By proper maneuvering and use of exploits, it's possible to gain access to worker units and buildings in some campaign missions or single missions of Cossacks: European Wars and its expansions that were written as baseless or with the base being granted far, far later.
- The Steam version of Back to War also contains the campaigns of both the original game and The Art of War. Which means you can have access to 18th century ships in the original's campaigns, especially ships of the line, which was previously impossible since they didn't exist back then.
- European Wars:
- In the notorious first level of the French campaign, proceed as normal up until you reach the six riders at the other door of the besieged city and obtain them, and put your officer out of harm's way. Put the riders on "don't attack" mode, go up North where there's a big pack of pikemen (don't stop moving because of the enemy canon towers), lead them on a goose chase till there's an opening and go to the blue town hall in the North-West corner of the map, capture it and suppress your riders before the pikemen reach the town hall. You can now build an economy and armies to suppress the enemy forts and armies as you like so your officer and priest will have a pleasant stroll through the map.
- The final phase of the Pavliuk Uprising mission of the Ukrainian campaign is very hard if one goes for the Polish fortress to capture the artillery inside, due to the limited amount of time to capture the artillery and get ready to repel the big incoming army of light riders. The solution? Immediately go back at the beginning with the three cannons you received earlier and your small army, and methodically destroy said army of light riders before it goes on the move.
- The second mission of the Russian campaign is quite difficult. 10 serfs are given to you, but they can't build anything since you have no warehouse, zero stone and zero wood. They can merely harvest corn for food to keep your units from dying of hunger, thus you can only produce Don Cossacks, and not many of them at that. There is a Tatar hold way down south with a warehouse, said warehouse will be automatically set on fire upon capture... unless you send serfs to repair it. Once it's captured and repaired, your serfs can harvest wood (don't forget to destroy your base's wooden walls, it consumes wood) nearby... and stone all the way to your base. It takes some time since it's basically a far North-far South trip for your workers with a small load of stones each time, but from there you can build an economy that will rely entirely on wood, stone and food and screw the semi-baseless premise of the mission, rendering the rest of it a cakewalk.
- The Art of War:
- The most notorious example is perhaps the first mission of the Polish campaign. By itself, this mission is insanely difficult with loads of Save Scumming, but if you threaten the small group of merchants hauling their goods to the local marketplace and then drag them to the village at the starting position in the map, they will capture the place and its worker units, which you can then recapture as your own after killing the merchants group. And with extra effort, you can even use that trade caravan to take over the marketplace they were heading and the gold mine, just to recapture them as your own, allowing you to keep upgrading your musketeers and pikemen for what will be pocket change with the constant flow of gold (to the point of making them one-shot everything), rather than struggling under the scripted money rewards of the scenario. You can also just destroy the mine with a mortar (if you've built an arsenal and traded resources at the marketplace beforehand) and build a new one in its place if you haven't yet killed the Tatars guarding it.
- Really, that entire mission is about sequence breaking if you plan to simply survive in the higher difficulties, even without outright cheesing via recapturing the base. This even includes circling to the spots from where enemies normally attack, aggro handfuls of units, lure them to the orange fort's musketeers, get back and defeat them with ease. Rinse and repeat, until you defeated 3-6 small groups instead of a murderous horde of units. This becomes particularly important once you start facing Ukrainian cossacks and their Serdiuks, which are significantly more dangerous than the Tatars, though by that point it's just better to use the above base building solution to produce Winged Hussars (just make sure your Hero Unit doesn't get mixed in them).
- For the first level of the Saxony campaign, it's ridiculously easy (in any difficulty) to use your rider to lure a large pack of bandits from the black-colored faction into a nearby town hall with only a handful of guards and a rider from the orange faction (your allies), who will get killed. All you have to do next is to kill the bandits with your units and recapture the town hall. You can now build an economy (although lacking gold and coal mines, there's only a mine of iron on this map) and an army to steamroll the rest of the map. You can even take on the normally unstoppable army coming from the north.
- The most notorious example is perhaps the first mission of the Polish campaign. By itself, this mission is insanely difficult with loads of Save Scumming, but if you threaten the small group of merchants hauling their goods to the local marketplace and then drag them to the village at the starting position in the map, they will capture the place and its worker units, which you can then recapture as your own after killing the merchants group. And with extra effort, you can even use that trade caravan to take over the marketplace they were heading and the gold mine, just to recapture them as your own, allowing you to keep upgrading your musketeers and pikemen for what will be pocket change with the constant flow of gold (to the point of making them one-shot everything), rather than struggling under the scripted money rewards of the scenario. You can also just destroy the mine with a mortar (if you've built an arsenal and traded resources at the marketplace beforehand) and build a new one in its place if you haven't yet killed the Tatars guarding it.
- Back to War has an insanely hard Single Mission where the player's worker units (from the Swedish nation) can't build anything and the player's island base is under constant assault from Algerian pirates (made worse by a tedious way to gain iron and coal to allow your units to open fire, you only have a gold mine at your disposal here) with only a diplomatic center to get the notoriously weak Mercenary Units to defend your base. There is a way to reach the blue enemy base in the North East with the available transport boats by rubbing the strait's cliffs (you'll have to save and reload if one of the enemy xebecs spots it and destroys it). All you have to do next is to disembark your military units (mounted Zaporozhian Cossack mercenaries, preferably) and capture a lone unguarded Turkish worker unit in the base, who — unlike your Swedish workers and the Algerian workers of the base — is allowed to build structures (and there are unguarded gold, coal and iron mines nearby, besides), which comes in handy to get much needed units with muskets (janissaries and bedouins here) who can be upgraded and won't deplete your gold reserves, all of this long before you reach the Swedish city that will grant you access to Swedish units after some tedious quests (and you gain access to ship building with Turkey as well, not the case with Sweden in that mission). Again, make sure to destroy your base's wooden walls so your wood supplies don't decrease. The mission can be won by simply storming/destroying the Algerian base in the North-West corner of the map that way instead of doing all the questing.
