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The Settlers: Rise of an Empire | 
| From: Ubisoft
Category: Video Games
List Price: $29.99
Buy Used: $6.34
You Save: $23.65 (79%)
New (11) Used (15) from $6.34
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 1082
Platform: Windows
ESRB: Teen
Media: DVD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.5 x 2
MPN: 68362
Model: 68362
UPC: 008888683629
EAN: 0008888683629
ASIN: B000Q56VHK
Release Date: September 25, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Game works perfect. Includes original manual, case, and artwork. Satisfaction Guaranteed!
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| Features:
| • | Diplomacy is key - Build up your small town, maintain trade relations, and make claims on land and villages | | • | Use wise planning to for mining operations, resource gathering & food production - plus the occupations of the various settlers | | • | Plan a road system for transporting goods effectively - and to help your people prosper | | • | Upgrade buildings, hire entertainer and organize fairs - all to improve the economy & match up male & female settlers | | • | Build walls to keep out enemies, and defend against invasion with military actions |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The Settlers: Rise Of An Empire challenges you to build lively, bustling towns in a medieval world. Everything is visible, lovingly animated and realistic. Each settler has his or her own daily routine, with a range of different actions and behaviours that can be observed by the player at all times. This enables him to get the best out of his Settlers, build up a flourishing economy, tend to his settlers' needs, and protect his empire against danger from the outside. By expanding his empire, the player can aspire to becoming a legendary king or queen. Guide noble young knights with various skills through the epic storyline
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Good Game July 24, 2008
I thought this was a very well-made game by ubisoft. The amount of detail in all the aspects were really quite cool. One should get it and try it oneself. Enjoy.
I'm going to settle this right now... July 17, 2008
A farmer walks out during the warm season and collects his wheat, which he in turn takes back into town. There, a baker turns the wheat into bread, which will be bought and consumed by an iron minor. The iron minor brings iron ore into town which a blacksmith will pick up, and turn into swords, which will be used by your fighting men paid for by the taxes of everyone on this chain.
It's the social chains like this that make Settler RoE a unique game. And this is essentially what settlers is all about; building up these chains as best you can. The game has a good campaign as well; every mission is different while the basic principal remains the same: keep your people fed, clothed, clean, and happy. Basically, it's sort of like civilization, but focusing on one town.
As a bonus, once the campaign is over, you can play any number of "free-settlement" maps, were your goal is to build the best city possible, while others have a specific goal (How long can you hold out under a barons taxation before revolting?) . Also, a downloadable map-builder and bonus maps should create some interesting opportunities for replay ability.
However, it does tend to get a bit repetitive. This game aimed to rival a lot of other games... but came up short towards all of them, thus dropping it all over. After your thirtieth near-identical city, you'll be asking "What now?" Combat was also somewhat disappointing: Swordsmen or archers, and couple that with some siege equipment, those are you're only choices. That in conjunction with some technical errors put another nail into the coffin of Blue Byte, although not quite sealing it. Settlers RoE could have been better, but it feels more like an attempt to bring back the dead.
If you can find it for cheap, than this game is worth your money.
 How to get around the "please insert original disc" message. July 12, 2008
The game is great, but the copy protection is annoying. Ubisoft offers no web-based support for this game, but BlueByte forums.
1)Install game.
2)Install patches.
3)DVD is only for installation; Remove it.
4)Click the desktop icon for the game.
5)Choose the button that says "activation."
6)Enter your key, at the back of the manual book.
7)Download the text file from the website that opens.
8)Open it & copy everything.
9)Paste everything into the box that wants the rediculously long activation code.
10)Play without & disc, enjoy the fruis of your labor.
I CCB )combat city builders) recommend the Age of Ampires & the Anno series (aka 1503/1703 AD).
Strong city-building sim, but lacks anything resembling a challenge. June 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Alright. Let's see here.
This was hyped to me as "Like Stronghold 2, except with more focus on city life than combat."
That was a pretty fair comparison. In Settlers, your main object of any mission is to build up a city infrastructure and promote your knight to new ranks in order to gain access to better buildings.
It's a beautiful game to play. When you really get a city rolling, you'll be entertained merely by zooming in and watching your settlers go about their business. The cities themselves feel alive and are nicely detailed. You really will feel as if you're lording over a medieval settlement.
