TITLE: Settlers: Heritage of Kings, or why I'm now bashing my head to the wall AUTHOR: Jim9137 DATE: 2/24/2005 03:26:00 ip. ----- BODY:

This is mainly an excuse to test this new fancy trackback system, so I can harass Portico's blog with it. Teehehee. ANYWAY *COUGH* *COUGH* Let me tell you a story about this happy kid who played Settlers 2 on his old 486/DX machine. Let it be known that this happy kid was just overly ecstatic about all the nice graphics and very cunningly hidden need for strategic decisions. You should also know that he loved the economy model for its logicalness, and just looooved to explore the map in real-time. To cut short story into longer one, Settlers series are games where you (as title implies) build a settlement on a weird island. You then start to build up the infrastructure from the ground. For example, in order to keep on building buildings you have to make a woodcutter. Then a sawmill so that the wood can be processed to wooden planks. You might also want to invest in a forester so that you won't run out of wood. Of course you have to feed your workers with food and this is where farm and butchers come in.... And so on! Very fluent way to learn some basic principles of economics. The game also had this amazing athmosphere in it. You not only needed, but you WANTED to explore the maps. (Most of the map is covered in the infamous fog for most of the time. No radars here!) Maybe you just wanted to find more gold? Find some enemies? Make nice friends of bunny colonies? (Hunters hunt those, by the way. Teehehee... *ahem*) In any case, you went on exploring spree soon enough. Maybe you sent few scouts, or expanded rapidly by building lookout towers. Maybe you have even infrastructure to hold few forts. Either way, the game had really done this part in the game. Exploring. As boring as it may sound, it's way more interesting in Settlers than in most of the RTS games. (Author's note: I used that to describe all RTS's. Not just C&C clones. Or Dune II clones, if we're exact.) Which brings me back to the topic. So, if I were brilliant chap, and wanted to make quick cash on the game industry, what would I do? First, I get hold of franchise. Settlers in this case. Then I try to acquire the company's name in it (Byte Enchanters), and maybe some old developers to lure those old fans who still observe the gaming news. (Myself not included) Then I slap the name on the game (Settlers), copy some game mechanics from some more popular but similar game, maybe even take something from the old games. Then I just announce the sequel, keep all the details in mist for few months, watch as the fan's flock ecstatically waiting for new sequel, "at last!", nothing can go wrong! Not for you, but for me everything did. Though, I base this blog entry on few hours playing, but I can fairly certainly say that this isn't Settlers. It is something else. It is... Advanced Warcraft 3. That was my first experience, and I still stick to it. The whole building restrictions are gone. Kaput. There are no territories to battle over. There is practically no need to make infrastructure. (You just order Serf/peasants to whack wood and maybe make a sawmill for increased wood production, etc.) You don't have to scout the mountains anymore for minerals. They are lying on the ground already! Maybe you see a pit, then you build a mine. One of the innovations of this game, is that you have to provide housing and farms to the workers. Near them. But even with those changes, this is not Settlers. Well, maybe they didn't call the game Settlers V because of the differences. Maybe they start to run this more traditional RTS line with Heritage of Kings tag, at least I hope so. Still, as the author of Portico's carefully explained, this doesn't even feel like Settlers. The whole atmosphere is more darker, more grim, and there are these dark brooding heroes... Even in the summer everything is grey. Oh yeah, you have seasonal differences too, but I'm not sure about their effects. And you also have payday when people pay you the taxes. Nice idea that too. Back to the athmosphere. Remember how those people hanged around the road's flagpoles, chewed some bubble gum and read newspaper? Not anymore my friend. Instead, you have this voice telling you funny things. ("Jingle bells jingle bells... OH LOOK ITS GREEN AGAIN!") You can also peruse your peasants about opinions if you want, but it basically goes "I really like here" to "I want a warm bed to rest/Food to eat". Oh yeah, you can also use church to bless your citizens once in a while, to boost their morale and make them work harder Another good idea, if I say so. (It was easy to stay in 103% of general motivation though...) Ah, and the combat. While in the earlier games you had to make forts and towers to expand your territory, and then arm them with soldiers. If your territory overlapped with enemy's, the corresponding towers/forts started a combat. It's not anything difficult, you can arm your (/promote) units more effectively, and you can also use superior manpower (hence the forts. Towers can hold only that many people) to come victorious. Combat in Heritage of Kings however, follows the more traditional way. You just hire groups of swordsmen/pikemen/cavalry/archers/siege engines, and order them to attack your enemy. You can upgrade them though, for example pikemen will be lancers, and swordsmen will turn to longswordsmen and so on. Nothing especially new here. Even the formations has been witnessed already. So what do we have? A game with the name of Settlers. But the game mechanics are totally different, so they put a tag on it. (Heritage of Kings) I can see this game being very successful traditional RTS game. At least I think other companies will take some example from it, because it is sort of revolutionary in it's own way. Though, this all might have been done earlier in Age of Empires series, or Rise of Nations, so I don't dare to say this for sure. I don't play much C&C RTS's, you see. But no, we don't have Settlers. Give me proper Settlers sequel. With the bunnies. :( EDIT: Tried to make the entry more readable, but I think I failed more horribly. C'est la vie!

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