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SIXTEEN NATIONS. TWO HUNDRED years of war. Eight thousand man battles. It's Cossacks: European Wars, and it's enough to make anyone who ever owned toy soldiers sit up and take notice.

Cossacks has been developed by GSC Game World, and is being published by CDV - the crew behind the WW2 real-time strategy game Sudden Strike. Cossacks, too, sits firmly in the real-time strategy (RTS) camp. While the game couldn't claim to be revolutionary, it does look to add enough depth to the genre to raise it above the pack.

For starters, the sheer scale is impressive. The 'Cossacks' name seems to owe itself to a bit of national pride on the part of GSC, who are a Ukrainian outfit. But the 'European Wars' half of the title gives a better lead as to the scope of the game. It models war right across Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - from the Thirty Years War through the English Civil War, the Seven Years War, and even actions against the pirate nation of Algeria.

Each of the sixteen nations in the game has its own buildings, units and advantages. GSC has taken a great deal of care to match authentic architecture, unit types, and uniforms to the different nations. Spain is the only nation modelled in the playable demo, but the unit shots on the official website provide a tantalising glimpse of the variety the full game promises.

The game is presented in classic RTS three-quarters-down 2D style. The units have the appearance of painted tabletop miniatures, and are drawn with up to 64 different facings to deliver extremely smooth animation. There are also some nice background touches. Waves lap on shorelines. Cannon shots splash into the sea or ricochet and splinter off buildings and features.

Comparisons with Age of Kings are unavoidable. The look and feel is similar, and at first glance you might mistake this for a sequel to the Microsoft/Ensemble Studios best-seller. In fact, the demo hints that Cossacks will be quite a different gaming experience.

As well as the larger scale of the game, the historical flavour is stronger, and there is more of an emphasis on the wargaming side of the equation. While Cossacks is unlikely to satisfy the hard-core grognards with its depiction of battle, organisation of armies into large formations led by officers and drummers is crucial, and smart manoeuvring of a well-balanced army is vital to battlefield success.

The map models 3D elevations. Hills play an important tactical role. Ranged units on a hilltop fire further, and units moving up or down slopes slow down or speed up accordingly. This makes placement of artillery batteries, defensive pikemen and so on important considerations.

Resource gathering and expansion will still play an important role, but the economic model is more complex than is found in most RTS games. There are six resource types, and while they are inexhaustible, their uninterrupted flow is crucial. Various units consume food, iron, gold and coal so fields and mines must be capable not only of supporting new production and research, but also supporting the existing populace and war machine. In some ways, the resource side of the game is more reminiscent of SSI's turn-based Imperialism 2 than a stock-standard RTS.

The era being portrayed saw vast technological advances from the decline of the sword to the rise of the massed musket army. The game models these advances through more than 300 possible weapon and efficiency improvements.

Cossacks will include four "long" campaigns and ten additional scenarios, as well as a random map generator. The playable demo suggests the AI will deliver a fairly challenging single player game, but it is in multiplayer mode that the game really promises to shine. Up to eight players will be able to engage in massive horse and musket battles over LAN or the Internet.

Cossacks: European Wars has already been released in Germany and Russia. We should see the English language version released around March 30. In the meantime, the really good news is that you can play the demo in multiplayer mode while you're waiting for the full release. If you can sneak it onto your LAN at work, you could be in for some spectacular gaming.

Show me the screenshots!

Check out the Official Site.