The Settlers - Blue Byte RRP œ39.99
           (Strategic 'God Game' for PC and Amiga)

               PC review update by Jean Childs

Since writing my review of the demo of this game, I have bought
the full version and I haven't stopped playing it. Most of the
building details were covered by the previous review, so here I
will present an update on what is available on the full version.

What's that you say? You didn't read it? Okay, I'll just give a
short explanation of what happens. You have a little world of
little people who go about their work of building, mining, growing
food, making tools and fighting. Just like the real world but
minus the pubs. You need knights to do your fighting and take over
your opponent's land. Your knights will be better fighters if they
have gold. You need miners to mine for the gold and also for iron
to make the swords and shields. Coal also needs to be mined as
both the armourer and the goldsmith use it in production. The
miners won't mine without food so various food chains have to be
set up, such as a bakery, a miller to grind the wheat for the
bakery, and a farmer to grow the wheat.  All these need buildings
so the basic supplies of wood and stone have to be kept going. I
haven't mentioned all the professions available or necessary, but
will just mention the forester. He's very important as without him
planting new trees, you'd eventually run out of wood. No wood - no
buildings, no tools, no chance. There's a moral there somewhere.

I would like to correct a few errors made in my first review. In
it I referred to the locksmith as this was the description given
in the magazine. In fact he isn't a locksmith, he is a tool-maker
(or iron-worker) and it was him that was making the tools not the
blacksmith. The blacksmith (or armourer) was the one who I
couldn't work out what he was producing. He is an armourer and
very important he is too. With every sword and shield that he
produces, you can change one of your unemployed men into a knight.
(The reason for the brackets and alternative descriptions is due
to the fact that the manual sometimes calls them one name and in
another place calls them something else.  Possibly due to the
conversion from German as that is where the game originated.)

I also said in my earlier review that you could build a knight's
hut, a knight's keep, a watch tower and an even bigger knight's
keep. Again these were the descriptions taken from the magazine.
In fact you can build three knights buildings:- a guard-room (or
hut), a watch-tower and a garrison. The other large building is a
stock which is an additional castle for storing food, materials
and men. These are built in order to save time in transportation
of goods to places distant from your main castle.  I also referred
to the four different mines as being coal, iron ore, gems and
gold. Well, the gems (again taken from the magazine) is wrong. The
fourth mine is in fact stone, an underground source of the same
building material as obtained by the stone-cutter. Last, but not
least, I said that the black dots for coal on the geologist's
signs do not show up very well.  This was down to me. It's amazing
what a difference a little twiddle with the brightness and
contrast knobs on the monitor will do.

"So what is the aim of the game?" I asked in my review of the
demo, as the only way to take the land of your opponents was by
building a knight's hut where your opponent didn't have one.
Well, unlike the demo, in the full game you can attack your
opponent's knights' huts. The knights come out of their huts and
sword fight. The aim of the game is to win by obtaining at least
75% of the land and 75% of the knights. To do this you must have a
strong army which can only be obtained by producing the equipment
and buildings necessary. The knights start off as 2nd Lance
Corporals and are pretty hopeless at fighting. Any knights that
are in watch-towers, garrisons, stocks or the main castle will,
after a while, 'train' up to be 1st lance corporals, then
corporals, lieutenants and finally captains. You don't actually
see them practising or anything, it is just a case of leaving them
long enough. Having gold is a great motivator for them. But if
they get called out to take residence of a hut then their training
stops at whatever level they are at.

There are five different modes of games available. One player, two
player and demo mode are self explanatory, except to explain that
two player mode consists of a split screen. The other two modes
are training and missions. In the training mode you are guided
through various aspects of the game by having to only complete
certain tasks. For example, in the third training scenario your
only task is to produce five units of fish, meat and bread by
building the necessary buildings. You don't have any opposition
until scenario 6 which requires you to take over several enemy
knight's huts. This is the last of the training sessions. The
manual covers the training very well and it is recommended that
new players work their way through the training sessions first.
With spending every available minute of my leisure time playing
this game, and with NOT having to get the July issue of SynTax out
on time, it was not surprising that I was ahead of Sue. Anyone
listening in to our telephone conversations would have heard
something along the lines of:-

JC "I've finished the first mission. I wiped them out. Have you
been fighting any knights? It's brilliant!"

SM "No, I'm still training. My geologist can't find any gold but I
love it when he goes YAHOO!"

