Now you can control your troops with a little more precision than you used to be able to by pausing, giving orders, and unpausing to watch your maneuvers take effect. That's the addition of a pause and command feature. Luckily for us there was one really major addition to the gameplay that's worth mentioning. Sure there are ways to get around this by building new settlements as you move your way across so you can bring all of your slow moving troops as you make your way across, but after playing one of these maps for a couple of hours, it was just too much in a game that already borders on being too much. Maybe it's just me, but that isn't something that I would really want to brag about. While I didn't time it, I've seen that on the biggest map, it'll take your slowest unit an hour and a half to move across from one side to the other.
mainly you may actually find yourself playing a seven year war. Adding to the expansive time consumption is the addition of the gargantuan maps that will either drive you nuts or give you the feel of an epic war. You'll find yourself embroiled in some long sessions of bombardment from afar drawing games out for much longer than many gamers will be used to in an RTS. The theme of the missions included here seems to be pounding away at the enemy. This is interesting and all as you have to figure the best strategies for getting around specific obstacles, but removes a lot of your options for attacking from different angles. At the same time, you'll get a lot of very straightforward linear levels where you'll move along a set path laying waste to things along the way. This alleviates the micromanagement crunch and allows you to focus on the battles. Many of the single player missions will be pretty linear with a group of units at your disposal without the opportunity to get reinforcements like commanders might have faced in real campaigns. Making sure none of your peasant workers get captured and enslaved by the enemy can be a tough problem if your attention has been diverted elsewhere. First off, the resource model of the game, while automated for the most part, takes a while to get up and running and take care of. It can be extremely complex and frustrating for a bunch of reasons. I don't think I'd really ever consider Cossacks as a game for the casual RTS fan. It'll probably take you quite a while to make it through all of these, not necessarily because of the difficulty, but because of the strategies you have to adopt to beat them tend towards the drawn out sieging type of conflict.
Along with the new units and nations there are several additions to the Cossacks experience in the way of 30 new levels total including 5 new campaigns and 5 stand alone missions. There are also several new units for some of the other nations including a bunch of new naval vessels for all of the nations. First off, you'll get two new nations, Bavaria and Denmark, with their new building art and one unique unit along with the basic plusses and minuses that each nation gets tacked onto it. The Art of War comes with a bunch of new stuff fitting into the "expansion" theme nicely.