I am completely smitten by the game. Never did I expect to stumble on this gem in 2014 and enjoy it as much as I did. I always liked RTS genre with a twist, and what a twist RPG addition is! This is simple, yet brilliantly executed game gives you full creative freedom of an RTS game, but throws in a Hero who can level up and equip items. Seems simple enough, until you get your hero to level 80, who singlehandedly can shift the balance of the battlefield, unless you bring a significant army against him, or shut him down early on. This is an amazing little strategy game which brings novelty and freshness to its gameplay.
Campaign is really cheesy and cringy, but varied and extremely entertaining. Some magnificent easter eggs to be had there that make you beg developers for a Sequel.

Thoroughly enjoyed and well recomended.

I love the game. Don't let my hours fool you, I've played this since release. I saw it here and I wanted it on my Steam for a computer that the original disk won't work with so I bought it again here. I literally probably easily have 300-400 hours in this one, if not more, as I've played it at least weekly since 2006.

The campaign is ok, can be difficult but it is good for teaching you about the heroes and the units. I play the skirmishes. I never get tired of it. Sometimes I'll give myself an AI teammate and go against 3-5 AI teamed together or any of a million set ups I've tried over the years. There's still a couple of bugs but they aren't bugs so much as exploits which you'll probably never find anyway. Some AI pathing issues mainly with the dwarf constructs and the frost guys mammoth. I love that there are npc monster huts that you can hire and they auto send groups of troops out fighting. I was so disappointed that they never made a Part 2 or added more to this one but I still play it at least once a week, it's a nice break from my intense longer games.

I hope they sell a few copies here and decide it's worth doing another.

After 14+ hours with this game's campaign (and still more to go), and a few more hours with it's Skirmish mode vs AI, I can say that this game truly is a hidden gem of the RTS genre. Though the campaign story writing is cheesy and corny to an extreme, it is at least voiced by somewhat professional English-speaking actors. And though the writing is silly, the actual mechanics of the campaign were designed by an obviously smart and thoughtful team of people (even if English wasn't their first language...).

I've honestly never had as much drive in an RTS campaign to finish each mission as I've had in this game. The scenarios are very challenging and may require some reloads, but none of them (so far) are broken or impossible. The game rewards micromanaging but also overall strategy, and the units, damage types, spells, and technologies are very well thought out and designed. The game had bad PR, a questionable name, a foreign developer, and some strange design choices, but it was clearly made by hardcore gamers with a deep understanding of RTS mechanics and an exceedingly creative spirit. This is the last (and probably the best) game in the strange and exotic Cossacks series from long ago.

Add to this the fact that this game's graphics are easily some of the best ever from the mid 2000's era, and I was very impressed with the look and feel and how well it aged, even though I tend to be a graphics snob. The sheer wealth of fantasy creatures, all of which look pretty awesome even by Windows 7, 2015 standards, is amazing for a game this old.

The game has flaws for sure and a few bugs occured during the campaign, but basically, it's a ridiculously good buy for the content you get (expect about 20 h for the solo campaign), and is a great blast from the past if you're in a nostalgic mood. It is a tragedy the game's developers are now mostly defunct, though I do believe there is a community out there who still appreciates this game.

Please message or friend me if you are interested in doing some multiplayer skirmish games. I'm trying to put together a group that is willing to play on the occasional evening, because, even though the AI seems somewhat competent even on Normal, the sheer wealth of this game's units and spell strategies are best suited for the discerning mind of a human player.

Cheers, and I hope this helped!

It's cossacks in a generic fantasy world.
If you enjoyed the cossacks formula but instead of pikemen and dragoons wanted to amass armies of werewolves, wizards and centaurs, then this is your best bet.

Don't expect anything extremely original, it's the same generic fantasy tropes: elves, undead, dwarves and "cryo" (humans/ice people).
And in those races, the unit types are pretty standard: for the elves there's griffins, ents & unicorns, for the undead there's zombies, mummies & liches and so on and so forth.

While the setting doesn't really break any barriers, the gameplay makes up for it with a certain massiveness and "realism", for lack of better terms.
You can, and you will, (literally!) trample over helpless elf archers with your dwarven machinery. Beign a gsg game it's not uncommon to see hundreds of units on the battlefield, and theres a certain satisfaction in destroying them, having their ranks break down, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women.

