The Settlers - The Legacy of the Kings
| The Settlers - The Legacy of the Kings | |||
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| Studio |
 Blue byte
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| Publisher |
 Ubisoft
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| Senior Developer |
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| composer | Michael Pummell | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
November 25, 2004 February 17 and 18, 2005 February 24, 2005  |
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| platform | Windows | ||
| genre | Real time strategy game | ||
| Game mode | Single player , multiplayer via LAN and Internet | ||
| control | Keyboard , mouse | ||
| system advantages preconditions |
Pentium III 1 GHz CPU 256 MB RAM 32 MB T&L graphics card 1 GB hard disk space DirectX 9.0c or higher |
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| medium | DVD or download (from 2008) | ||
| language | German , English and others | ||
| Current version | 1.06 | ||
| Age rating |
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| information |
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The Settlers - The Legacy of the Kings is a real-time strategy game and the fifth part of the Settlers game series . The game was developed by Blue Byte for Windows and published by Ubisoft on November 25, 2004 in Germany. It is the first game in the series that is completely implemented in 3D graphics and stands out from its predecessors with a rotating and zoomable camera view. In terms of play, this part differs significantly from its predecessors, as the focus of the game is less on the circulation of goods, which have been reduced to a minimum, and more on the rapid collection of resources, the production of military units and real-time battles.
The game was a commercial success, but received mixed feedback from the trade press and fans. The graphics, music and sound effects were consistently praised, but the departure from the traditional gameplay of the series, as well as weaknesses in the AI and in the mission design, received clear criticism. Soon after the release, two expansions appeared that were merged with the base game into a gold edition before a year had passed . In November 2018, Ubisoft relaunched the game as a history edition , with only small adjustments to the technical development of the Windows platform and for higher-resolution screens.
Gameplay
The basic building of the game is the castle, which can also be expanded into a fortress and a citadel. If this is destroyed, the player loses the game. In it, the first settlers, the serfs, can be acquired, who do not pay taxes, but are the only units able to build and repair buildings, collect wood and extract other raw materials without building mines. Another basic type of building are the village centers, which can only be built on predefined settlement sites and which set a limit for the number of all inhabitants in the player's settlement, including military units. Each village center offers space for 75 settlers, but can be expanded twice, first to a community center and then to a city center, which increases the population limit by an additional 25 settlers.
There are six different resources, the five raw material types clay, wood, stone, iron and sulfur as well as money (thalers), which are required for the construction and expansion of buildings, for research and for the recruitment of military units. The player receives thalers through tax receipts, which are paid every 120 seconds by all settlers, except for the serfs and the military units. Wood can only be felled by serfs. Clay, stone, iron and sulfur can also be extracted in fixed raw material shafts or quarries by building mines. All these resources are available to the player immediately after they have been obtained and do not have to be brought to warehouses by porters, as is known from the previous parts of the game series. Another new feature is that raw materials that have already been extracted can be refined by associated buildings (brickworks, sawmills, blacksmiths, alchemists' huts and stonemasons), which means that they can be multiplied very effectively. It is also possible to build a bank, the treasurer of which is responsible for increasing the amount of talers, as well as a market place where resources can be exchanged for other resources.
Another innovation is the research made possible by the construction of a university. Only when certain technologies (construction, alchemy, education, conscription, etc.) have been researched, new buildings can be built and existing buildings can be upgraded up to twice. This allows, for example, to have more settlers work in one building, to let the settlers work more efficiently or to research other technologies in other buildings. Research can also be used to recruit or upgrade new military units.
All civilian settlers, with the exception of serfs, must be provided with a place to sleep in a house and a place to eat on a farm to keep them happy. The proximity of these two buildings to the workplaces of the respective settlers has a significant effect on the efficiency of the workers, as they can go back to work faster and thus longer thanks to shorter walking distances. It is also possible to increase the motivation of the settlers by building ornamental objects and a chapel, which can be expanded to a cathedral. Overtime and high taxes can also be ordered, but this has a negative effect on motivation.
The military part of the game comprises four military buildings (barracks, firing range, stable and cannon foundry) in which seven different types of units can be recruited: swordsmen, spearmen, riflemen, light cavalry, heavy cavalry, light cannons and heavy cannons. With the exception of the cannons, all of these unit types can be upgraded to stronger versions of these unit types such as broadswords, lancers, long archers, etc. through various technologies. If the player recruits one of these units, he first receives a captain who has to be paid a permanent salary and who, depending on the technological progress and unit type, commands four to eight soldiers (cannons are only available individually). The captains can move up ranks in combat and replace fallen soldiers at the respective military buildings by recruiting. In addition to the normal military units, six different heroes are available to the player (three more are almost entirely reserved for the multiplayer mode in the main game), most of whom have powerful attack abilities. If necessary, serfs can also be called to arms, who then form militias and the alarm bells are rung, whereupon the workers take refuge in buildings and shoot at the enemy from there. It is also possible to build observation towers that can be upgraded to ballista towers or cannon towers. Furthermore, the weather also plays a military factor, as it is not possible for the various players to cross rivers or lakes. In order to guarantee this, a weather machine consisting of a weather power plant and a weather tower can be built, which is able, for example, to bring about winter or summer, whereby these waters then freeze or thaw and are thus crossable or no longer crossable .
