Maps are rarely a single pixel larger than your kingdom will require, which means the placement of a single storehouse can often be the difference between victory and defeat. None of this would be much of a problem in a normal strategy game where levels are vast and you can build farms anywhere, but Blue Byte have obviously spent a lot of time honing the balance of Settlers 7. Grain is also used to make beer, which attracts (dubiously qualified) scholars, who lead you towards a Wisdom victory. But your population then requires housing, which uses up land and means there’s less for farming. Bread is used to attract workers and grow your population. Fertile land, for example, is used to grow grain through farms. Coal, gold, land, fish, wood, stone and meat are the most important, each with a number of different interactions that make things a bit trickier than just collecting as much of each as you can. Tandria’s basic resources come in a few different forms. We even managed to fail one of the tutorial levels, which is an impressive feat in itself. This game needs a Dungeon Keeper-style hand to slap workers with.ĭon’t be deceived by the cartoony graphics either Settlers 7 is an incredibly complex and hard game. War, Wealth and Wisdom are the dishes of the day and you’d do well to choose a specialty early on in any given mission thanks to the way that Settlers 7 draws difficulty primarily from limited space and finite resources. Ostensibly there are three main routes to overall victory, hence the unwieldy subtitle.

The singleplayer campaign kicks things off quickly by casting you as a princess in the fantasy world of Tandria and sending you off on a mission to bring unity to the land. This is a very hard game, it’s just that the challenge stems from plotting growth to the last gold piece rather than wielding military might. Sorry to disappoint.ĭon’t be totally put off though as, although Settlers 7 lacks the combat complexity of Total War or StarCraft, it still manages to pack in a comparable amount of difficulty. In fact, beyond recruiting soldiers you have very little control of the military it’s all a bit hands-off when you start getting down to details in terms of combat. You’re going to spend far more time planning how many windmills you can squeeze into your territory than you are organising troops into phalanx formations.

What Settlers 7 does have though is a tremendous amount of city planning and a resource web that’s more complicated than trying to make jerked chicken without burning your hand and having to spend the rest of the week typing with one finger.

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