Sixth Settlers game unveiled

By Tom Bramwell Published 25 April, 2007

Well I'm not moving again.

Ubisoft has officially unveiled the latest game in Blue Byte's long-running Settlers series. It's called The Settlers - Rise of An Empire, and will be out on the PC this September.

As ever, the player's job is to establish a settlement and help it to thrive, building towns in the game's medieval setting, helping build the economy through resource-gathering, goods production and trading, and protecting the group from outsiders. With their tricks.

For the first time ever you'll also find yourself looking after female settlers, with the menfolk eyeing them up and potentially marrying them. To this end, you can employ entertainers and travelling fairs to help them get to know each other.

You will also need to become a master of diplomacy when it comes to dealing with people Not Of The Village, with road-planning elements, mining, and lots of building upgrades to consider, too, not to mention the impact of the weather and seasons on things like expansion and resource-gathering. There'll be four climatic zones in the new Settlers world, and the differences will be pronounced enough to influence gameplay.

Blue Byte is also promising lavish visuals this time, with each settler distinguishing him or herself through individual routines, actions and other behaviours that you ought to be able to spot.

It'll be brought together in such a way that you can get into it easily, but will still find new stuff to get on with the further you get into the game. You'll even run into the odd noble knight.

What's more, in addition to the single-player mode and freeplay option, Blue Byte's promising multiplayer over LAN and internet, and a map editor so that you can cobble together your own playgrounds.

It all sounds jolly exciting, and looks that way too, as you can see in our burgeoning screenshot gallery and the accompanying Eurogamer TV trailer. We're hoping to get a hands-on fairly soon, so check back for more rising empires in the near future.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (22) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Der_tolle_Emil #1 5 years ago

    Well Heritage of Kings was definetly not what I expected and even looking at it as an individual title and not something from the Settlers series the game was still quite bad.

    I knew about the new things in Settlers 6 for some time now (German magazine Gamestar had information about the game a couple of weeks ago, including early screenshots) and I have to say that I don't know if this thing will work.

    Of course they cannot go on and on and make every Settlers game the same but I still have my doubts about this one.

  • Thornhillboy #2 5 years ago

    Settlers died after 4. I didn't want an AoE clone, I wanted Settlers!

    *weeps*

  • Wite_Noiz #3 5 years ago

    Agreed, 4 was the last good one.
    Although, I think 3 was the peak - I had lots of issues with 4 and found the game to be generally poorly balanced.

    Love 2 and 3, though.

  • Nova5lag #4 5 years ago

    Isnt settlers 2 coming out for the DS?

  • SBfistfun #5 5 years ago

    wow, can't believe the whole settlers thing is still going

  • Rez #6 5 years ago

    Settlers 1 and 2 were the best! It went downhill after that.

  • rudedudejude #7 5 years ago

    1 was the best!!! Nothing better than clearing a forest for wood only to find your boatmaker having used the wood to product the 187 boats now sat outside his house and around your town, absolutly funny as hell :D

    And the fighting was excellent! And the 'special click' on the amiga was also awesome, me and my mate used to have split screen co-op, it was bloody excellent!
    Edited by 1 at 25/04/07 @ 17:53

  • deepmenace #8 5 years ago

    yes! split screen mode with 2 mice, almost unheard of but truly awesome.
    Edited by 1 at 25/04/07 @ 18:04

  • zoidberg #9 5 years ago

    The Settlers II was the best in the series. When Settlers 3 came out I cursed Blue Byte... and have continued to do so since.

    The 10 Year anniversary edition of new-grahpics Settlers 2 is good, but not great. I wrote the FAQ on Settlers 2 available on gamefaqs and am really looking forward to writing another one, for a Settlers game that deserves it.

    Let's hope The Settlers 6 (or 7th, if you count 10th anniversary), will kick settlers-butt.

    'till then, when does the Settlers for DS come out?!?!?!

  • Ryuken #10 5 years ago

    If this one manages to capture the good parts of Knights&Merchants and Beasts&Bumpkins then I am interested. :) Seems to look that way though.

