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GSC (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. devs) reopened, developing Cossacks 3

Major_Blackhart

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Shit. I dunno if it's gonna be day 1 for me or not.
 

AwesomeButton

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Judging from the videos they really didn't make any improvements whatsoever, which is sad.

- The clashes of units once again come down to battle of the clones where two blobs of absolutely identical units chew at each other and everything is decided by numbers.
- No way to upgade your formations' attack/defence values on formation level, giving you some regiments that are "elite" and others that are fodder.
- No way to modify the speed of movement of a formation (forced march)
- It will be a pleasant surprise if line/square/hollow square formations modify stats somehow and if marching column is added.
- A formation or a bunch of units sent over a long distance will inevitably form a long line because everyone moves at the same speed and only the corners they turn and their initial position from which they began moving, determine who is behind whom.
 

Jinn

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Very interested to hear some codex opinions on this. I'm not a huge fan of RTS games for the most part, but this one looks intriguing to me in several ways and I love the developers and want to support them if I can.
 

Ba'al

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I've played both tutorial missions and one random map game against normal ai. So far it plays almost exactly the same as the original but with different graphics. Details like tech prices seem to be the same, they even left the absurd 'ai detonates mine 1 milisecond before you capture it' tactic. The only thing I found lacking are some of the nations (which may come with a free DLC) and 18th century ships.
I noticed two improvements: having selected units, while holding down and dragging RMB, you can see how your units will position themselves (before you had to let go RMB and readjust); if you send more than 5 peasants to build a mine, only five will go.
I'm gonna play more tomorrow and post more in-depth comparisons with the original, if anyone is interested.
 

AwesomeButton

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having selected units, while holding down and dragging RMB, you can see how your units will position themselves (before you had to let go RMB and readjust); if you send more than 5 peasants to build a mine, only five will go.
I think this was a feature of Cossacks II
 

anus_pounder

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Is Ukraine still in the game, does it get unique peasants and is it unable to advance to the 18th century as well? :dance:

EDIT: Minor nitpicky stuff but I'm bothered by the fact that the cannons don't have any gunners. Or is that just the cannons from the tutorial?
 
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Ba'al

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I think this was a feature of Cossacks II
It was, now it's better - you can point your troops in any direction, Cossacks 2 had 16 directions, I think (probably because of the sprites).
Is Ukraine still in the game, does it get unique peasants and is it unable to advance to the 18th century as well? :dance:

EDIT: Minor nitpicky stuff but I'm bothered by the fact that the cannons don't have any gunners. Or is that just the cannons from the tutorial?
Ukraine is in the game, it has unique peasants and is unable to advance to the 18 century. None of the cannons have gunners, which is strange because Cossacks 2 had them, though I strongly believe this is intentional.

The devs really did their best to replicate the original, I've performed several tests and all the peculiarities are still there. For example: the order in which you research the gunpowder techs (+10% shot power, +20% etc.) and upgrades affects the final strength of a shooting unit. I have tested this on a 18th cenutry dragoon. If you max out the upgrades at the stable, then research the techs in the 'highest percentage first' order, you get 91 shot power. If you max out the upgrades, then use the reverse order for the techs, you get 89 shot power. If you research the techs first (highest first), and finish with the upgrades at the stable, you get 63.

Either they reused the code form the original (which imo they did, because why would you implement upgrades like that?), or went that extra fucking mile to implement every fucking little detail that makes the original Cossacks what it is.

What they have added are some UI elements such as tooltips, which give a brief description of units/buildings and their prerequisites. You can also track the number of peasants you have working on a particular resource, it even subtracts the number if you have any upkeep (only works for gold).

Apart from that, the only other and perhaps most obvious change is the game engine. It looks quite nice, perhaps a bit dark and cartoony (the former could be the result of graphical settings with which I haven't yet experimented). I think that the original had a clearer look. The new engine does affect gameplay: the trees are now solid 3d objects and thus obstacles, making marching units through forests a bit of a pain. None of the units turn on the spot anymore, they seem to have some momentum, which makes cheesy hit and run tactics less effective, but still usable.

I could go on about other nitpicky stuff, but I lack the autism to do so.

Oh, the game runs decently enough, though I have encountered a few lag spikes in thick battles. Mind you I have an old Core2duo setup and the game is fresh off the press.

TL;DR: Cossacks 3 = Cossacks 1 + grafix, it's p. good.
 

AwesomeButton

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I hope the new engine makes it more easily moddable. The script editor in Cossacks 1 was a nightmare. The thing I'd most like to see modded is variance of unit models within a single unit type, so that not all my musketeers look like clones. This would add to the atmosphere a lot.

Oh, and I suppose units still have no voiced responses on issuing commands? I doubt they would do such a feature with so many playable nations planned.
 

DramaticPopcorn

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Really curious to see how moddable this will be.

EDIT: Lots of reviews saying it's unstable as shit, what's codex experience?
 
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Zewp

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It's unstable as shit. Lots of weird bugs that tells me this game really should have spent a couple more weeks in QA. Skirmish and multiplayer were basically unplayable up until yesterday because of bugs. You'd get halfway through a match and then your selection box stops working, ctrl-c + ctrl-v duplicated units, cheats working in multiplayer, that kind of thing. They released a patch with a massive changelog this morning but I haven't really tested it properly yet. The only campaign I haven't done yet (can't remember the nation) still has a bug that renders fishing boats unusable.
 

AwesomeButton

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From screenshots I saw on the steam page it looks like buildings are no longer proprtional to to a singe unit's sprite size. Is this really the case?
 

Jugashvili

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I was pretty hyped for a Cossacks reboot but after a short run it feels like a pretty sloppy port tbh famiglia.

Stuff I like:
- Captures the feel of the original, nothing feels off graphics-wise
- The AI is slightly smarter, especially on higher difficulty. Now it actually uses your captured peasants to build tech from your civ, which is a nice touch and something the AI couldn't do in the original (they just had them gather resources).
- Formations feel slightly less useless, also it looks like they've added a formation attack bonus for gunpowder units, which makes them good for more than just pikemen
- Useful UI/handling features from the later games have been implemented (infinite unit queues, resource counters tell you how many peasants are allocated, etc.)

Stuff I dislike:
- Buggy, unstable.
- No in-game encyclopaedia. Wtf, GSC? Even for people who played the hell out of the original back in the day, it's still useful
- No after-battle reports. Easy to implement and is always fun to have a look at after a battle. Lazy.
- They've cut out some nations? I miss Saxony.

Get it on sale, but mostly for the nostalgia value.
 

AwesomeButton

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I watched a 40 minutes video by some Russian-sounding moron yesterday, the game sadly retains all it downsides, the biggest one for me being the lack of tactical depth. Battles mostly turn into fun to watch but brainless massacres where hundreds of sprites from each side stack on top of each other. Only real fun to be had will be with custom scenarios that remake historical battles, but these need a lot of scripting to emulate mechanics that give tactical advantages under specific circumstances - give a bonus to defence when an army is positioned between buildings or on a hill, emulate retreating regiments if their strength drops below a certain number, etc.
 

Zewp

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That and there's no reason to really use anything other than pikemem. Any MP match with more than 2 players also tends to have peace timers, where the winner is determined by whose economy is most successful so that they can churn out the most pikemen or grenadiers and steamroll the closest opponent.

2 player matches tend to depend on who can rush with pikemen the fastest. Just get your barracks up, set repeat production and send them to your enemy in mobs. The one with the slightly better economy wins.
 

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