Hello fellow settlers,

I saw the webpage about this game, and since i played almost every normal settlers game i thought i would give this a try.
Now i would like to say that if people don't like constructive comments, or are to young to understand what it is compared to whining about game features, plz stop reading now and move onto a new post.

I applaud the idea that is being tried out here with the concept of game play, but for some reason as a die hard settlers fan, this just doesn't strike me a good addition to the settlers branch. Settlers was all about a certain amount of grace while building up you empire, and slowly expanding it.

The first looks are average, specially if you find out roads have no use, the best part about settlers in general was that you people had there own way of moving about. In some version you dint even build roads the settlers made them while the moved true the land, but if you did build roads they would at least use them as if it was a part of you land. For the rest i like the general look of them game, most things aside from the roads are proll still bit daft cause its not completed yet (at least i hope those land marks will get more robust and not stay like they are now).

The resourcing system, is a good new take on things as well, although for some reason i cant seem to get it to work for me. You fail the first time at building stuff (normal for a first try id say), and then you bang up to a wall of not having tools to make the basic buildings any more. In the non browser based games this was balanced a lot better, so you would not actually get stuck (or had to try really hard todo so). In this game if you don't have a tool smith and you screwed up you basic material income cause your just fooling around a bit, you can get really stuck. And i think that's just wrong, its doesn't give me that settler feeling all the other settler games did. The older systems just made your settler a wood cutter by giving him a axe, and he would drop that axe if he wasn't needed any more so you could re-use that axe for something else.

Now lets move onto the general game play, the good thing i recall about settlers, is the fact it had a few modes of game-play depending on how you as a player wanted to build you empire. But in general it wasn't any where near sluggish, specially if you went more for the offensive type of play.
If i have to compare that to this game, it would not be totally fair cause the browser game is just a slower mind set then a normal computer game.
It does how ever not contribute to any previous settlers feeling i had. and there for kinda ruins my game. Even tho i only played the first parts of the game, i can already see where this is going, long waiting times for things to get done slow moving units and long cool downs. Giving it a overall slow and sluggish game-play, that mostly consisted of waiting and more waiting and if you actually could build something you will still have to do some more waiting. You could off course spend you day buffing your buildings every 30min, but seriously i got better things to do.

Even tho it dint really strike me after the first 2 days of playing, i wanted to stick around and see how combat was gonna be like, and now that i saw how it works i wish i just stopped on the first place. I spend a lot a time getting that first army, while rebuilding most stuff cause i slowly see where i failed with some "basics". The second i made my first troops i was already jumpy about using them in the first battle, sadly enough that took a while longer to get to. I had to hire a General place a camp and assign troops to him, i actually kinda liked that system tbh, it made perfect sense to me so far. So as a true fighter i picked the area i wanted to take over first (thinking ahead a bit more then i should have), place my camp close to the camp i wanted to remove from the map looking a little bit at enemy camps but not to much (big mistake i noticed later).
I waited for all my other things to finish, as for some reason i thought i was gonna hit the jackpot and was about to do something awesome (also a big mistake). I picked the target send of my troops, and soon saw where i made my mistake, all that came out of the camp was a dude on a horse moving rather slowly to its target. So yeah i looked away in disgrace and went on with my business, at some point i wanted to look at how the battle was going, so i looked back to see what the general had killed. Coming to the bandit camp there was nothing to see at all and the dude on a horse was no where to be found, but i did hear noises of a fight. So i looked around, and it seems my general decided to not attack the camp he could have taken on to complete my quest, but he moved in another direction to attack a camp where he was outnumbered 2 to 1.
Seems that if you move in a straight line, and attack something, your troops get agro from a camp that might be close to its path. Witch would make perfect sense in fast game-play where you can replace the troops in about the same amount of time it took to lose them, but sadly enough my general felt kinda weak after the battle and is unusable for 3/4h since he lost the match. That is about half the time it take my explorer to do something useful, and if you expecting a settlers like game kinda silly to say the least.

The thing i liked about settlers is every thing this browser game does not have:
  • An army of settlers moving stuff from point A to point B, for the sake of making you empire.
  • The army of settlers had a logical way of moving around, and were able to be directed around on local road systems.
  • The combat system made sense, and in newer versions you could decided where you troops went and how they got from your castle to the enemy.
  • To kill time while waiting for things to get done, you had a ton of menus to make you empire perfect, even tho half of those dint make any sense specially in the older versions of the game.
  • Resources where gained in a rather good pace, and you could always keep on rebuilding you basic income structures with out being able to get stuck (Hench i loved making colony's that did nothing else then chop trees, plant trees and produce boards).
  • Even tho your settlers needed tools to do certain things, it wasn't really an issue you could keep going without and tool smith for a long time, simply cause they reused 100% of the tools given (some older versions may have some issue with this, but i think it was possible to make you wood cutter drop the axe and move it onto another settler (butcher for example)).
  • Finding resources, how epic it was to move around a group of 20 settlers to look for coal/iron in the mountains, and the after you set them lose to see them scatter around the mountain covering every corner of it.
  • The joy of exploring you own areas, and not having to wait 10min for a area to magically pop-up from under the clouds.

I can make a way longer list if needed (tree cutting and replanting is another one), but i think this already covers my point.
The idea is good, it has great potential, but from some reason i am missing all the key features that made the settlers the game it used to be (and dunno if you can even get that much into browser game).
In the older versions, that this browser game seems to related to the most, you could entertain yourself for hours on end doing nothing else then building stuff and routing resources. Ever since i started this web based version of it all i did was wait around to get something done, and i don't even have anything interesting to look at or to do in the mean while (other then chat to people and buff buildings).

I never really liked the newer version of the settlers, as i think they have nothing to do with the original flair the game had.
I looked at this browser game hoping it would do just that, get back to the core idea of the game, and give us really nice empire building thingies.
Sadly enough for me it dint, not even close to it, there are tons of game out there doing the same and for me this is just another one of them.
Settlers used to be unique and special and loved because of it, i really hope this will be changed in some areas to fit that specialness it used to have. But for as long as it doesn't have that, this old settlers fan wont bother with it any longer.

Cheers and good luck, hope some people can do something with this feedback.

PS:This is simply a copy and paste from another language realm, so if it looks like you seen it before, it very well could be so.