And more often than not, you won't even need them. Priests aren't integrated into the existing system, just placed on top of it. This area is interesting, but it isn't very well developed. Priests have access to a variety of divine intervention spells, such as creating resources or destroying the enemy. You must build temples, which give you access to priests. One area that is completely new to Settlers III is the inclusion of gods. The missions do become harder, but difficulty is almost always determined by the scarcity of resources or the proximity and strength of your neighbors. Building up your city takes a great deal of time, and going through the rudimentary steps at the beginning of almost every mission becomes very repetitive. You start off with some supplies and must expand until you encounter an enemy. But the new cultures and campaigns don't alleviate the major problem of Settlers III's mission structure: Each mission is almost exactly the same. Each culture features a unique building set and a few slight differences in supply needs and building types. You can play as Romans, Asians, or Egyptians. Settlers III is broken into three campaigns to reflect the inclusion of new cultures. There's a slightly different interface, and the inclusion of new types of units (such as archers and spearmen), but these are surface changes and make only a moderate improvement.
Settlers II suffered from its rudimentary combat, which simply required you to send as many forces as you could spare to an enemy fort and hope for the best. That in itself is an improvement, but some more changes would have been welcome.Įventually, you'll be able to expand no more, and you'll have to resort to military might to push back the enemy borders. It's a good system, but it is basically the same as in Settlers II, with the major exception being that you no longer have to set roads for your workers. And all of these require carriers to lug supplies around, so you must make sure you have plenty of houses to keep the workforce plentiful. So you must build grain farms, mills, bakeries, fisheries, pig farms, and slaughterhouses.
Miners require food, though, and a variety of food at that. With these minerals, you begin to build weapons to arm your military and tools to supply your ever-expanding workforce. With these basic building blocks, you then move on to mining minerals, such as coal, iron, and sulfur. To do so, you must have woodcutters and stonecutters. You must gather wood and stone to build structures.
It is a game of complex interdependencies. Settlers III, like its predecessors, combines city building and combat, focussing primarily on the former. But while many problems of Settlers II are addressed, many still remain. It adds many new features and expands the scope of the series. Settlers III, on the other hand, tries to do a little of both. Populous: The Beginning shares some basic similarities to its two predecessors but is a completely new game at heart. The designers of Caesar III stayed true to the series' formula, adding a few new features and refining some areas. Impressions' Caesar, Bullfrog's Populous, and now Blue Byte's Settlers have seen the release of their third incarnation.
Settlers 3 series#
In the past few months, three venerable empire-building series have all become trilogies.