>>2327006
No it's not dumbass. It's a cossacks spin off, and yeah, it's pretty neat.

Having to produce peasants just to send them into troop production building and converted into soldiers is ass.

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You shut your filthy gob.

>>2327022
why? It's a cool realistic mechanic where trained soldiers don't materialize out of thin air. Especially in a colonial setting where you'd ship retards and lowlife losers overseas to become americans

It's the American version of cossacks. It's fun but complex and hard, I sucked horrible at rpgs as a child and never could get anywhere with it.

>>2327058
They materalize out of thin air but with extra steps

>>2327006
Sadly never conquered Greenland

>>2327058
>>2327022
It could be cool in a different context, but as is it's just needless busywork. It could be functional if you had civilian structures passively create townsfolk and then you turn those into soldiers. I'm not saying that'd work in American Conquest, it'd just make more sense.
>what if instead of clicking one button... I must click two buttons?
vs
>basically Zerg production

>>2327058
Houses and population cap already represent people.

>>2327068
>>2327071
>>2327076
just draw shapes on paper and imagine soldiers teleport to the enemy and you win. If you want to skip mechanics because they're "busywork" why even play games? The busywork is the fun part of playing games.
It's like punching trees in minecraft vs spawning 9999 wood into your inventory with console. Yeah you achieved the end result of getting wood, but did you have fun? Did you play a game? Or are you just an NPC following a checklist?

>>2327094
There's a difference between "gameplay" and "busywork". "Select barracks, click button, receive soldier" is functionally identical to "select town center, click button, receive villager, send to barracks, click button, receive soldier" except the first one is faster and the second one has no advantage whatsoever.
The only possible benefit is if you want to create a militia or something, but there are better mechanics to handle that.

>>2327069
rent free

>>2327102
It's not just meaningless busywork. Peasants are vulnerable and can be capture. It's also preventing you from just effortlessly keep training more soldiers if enemies are attacking your base.
I think it added more depth to the game.

>>2327006
This game has easily the most complex firing and morale mechanics of any early 00s RTS. Not to mention massive pop limits that were unthinkable to other games in the same era. It also does cannons so much better than any other early 00s game, including cossacks games. It's just overall an amazing game, even with the bugs.
People who don't get the recruitment system just want to play ADHD meta clickers, they don't have the patience to understand how much depth and logistics it adds.

>>2327102
>"Select barracks, click button, receive soldier" is functionally identical to "select town center, click button, receive villager, send to barracks, click button, receive soldier"
Not, it literally functionally isn't. All sorts of things can happen to the villager between being created and sent to the barracks, you don't even have to send them there. It's your deliberate choice to divert economic power into military power. Or they can get killed by the enemy in transit.
Holy shit how are you on this board and this clueless about strategy games?

Is it just me or the campaign missions are hard as hell?

>>2328001
Some are really hard like the Alaska one, others are easier. The Spanish ones are a good balance, challenging but not impossible.

I remember buildings being incredibly hard to take down

>>2328748
Depends. If you get the first few bits of building hitpoints, it catches fire and starts losing hitpoints by itself. If there aren't enough peasants around to repair faster than it's burning, you just wait a bit and it blows up. But if there are a ton of peasants around, they'll repair hard, so you'll need more cannons. Otherwise you have to move in and start capturing them which will get tons of your dudes killed.

>>2329519
I don't know what he's talking about. Buildings might as well be out of kindling how easy they burn down. Or get capped. In cossacks you pretty much needed those merc algerian archers or grenadiers unless you wanted to pelt it with MASSED artillery for several minutes.

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>>2329525
Is Cossacks worth playing if I like American Conquest?

>>2329527
Cossacks is actually way more balanced and less buggier than American Conquest

>>2329533
Really? But AC graphics looks so much better...

>>2329533
>>2329539
Wait, how's Cossacks 2?

>>2329527
I second >>2329533

>>2329544
Braindead AI and very interesting if micro intensive mechanics. Expect to manually order volley fires on a unit by unit, the formation not individuals thankfully for anything resembling real effect.

So I've tried Cossacks a bit and aside from being more balanced and less buggy like you guys said, the American Conquest seems to be better at everything else.
Still kinda fun though.

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I wanna try playing the natives. Which is the most fun native Americans faction in your opinion?

Are archers supposed to be this inaccurate?

