Cossacks Anthology

I'm writing it after two years. I bought this game here at GoG in the middle of 2017 for my Father who just retired, because he loved strategy games and his old PC crashed at that time (gave my old laptop to him too). He used to play Cossacks along with Aztecs and AoE for many years. He would come back from work and sit for many hours just playing and talking with us at the same time. I would sit beside him and he would always enthusiastically explain to me how each troop and building work. He passed 2018. And i still miss him. And this game will always remind me of him, and as i can't find our old CD version i appreciate that GoG has this version. If over 60 year old man can play this game for over 300h and really enjoy it then money are really well spent.

TL;DR: Download this .. rename the ddraw.dll to mdraw.dll ... plop it into the game folder, replacing the bad dll. https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw/releases My game was frozen when I started it (beyond the main menu) even though it worked fine the first time I ran it (but never afterwards, no matter how many reinstallations.) I have tried very much every solution I could find .. but nothing worked. Turns out, the ddraw.dll which has been bundled into this game is the source of all problems, does not work on Windows 10. I did not discover this solution, I found the answer on a different forum for a different game - but it worked fine here. Cheers to the person whose name I don't remember.

I still remember as young teenager getting this game. I enjoyed it so much that I showed it to my father, who started playing and mastering it with me. Since there was no DRM back then, we had no trouble copying the CD & installing it on my fathers computer. What resulted was 1-4 hour long LAN matches on the weekends. The game has standard RTS elements such as AoE style resource gathering. Stone, gold & wood among others. These resources are used to build units & buildings. Advancing in technology is as you'd expect in a standard RTS. Certain unit types excel in certain situations. The way the game is set up, it encourages you to engage in the lined formation fighting of the era. Have mortars showering the enemy front lines from behind your own, have cannons roll out infront of your troops (they can actually kill your own men if they are infront of it) rain hell on the enemy before you push up. Use cavalry to flank positions or raid enemy workers. Build an extensive navy of Ships of the Line, frigates and even the ultra powerful "Victoria" super battleship. Overall, it is probably the best late 18th century style RTS's. In conclusion the game is not perfect, but its good enough that it gave me and my father many nights of explosion, musket blasts & naval combat that would make Washington proud.

This game is a bit too complex for me, I like the complexity of RA2, or other simple RTS games. I use to manage to win only naval wars since the ships are simple compared to land armies. So if you like complex RTS games, this is quite fun. One of my most favorite features is the cooperative styled multiplayer where more player can give orders to the same nation, sharing the tasks is quite fun. I liked to care the financial tasks while my buddy did the complex stuff with all the different kinds of soldiers, cavalry and artillery.

I bought Cossacks + add-ons on CD years ago and loved it. On that basis I bought Cossacks 2 but I never really got into it; I definately prefer Cossacks 1. However, over the years the PC's were replaced, and newer versions of Windows were used, and I was no longer able to install and play the game (on CD), so when I came across GOG selling it as a complete bundle for a few ££ I was instantly attracted to it, but I was concerned it still might not work on my even newer machines using Win 7 and Win 8.1. I read various peoples comments and I got the impression that it 'should' be ok. As there is no real risk to purchasing from GOG I went ahead and bought it and I can confirm that it works great on 2 of my 3 Win 7 Laptops. 1. HP Pavillion DV8000 (about 7 yo) - Win 7, Dual Core, 2gb Ram, 128mb Radeon Xpress 200m Gfx - Works great (Suffered Graphics corruption with CD version) 2. HP 4730s (3 years old) - Win 7, i7, 4gb Ram, 1gb AMD 6490m Gfx - Black Screen, hasn't crashed, but won't display properly - I reckon I can get it going with a little more effort. 3. Samsung (1 yo) - Win 7, i7, 8Gb Ram, 2gb AMD Gfx - Works great, The game itself - Excellent use all the various features that you expect of RTSs. Research tree, Multiple Building Types/Upgrades, Unit Types/upgrades (Infantry/Horse/Cannon/Ships etc). Peasants for buidling and Resource collection. Terrain/Fog of War/LOS all affect battle. Multiple mixed types of soldier can be grouped, but they won't be proper formations. However, proper units/formations are created using a Leader & Drummer and an even number of one type of men. e.g. 72 Pikemen and the other 2 together. Click on the leader to form them into a proper unit; Much more effective. Games can be quick skirmishes, or long epic battles with massive armies. See the photo's. You'll loose the first few games quickly, but you'll get the hang of it. One trick is to keep a few men dotted around the map as spotters. Anyway, it comes highly recommended by me :)