How is the multiplayer?

[tzaeru]

Hi,

I've been looking for a strategy game to play online. I'm kind of semi-competitive in my playing style; not entirely casual, but not hardcore enough to much seek into tournaments or so. I usually geek the hell out of a game and try to git gud in them.

Right now this and Age of Empires II: HD seem like good candidates, but I don't entirely enjoy the heavy focus in micromanagement in AoE. With Cossacks, though, I've seen several reviews cite problems with bugs and imbalance in multiplayer.

So.. How workable is the multiplayer atm? Does it work sufficiently as is, or does it need lots of patching before it can be considered on-par with the best known examples of the genre?

[Mr_Cossack]

It was broken at release, but patches have sinnce fixed those issues. I can now play MP without issue. My games fill up in seconds during EU prime time the lobby has over a 1000 players in server #1.

As for balance, well Cossacks is huge scale compared to Age of Empires, you manage thousands of units rather than 200/500 max. You have to build your enconomy and upgrade your base and units. Balance needs work of course, but its still fun as hell to play. There are games for noobs and decent players as you will see in match titles.

[mamuschka]

still buggy

[Wormeur]

Yep still buggy. half the games just bug at start, never to launch.
Some just crash 45-1h into the game.

So i usually stick with 1v1 or 2v2 10pt max, sometimes 20 but it is risky.
I think the more units, the more chances to have a bug.

That being said, the game is quite enjoyable, when it works

[PikaTheChu]

Buggy, host leaving the game = game over, game is clientside = lots of cheating possible, drophacking as well, so this is probably the last game you want to get for MP.
On top of that there is no balance whatsoever between the nations.

[🎅⛄❄AmbeR🎅⛄❄]

Its playable but lots of work to be done

[DONAR]

it's hard to get a good match, game chrashes often, or error messages occur, but when you do get a good match every now and then it's really fun.

[Unrealmouse22]

need an option for no mercs, just like yes/no balloons

[Dr.PotatoAim]

It's good... The crashes wins 50% of the games tho.

[Hoola]

I feel I can answer this, as I am pretty competative and "serious" RTS-player myself. The main difference is that I really like the heavy micro of RTS, like Warcraft 3.

I'm also looking for a new "competative" RTS to play. I played quite a bit of Age of Empires 2 and AoE 3, and these are both solid options with a pretty active multiplayer community. AoE3 is probably a little more micro-intensive than AoE2 though.

Cossacks 3 is NOWHERE near these games currently, it's just too buggy and lacks some key components. It has no matchmaking system at all, and no ELO/rating whatsoever, so you're stuck in random public lobbies unless there are some third-party website I don't know about.

In Age of Empires, and this game is similar in many ways, your best defence is walling, so the enemy can't raid your workers. There are walls in Cossacks 3, but when I tried to build palisades the game crashed. It was a known bug apperantly, so they might have fixed this since when I played; they do churn out quite a lot of patches(simply due to how many bugs there are). But the game is "cozy" and I can definatly see the potential, if the devs keep up patching and really are passionate about their game.

TL;DR: Game has potential and a decent playerbase, but is really buggy atm and doesn't have any matchmaking/rating for competative play.

[StoleMyCoconut]

Coxsacks 3 had a buggy release but if you would have to choose from aoe2hd or cossacks 3 go for cossacks it runs alot smoother already while aoe2 been in development without any succes while cossacks is build on a new engine

Aoe2 + multiplayer wait 5 seconds for your units to react

Coxsacks instant reactions already...

[kinginora]

Terrible wtf sucks............. i play other game because cossaks3 devs dont fix peasant's bug fil plz

[Gambino]

It crashes more times then a monkey riding a rocket...

[Hoola]

AoE2: HD is not perfect, but of course you will get delay if you lobby up with people with 56k modems and 200 ping. And Cossacks 3 does not run smoother than AoE2, especially considering all the errors and crashes. And AoE2 is basically 20 years old, so if a game released in 2016 isn't smoother than that..? Maybe says something...

[tzaeru]

Well, I bought it! Played through tutorials and a quick random map.

I can already see that there's a lot of quality-of-life fixes that need to be implemented. But I love the way the military is used as whole squads instead of as single units. With the units taking some time to get into proper formations etc, there's *probably* going to be less focus in microing individual units and kiting and more focus in managing the whole army coherently (though it's of course hard to say yet, but I'd like it if it was like that in the long run!)

Overall it feels very good and more complicated in economy management than your standard AoE/Warcraft/Starcraft/etc. In some ways, it even reminds me of Total Annihilation.

I'm optimistic!

[tzaeru]

Okay, definitely not multiplayer ready yet.

Troops don't render where they actually are (instead they fight and die in random positions on your screen), unit queues get bugged and stop producing and basically it's a clickfest of who can spam more economy buildings faster. Handling the amount of units you are producing at 30 minute mark is also a bit.. interesting. You can basically queue units and build more barracks as fast as you can click and make them into squads.

Still, I see a lot of potential. It's refreshingly different in many respects from the traditional RTS approach.

Hopefully the worst issues will be remedied and balance tweaked in future!