The Settlers

The Settlers is a slow-paced Real Time Strategy computer game by German developer Blue Byte Software, first released in 1993 for Commodore Amiga and in 1994 for the PC. more...

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It was the first game to involve construction of a settlement and allocation and management of resources, which it did through a mouse operated point and click interface. It may also have been the first game to simulate thousands to tens of thousands of single game units in real time. On an 8Mb-expanded Amiga, the game can control a maximum of 64,000 individuals, who all behave autonomously.

Choosing a new game

A new player may begin a series of predefined games against computer opponents of increasing difficulty. Alternatively, the player may select a landscape of any size (memory permitting) and play against up to three other opponents of choice. The computer will generate a random landscape, or one based on a seed number given by the player. Finally, the player may opt not to play and allow up to four computer controlled opponents to play against each other; the player may spectate freely on all of them, including their statistics.

Transporting goods

Paths designated by the player enable communication and transport through the settlement, which begins at the player's castle. The ends of paths are always denoted by flags. People and goods circulate through this path network. Goods circulate in a human chain system, in which workers take goods from one flag and drop them at the next one, and goods accumulate at flags (a maximum of eight items per flag); a priority system, which is tweakable by the player, decides which goods are to be taken first.

Priorities are there to decide which goods at flags should be transported first, which of the four mine types (iron ore, gold ore, coal or stone) receives food first, where raw materials coming from mines go, where iron goes (blacksmith or tools maker), and a variety of other prioritisations. Tweaking them properly is encouraged.

If placement of buildings and roads is not carefully planned out by the player, so that different paths for goods use the same waypoints (as an extreme, having only one central castle), it inevitably will lead to traffic jams. If no counter action is taken (re-routing the goods, distributing more warehouses, better planning out where to place buildings), such single bottlenecks can spread out and jam more and more waypoints, leading to shortages because goods can not reach their destination fast enough anymore. This aspect of the game could be seen as simulation of a centrally directed system vs. a distributed system.

Graphical environment

Despite the appearance of rolling hills, all paths and game maps are built on a grid of overlapping hexagons, with flags and buildings positionable at the vertices. A regular hexagon denotes perfectly flat land, while pulling in the vertices gives the impression of steepness.

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