The Settlers is a Real Time Strategy game, which according to my research was first released in 1993 for the Commodore Amiga and PC by German developer Blue Byte Software. The game involves constructing a settlement for your settlers/people. This also involves ensuring your people can eat and survive, thus you build homes for bakers, farmers and fishermen. You will also have to defend your people against attack and start your own invasions on your opponents to ensure you are getting the best land.
The Settlers is a Real Time Strategy game, which according to my research was first released in 1993 for the Commodore Amiga and PC by German developer Blue Byte Software. The game involves constructing a settlement for your settlers/people. This also involves ensuring your people can eat and survive, thus you build homes for bakers, farmers and fishermen. You will also have to defend your people against attack and start your own invasions on your opponents to ensure you are getting the best land.
Your knights who defend your people have a constant need for gold which you must supply. But, producing the gold involves up to 25 workers who all depend on each other. Your farmers grow the wheat
for the miller, who then turns it into flour for the baker; he then makes the bread which the ore miners eat to give them the energy to get the gold for the knights.
You will have to constantly build new roads, buildings, mines and boats, so it can get pretty hectic. Be careful not to build a large settlement over a vast distance as this can mean you run out of resources later.
To keep you up to date with the goings on in your settlement you have tables and statistics with information about your people. You can also adjust the supply of goods and you can make your knights more or less aggressive, which is handy in times of war. You can also play this game two player using a vertical split screen. The other settlers are controlled by the computer and vary from being placid to aggressive. Each settlement’s workers have different colored outfits so you can identify whose is whose.
You may think that this game sounds like far too much work and far too hectic to be enjoyable, but you are wrong. Once you get started it is hard to stop. I originally started playing this game around 1993 -1994 when it was first released and would spend hours glued to the screen, much to the annoyance of my younger brother.
I recently downloaded this again and thought it could not be as good as I remember. I was wrong! The playability is just as addictive and the graphics are pretty good for the age of the game. The pace is pretty slow compared to a lot modern games and you spend most of your time watching the farmers and other people perform the daily tasks. But it does not seem to matter as the amusing fight scenes when you defend your people make up for the last half hour of watching your fisherman catch fish.
