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What have I missed?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The most realistic historical feature I find in this game is that the graphic quality looks like past centuries'.

Reading the other contributors reviews I've come to the conclussion that I must have missed something. I have to say I bought directly the Fight Back expansion for it's playable without the original title, which I'm not sure if restricts the game or not.
[...]I bought this game because it was only 10, assuming it was a few years old, but still could be strategically interesting and enjoyable,and guess what? it's not.
In terms of tactics, it looks poor to me. Notihng compared to total war, of course, but let's say starcraft is more tactical. You move a whole battalion against another, which means that if only 3 men of the enemy's stay alive, they will block your whole battalion. You cannot divide battalions, and pick some men away (you can pick them individually). The game options, compared to those of for example age of empires (I!!) are poor: predefined battle or campaing. No chance for example to choose your troops on a battle. The orders you can give to a single battalion are very few: attack, stay peaceful, fire guns or contact fight only, and a couple of square formations you will never use unless you are surrounded by the enemy from all sides and they're superior in number at every side, in which case you don't have to worry about the formation because you will loose anyway.
Another messy fact is that when you move a battalion they will keep the formation (of course) but they will allign as they want. You will find your soldiers making a perpendicular - 90 degree line against the enemy.

[...]
The most dissapointing part of this game is that despite the poor graphics and options, it could've been as a matter of fact enjoyable if there were more tactic options and control over your troops.

I'm going to give it another try, though...

PS: I've rated it with 2 stars: I reserve the one star just to games you would only play when the only alternative is work. This game is interesting and funny until you discover it's not (10 minutes), therefore the 2 stars.

Great Game for online play

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I got this game used. Great game, but sometimes the CD doesn't work. then i run system restore to the nearest date and it works again. The online gameplay experience is exellent. There is a very large following of this game on the server, so there is usually no shortage of people to play against. Only drawback is that the game is in Russian. LOL :)

U BETTER HAVE MUCH MORE THAN THE MIN SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: December 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

THE GAME IS REALLY SLOW AND THE AUTO SAVE FEATURE REALLY CHOKES THE GAME DOWN. THE MANUAL THAT COMES WITH THE CDV ISN'T ENOUGHT TO REALLY UNDERSTAND THE DEPTH OF THIS GAME. I'D PASS ON THIS ONE.

Fight Back.....The yawns

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 13
Date: June 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

German armies on the North American continent? If that sounds incredulous then youve pretty much got this thing figured out. Not much about this game is grounded in reality and much less in fun: unless youre sense of fun is to watch peasants scramble around like ants with a constant stream of the little buggers shuffling into your garrisons to be converted into troops. Hordes or peasants dig, scrape and hack to harvest resources with which you upgrade units, create new ones and construct buildings. Sound familiar? Age of Empires stuff at best. The game is developed by a Russian based company and looks very much like Cossacks (which looks very much like TZAR). This isnt a bad thing as the graphics are quite interesting but it does show the formulaic patterns of these games. They are basically clones and very derivative: in short there is not much in the way of originality. Gameplay is not as interesting as other reviews would have you think. Pathfinding is very poor as units frequently get bogged down in buildings, trees and other terrain. Just getting your troops to the front line is pee poor. As in most games of this type population is dependent upon buildings which have a base unit support attatched to them. Unfortunately the more of any type of building you create in an area the more expensive it gets. Ultimately you have to spread your buildings all over the map otherwise a simple house will cost a million sticks of wood etc...The Ai appears to be under no such limitation as its settlements are compact and teeming with dwellings. Winning the game comes down to obliterating your opponents settlement. To this end cannon and copious amounts of pikemen will be needed. If a building is garrisoned as all can be then storming said building is going to waste a lot of men. Forts and Fortresses come heavily armed and are suicidally expensive to take. In short, good luck trying to win a game. Resources can barely be replenished fast enough to recouperate. Natives are not well represented here. They are represented only by a single teepee or lodge house around which a circle/s of natives occasionally dance. For payments of gold twenty or so indians can be hired to attack your enemy. All said and done I think this game is a mild distraction at best and will not have a great deal of playability. Even at half the price it would be a waste of time and cash. Why not save up your dough for something more entertaining and less micromanaged?

great fight

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: July 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Bulid the best army you can and attack hard. This game is very real watch your get picked off one by one, then send in the marines to help beat down your emeny. Oh yea dont forget to defend your base. This game is based in the American 1790's era muskets that dont have very strond power. No michine guns no lazer weapons and no cheats . This game is a real War game. Build your best amry and win.

Intrigueing but incredibly frustrating

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: June 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Loving history and enjoying my weekends playing wargames and strategy based games, I saw this game used at my local computer gaming store and bought it. For $9.99 I thought..."How could I go wrong?" Well there was a reason why the previous owner sold this game back.

The positive points:
- Interesting concept and time period
- Great renderings, colors, textures and graphics
- Fairly good sound effects
- Great menu artwork
- Great fun in building towns and armies
- For the non-historian, this game opens up a page out of the history books (and those history haters might learn something).