Resources are scattered around the maps, which are divided into regions. You can't build in a region unless you've claimed it by setting up an outpost. Through this system you can slowly expand the territory you control and gain new trade partners or plots of land. In some maps expansion is a necessity, just to gain the space you need for the farms to feed and clothe your settlers.
I should remark again on the prettiness of the game. The seasons cycle, the peasants talk in the streets and hold festivals when you promote your knight, and mutter when there's not enough food or they're cold.
It's definitely a fun simulation game to play, but there aren't many deep details to delve into. It's fairly superficial. This won't bother you much, though. You'll be having too much fun watching the settlers go about their lives.
Now a few negatives.
I mentioned before that the focus wasn't on combat. Well, I just mentioned it a second time--it really needs to be discussed. For starters, there is a grand total of two basic military units: swordsmen and archers. That's it. There are also spies, mercenaries, and siege equipment, but you'll almost never use them. It's pretty much those two lonesome unit types. You'll never build a large army, either. Four squads--two archers and two swordsmen--are enough to completely dominate most enemies in the campaign. There are a couple of occasions (mission-specific) where you will have to build a single battering ram and only use it once--then you can leave it to rot if you want.
The only other real negative is the difficulty.
Namely, there ISN'T any. Difficulty, that is.
You can beat this game blindfolded and with the speakers muted. It's really that easy. You'd almost have to try harder to lose the levels than to win. For most of them, it's just a matter of time before you achieve victory--in 75% of missions, there's nothing to challenge you. Nothing at all. No enemies will attack you. No natural disasters will damage your town. The very biggest threat in the entire game is wolves, who will occasionally attack a lone settler.
Despite the flaws, this is a very fun game. If you can find it with a cheap price tag, it's worth picking up. You will spend several hours building up cities and enjoy every moment of it.
Eventually, though, you'll eject the disk--because you will have built every building, promoted your knight to the top of the tree, and have not a single challenge to overcome.
 Simpler than Stronghold 2 April 6, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thought this game was a bit too simple for my tastes.
To prove my point I did a comparison to one of my favorite castle building games, Stronghold 2, by listing items and canceling out the items that were the same in both games. As it came out, the Settlers had about 20 items that were not found in Stronghold, and Stronghold 2 had 70+ not found in Settlers, spread out between castle structures, military units (not as much of the total as you would think), and economic buildings. The Settlers seems like it should be for children when compared with this game.
The worst difference is in defense building. In Stronghold 2 you can build a wide variety of gates and towers and any thickness of two types of wall you like, but in Settlers 6 you can build only one type of tower and one type of gate for each type of wall, and the walls are uniform and thin.
In Stronghold, as well, you can actually look inside your buildings and see your people working. In the Settlers they work outside their buildings and often get their tasks done in fewer steps. One example of the latter is bread making in Stronghold 2, which involves going through a mill for flour instead of just sending grain straight to the bakery (however Stronghold Legends does not have mills either). I just found it more entertaining, perhaps, that in Stronghold 2 tax collecting is carried out in a separate building instead of the castle, and carts have to be dispatched from posts instead of the central storehouse. It's things like this - attention to detail - that really make a game more complex, lifelike, and entertaining. When you need less structures and people to carry out your economy and defense, the game is more boring and less like real castle life.
There are a few unique perks in the Settlers, like upgradeable buildings, the seasons, different environments and castle styles, and troops gathered into battalions, but not enough to even get close to the complexity of Stronghold 2. Even Stronghold Legends, which is stripped down to accommodate a greater military aspect, seems more entertaining than this game, even for those who prefer castle building to fighting.
Also, the Settlers seems to give everybody graphics problems; I almost had to return my copy but discovered just in time that the game started out on zero brightness, etc., so that I had to change those values to get started. The graphics I found to be detailed and complex but they didn't work well on my machine.
This game is also fairly easy, as I was unable to fully complete the Stronghold 2 campaign but the Settlers 6 campaign, though arduous, was a breeze.
Overall, Stronghold 2 beats this game in almost every aspect, but if you want a game that is simpler, easier, and less militaristic, it could be a very good buy (or if you just got sick of Stronghold after playing it too much).
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