Graphics are top notch, for a 2d game, they're amazing, and even all those years they still look like a fairytale, couldn't say the same if it was 3d.

Multiplayer still works after all those years, with gamespy being down, it's a privilege to be able to get multiplayer to work wihtout having to tinker with hamachi, tunngle or gamespy.

There's a hero RPG system "borrowed" from warcraft 3, it takes 20 minutes until the cooldown ends and you can use him, they're really weak early on, but when you get them rolling? They become small superweapons.
There isn't an 18 lvl cap like in, say, wc3, so you can get real high with the hero and wreak total havoc, especially with the proper skills & an army (that you got rolling while he was out of it) worthy of the title.

All in all, pretty good, worth trying out, at least because it's one of a kind (despite the generic setting).

PROS: (Scroll down In-Game Scenario)
- Multiplayer Works, but you might need a steam friend to join you.
- Nostalgic gameplay
- Plays like the original
- Cheats work for it (even in the campaign)
[CHEATS INCLUDE: More money, more XP, see whole map, more recources, InstaUpgrades&Faster, and spawn units, buildings, items, spells, chests, and MUCH MUCH more.]
- Skirmishing is amazing. You are given the choice to use RTS + Hero or just play as a Hero, and defend you AI Team(s)
- You can have up to 7 teams on one of the maps, so if you're feeling a 1 vs 6 with all 6 teams set to Hard, goodluck
- Campaign lasts for Hours upon HOURS, especially on Hard difficulty
- Campaign is you playing a Hero that leads or assists a variety of armies set out to rid of the UNDEAD and those ♥♥♥♥♥ necromancers.
(I could go on)

CONS:
- There isn't a second game or any other extentions

Okay now Here is a Battle Scenario for Skirmish:
You decide to be an Undead Warrior and instead of summoning your rally workers (necromancers) right away, you go and explore the map a bit, checking out all the libraries to see what spells are being sold. Before closing in on the library, you come across a Demon, six times your size. You arent strong enough to take it on yourself, so you summon skeletons to fend him off while you escape. Your skeletons are broken to pieces by this demon, but you escaped and find a small encampment surrounded by goblins. This is an easy first battle to start gaining XP, so you attack their cheifs, and for each chief dead, a few goblins start to flee in fear of their dead leaders. The Goblin "Necromancer" revives one chief and you find yourself being attacked by those goblins that were just fleeing. You kill the Necromancer, and then the cheif. After that, the rest were weakened and you started to attack their barracks. Your "Raise Dead" spell is ready to be used again, and you leveled up twice.. you choose to level up your Mana Regeneration, and your speed. Since you you are now lvl 3, your "raise dead" spell is slightly stronger, giving your skeletons a slight upgrade when summoned.

After a few encampments (settlements) detroyed, you finally earned enough money to Hire one of the settlements that stand in the path between you and the enemy. (They will keep sending out small groups of allies to attack the enemy until their settlement is destroyed). Since you decided not to summon your "rally workers" at the beginning of the game, the enemy gains RTS advantage. They have many buildings and a large, upgraded army.

You summon your Rally Workers, and begin to start building mines and barracks that allows you to build an army of your own. Your Hero Freezes for 30min and you start to grow your army. You get attacked once or twice by the enemy (Elves), but your allied settlement did well slowing them down for now. You know you are outnumbered, so you choose to create more necromancers and skeletons at the beginning of your reign. Since you are the undead, your armies will grow very fast, and very strong if you spawn in the right troops. You have 200 Skeletons, 40 zombies, and 36 ghosts. You get attacked and barely win the battle. you have 0 skeletons, 4 zombies, and 34 ghosts left, but you set your skeleton spawn limit to unlimited, so your army is already almost fully back together by the time the battle is over. You recount all undead, and you decided to make some werewolves and undead dragons while you were at it (whitewalkers did it again!).