The bad:
- VERY slow game (even on my high-end computer)
- Indian teepees and other indigenous populous dwellings are laughable
- Micro-management is king. (there should be a way to not micro-manage you people/armies/town and EVERY ASPECT of the game)
- Controlling troops are incredibly difficult (something that is not realistic)
- Winning of the "Battle" mode only involves capturing your opponents fort (and the computer cheats).
- As my friends and brother calls "computer cheating" (computer doesn't play by the same rules)
- Seemingly limitless number of troops (for the computer) (CHEATER!)
- Winning is practically impossible (overly difficult even on "easy" mode)
- Bad "Fog-of-War" (even after exploring unknown territory, it stays unknown, and you have to memorize the map and it's details after you've passed through it.)
- Morale???? What Morale? Rarely battles of this time period fought very long (one side would become demoralized or scared and run/"route") This never happens in this game
- 10-12 bears attacking in a coordinated group?? Is this supposed to be a joke?
- Aligators taking out your troops when nearing the shores of a river? Who thought that up?????!!
- No weather in this game (like rain, snow, wind, etc)
- No disease or sicknesses to injure or kill Europeans or natives (which was a MAJOR factor of this time period)
- No nighttime (it's daytime all the time in this game.... "is that realistic?")

As you can see, the negatives FAR outweigh the positives. Usually I try and look for the good in a game and try and enjoy it (especially since I spent my hard earned money on it, even if it is only $10)

Having no manual, no instructions or any kind of paperwork.... made my gaming experience more difficult, but who really holds on to that stuff after a couple of months of playing the particular game?

In short, this software has serious problems. Whomever created the game, had no solid historical basis or backing. Game play is seriously lacking.

Games that are TOO challenging, kills the average PC gamers will to continue.

Maybe they the producers of this game don't care for they have their money now.

I am just thanking my lucky stars (no pun intended), that i didn't pay full price for this incredibly frustrating piece of software.

one of the best historical war-strategy games

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a stand-alone add-on to the American Conquest (so you don't need actual AC - it's included), sequel to Russian-built Cossacks.
New features (copied but edited from developers site):
- new "Battlefield" mode: 20 battles for single - and multi-player
- 40 new buildings and over 50 new units
- 8 campaigns consisting of 25 new missions in total Global rating system
- 10 new single missions
- 17 different nations and tribes, including 5 new ones: Russia, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal Haida
- Game events covering the period of 1517 to 1804
- Map 4X zooming in-out.
The rest I think is the same as AC.
Game didn't have any "hype" in the US, so it's almost unknown (except among those who played Cossacks).
Good solid war-strategy game. History is as accurate as it could be in the game (probably the most accurate out there). Graphics are very good with some minor glitches (like soldiers walking through the trees). Music is somewhat annoying, but other sounds are Ok.
Truth in battle - a group of soldiers is nothing (dead in 5 sec) comparing to the unit of soldiers of the same size (no Terminators); moral influences units fighting ability; height somewhat counts to the range of fire.
Multiplayer,.. oh well - if you live by European time you can find some really good players, but learn some russian :)

Put aside almost any other RTS game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you are currently playing, and having a lot of fun, with some of the following:

.- Cossacks European Wars and/or Cossacks The Art of War (I know there is another Cossacks sequel, but never played it)
.- Empire Earth and/or Empire Earth - The Art of Conquest
.- Stronghold and/or Stronghold Crusader
.- Praetorians
.- Legion
.- War & Peace
.- Seven Kingdoms I & II
.- No Man's Land
.- Age of Empires and/or AOE Rise of Rome and/or AOE II Age of Kings and/or AOE II The Conquerors

Stop playing, go shopping and get ACFB, if you liked "Cossacks" (any version) a lot, you'll fall for this game.

Let put it this way, "Cossacks" is an animated, cartoon film. ACFB is a real full fledged movie.

Is true you need some hardware strengh, but in the Cossacks' way. No that much as AOE II, which, playing against the computer, with 400-500 units both sides, you always know when your foe is going to attack you because ... when it's setting its army the computer doesn't let you play !!

My Athlon 1 GHZ, 512 MB of RAM and NVIDIA GForce 2 PCI 32 MB video card, plays Cossacks, Empire Earth, Stronghold, Praetorians and War & Peace fast, very responsive to the mouse at 1024 x 768 x 16. The new ACFB is just playable, I just won my first single map, fighting (going North from Florida) with Spaniards against Brittons, with more than 3,000 units both sides.

For the first moment you get impressed by this game. When you see in the screen the first bunch of peasants, waiting for your orders, they are wandering and fooling around just like any real workers squad without a supervisor !!

The design, accuracy and realism of the buildings is amazing. The same for landscape: trees, terrain, rocks.

At $30.00, it's a steal.

Awesome.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I was very pleased with this game. It offered a very satisfying pop cap and playable features, like massed firing by ranks(not availble in any RTS game, not even Cossacks) and Bayonet charges(which only Cossacks had also.) The game is more realistic with flagbearers and drummers. Officers are very powerful units in hand-to-hand fighting, and Cavalry are the only units that can defeat Unit formations of 196. All buildings are capable of shooting enemy units, except mines. The only thing that botheredd me in the game that there is no diplomacy, you rule every nation as a Communist Dictator with totalatarian power, unintended mistake, but when you look at it, thats how you rule your civilians.

if you like battles, ...... if you like massive battles o ya

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: June 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

first of all this game kicks the ... out of any other game out there but dont get it unless you have a gamming platform that can hold anything.y you ask...hmm.. well it might be becuase you have realistic graphics cool music, o and armies of up tp 16,000 people and awsomly realistic ships.this game isnt for you if you dont have patience though many of my games take about 8 hours but thats 8 hours filled with heart pounding kaick a battles, only bad thing is that some stuff is a little cheap but still its an awsomly realistaic game and worth your money and time.

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