The Settlers: Rise of an Empire

The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is another installment in a highly popular strategy game series first released in 1993 by Blue Byte Software. After a poorly received Heritage of Kings, the previous game, the German developer decided to go back to the good old convention adding a grain of innovations.

The game’s main purpose is to manage a medieval town, which starts as a small village and grows into a large, well fortified metropolis. First, you get to select your hero, whose unique abilities your settlers. A nice example is the merchant, whose singing can help the settlers put their daily problems aside for a moment, thus increasing their morale.

Just as in previous games of the series, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire also requires you to collect resources essential to development of your village. Materials need to be transported by carriers, although you cannot manually designate their routes. The game decides where to create a road considering the traffic. Lack of geologists is a simplification as compared to previous games. Resources are detectable right away and you can excavate them as you please.