[ragnar]

A while ago I tested the demo of the new iteration of Settlers, Settlers 5. I was sorely disappointed for a number of reasons. The cute cartoon-like settlers were gone and in were a more 'realistic' look. Gone was the nice way you would watch the settlers build up buildings, instead the buildings grow up like mushrooms. Gone was almost everything that I liked about the Settlers-series and it it's stead was something more of a standard RTS mixed with not so good elements from the Cultures-series (which could be labeled as a Settlers-clone in the first place).

The big problem with the new settlers is the micromanagement and the simplification of the game. The interesting part of the Settlers series, to build up a working economy from the ground up and to be able to maintain the balance of that economy is nowhere to be seen. Now the focus is on steering individual settlers and tell them exactly what they should do. There are heros and there are quests that you must run around the map and accomplish, two things directly borrowed from the Settlers-series and the game essentially becomes a game of moving around your heros. This is rather boring in my eyes.

I want my settlers to be autonomous, they should do whatever needs to be done and they are able to do. I never ever want to click on a settler and have to place it myself wher it should be and what it should do (In the Culture series this is done to an extreme, where I need to even tell the settlers to produce babies and which sex the baby should be).

I want to decide the big picture, i.e. where to build buildings, how active the production of the buildings should be, where to attack rather and defend rather than clicking on the swordsmen and individually or in group place them somewhere. To take some examples: If I want to build a sawmill, I should just need to place the sawmill and the settlers automatically bring out enough builders to build the thing and other settlers bring the materials to build up the sawmill. If I want to cut wood it is much simpler to click on an area of wood and tell the game that I want 2 settlers to cut wood in this area, instead of needing to find two settlers to click on and then direct them to the correct place and tell them to cut wood there. The focus should lie on the work that needs to be done, rather than on the individual settlers.

[Kolorabi]

The Settlers is perhaps my favourite game ever. It's so well designed, with every aspect of the game being dependent on everything else. Building these complex societies where everything worked, almost like a giant machinery was immensely satisfying, and the attention to detail is just amazing. I mean, this is a huge game, with thousands of "units" living in the game world at once, and if you want to, you can follow one piece of wood from the point where the lumberjack cuts down the tree, through the sawmill where it's made into a plank and to where it's finally used to build a house or a boat or a hammer.

And then there's the fantastic two-player split-screen mode, which I've spent months on together with a friend of mine. We played it again a few weeks ago, and were instantly hooked. All in all, it's really a magical game, especially if you play it on the Amiga as it was meant to (the PC-version feels inferior, despite supporting SVGA and more colours).

I feel the series kind of lost it's way after the first game. I liked the direction the sequel had, but some of the things it added were not implemented well enough (like the ships and the catapults), so instead of adding to the experience, they made it slightly worse. Also, the game lost the random terrain generator, which allowed for near-infinite replayability (especially in two-player mode) in the original.

The third and fourth game were both disgustingly cute and didn't feel right at all. I also think the road system was simplified, and the worlds were made smaller (ever tried playing on mapsize 8 in the original game?). And now, The Settlers 5 seems to have lost almost everything that made the series special. I like that it's dropped the cute look of TS 3 and 4 ( ) in favour of something a little more true to the original, but gameplay-wise it seems to be just an oridinary RTS with some Settlers-like elements slapped on.

The central part of the Settlers series is, as you say, that it focuses on creating and mantaining a complex economy to support your war effort. You don't control individual units, instead you focus on the structure of your country so that the people can take care of themselves. I wish we could have more games like this - games such as Foundation (Gold, preferably) and Anno 1503 borrow some of the good elements of The Settlers, but none have managed to recreate the magic gameplay that Blue Byte created in 1993.

[ragnar]

I have unfortunately never played Foundation (it's the Amiga game you're talking about, right?) as I never had an Amiga that could play it. Anno 1503 (or rather Anno 1602) I never really got into for some reason.

[Kolorabi]

Originally Posted by ragnar

I have unfortunately never played Foundation (it's the Amiga game you're talking about, right?) as I never had an Amiga that could play it. Anno 1503 (or rather Anno 1602) I never really got into for some reason.

The Anno-games are addictive, but some may feel they go too deep with the whole micromanagement-thing. You have to control everything, and it doesn't feel quite as smooth as in The Settlers.

As for Foundation, yes, I'm talking about the Amiga game. It actually doesn't run that well on my old Amiga (A1200, 030/50, 16 MB) either, but it works like a charm with WinUAE and RTG emulation.

There's also Widelands, an open-source project. Here's info and screens: http://widelands.sourceforge.net/tiki/tiki-index.php

Right now, it looks a bit shabby, but there's definitely potential here.

[ragnar]

Oh, I didn't know about widelands. Thanks for the tip! You might also want to know that there is an Anno 3 in the making, with 3D graphics and everything!

[Catbert]

What do you think of Knights & Merchants? Apart from the very bad AI, it was a pretty cool game, no?

[ragnar]

I haven't played that one.

[bigjko]

Lose the grainy graphics, and Widelands looks pretty promising.

[Kolorabi]

Catbert: I tried it briefly, it seemed kind of cool. I think I got it for free with a mag (it was a crappy mag, but they always had a full game on the covercd, so I bought it every month ). I liked how the soldiers had to go to eat and stuff (and the animations were quite good, at least for it's time).

Ragnar: Yes, I knew about Anno 3. I think I've heard that most of the team that made the two first games have been laid off.. don't know how that might affect the third one.

Btw, you might also like to try SpellForce. It's not really that Settlers-like (unless we cound Settlers 5, which seems to have been a bit inspired by it), but the lead designer is the man who did the original The Settlers, Volker Wertich).

[ragnar]

Not sure about Spellforce. Might be good, then it might not. Haven't looked too closely at it.

[Kolorabi]

Originally Posted by ragnar

Not sure about Spellforce. Might be good, then it might not. Haven't looked too closely at it.

Oh, it _is_ good, all right. But it's not what you should go for if you want a modern version of The Settlers.

[ragnar]

Didn't think so either, I just looked very briefly at it on it's homepage.

[Eye-Z]

Settlers the original is something i've played years ago and is probably my favourite rts...

i now only own settlers two which is prtty muhc the original with just a few extras.

i seen later advancements and noticed it had littled what i loved about the originals..so

settlers 5 was always going to suck for me...reason being i lost interest after number 2

[Glenn Epic]

Wait a minute, there's a settlers 5

[Royal Fool]

Yes, except it looks nothing like the older games. IMO, the series went downhill ever since I saw 'The Dark Tribe' in Settlers IV. Gah.

Blue Byte's franchises have sadly been declining somewhat steadily - Incubation, Battle Isle and now Settlers. Go do a remake of Dr. Drago's Madcap Chase already! I won't even care if it's a console remake, just do it.

[Kolorabi]

New_Order: http://www.thesettlers.com/

Originally Posted by Royal Fool

... Battle Isle ...

Battle Isle was a great series. Battle Isle 2 is my favourite, together with Historyline (which isn't really in the Battle Isle-franchise, but similar enough).

Have you played Massive Assault? It's completely brilliant, and though it's not really a Battle Isle-clone, it feels a bit similar to play. It's really worth checking out if you're a fan of this type of game. There's a sequel coming up, and an online-only version available too.

http://www.massiveassault.com/