The main game contains a total of 14 different civilian settler types, 20 different military units and 57 buildings (including upgrades). In addition, 12 different decorative objects can be erected.
Game modes
The main game's single player mode features a 15-mission campaign and several standalone missions. In the campaign, the player takes over the fortunes of a young man named Dario, whose village is one day attacked by black knights. When Dario investigates the cause of the attack, he finds out that he is the son of the former King Keron, whose empire was once divided into eight principalities. He also learns that the black knights are devastating the country on the orders of their leader Kerberos, who had instructed them to find the parts of a powerful orb whose owner would have a legitimate claim to the royal throne. Dario then teams up with some companions and they decide to reunite the kingdom and to put an end to the dark goings-on of Kerberos.
In multiplayer mode, some of the maps provided can be played via LAN or the Internet . The players can choose between three different victory conditions. For the conquest victory, all enemy headquarters must be destroyed, for the technology victory, all research in the college or university must be researched, and for the points victory, all game parties must collect as many points as possible within an hour, whereby the party with the most points wins.
The actions of the computer opponents in the game are based only on simple scripts ( Lua ) instead of a "full-fledged" AI , which is why it is not possible to play a free game against computer opponents on the multiplayer cards (they remain inactive).
The Settlers: The Legacy of the Kings - Nebelreich
The first expansion of the game was released on March 24, 2005 under the title The Settlers: The Legacy of the Kings - Nebelreich . For the international market, the game title was supplemented much more simply with Expansion Disc . It contains new single and multiplayer maps, as well as a new nine-mission campaign in which you must defeat a mysterious fog people who invade the settler kingdom. By setting up an architect's room, the player is now also able to build bridges at given places. Two other new buildings are the gunsmith's shop , which allows the new sniper unit type to be trained on the firing range , and the tavern , in which the player can hire scouts and thieves. The scouts are particularly effective at scouting the map through binoculars . In addition, they can show the direction in which undiscovered raw material deposits lie and unsupervised areas ( fog of war ) light up for a while with torches . Thieves can be used to steal goods or sabotage bridges and buildings to collapse.
Furthermore, two new heroes for the single player mode and a new heroine for the multiplayer mode as well as mercenary quarters, in which you can recruit soldiers for talers and foggy rivers that do not freeze over in winter, were introduced. A map editor was also included that allows the players to create their own maps create.
The Settlers: Legends of Kings - Legends
The second expansion, The Settlers: The Heritage of Kings - Legends, followed on September 1, 2005 . In addition to new single and multiplayer maps, it offers three new campaigns, each with four missions, and a new campaign with five missions, which are mostly about fighting barbarians. Only the Evil In Me campaign differs from this scheme. In it, the player takes the fate of the black knight Kerberos into his hands, who, together with the other two evil heroes from the main game (there these three villains were only available in multiplayer mode, where Kerberos could be played in one mission), forges a plan, to overthrow Dario from the throne. In addition, the map editor has been expanded, which now provides some simplifying functions such as the texture brush or the random map generator.
more publishments
Two gold editions were published for the game. The English version was released on September 16, 2005 and contains the main game and the first expansion Nebelreich . The German version was published on November 10, 2005 and contains the main game, both expansions and a soundtrack CD . Due to the two included expansions, this version of the Gold Edition with at least 2 GB, compared to the main game, requires twice the amount of free hard disk space. A complete version was released for the international market in 2006 , which also contained the main game and both expansions. In addition, the game was released on July 22, 2008 on Steam and on September 15, 2009 on GOG.com .
On November 15, 2018, the game, including both expansions, was re-released as the History Edition . A technical revision by the developer made it possible with the new release to play the fifth part of the series for the first time with a higher image resolution up to 4K . Several test reports published on this subject criticized weaknesses in the display on the screen. The font size is not correctly scaled up, so that the labeling of buttons and the mission texts are barely legible at the highest resolution.
development
The development was preceded by a comprehensive analysis of opinions from the press and fans. After the development studio Blue Byte was taken over by the French Ubisoft in February 2001, shortly before the release of Siedler IV , the immediate predecessor of the Siedler series, the new owners wanted to orient the series, which was particularly successful on the German market, more internationally. After mixed reviews of the fourth part in the USA, but also with a view to the growing dissatisfaction among German fans because of the great similarity between the fourth and the third part, the development of the fifth part began with a process of discovery.
