The Settlers

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This article is about the computer game. For other uses, see Settler (disambiguation).
The Settlers
The Settlers II box art, 1996.
Developer(s) Blue Byte Software
Publisher(s) Blue Byte Software
Designer(s) Volker Wertich
Platform(s) Amiga, PC-DOS
Release date(s) 1993
Genre(s) Real Time Strategy
Mode(s) Single player, multiplayer
Media 3.5" disks (3)

The Settlers (also known as Serf City, original German title Die Siedler) is a slow-paced Real Time Strategy computer game by German developer Blue Byte Software, first released in 1993 for Commodore Amiga and in 1994 for the PC.[1] It was the first game of its type, blending together principles which had not been seen in a single game before,[2] and defined the line of the later Settlers games. On the hardware available at the time, the game could control a maximum of 64,000 individuals, all behaving autonomously.[3]

Contents

[edit] Gameplay

The game is played through a mouse operated point and click interface. The player cannot directly control units, but instead places orders to build or attack buildings. Except when attacking, units are further controlled by designating the paths on which they may walk.

[edit] Choosing a new game

A new player may begin a series of predefined games against computer opponents of increasing difficulty. Alternatively, the player may select a landscape of any size (memory permitting) and play against up to three other opponents of choice. The computer will generate a random landscape, or one based on a seed number given by the player. Finally, the player may opt not to play and allow up to four computer controlled opponents to play against each other; the player may spectate freely on all of them, including their statistics.

[edit] Transporting goods

In-game screenshot (Amiga)

Paths designated by the player enable communication and transport through the settlement, which begins at the player's castle. The ends of paths are always denoted by flags. People and goods circulate through this path network. Goods circulate in a human chain system, in which workers take goods from one flag and drop them at the next one, and goods accumulate at flags (a maximum of eight items per flag); a priority system, which is tweakable by the player, decides which goods are to be taken first.

Priorities are there to decide which goods at flags should be transported first, which of the four mine types (iron ore, gold ore, coal or stone) receives food first, where raw materials coming from mines go, where iron goes (blacksmith or tools maker), and a variety of other prioritisations. Tweaking them properly is encouraged.

If placement of buildings and roads is not carefully planned out by the player, so that different paths for goods use the same waypoints (as an extreme, having only one central castle), it inevitably will lead to traffic jams. If no counter action is taken (re-routing the goods, distributing more warehouses, better planning out where to place buildings), such single bottlenecks can spread out and jam more and more waypoints, leading to shortages because goods can not reach their destination fast enough anymore.

[edit] Graphical environment

In-game screenshot of Settlers I, 1993 (PC, SVGA)

Despite the appearance of rolling hills, all paths and game maps are built on a grid of overlapping hexagons, with flags and buildings positionable at the vertices. A regular hexagon denotes perfectly flat land, while pulling in the vertices gives the impression of steepness.

Although small, the workers in the game are extremely detailed and cleverly animated. Each individual worker may be followed around by the player, and always acts in character. In several of the buildings, workers may be seen working inside. Only when completely cut off from their road network (e.g. by enemy invasion) do workers wander aimlessly around.

The atmosphere is enhanced by background music. If this is turned off, digital sound effects of the various workers are played, alongside other ambient noises such as the tweeting of birds, the grunting of pigs, the yells of the knights in battle, or the sound of wind in the mountains.

[edit] Pace of the game

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Please help improve this article to make it neutral in tone and meet Wikipedia's quality standards. (October 2008)
In-game screenshot of Settlers I, 1993 (PC, VGA)

Compared to modern games, The Settlers is quite a slow-paced game; unlike its sequels, the game time cannot be accelerated. Some time-dependent features of the game can therefore take a long time, such as upgrading a freshly recruited knight up to the fifth and highest level. But knights also get stronger with the amount of gold possessed by the player's kingdom, and gold can be mined to this end. While the statistics dialog of The Settlers does feature a 50-hour scale, and on a big map a game may last even longer, a typical campaign is won in far less time.

[edit] Economic aspects

 This section reads like a review and may need a cleanup.
Please help improve this article to make it neutral in tone and meet Wikipedia's quality standards. (October 2008)

The Settlers boasts a total of 26 kinds of material resources and the same number of settler classes and professions. Idle people start to convert into dedicated people when new kinds of buildings are finished, e.g. blacksmiths start to appear once a smithy is constructed. In order to upgrade, they need tools specific to the job, e.g. hammers. A toolmaker's building can create additional tools, where the proportional number of each tool being created is set by the player.

