Story
The story of the game takes place in the land of Tandria, where you take the role of Princess Zoé, attempting to free Tandria from its corrupt rulers, thieves and bandits. Throughout the majority of the story you are accompanied by an adviser, Bors, whose guidance is crucial to your success in early levels. The story takes you through various locations on Tandria and features a colorful cast of characters, allies and enemies alike, such as Ramírez, Raspun, Dracorian, Rovyn, Lord Wolvering, Bishop Matheusz, Field Marshall Ludowig, King Konradin and King Balderus.
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Gameplay
The campaign of the game consists of 12 levels, some of which also act as a tutorial for various mechanics of game, ranging from basic economy to more advanced tactics. In early levels only military victory is available, but later when Victory Points come in play the possibilities of varying tactics open up. The map consists of sectors that are either neutral, yours, ally's or enemy's. Each sector holds a single military outpost, but can also be upgraded to place palisades and stone towers next to roads. You can take over neutral sectors with brute force, use your traders to bribe them, or proselytize them with novice clerics. You can freely travel through sectors owned by your allies, but only military strength will help you take over sectors from your enemies.
The logistics of the game's economy is divided into 4 classes, military, church, trade, and building. Each class have their own queue displayed, where you can prioritize, halt and resume objects. Additionally you can also prioritize a whole class over another. Technology research is done with your clerics of varying levels, and are generally used to boost part of your economy and military by reducing production times, providing more resources, or just making your units faster. Establishing trade routes is useful if you are short on a particular resource, but have plenty of something else. Establishing routes requires traders of varying levels.
Prestige pointsPrestige Points are used to unlock upgrades, mostly for your buildings, but also for stone roads and forest clearance. Prestige Points are automatically awarded for conquering new sectors, researching new advancements and establishing trading routes. You can also build small, medium and large prestige objects of varying price to quickly raise your prestige level.
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Victory pointsVictory Points are the main deciding factor on who wins the map. While pure military victory is possible by simply wiping your enemies of the map, it's much more likely that the victory is received by Victory Points. There are two kinds of victory points, dynamic and permanent ones. Dynamic points are only yours as long as you can hold them. They are generally awarded for holding a certain special sector on the map, having most sectors, having the largest army, having the most money, having most research and most trade routes and other, similar things. You only hold the point as long as you qualify. Permanent points are different in the way that they are generally harder to get, but once you get one, it's yours for the rest of the match. Permanent points are gained by doing certain quests, researching the most expensive technology or establishing special trading routes.
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Buildings Most of the construction in the game is divided into the 5 class of buildings, each of which have 3 adjacent building slots reserved for work yards. Farm: Farms need a lot of space for their work yards.
- Grain Barn
- Piggery
- Shepherd
- Stable
- Windmill
Mountain Shelter: For various mining related operations
- Coal Miner
- Iron Miner
- Gold Miner
- Iron Smelter
- Quarry
- Coking Plant
Lodge: Your main building for various gatherers.
- Fisher
- Hunter
- Sawmill
- Woodcutter
- Forester
Residence: Raises your maximum population, your basic living quarters.
- Paper Mill
- Weaving Mill
- Brewery, Bakery
- Wheelwright
- Toolmaker
Noble Residence: Bigger and fancier houses. Work yards of Farm, Mountain Shelter, Lodge and basic Residence work without food, but it's possible to food boost them to work more efficiently. Work yards of Noble Residence requires basic food just to work, but is also possible to boost with Fancy Food. It's possible to upgrade both residences twice to hold more people.
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Special buildings - Storehouse
Your basic storage building, but also contains the units that move your resources around the map. Bunch of well placed storehouses are a key to a good economy. Basic storehouses can only support 20 of each resource, upgrading will raise the cap to 50, and second upgrade will remove the cap entirely.
- Stronghold
The building for Military Branch. From this building you will train your military units. Can be upgraded twice to train more advanced units.
- Church
Trains Clerics of various levels, depending on the level of the Church. The only building with three upgrades.
- Export Office
Heart of your Trade Branch, trains traders.
- Constructor
Essential to your kingdom, this building is the home of your constructors. Basic constructor holds only one person, but the building is upgradeable to hold 3.
