The Settlers: New Allies (February 2023)

Don’t know if it was already posted upthread. Ubi hired the guy who created The Settlers, and later the SpellForce series, and his studio to do his thing with the next Settlers.

That was a great trailer, though I watched it while listening to the new Slipknot so that might have colored my experience a bit. I loved the previous Settlers game and played quite a bit of it (years after it came out) and as such, this is firmly on my Day 1 radar so far.

Settlers and Slipknot, like peanut butter and jelly. ;-)


That trailer was a little odd in being very zoomed in on the settler people almost like it’s a third person action game. Barely showed any building (you kind of saw glimpses of the village) and showed a lot of soldier training and fighting (the worst parts of the Settlers series). I didn’t quite get a grasp on what angle they were taking this game; almost like a Champions of Antera vibe which was fine in its own right, but not a Settlers proper game.

Yep, I played well over a hundred hours of Settlers 7, completing all the dlc also. :)

EPIC and or Uplay, probably will never come to Steam sadly.
So Uplay it will be.

This drives me crazy, so many “trailers” show games from some strange, zoomed in perspective (usually strategy games and the like) even though said games are almost never, ever played like that. Guys - nothing looks as good zoomed in as zoomed out, that’s just how art works! I assume they are trying to trick the CoD kiddies into buying it, though I can’t imagine that actually works.

Just saw this article:

https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/20/why-original-creator-volker-wertich-has-returned-to-make-the-settlers/

It’s still quite early and information is very limited but it does look like the team is leaning into the combat aspect more so than prior entries:

  • The Combat strategy: Players would control full armies of different units, taking on and defeating enemy armies to take over or defend their territory. Special units such as army leaders can have a positive effect on their troops.
  • The Glory strategy: As mentioned above, players would select a hero character who will fight in the arena against the enemy. Once a player initiates a battle, spectators representing both sides will gather at the arena to watch the battle. Winning a fight can lead to dissatisfaction among the defeated party. This however can lead to revolts, allowing the player to take over the enemy territory.
  • The Faith strategy: the third winning strategy will allow players to inspire Faith amongst Settlers and will be detailed at a later date.

Wertich said that you can win the game through combat, building a big army and attacking others. But you can also train a hero, build a large arena, and then challenge an opponent to a fight. Wertich has been working with Ubisoft for three years now.

Hmmm, I’ll remain optimistic since I love Settlers, but the focus on combat, armies, and heroes gives me a tiny pause.

Ugh… I was just gonna come here and say that I was a bit put off by the focus on combat (as mentioned above, certainly not one of the Settlers’ strengths).

How is Settlers 7 (that’s the current one, right?)? I see it’s on sale on Steam (and on the Uplay store) now for only 7.50 (for the “History” edition, whatever the frick that is). You still have to go to Uplay to actually run the game, right?

Settlers 7 is a masterpiece and has a very distinct boardgame style if that appeals to you. I absolutely adore it. I really enjoyed the campaigns and there are a bunch of scenarios to play as well as multiplayer. The design focuses on resource scarcity and because it has more of a boardgame feel the AI can play the game very effectively.

While I think both versions should work (though they both require Uplay) the History Edition is probably the one to get since it is optimized for Windows 10, provides support for higher resolutions, includes all DLC, and removes the always-online DRM that was included at launch in the earlier edition. So while you still need to register on Uplay you should be able to play the History edition entirely offline. Andreas Nitsche was the lead designer on Settlers 7 and Bruce Campbell Shelley was a consultant on the project.

7 is easily the best since 2, while having a very distinct feeling.

This combat talk is very worrying, though I will note that 7 had a lot of combat.

Sort of. If I am remembering correctly I think the combat was pretty hands off in that you moved your army towards the opposing force and the troop quality and composition basically decided the battle with hardly any player direction. I saw the combat aspect as a territory gating mechanic. Your opponent would have a force of a certain size/quality stationed at a point on the map and you really couldn’t advance beyond that into the territory beyond that until you built your economy/infrastructure up enough to support a certain tier of troops. I might not be recalling this correctly though.

I thought of the military portion of Settlers 7 as a mechanism to throttle expansion so it wasn’t unchecked. Or as a gameplay timer if the enemy was going to invade your controlled regions.

Hmmm…this one is definitely on the front burner for me now. The first SpellForce is one of my favourite games. Love to see some of that creative magic baked into the new Settlers.

Yeah, I was fine with how it was done, it’s just that you did a lot of it. So it might be OK in another game with a lot of it. I’m just skeptical, because combat is usually terrible in euro logistics games, including most Settlers games.

Looks promising!

I’m sure we have a GOG thread that would say the same, but I’d check them out before buying any old Settlers game. IIRC, they have versions that actually run on Win10.

This, exactly. I still replay Spellforce annually. I think this Settlers reboot is Day 1 purchase for me.

Well… maybe next year!

https://www.thesettlers-alliance.com/en/a-message-from-the-the-settlers-team/

Well, the bright side is I learned a new German term: “wuselfaktor,” which I gather roughly means that “ant farm” quality you get from city builders.

You can find an explanation of Wuselfaktor in the middle of this blog post.

Yes, apparently it translates as “bustle factor,” which makes sense!