All this is managed in a stunningly intuitive interface with a bare minimum of text labels. This is also what distinguished Settlers from heavy strategy games: despite the seemingly high complexity, the whole is easy to manage. Smaller tweaks can be done in the various menus but tweaking is not required for the gameplay.

As well as ensuring military supremacy, the entire economy of the kingdom is under the player's control. There are three sources of food:

  • fish (which are caught directly but are scarce and rapidly run out if over-fished)
  • bread (which must be baked by a baker, from flour which is milled by a miller, from wheat which is grown by a wheat-farmer)
  • pork (which is produced by a butcher, from pigs grown by a pig-farmer, fed by wheat from the wheat-farmer)

Food of any type is necessary to feed miners, who dig for four materials: coal (for smelting ore), iron ore, gold ore and stones (for buildings).

Two types of smelter will take one unit each of coal and gold or iron ore and produce (respectively) a pure ingot of gold or a bar of iron. Gold bars will then be stored in your guard structures, which will make all your knights stronger at attacking enemy guard structures, on larger maps more gold is required to reach the same level of strength.

Stone cutters cut from piles of stones which lie on the surface; once these are exhausted, stone must be mined. Woodsmen plant trees, woodcutters chop down them into logs. Logs are taken to the sawmill to be cut into planks. Planks and iron can be used to make tools by the toolmaker. Iron and coal are required by the weaponsmith to make weapons (without which the knights cannot be armed).

Geologists may be sent out into the hills to prospect for ore. Boatbuilders take planks and make boats for transport across water. Finally, builders take planks and stone and construct new buildings to order. Simple huts require only one plank and one stone; complex buildings (such as a new stock house) may require several units of both planks and stone, and a long time, to complete.

The player may divert resources according to need; for example, once a good stock of boats is built up, it is no longer necessary to waste planks by giving them to the boatbuilder. In the cases where more than one profession compete for the same resource, the player can also set the proportionate supply each will receive as well as resource use priorities.

A series of intuitive graphs and flowcharts allows the player to supervise the economic life of the kingdom and make small adjustments to optimise production.

One of the most challenging aspects of mastering The Settlers is to design building placement and the drawing of roads to allow for efficient transportation of resources. If too much traffic is set to pass a single point, or the tilt of the road slows your settlers down, it can create queues for long distances, slowing down your economy or even losing you the game if reinforcements can not get through to your military buildings. The game is designed in such a way that a resource or settler will always travel the path to their destination with the shortest number of intersections (marked by flags), giving the player much freedom to preplan the distribution of goods to best effect.

Once the kingdom has achieved a certain size, it takes on a life of its own, and a flourishing economy will almost run itself, which is one of the many satisfying aspects of the game. While some resources (trees, wheat, etc.) are available in infinite supply, others (notably ores) eventually become exhausted. Strategic players attempt to cut off enemies from these resources, and invade their territory to capture them. On a more minor level, the woodcutter and fisherman will each happily wander onto enemy territory and cut down their trees or catch their fish.

[edit] Opponents

Up to four players may compete for a single landscape, up to two of which may be player-controlled (using a vertical split screen). The computer characters vary from being peaceable and placid to being aggressive and warlike. Workers wear coloured shirts to identify their allegiance.

[edit] Sequels

The series' original title in Germany is Die Siedler, marketed in the rest of Europe as The Settlers. When the game was first released in the United States, it was renamed Serf City by US publisher SSI. However, starting with the second part in the series, The Settlers also became the official title of the series in the US.

A new port of The Settlers 2 for the Nintendo DS was released in the UK on August 3, 2007,[4] and in North America on August 21, 2007.[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Serf City: Life is Feudal". Moby Games. http://www.mobygames.com/game/serf-city-life-is-feudal/release-info. 
  2. ^ "Replication of a review from 1993 out of the CU Amiga magazine". CU Amiga. http://amigareviews.classicgaming.gamespy.com/settlers.htm#settlerscu. Retrieved on 2007-05-08. 
  3. ^ Replication of a review from 1993 out of the Amiga Format magazine Retrieved May. 08, 2007
  4. ^ GAME - The Settlers for DS
  5. ^ GameSpot - The Settlers for DS. Retrieved July 23, 2007

[edit] External links

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The Settlers video games
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