  • AOFanboi #11 5 years ago

    Settlers 1 was greatest simply because you made actual routes for these Lemmings-style humans to move stuff around. The second also routed - by 3 and 4 the routes were gone and people milled about. The road-planning fun and weighing transport redundancies versus number of people was nearly absent. Never bothered with the fifth.

  • malloc #12 5 years ago

    "1 was the best!!! Nothing better than clearing a forest for wood only to find your boatmaker having used the wood to product the 187 boats now sat outside his house and around your town, absolutly funny as hell :D

    And the fighting was excellent! And the 'special click' on the amiga was also awesome, me and my mate used to have split screen co-op, it was bloody excellent!"

    Totally.

    I played the demo religiously for ages, without the instructions and would always produce stuff the wrong way around. The number of times a fisherman managed to produce food for my entire town was nothing short of astonishing, great stuff.

    The classes of knight were pure comedy gold, the scabby teenager out of school up to the posh up himself with purple feathers out his helmet were just quality. Having people drilling for places to mine, constructing roads over land with a difficult gradient, it was all there people.

    Don't screw it up PLEASE.

  • Bluetooth #13 5 years ago

    Settlers, along with F1GP and UFO Enemy Unknown were the games that ruined my childhood and made me a geek.

    And it was well worth it, that is until I think about the nookie I've missed.

  • Azazel #14 5 years ago

    Well, just remember: people who do it all for the nookie end up forming shit nu-metal bands.

  • immateriaux #15 5 years ago

    What was wrong with "Heritage of Kings?

    Which, by the way, is not meant rhetorically, I've never played any of these Settlers games but did think the game looked nice on the box!!

    Was also thinking of getting the DS version in June, which I believe is a port of Settlers 2 - should be a good style game for the DS and if Settlers 2 is indeed the best then good news on that front. But what was the problem with the last PC version?

  • LaundroMat #16 5 years ago

    There's a sample of a bird twittering in The Settlers on the Amiga that sounds exactly the same in Oblivion.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #17 5 years ago

    @immateriaux: The last Settlers had nothing to do with Settlers but was merely an Age of Empires type game.

    The specialty of Settlers games is that you don't directly control your units. (Except for military in the later games, ie. 3 and 4). You only set out places where specific buildings should be built and that is mostly it. In Heritage of Kings you directly controlled the units like in Age of Empires and assigned them to work on a building. You also built mines to gather stone etc. very much like in Age of Empires. While gathering stone, wood and minerals was always part of the Settlers you never had to directly assign workers to work in a mine. You only built the mine and supplied it with food - nothing more to it.

    So in short the game had nothing to do with Settlers and as an Age of Empires clone it wasn't great either.

    I am also looking forward to Settlers 2 on the DS because I still think that Settlers 2 was the best Settlers game until now.

  • rudedudejude #18 5 years ago

    Ahh the knights!

    I remember many a time praying my last feathered guy could defend his house and protect my entire food production, killing off 30 of these little weakling guys as they charged over the hills!

    And the gealogists! Also classic! Road planning was also an excellent part of it, being a good roadplanner could give you a geat advantage, and you could get some funny as hell congestion if you weren't careful.

  • Thornhillboy #19 5 years ago

    *little geologist walks out*

    *taps the ground*

    *Woo pee!*

    *plants sign post*

    Classic.

  • thegouldfish #20 5 years ago

    The hours spent playing Settlers 1 and 2 single and multiplayer.
    I'm sure I have a settlers 2 save game with a time over over 60 odd hours.

    From the video it looks more settlers then settlers 5 was, so it looks hopefull.

    Also looking forward to Settlers 2 on the DS :)


    Lets just hope Blue byte don't turn into the "settlers company" and make other games.

  • immateriaux #21 5 years ago

    Thanks for that information Der_tolle_Emil, appreciate it.

  • tentaculat #22 5 years ago

    Ahh.... Two-player Settlers on the trusty Amiga, split-screen with dual mice. Fun times! This was one of the best games for the Amiga and it's a shame the series has strayed away from what made it great.

    The PC version was better for single player, but no dual-mouse support IIRC, might have allowed joypads though.