(Come to think of it, have you ever wondered what an outsider
would think listening in to any adventurer's conversation?)

There are thirty missions to work your way through, controlled by
using passwords. In these games the number of computer opponents,
your commencing stock and your growth rate are pre-set. In some,
even the position of your main castle is already determined. The
object of each is still to take over 75% of the land and knights
and each mission appears to get progressively harder. I say
'appears' as, at the time of writing, I am only on the eleventh
mission. In this there are only two computer opponents as opposed
to having three in an earlier mission. But my growth level is a
lot lower and there doesn't appear to be much stone about which is
making building difficult.

In one player, two player and demo modes you can modify numerous
parameters to the game, the size of the world or playing area, the
number of opponents (one, two or three) and the type of opponent.
You can also select for yourself and your opponents the size of
stock, the growth rate and your opponent's intelligence rating.
There is also an icon containing a 16 digit combination which can
be altered randomly or entered manually.  This affects the world's
appearance and, according to the manual, allows about 270,000
billion combinations.

Right, now back to the game. In order to conquer a world you need
to produce a powerful army of knights, which can only be done by
careful management of building, mining and transportation. If you
click on the statistics icon, valuable information is available.
It shows how many of each type of building you have, and also
which ones are in the process of being built. It tells you how
many settlers you have and their professions and what stocks you
have in your castles. There are diagrams with pointers that
indicate where you may have a problem in your chain of production.
There are even graphs that compare your progression with that of
your opponents.

You also have the ability to control the percentage of materials
that certain professions can use and also its importance in
transportation. You control which tools are to be made and which
miners are to be fed most. Other options allow you to control the
number of knights to be placed in buildings at various distances
from the enemy, percentage of knight recruitment, and loads more.
Information is also available regarding individual buildings. For
example, you can click on a pig farm and see how much corn that
farmer has to feed his pigs with. The manual describes all of
these functions with great detail, and is one of the best manuals
I have seen.

Now for the difficult bit. Sue asked me to mention some hints and
tips that I have discovered, that are not mentioned in the manual.
Well, one thing that you can't control is the priority of building
materials being despatched to various sites.

That doesn't mean, however, that you have to wait until one
building is finished before starting another. Knights' buildings
and mines seem to have to wait longer than other buildings. The
goldsmith's building appears to get built with remarkable speed.
I don't even start any new buildings if my knights' huts are
urgent.

Once a mine's production falls to between 20 and 30 percent, I
start looking for a replacement. Coal mines tend to run out
quicker than other mines so I usually start looking for another
when one reaches about 40 percent. As coal is used first with the
iron ore and then again with the iron to make the weapons, I try
to have twice as many coal mines as iron ore. One stone mine is
usually enough for the entire game, as he is supplemented by the
stone-cutter.

When in a world with little mining areas, I never take more than I
need at the beginning of the game as this invites attack. I often
find that the computer opponent is content with what he can take
of unclaimed land to start with. By the time he wants what I've
got, he usually finds that I have a watch-tower in his way.

If you become desperately low of a certain tool, or even run out,
giving a specific tool top priority is not always enough.  The
best way is to cut off production of any other tool entirely. But
don't forget to switch it back on afterwards.  Giving priority to
certain materials does not always get them out of the castle or
stock quick enough either. For a fast and efficient release of a
certain product, select it for top priority and then temporarily
put that stock or castle on evacuation.

When building your first knights' huts, don't wait until they are
finished and the knights automatically recruited. Manually recruit
them as soon as you have enough people to do so. That way, they
are training while the huts are being built.

Once you have a reasonable fighting force, the quickest way to
destroy your opponent is to cut up his land. Try cutting off his
main castle from the rest of his buildings but not too close as he
will be able to replace his knights too easily. Once his castle is
cut off, you can take out his stocks by attacking the nearest
guard hut to each. Now he has a problem. He is producing goods but
with nowhere for them to go. They start to stock-pile and with a
bit of luck they will stock-pile outside some of his knights'
huts.  If you then attack these knights' huts, the goodies are
yours. If his knight is guarding a mine and the product is being
stock-piled outside the knight's hut, then wait until the miner
runs out of food before attacking the knight's hut. An ideal
situation, would be a gold mine, a wheat farm, a mill and a
bakery. Leave them to it until you need gold and then the saying
"there's gold in them there hills" takes on an entirely different
meaning. Wicked aren't I?













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