>>2329525
If you're only bringing a few cannons and trying to blast the center of the enemy base, you probably won't destroy anything. That's why I always get all the cannons I can enjoy the ultimate bombardment kino

>>2329600
The ones that have musket units. Haida is pretty kino, can rally runaway soldiers at totem poles too

>>2330090
My man. In C1 unless you brought actual archers or have a gorillion grenadiers you need a solid battery of howitzers, not cannons, howitzers to take out a regular building in reasonable time. In C2 you need dedicated sappers at the very least. In AC you can hailmary run a half naked and literal spearchucker inside and that solid stone fortress burns down in 10 seconds flat. And usually peppers shrapnel all around while doing it. Don't pretend it's the same.

>>2327006
>>2327006
I played it quite a lot as a teenager, but it wasn't a great game. It was like Rise of Nations in that resources never ran out so games could drag forever without a decisive winner. Resource levels had too many zeros on the end in a way that added nothing to the game. Gold was the key; if you ran out, your ships would mutiny and start attacking you.

The thing that ruined the game mechanically was that forts could fire more than halfway across even the largest maps. They also had really weird ranges of fire where you could have your units approach them in certain directions and not take damage. If you did cross in front of them, though, your units would die almost instantly. It thus became a game of streaming units from one of the enemy's structures to the other, or using the Native American units to burn down structures. Cannons were too slow to use reliably; they would friendly-fire on your structures and units if you weren't careful which was a cool idea in theory but in practice this meant they were useless because leaving a gap for them to fire through would mean the enemy cavalry would charge them. Cavalry in particular was costly and slow to build while being expensive to maintain, but it was absurdly overpowered; none of the other units even came close.

>>2327022
The peasants were another mechanic that was cool in isolation; you have to choose between production or military, but in practice due to the issue of the game being such a slog, the idea that you'd e.g. commit all of your peasants to one last desperate charge wasn't going to work because the marginal difference that they would make was so minimal, and then you have no economy left. The capture mechanics were also kind of cool but made management a nightmare versus the AI, which had full view of the map. I remember I'd play with the fog of war turned off (I think it was a cheat code) because there was just no other way to reliably win the conquest maps.

>>2327071
The whole point of it was that you needed to protect the tiles your units were using to transit from the houses to the fort. It wasn't actually fun mechanically, but that was the idea.
>>2327094
It made the game unique, but it didn't make it enjoyable. All games abstract over aspects of their domain in order to make the game fun, and reversing that abstraction can sometimes produce some interesting results, but if the mechanic itself isn't fun (and it wasn't),people aren't going to play the game.
>>2327261
This game made me realize that the population limits in other games weren't a technical constraint, they were intended to force end games. This is actually the best part about the game; having large field battles *without* any structures present.
>>2328001
I remember most of the campaign levels being a breeze interrupted by a few that were nearly impossible; I am thinking particularly of the Tecumseh campaign. The game often gives you units to storm or destroy buildings which acts as the event flag for the next part of the scenario to load, but there were more than a few maps where the amount of soldiers they give you isn't remotely sufficient. The Bison Hunt scenario was also quite difficult.
>>2328748
Yes, this was what Natives so overpowered in conquest maps; they were incredibly weak but massing enough fire arrows was basically the only reliable way to take down a building that didn't involve cannons (which then would be too slow to reposition to attack again, so the AI would usually just end up rebuilding whatever you just destroyed if there was no area-denial in place).

I think something a lot of people probably wouldn't have picked up on when first playing it is that certain units like the halberdiers had a higher storming strength vs. gunpowder units like the arquebusiers. The easiest way to fight garrisoned buildings usually involved garrisoning in other buildings. You'd hop from house-to-house and then fire in on the forts.

>>2329539
Weird, I always thought Cossacks looked better. I never played it, though. It's all the same engine, anyway.
>>2329550
American Conquest was the same way; you'd target a single unit to concentrate fire in order to cause damage to the formation's morale.
>>2329600
They are all really mechanically different. I remember the Mayans being my favorite. The Delwares and Hurons were good, too. I tried playing as the Sioux a few times but I don't think I ever managed to win the game with them.
>>2329882
There are upgrades you can buy that make their fire scatter less; I seem to recall that reducing scatter fire for either archers or muskets ended up being a handicap, but I can't remember why. It was probably something to do with how dispersed fire impacts morale and how units will waste volleys when you target a unit instead of a formation.