A team of more than 30 developers around chief programmer Dietmar Meschede and chief designer Andreas Suika was put together, which consisted of seasoned veterans from the development of previous settler games as well as new designers, graphic artists and programmers in Mülheim an der Ruhr and Bucharest . Project manager Benedikt Grindel promised in June 2002: "The new title will contain many innovations and novelties and not just be a fifth part of the series." For this reason, the game should not simply be called Siedler V , but with a name that deviates from the previous scheme appear. The official announcement of the game went on to say: “Conflicts between peoples or players will be resolved in a completely new way. 3D technology is just another instrument for radical changes that will mean a real leap in innovation for the gameplay of Die Siedler ”.
In October 2002, Ubisoft reported it had signed an agreement with Criterion Software . For the upcoming Settlers game, a new game engine based on Criterion's RenderWare Graphics will be used, which is capable of Pixel-Shader 2.0 and DirectX 9.0c.
To have the ambitious plans to develop the new game as a cross-platform title not only for Windows, but also for common consoles such as PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube , which Ubisoft announced shortly after the takeover of Blue Byte, mainly in English-language media it soon became quiet again. In 2003, Blue Byte was moved from its previous headquarters to Düsseldorf , to the German headquarters of Ubisoft. In the spring of 2004 it was announced that with Thomas Häuser as Technical Director, Thomas Friedmann as Creative Director and Thorsten Knop as Art Director, several independent consultants had complemented the development team and that they had supported each other as part of the internationalization strategy from American designer Bruce Milligan who had worked with great designers like Bruce Shelley , Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds in the past . Some components of the multiplayer mode would also in Ubisoft's studio in Montreal , Canada developed.
On November 10th, Ubisoft released a previously announced single player demo as a download for Windows PCs on its website. The approximately 400 MB data package contained the complete tutorial and a complete mission of the campaign. About two weeks later, on November 25, 2004, the full version went on sale in Germany. International players had to wait a few months longer until February 2005.
In mid-December 2004, a patch was released for the demo that added multiplayer functions. At the end of January 2005, the first patch for the main game followed under number 1.01. In addition to bug fixes, the developers also made changes to the interface and the controls, and - in response to feedback from the first players - rebalanced the strengths of the units. One day before Christmas 2005, Ubisoft brought the game to version 1.06 with the sixth and final patch.
Music and speakers
The music was composed by Michael Pummell. Hans Holzbecher , Hansgerd Kilbinger, Karlheinz Tafel , Katharina Padleschat, Markus von Hagen, Oliver Kalkofe (as mentor) and Stephan Schleberger were engaged as speakers . In the expansion Nebelreich also were Silke main and Tom Zahner heard. For the second expansion, Legends , the creators dispensed with spoken texts in the video sequences.
The Finnish music group Apocalyptica contributed the ballad "Bittersweet" from their album, published in 2005 with the band name as the title, as the title song for the game . In addition to Apocalyptica, the band's friends Lauri Ylönen from The Rasmus and Ville Valo from HIM were also involved in the musical collaboration between Ubisoft and Universal Music . Regardless of the release of the game, but around the same time, the song was released as the first single from the new album and, in addition to first place in Finland and 6th place in Germany, also reached high positions in the music charts in other European countries .
Sales figures, awards and criticism
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Less than a month after the release of The Settlers: The Legacy of the Kings , Ubisoft Germany announced that the game has achieved Gold Award status for over 100,000 copies sold and that as a result, the sales of The Settlers IV in the comparable period after the Publication were exceeded. After five weeks, 220,000 copies were sold in Germany. A platinum award for 250,000 units sold followed. In Media Control's annual hit list , the game took fifth place in the “PC games at full price” category, making it the best-selling strategy game of 2004. By 2006, 500,000 copies of The Settlers: The Legacy of the Kings were sold worldwide, 350,000 of which were acquired in Germany.
At the Games Convention 2004 in Leipzig , The Settlers: The Legacy of the Kings was crowned the best PC game. It also received a nomination for the best PC graphics there. At the 2005 German Developer Award , the game won the categories "Best Cutscenes" and "Best Strategy Game". At the same event, the Nebelreich expansion took second place in the “Best PC Game / Midprice & Add-on” category.
Regardless of the awards and commercial success, the game received rather below average ratings. Especially when compared to its predecessors, the Metacritic review database scores only mediocre with a value of 58% from 29 rankings. Critics resent the developers for having greatly reduced the cycle of goods known from the predecessors of the game series in the fifth part and shifting the focus from the building game to the control of heroes, the management of troops and tactical real-time battles.
