Euro Box Art! Cause it's way more appropriate

I tweeted earlier this week about picking up The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, I did so on a whim cause I was looking for a little distraction… why I picked this game up out of all the games I could have grabbed I’ll never know, I didn’t play the previous iterations nor had I even heard of them leading up to this one. I do know this much though, It has now consumed 14 or 15 hours of my life, and when I’m not playing I’m thinking about how I can be better at it…

It’s an RTS game, that much is clear, but in every way that the modern RTS games are going, I’m looking at you Dawn of War II, Demigod, and C&C4, The Settlers has gone in the complete opposite direction. The majority of your time is spent developing an economically strong kingdom, and while that includes military this is not where the strategy in this game comes into play. The strategy comes from collecting resources… (I know… sounds kind of lame…) but there are so many resources that have so many different uses that it is challenging to use the limited space, and limited resources you have access too in the area you start in and use them to expand your kingdom to begin production of different resources.

The game has the notion of Victory Points, you need X number of victory points to win a match, and these can be obtained a number of different ways. For example, you can gain a point by having more territories than your competitors, by owning specifically designated zones, or by completing  map based quests.

An example of a map based quest may be delivering 80 shirts to the quest giver, so it becomes a race to see who can get 80 shirts the fastest… this may mean establishing a trade route so that you can trade for the shirts, set up your own production line for tailoring, which involves having a series of different constructs in place… in this case, a shepherd, a weaver, and a tailor… The nuts and bolts of it is you can collect any X of the many victory points defined for the match, and you can use any means available to do so.

You also have to consider upgrade points gained by ‘prestige’ (which is also a victory point, having a high prestige level than you opponent). It may be in your best interest to advance your Export houses if your focus will be in the trade game, or into the Church if you opt for the Technology side of things… There are other options available to improve your fortifications in the choke points on the maps.

Overview Map, Identify and protect those choke points and important natural resources!

Ultimately you’re going to need some combination of these things to be successful, but doing things in an order that is effective for your strategy, and in a way that suits your playstyle is challenging, and rewarding. I’ve got to say this is hands down this is some of the most fun I’ve had in a strategy game in a really long time. It brings me back to the nights playing Warcraft II when the matched would last for hours.. matches seem to be lasting me an hour, hour and a half on average in the campaign and in multiplayer.

I don’t think I could justify this game by trying to explain how deep the economy system is in this game, there is a lot of stuff you need to consider, and I’m not even to the point of the campaign where I have all the units unlocked, if you’re into strategy games at all, and can live without the ‘action’ part of it, I’d strongly recommend grabbing the demo. This game certainly won’t be for everyone, but this has been the surprise of the year for me so far, it wasn’t even close to my radar and I’m having a lot of fun with it.