After 30 minutes of battling back and forth, your Hero is ready to fight and you army is ready to attack, so with everyone, including a few settlements your hired on the way there, you attack the enemy base (while spawning more troops flagged to go strait to the enemy when spawned). Your hero places a ghostly tower close to your troops to help protect them from the enemy. You raid the enemies base with EVERYTHING you got, and with luck on your side, your settlements decided to join at the right time. You overthrow the enemy base, but the enemy Hero comes in for an attack! She kills most of weaker enemies, with some allies to back her up. You overpower her, The Ents, the Griffon, The Unicorn and the many troops around. You win by total annihilation!

Goodjob.

10/10 would buy again. (:

Similar RTS Games (But very different):
- Age of Empires
- Age of Mythology

A serious diamond in the rough. The campaign wasn't that good, the gameplay is a bit slow. But in the end, it's pretty innovative and I love the variety of all four playable factions.

There's also a huge mod for the game that should still be in circulation but I haven't looked into it recently myself.

As for all the reviews saying that the game does not work with machines over 2GB RAM; that issue has apparently been resolved as I learned just today. Game seems to work flawlessly for me now!

A side note: Elhant (the campaign's protagonist) really is a prick. Really.

Edit 12/30/20: Game works even better on Linux than it does on Windows by some miracle, and is still a really underrated game!

An awesome old game. Very nice graphics for the time, still ok today.

I saw people saying lots of crashes...I've played the first 5 campaign scenarios and 4 hours without a single crash. I have a low end machine too ... a ryzen 4800h with an rtx 3050 and I'm on windows 11.

Very worth buying still. The only real con for me is that I cannot remap the arrow keys to wasd. Minor nitpick.

Edit: It's 2 weeks later. Still not a single crash. Whatever problems people were having seems to be gone.

An oddly addictive game. I had this on original disc way back when, and downloaded from steam after trouble with that disc, so my hours of play are way higher than whats stated here.

But the game: Its hard to pin down. Its pretty clear this is an unfinished project, the starting screens kinda indicate that there are at least 2 more campaigns after the elves, yet are never implemented. The multiplayer maps also support this with each different faction that you play as having some unique heroes, many of which are never even seen in the main game. Sounds like they had quite the project planned, but funding was cut.

The game itself plays like a hero based RTS, AND a standard build your base RTS. Certain points demand you build a base and all that junk, but the vast majority of the game is just your main guy strolling around and killing things. In fact it gets to the point where you can overpower him to such a massive degree, that building bases and armies is totally worthless, as he can and will take on the entire map solo.

Alot of people hate this game for its unfinished feel and slightly odd style. But I love it. Its just a shame we never got to see the final product in all its finished glory to really judge this underated gem.

Heroes of Annihilated Empires. This game is good in my eyes thanks to playing it when I was younger and having slogged through the campaign. In reality, not as good.

The gameplay of HoAE is very reminiscent of the cossacks 1 games and even the same engine. The major exceptions to this is that there are four factions instead of dozens, The game is fantasy based instead of european, and the developers didn't have a clue what made a good campaign or difficulty scale if it bit their arse. I literally had difficulty getting past the first mission on hard, because you save civilians that constantly appear from the top of the map, and walk straight past enemy skeletons. Once you get past that the next couple missions differ between a slog and an armed waltz through a park.

I cannot recommend this game if you want to try and beat the campaign, I did that already and not only is the ending lackluster, it's just rubbish. You control the elven faction throughout the entire campaign, and can only mess around with the other three in skirmish, where the game truly shines. That is where I get my money's worth every time I play this game, and I recommend it just for that. Don't get me wrong, attempt the campaign, just don't do it on hard. It's stupidly and pointlessly difficult on hard, and the last couple missions of the campaign are pointlessly difficult and lackluster.

Final score: 5/10
Reason: Pretty fun skirmish, Four unique factions, Crap campaign (it ends for me when you get to the second demo level) and general feeling of unfinished and clunkiness to it. Buy it for the skirmish and fantasy.

What do you need to know about Russian-made strategies? They are awesome and epic.
If you like Warcraft, Age of Empires and Spellforce - you can forget about them. If only creaters of HAE could had more possibilities to continiue developing of this series, the game would become the only and the greatest of all fantasy strategies.
Nice graphics, video and comics, decent story, epic battels - This is Heroes of Annihilated Empires. Also easter eggs.