Web links
- The Settlers - Heritage of Kings at MobyGames (English)
- The Settlers: The Legacy of the Kings - Nebelreich at MobyGames (English)
- The Settlers: Heritage of Kings - Legends at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Heritage of Kings: The Settlers, Releases at MobyGames . Retrieved August 7, 2020.
- ↑ a b Siedler DEdK Heroes and Skills December 21, 2015, at siedlercommunity.de. Retrieved August 7, 2020.
- ↑ The Settlers: Heritage of Kings - Expansion Disc Instruction Manual (UK) (PDF), Ubisoft 2005, pages 8-10. Retrieved August 7, 2020.
- ↑ The Settlers: Heritage of Kings - Gold Edition at MobyGames . Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ↑ The Settlers: The Legacy of Kings - Gold Edition at MobyGames . Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ↑ The Settlers: The Legacy of Kings - Gold Edition, Covers at MobyGames . Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ↑ The Settlers: Heritage of Kings - Complete at MobyGames . Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ↑ New release: Heritage of Kings: The Settlers at GOG.com . Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ↑ The Settlers: Heritage of Kings - History Edition at MobyGames . Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ↑ a b Martin Deppe: The Settlers: History Collection in the test - Wusel high seven . In: GameStar , November 16, 2018, accessed August 6, 2020.
- ↑ Marcel Kleffmann: Test: The Settlers History Collection . In: 4Players , November 21, 2018, accessed August 6, 2020.
- ^ Christian Klaß: "Die Siedler V": Development has begun. In: Golem . June 14, 2002, accessed August 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Olaf Bleich, Benedikt Plass-Fleßenkämper: The settler story - The big bustle. In: PC Games . August 31, 2019, accessed August 8, 2020 .
- ↑ The Settlers 5 - officially announced. In: PC Games . June 14, 2002, accessed August 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Tobias Simon: Siedler - Next title based on RenderWare. In: Gameswelt . October 21, 2002, accessed August 5, 2020 .
- ↑ Andreas Link: The Settlers - Historical review of the legendary game series. Page 2: The Settlers - Parts 1-6 of the series. In: PC Games Hardware . March 12, 2010, accessed August 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Shahed Ahmed: Blue Byte to develop for the PS2, GameCube. In: GameSpot . February 8, 2001, accessed August 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Fabian Walden: The settlers 5 - In development. End of the year for the PC ... March 29, 2004, accessed August 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Settlers 5 - Demo is here! In: GameStar . November 10, 2004, accessed August 8, 2020 .
- ↑ The Settlers: The Legacy of Kings (Patch 1.06). In: 4Players . December 23, 2005, accessed August 11, 2020 .
- ↑ The Settlers: The Legacy of Kings - Gold Edition, Covers at MobyGames . Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ↑ Apocalyptica: Single "Bittersweet". In: kultura-extra.de. November 29, 2004, accessed August 7, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Heritage of Kings: The Settlers. In: Metacritic . Retrieved August 6, 2020 .
- ↑ Conclusion: The Settlers: The Legacy of the Kings (PC). In: Computer Picture Games . Retrieved August 7, 2020 .
- ↑ Heritage of Kings: The Settlers . In: Computer Gaming World , Issue No. 252, June 2005, page 96.
- ↑ The Settlers 5. In: GameStar . December 1, 2004, accessed August 7, 2020 .
- ↑ Marcel Kleffmann: Test: The settlers: The legacy of the kings. In: 4Players . December 11, 2004, accessed August 7, 2020 .
- ^ Stephan Lindner: The settlers: EdK - Gold Award Status. In: Gameswelt . December 22, 2004, accessed August 6, 2020 .
- ↑ Ubisoft: 3 ° trimestre 2004-2005 a € 186 milioni ( Memento from February 9, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Marcel Kleffmann: VUD: new awards granted. In: 4Players . January 25, 2005, accessed August 6, 2020 .
- ^ Fabian Walden: Die Siedler: EdK - Add-on is coming. In: Gameswelt . January 21, 2005, accessed August 7, 2020 .
- ^ German games abroad - page 5. In: GameStar . July 19, 2006, accessed August 7, 2020 .
- ^ Andreas Philipp: Siedler: The legacy of the kings - Best of GC. In: Gameswelt . August 26, 2004, accessed August 6, 2020 .
- ↑ Major Success for Ubisoft Games at the Games Convention 2004. (press release) . In: ubisoft.com. August 27, 2004, accessed August 6, 2020 .
- ↑ Marcel Kleffmann: German Developer Award 2005: all winners. In: 4Players . December 2, 2005, accessed August 6, 2020 .