Cossacks: Back to War

There are 6 basic resources in the game that are crucial to the player's military victory. These are gold, wood, food, stone, iron and coal. Gold, iron and coal may only be acquired by constructing mines over a designated resource area and sending peasants into them whereas food is cultivated from mills and via the use of fishing boats. Wood and stone are gathered by conventional means and there are also specific areas where these may be collected.

Depending on the type of unit or structure being built, the amount of resources needed to create a unit/structure would inflate quantitatively with each successive one built or trained. Depleted resources would result in an undesirable penalty for the player such as a lack of food will signify a famine for the state and the player's units will die from lack of supplies. Similarly, a lack of coal and iron means that shooters and cannons will cease to fire their weapons whereas a lack of gold will mean that units which require maintenance paid will commit mutiny against the state. The economic workforce consists of peasants who can multitask and also attack enemy soldiers.

Cossacks: European Wars was developed in Ukraine by GSC Game World. The game has been noted for artistic qualities and great graphics, in particular the special effects which were once described as "second to none". Another remarkable feat is the technology tree having more than 300 upgrades.

Desires to create the game Cossacks began in 1997, when Age of Empires was published, and development started in 1998. The 17th and 18th centuries were selected because the most obvious continuation of Age of Empires would be medieval Europe and Cossacks was its logical successor, not a competitor. At first, Cossacks was supposed to be about the confrontation in Ukraine and Russia and there would be four nations: Ukraine, Russia, Europe and Turkey. The game would be sold in the domestic market.

John Bye of Eurogamer described Cossacks: European Wars as a "massive hit". Publisher CDV Software told investors that the game was "very successful" through the end of 2000, after its release late that year. It sold well in Russia, where consumers purchased over 300,000 units by December 2001. It was also popular in Britain, reaching #1 on the sales charts and selling roughly 100,000 copies by that date, according to GSC Game World.

The United Kingdom's Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) ultimately gave Cossacks a "Silver" sales award in September 2002, for 100,000 sales in the region. Conversely, the developers were let down by the game's poor performance in the United States, where it launched at #8 on NPD Intelect's computer game sales chart for the week of 29 April 2001. It was absent by its second week. By May 2004, Cossacks had sold above 150,000 units in France alone.