Compared to the chaos of modern wars, warfare in the early 19th century was a highly formalized affair. Thousands of men marched in formation around the battlefield, lined up against an enemy formation, and then the two exchanged fire until one side broke. This stylized form of warfare has its appeal, especially for strategy fans, and it’s something that we’ll get to see more of with Cossacks II: Battle for Europe, a stand-alone expansion for last year’s Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars. We’ve been playing around with a near-final version of the game to see what’s new and improved.
It’s a bit odd that CDV chose to name this expansion Battle for Europe, since that’s also the name of one of the existing gameplay modes in Napoleonic Wars. As a stand-alone expansion, Battle for Europe doesn’t add a lot of new content to the existing gameplay of the Napoleonic Wars, but what it does add seems promising. Battle for Europe bumps the number of playable nations in the game to nine, with the introduction of Spain, the Great Duchy of Warsaw, and the Rhine Confederation. There are 10 new battlefields, four new campaigns, and three new historical battles. These are actually three pretty significant battles (Waterloo, Leipzig, and Borodino), which makes you kind of wonder how they were overlooked before…
