, they'll become exhausted and be unable to move until they've rested (and they'll suffer serious penalties if attacked in this state), though your troops will suffer less from fatigue if they can keep to paved roads between cities. This element of fatigue will stagger the movement of your various battalions, and it should make the pacing of the game resemble that of a turn-based game, rather than that of a frantic real-time strategy game. Cossacks II will be released later this year.