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By Brad Cook

Vaclav Havel, a key figure in the Velvet Revolution and the first President of the post-revolutionary Czech Republic, once said: “The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.” In the case of Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, we’re talking about a woman, Princess Zoe, but the sentiment remains: her test is how well she handles restoring the broken kingdom of Tandria to its former glory. Like those who carried out the Velvet Revolution, you may help Zoe accomplish her goals non-violently, although success through military might is an option too.

The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom

Settlers 7’s single-player campaign features a dozen missions that immerse you in its three paths to victory: trade, technology, and military. Tandria is a ragtag place when you first take control of it, but soon you’ll begin constructing buildings that raise your population limit and attract new settlers. You can put those people to work erecting new buildings and other structures, as well as gathering resources — such as food, wood, stone, and water — that you can convert into more valuable goods which serve a variety of purposes.

Plan your production chains wisely, because they enable you to churn out goods that not only feed trade routes but also let you train specialist settlers, such as soldiers and traders. In addition, you can visit the tavern to recruit important people, like the generals who will lead your troops into battle.

Three Ways to Victory

Once you establish an economy, you’ll want to decide which of the three roads to success — military, trade, or technology — best suits your style of gameplay. Military might depends on your ability to amass the goods required to train five types of units — pikemen, musketeers, cavalry, cannons, and standard bearers — as well as your skill at dictating your generals’ combat strategies.

A powerful trading empire depends on training three kinds of traders — hawkers, salesmen, and merchants — and shrewdly developing trade routes; you can take control of neutral areas, thus expanding your commercial empire, by sending bribes with traders. And if technological prowess is your forte, you’ll want to train three types of clerics — novices, brothers, and fathers — who will research technologies at monasteries scattered around the map; players can interrupt each other’s research and take it over, albeit at a higher cost than if they had initiated the process.

No matter which route you take, you’ll earn Victory Points for achieving certain goals, such as building the largest army, amassing the most money, or researching a specific high-level technology. The player who reaches a pre-determined Victory Point total and holds onto their points until the timer reaches zero is declared the winner. (Sure, you can also win by simply wiping out everyone else on the map, but where’s the fun in that?)

While some Victory Points are permanent, many of them can be taken away and reassigned to another player. Thought you had the largest army? Nope, someone just trained a few troops that put them over the top. So if you find yourself in the catbird seat, watch out: everyone will know about it, and they’ll start looking for ways to knock a few Victory Points out of your grasp.

Career Aspirations

Princess Zoe’s story offers a great way to train for online multiplayer matches and offline skirmishes against computer-controlled opponents. As you rack up victories, you can customize your personal castle. Add turrets, walls, and other objects as you upgrade it from a modest structure to something awe-inspiring. Your castle even appears in your games and becomes your personal profile picture for multiplayer matches, letting others know how much you’ve accomplished.

Which leads us to another relevant quote, this time from legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden: “It’s not so important who starts the game, but who finishes it.”

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Canons firing on a path.

Boom! Go the Cannons. War has begun.

Bird-eye view of a town.

Nestled Among the Mountains. This kingdom may seem serene, but it has military might on its mind.

A cloister.

Work, Work. Upgrade your roads and your settlers will be able to get resources into storage faster.

The Settlers 7: Gold Edition
Enhance Your Conquests With The Gold Edition
The Gold Edition provides exclusive unlockable content for consumers, including: exclusive map, additional castle forge elements — allowing players to customize their castles and make their cities unique, and the original soundtrack of the game.
 

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System Requirements:

 
knight bowing down to a king.

With Great Power Comes Great Rewards

As your kingdom grows, so does its prestige, represented by a point total; every five prestige points you earn establish another level of prestige, which triggers a reward. You accumulate prestige by: taking control of neutral areas of the map; building prestige objects, such as statues, or adding prestige extensions to certain buildings; establishing trading outposts on the map’s prestige places; and researching a prestige technology.

Each time you score a prestige reward, you can view the Prestige Options Tree to see what’s available. Prestige rewards build on what you’ve previously chosen, so, for example, if you upgrade your streets and enable your settlers to transport resources faster, your next options will include upgrading storehouses and employing geologists, who increase the output of mines.

During a match or campaign mission, you can also scoop up other rewards in the form of raw materials or finished goods. You get them for taking control of neutral areas, hitting certain population thresholds, establishing trading outposts, completing quests, or by falling behind in the Victory Point race. Think of that last one as a hedge against a player taking such a commanding Victory Point lead that no one else has a shot at catching up. Yes, everyone wants to knock off the front-runner.

The Settlers: The History

The Settlers iPhone app

Released in 1993, The Settlers set the template for later games in this long-running strategy series: take control of a castle and build a thriving kingdom by gathering resources, building an army of knights, and eventually eliminating your opponents. The Settlers was known as Serf City: Life is Feudal in North America, but the name was changed back to the original one when The Settlers II: Veni, Vidi, Vici was published in 1996.

The success of the first two entries set the stage for the rest of the series: The Settlers III (1998), The Settlers IV (2001), The Settlers: Heritage of Kings (2004), and The Settlers: Rise of an Empire (2007). Beginning with The Settlers III, add-on packs were published for each game. Heritage of Kings was the first 3D entry in the line-up.

You can play The Settlers on your iPhone or iPod touch too, courtesy of Gameloft. That version of the game is based on The Settlers IV, which has you controlling the Romans, Vikings, or Mayans as you build your settlement into an empire.

 
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