This year’s Game Developers Conference in spacious San Jose, California, is under way, and we took the opportunity to visit publisher CDV for an up-close look at Cossacks II: Battle for Europe, a stand-alone expansion from developer GSC Game World and publisher CDV. Like the previous game, Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars, Battle for Europe will take place in 19th-century Europe and will feature massive 2D battles between musketmen, cavalry, and cannons.
The expansion will feature three primary play modes: a single-player campaign inspired by historical conflicts, a strategic Battle for Europe mode reminiscent of Creative Assembly’s Total War games, and a skirmish/battle mode for quick play. The campaign mode will offer four different campaigns for the nations of France, Germany, Poland, and Spain, and each campaign will offer about six different missions. In contrast, the Battle for Europe mode (available in both single-player and multiplayer games) will offer a fully turn-based, strategic component–similar to the kind found in the award-winning Total War series–to go with its real-time battles. In the strategic mode, you’ll survey all of Europe as a board-game-like map (similar to Risk) divided into 24 provinces among 10 nations. You can attempt to establish diplomatic ties with your neighbors so you can barter for safe passage across their borders, make military alliances, or trade resources such as gold, food, and soldiers. Yet even though you can, if you earn a massive amount of funds, expend large sums of wealth to ally with as many as seven of your nine neighbors, you won’t be able to make friends with everyone–and your final victory will have to come through force…