Nice blogposts

>>2330096
Yeah you can get lucky. That doesn't mean buildings are easy to take down by default
>Don't pretend it's the same.
I don't. AC is way better than any Cossacks game

>It's like Age of Empires 2!
Dropped

>>2332305
kys

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>>2327006
Oh look, it's the bi-montly "has anyone played AC?" thread

>>2327022
>t. filtered

>>2329600
Hurons and Iroquois if you don't try to play them as Europeans (most common mistake)
Sioux once you learn how to micro your cavalry

>>2330823
Sioux are good if you embrace their actual goal and playstyle. They are the ultimate raid faction.
You aren't raiding HARD your enemy by 15th minute mark? Sorry pal, this faction is not for you.
You are trying to amass large number of units, rather than hit-and-run clusterfuck on enemy economy? Sorry pal, this faction is not for you.
The point is to either starve your enemy (easy) or frustrate them into throwing the game (very easy)

>>2329527
Consider the following additions AC made
>Actual fortifications
>Garrisons
>Morale mechanics
>Aim mechanics
>Mass infantry waves
>Armour vs speed mechanics
>Improved cavalry
If you can play without any of those, then sure, give Cossacks a shot, but in the end of the day, the morale and aim mechanics from AC are just too good to move back.
What Cossacks have above AC are
>Better food mechanics
>Balloon tech
>Better tech-tree in general
>Actual, solid eras
And very divisive difference between the two
>Cossacks allow to just mine stone, AC requires to build and then upgrade quarry
Depending who you ask, either system is better and the other one sucks balls

>>2329533
>Cossacks
>Anywhere near "balance"

>>2329544
Pretty bad, despite on paper being the superior game in the whole franchise. It's a combination of non-existing AI and micro that kills it, while MP has only a small selection of maps that's been solved ages ago.

>>2329527
Oh, and said all that >>2334333 :
Cossacks have really fucking good campaigns. Some next tier stuff. Polish campaign from the expansion is one of the better ones, French is also pretty good.

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>>2334335
>Polish campaign
Stole that shit for my TTRPG campaign when running Honor + Intrigue, nobody figured out. Pure fucking kino.

>>2334333
>>Actual fortifications
>>Morale mechanics
>>Aim mechanics
>>Mass infantry waves
>>Armour vs speed mechanics
All of those existed in c1...

>>2334350
Can you elaborate? How exactly did you adapt it?

>>2334383
So you never played AC or C?
But sure, let's go with Cossacks features:
>No forts, fortresses nor blockhouses you can build
>No morale mechanic, units just fight to their death
>There are no aim mechanics, any shot fired is a guaranteed hit
>Game starts clipping when moving formations, the formations themselves move like ass
>Armour does fuck all, units have pre-defined speed
You dumb fuck

>>2334445
Nta, but how about simply playing the campaign? Just the first mission should give you the idea.
It's effectively someone's Dzikie Pola tabletop campaign turned into RTS campaign, but still distinctively designed around main characters and their actions while handling small amount of hirelings

>>2334383
>>2334455
Oh, right
>Mass assault is impossible, because there are no mechanics for mass assault
You can recognise those when the game stats playing the related music cues, but that's not just some cosmetic feature, there is an actual morale penalty to the defending side due to being overwhelmed and an attack bonus to the charging side. Which is why the Injuns can fight at all past certain point of the game, or else they would get massacred before even getting close to your troops (and they still die by hundreds)

>>2334455
I've played all the Cossacks campaigns and missions, I'm just wondering how that translates to tabletop since I don't play that. I understand why you've chosen it given the specifics of the first two missions of the campaign.

>>2334459
I'm not the guy who run it as a tabletop campaign either. I just see how easy it is to turn that particular campaign into an RPG. Wouldn't use H+I, but that doesn't invalidate the story that effectively put you in/the party in charge of a frontier wilderness with specific goals to placate the area. Not to mention the campaign borrows ideas from real-life Dymitriads, where effectively Polish petty nobles played kingmaker in Russia after Ivan the Terrible died, taking over Moscow with nothing more than balls of pure brass (Ruskies are seething to this day)

>>2334445
Oh, it's easy. The campaign gives you your main character, but is perfectly scalable to a player party. The first 3 missions are baiscally small-fry skirmishes that work on personal level and have enough events while map-crawling to handle it all and provide additional opportunities. Even once base-building becomes dominant element of the campaign, it's still very easy to adjust and continue with party antics.