- Well
You guessed it. Offers endless supply of water. In most of the maps you will start with a fully upgraded storehouse, a fully upgraded constructor and a tavern. Tavern acts as a place to hire mercenaries (Pikemen and Musketeers), hiring Generals to lead your troops, and to do small trading.
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Units
Aside from the various automated workers, you also have access to military, church and trade units.
Military- Pikemen
Basic melee unit, available from both the tavern and from level 1 stronghold.
- Musketeers
Basic long range unit, available from the tavern and level 1 stronghold.
- Cavaliers
Advanced melee unit, available only from level 2 and higher stronghold.
- Cannons
Advanced long range unit, available only from level 3 stronghold.
- Standard Bearer
Support unit, army with him will fight more effectively. Available only from level 3 stronghold.
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Church Clerics come in three tiers, Novices, Brothers and Fathers. While novices can also be used to take over neutral sectors, the main use of all the cleric units is technology research. Clerics can also be used to boost the health of your military by sending them to military outposts in your sectors.
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Traders Trade MapTraders also come in three tiers, Hawkers, Salesmen and Merchants. You can use Hawkers to take over neutral sectors with bribery, but the main use of traders is to trade and establish trading routes.
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Multiplayer, online & DRM
The game has your basic multiplayer modes such as
skirmish against AI and
online multiplayer against other players. The gameplay is the same as it is in later campaign missions, victory points being the main path to a victory. Settlers 7 is also one of the first games to contain
Ubisoft's controversial “always online”
Digital Rights Management solution, that requires the player to have a constant internet connection available even during singleplayer campaign missions. If connection is lost on either the player's side or Ubisoft's side, the game will pause and wait for a reconnection. If connection can not be reestablished, the session will be locally saved and the game will quit to the menu. The saved games are also synchronized in “the cloud” on Ubisoft's servers, so the player can continue their game on another computer in another location.
Map Forge
Map Forge allows you to customize the maps you play in, by changing the amount and type of Victory points, mining resource locations, event locations, and other details of the map.
Castle Forge
In Castle Forge you can customize the look of your castle for both the singleplayer campaign as well as skirmish and online multiplayer. Various objects that you can add are walls, flags, towers, windows and ornaments. You can also purchase more objects with your
UPlay points as well as in-game reward currency that is accumulated during all your matches.
Achievements
Settlers 7 has
achievements that are directly related to your Ubisoft / UPlay account and UPlay points.
Uplay
Uplay is a service where you earn points and use them to unlock bonus items. Here is a list of Actions (achievements) and Rewards for this game.
Actions | Points |
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King of my CastleDefine your own castle at the Castle Forge and use it in game. | 10U |
Against the OddsWin 1 skirmish match in single player mode with a minimum of 3 AI opponents. | 20U |
Heat of the BattleFinish 5 matches at the SETTLERS Empire. | 30U |
Hero of TandriaComplete the campaign of The Settlers 7. | 40U |
Rewards | Cost |
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The Settlers 7 WallpaperGrants you the exclusive Uplay Wallpaper for The Settlers 7. | 10U |
Enormous AdvantageThe "enormous" option is available for resources and start condition at the Map Forge. | 20U |
Castle ElementsUse an exclusive set of decorations for your castle at the Castle Forge. | 30U |
The Crushed MirrorGet your hand on this 4 player map to prove your skills against the AI or in multiplayer matches. | 40U |
DRM
Settlers uses Ubisoft's custom DRM that requires an online connection at all times.
System Requirements
- OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
- Processor: 2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 / AMD XP 2600 or better (Intel Core 2 Duo / AMD Athlon 64 X2 recommended)
- Memory: 2 GB (4 GB recommended)
- Graphics: 256 MB DirectX 9.0c-compliant, Shader 3.0-enabled video card (512 MB recommended)(*see supported list)
- DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c
- Hard Drive: 8 GB
- Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compliant sound card
- Peripherals Supported: Windows-compliant keyboard and mouse
- Internet Connection: Broadband Internet connection with 128 kbps upstream or faster
Supported Video Cards at Time of Release:
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 / 8 / 9 / GT / GTS / GTX series
ATI Radeon X1900 / HD 2000 / HD 3000 / HD 4000 / HD 5000 series
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