American Conquest

dont fall for being told american conquest is a dlc pack for cossacks3 as the american conquest and it dont even work and it has nothing to do with cossacks3 and im not happy that steam has resorted to that type of selling tatic so im deleting the american conquest and ill not be buying anything else from steam

it will not let me play the game

I've been playing this for years now - I only paid Steam the £1 for the convenience of getting it running on Windows 11 (with Windows XP service pack 2 compatibility on for better stability) instead of a Windows 2000 VM.
It's a fairly stable and bug-free game - only a couple things come to mind, like often ships will refuse to fire upon specific buildings, but I never read the manual or patched it so maybe I'm missing something.
If you like games where you can have thousands of units moving around at once, and like the complexity that can emerge from relatively simple game mechanics, this is a blast. For £1 it's a no-brainer, and my review is doing it a disservice - I just don't play that many RTS games so I haven't got much to compare it with!

Game ruined by crippling bugs, unresponsive controls, outdated code, constant crashes, and incompatibility with Windows. Do not buy.

unplayable. The game does not run with new OS.

Addictive to me. So many different outcomes....

American Conquest is an ambitious RTS that tries to capture the chaos of history, and to be fair, it succeeds… almost too well. While the game offers epic battles, expansive maps, and a surprising amount of strategic depth, there are a few things that can turn the experience from exhilarating to downright maddening.

First off, why do wild animals have such a personal vendetta against my workers? I swear, the enemy's not even my biggest threat – it's the packs of Animals that seem determined to wipe out my peasant population. Nothing like watching a hard-earned workforce get dismantled by nature itself.

Then there's the European recruitment system. One building to recruit all my units? Seriously? The stress of building an army while waiting for units to slowly trickle out of the Fort is enough to make me question my life choices. The enemy's already got Armies rolling in, and I'm over here queuing up musketeers one by one.

Some maps are just merciless. Normal difficulty? More like "hope you survive the first 10 seconds." Natives will charge your base the moment you blink, sprinting past everything just to assassinate your peasants and torch your mills. And let's not forget the joy of realizing your soldiers are blue, but your map color is red – thanks, France.

Speaking of frustration, I once sent 600+ Native Warriors to capture a garrison defended by 15 men. Out of those 15, four fell. The other 11 apparently had plot armor, because my warriors disintegrated like they'd signed up for the wrong battle.

The AI is relentless. Constant pressure, wave after wave of heavy attacks. Meanwhile, I'm stuck recruiting from one or two buildings that double as defensive structures – except they magically lose their defensive capabilities if I'm recruiting. Guess that feature only works if I'm the enemy.

The difficulty curve can be jarring. One moment, it's fun and challenging. The next, it's stress-inducing and borderline unfair. I don't mind a good challenge, but there's a fine line between exciting and "why am I doing this to myself?"

And can we talk about the lack of walls? This game desperately needs walls. My peasants need walls. I need walls. The initial panic of starting a mission with a sprawling base and getting attacked before I can even figure out where my units are is not fun.

Oh, and ships. I wanted to love ships, but they move slower than my motivation after losing that garrison fight. Expensive, cumbersome, and even firing their cannons costs a fortune.

Despite the frustrations, American Conquest is a unique experience for hardcore RTS fans who love large-scale warfare. But be warned – it’s not for the faint of heart, or for those with a soft spot for their poor, defenseless peasants.

Gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INzodEdWAA8&list=PLKuVMkePc-_OmPHGEbgTdI8z6RtuLycmU

When it comes to strategy games, this is probably one of the best you can find. For its time the graphics and gameplay are amazing. The different civilizations you can play require different kinds of skill levels. Though it can sometimes feel like the game is a bit unbalanced. (Britons fight with guns and mounted musketeers, Aztecs fight with bows and spears). By having the opportunity to mass up a huge army of spearmen as a native American against a Briton that can only have a limited amount of musketeers, you can still fight quite a fair battle. The campaigns are also really well made. The maps look absolutely beautiful and the kind of strategy you'll have to apply to each campaign can get you some more variety than just a random map game. There's definitely plenty of stuff left for you to find out when you'll start playing this game. You're going to love it if you're into strategy games

THE AMERICANS ARE COMING!

Evil Age of Empires. Cursed game and hard to beat the AI.

won't run. keeps saying I need 1024 x 768 x 8 graphics and then crashes

amazing game

Cossacks in America

Right, so after GSC tried their best to please West/Europe with their very Slavic RTS game
They tried to do that again but now to please even more Western groups
Some things never change...but it kinda worked, people still love this game. Some like it because of nostalgia, others for kinda unique setting. And also gameplay

Dated 2D with technical problems

Playing this on modern systems is rough. You need to find some render patches or else the game can be laggy...or in reverse - super speedy.
And even with patches - it still has a lot of problems. Its playable but yeah, keep this in mind.
For the visuals, everything is 2D, units, buildings, props. Its 2003 everybody and I think Generals already came out and also Warcraft 3 dominated and Im pretty sure most RTS games were already 3D by this point so yeah.
No matter how nice or realistic you look - you're still dated and jank.

Gutted Cossacks and Kinda Historical events

Just like in Cossacks, 6 resources to gather, you build a base, train armies and try to attack
There are less nations (like a half of them are europeans or american colonists and other half - Indians who are gonna be your worst nightmare - and yes, they play mostly identically)
Less artillery, cavalry is weird, your best bet are shooting footmen for Normal Nations and Zerg Rush Tactic for Indians (Since they can burn buildings and Euro nations can capture them and stay inside whilst shooting)
Upgrades are dumbed down and kinda boring, ships...I dont even remember them so yeah.

Also, they added kinda weird moral system - basically, if you're troops kill a lot and winning - enemy troops start running all around the map whilst screaming and abandoning their squads.
Also shooting is done from scratch - so its way less effective than in cossacks (on long range) but holy moly try to blast indians up close - mein gott.

For the story campaigns - historic events like:
Columbus campaign
Indian butchery as conquistadors
7 Years War (both sides)
Indian butchery as USA (both sides actually)
independence war (both sides)

Also single missions, skirmish and online story battles and such

Missions overall are mostly alright, mostly quite easy and sometimes boring and I dont think I had any problems with glitches. Storytelling is done through walls of texts (just like I do reviews) so It also can be quite boring.

Other Features

Music is fine, you have themes for each nation, here's an example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nMznRCt2ZM&list=PLE3636E2AAE5F5E55&index=7

As I've said earlier, there are several nations that plays identical. Some just have unique units, others dont and so on.
Playing as Euros is pain, because how slow they train and how costly they are. But in the late game - its homicide time
As Indians - guilty pleasure, you can feel this dumb barbaric force that can topple castles by stupid brute force and sheer numbers.
Still, both sides can feel very tedious and repetative. After I've beaten each mission - I felt burnt out completely. Just too much of doing the same over and over.

The maps design is quite good, but after like 4 or 5 missions you'll stop looking at details.

Still....its a negative

Yeah, the game is kinda fun once you learn it
But it lacks in variety, missions sometimes feel the same
And of course, just making it work properly - is something I've always hated in old games.

If you like this game - power to you and have a nice day. But if you've never played...think twice before buying this.