HomeFeaturesThe Settlers
The Settlers has finally emerged from development hell, and it’s fighting fitWe’ve been hands on with the upcoming closed beta ahead of its release in March
We’ve been hands on with the upcoming closed beta ahead of its release in March
First things first. The raw, beating production heart of The Settlers is very much intact. As in The Settlers games of yore, if you want your blooming township to eat, you’re going to have to build a farm to produce the wheat, a windmill to grind that wheat into flour, and then a bakery to pound said flour into delicious loaves of bread. You’ll need to do this while also making sure you’ve got dirt tracks or gravel pathways connecting these buildings to the central warehouse, and enough spare workers and residences to staff each place. The same goes for building up your army for keeping enemies at bay. First you’ll need to mine the right materials, build a furnace to smelt that ore into ingots, and a blacksmith to hammer those ingots into individual weapon types.
WELCOME TO THE SETTLERSWatch on YouTube
WELCOME TO THE SETTLERS
The level of detail on show is impressive. Even the individual log count in this saw mill is correct.
Building lots of houses together will grant you extra bonuses, and I like how it morphs and changes the neighbouring buildings as neighbourhoods grow.
You can only build inside your own borders, so getting your Engineers to expand your territory through surveys is vital to growing your village.
Provided you keep a watchful eye over them, though - and build a wall of arrow-shooting guard towers to protect your outer fringes from unwanted interlopers - you can get a handle on The Settlers. It only took a couple of Skirmish matches against the AI before I settled into the groove of its various production lines. The main game will have a central campaign, a single player challenge mode called Onslaught, and up to 4v4 multiplayer battles via the aforementioned Skirmish mode, but the closed beta build I played limited me to just 1v1 and 2v2 Skirmish matches, either against the AI or other players.
Upgrading your dirt tracks to gravel roads will help speed up resource transport.
I also only had two of the three playable factions to pick from - the rustic Elari farmers and the sea-loving Maru. The third faction, available in the full game come March time, is the gruff warrior clan Jorn, who would seem to be a little hardier than the Elari and Maru with their sterner-looking buildings and darker faction colours. Technically, they all have their own quirks and disadvantages, such as unique warriors and higher or lower building costs, but from my experience at least the Elari and Maru both felt largely the same.
The rhythm of building up my towns didn’t change much from match to match, for example, and the cost of individual buildings is usually so low in the grand scheme of things that requiring a handful less wood or stone here and there never really made much of a dent on my overarching economy. Due to the nature of its production line structure, those individual costs do eventually add up over time, but not to the extent that it took me significantly longer or shorter amounts of time to accomplish per match. I’m sure more competitive players will no doubt root out some super high level strategies once the game launches in full, but for this comparative newcomer, the factions' unique traits never really made themselves apparent.
Take that, bandits!
Not that this detracted from my overall enjoyment, I might add. In the lush green Shire map I was presented with, simply taming the natural landscape and broadening my borders was challenge enough for me. While the main aim was to destroy my opponent’s main warehouse - what would normally be your keep or town hall in other city-builders - there were also various landmarks I could seek out for extra rewards and resources. These are another new addition to the series along with the Engineers, and provided some much needed waypoints to help guide my gradual expansion. Some took the form of mysterious ruins or wrecked ships on the beaches, while others were hostile bandit camps and caches of stolen goods. In each case, the reward was definitely worth fighting and exploring for.
The combat units aren’t perhaps quite as varied as other conquest-based city-builders out there. You’ve got your standard soldiers, axe boys and archers, plus healers who can replenish their health bars and provide combat buffs if you pump enough gems into your research tree. There are also two siege units: torch-throwing mercs; and torch-throwing mercs seated on top of what I can only assume is some kind of armoured buffalo. They’re great fun, but it seems like this is as exotic as it’s going to get for this lot for fighters, which does somewhat disappoint the gryphon rider and giant turtle-loving part of my brain from my early Warcraft 2 days.
The aim of Skirmish is to destroy all of your opponent’s warehouses, and the sheer level of carnage you can wreak is impressive.
Everything’s built on a hexagonal grid, but you can rotate buildings to your liking so their entrances can join up with existing road networks.
Luckily, we won’t have to wait too long to find out for sure, as The Settlers will launch in full on March 17th. If you’d like to try the upcoming closed beta running from January 20th-24th for yourself, you can sign up for a chance to play over onThe Settlers website.
