As im a big settlers fan, i figured i'd start a small little thread on the Settlers series as a whole... I've been playing settlers games ever since it was first ever released on the amiga back in the early 90s, and was actually probably one of my most played games of all time to be honest, with all the hours, days and weekends i used to spend playing this. I can remember spending entire weekends with my buddys playing this with 2 mouse's and was just a total blast!

Now with Settlers : Rise of nations released as the newest edition to the franchise, if there are any fellow settlers players out there i'd like to know how you feel about this recent addition? because as a long settlers player, im not sure if i liked in which the direction of the game has gone? as im pretty old school i actually loved how the older games played compared with a much more RTS free style kind of gameplay. Now for those who dont know what i mean exactly about that, back in the older settlers games, you had to build roads and paths in order for your people to get around the citys and stuff which made it much more important to micro-manage everything, determin which kind of livestock, ore or materials was most important for your settlers to pick to first at cross-roads ect... with Rise Of Nations, and even before with Heritage of Kings, they've kind of done away with that micro-management and no longer really a road/path system which i miss. 

The graphics are absolutely superb!! i just totally love how the newer versions of the settlers look and feel, just beautifull but like to know from fellow settler fans and players their thoughts on the series as awhole?

Actually never really heard of it

you should go check it out, might be quietly supprised, i've been addicted to this games for a very long time.... even though the games have changed a lot down the years, the essential core gameplay is still there and a really nice alternative to the typical RTS's out there... this is much better then AOE in my opinion... but it plays different from that....

Sounds pretty good

I loved settlers 1 & 2, but I feel the series went downhill with 3 and 4. They were fun games, but they just didn't have the magic of the first 2. I haven't played any of the recent additions to the series.

The Settlers II was so pimp... Just thought I'd add that.

I've heard a lot about the settlers games and looked into them multiple times, but somehow never felt compelled enough to buy one.

Yea i'd have to agree with MattyFTM, that settlers 3 and 4 were definitely not as good as the first 2, the first 2 are epic in gameplay, all there is to it, but i really hated the fact that your fisherman would run out of fish on settlers 2, i really loved my fishing lol....  Heritage of kings is where the series kinda came back to how it used to be in my opinion, but still lacked the original gameplay, was more of your traditional RTS with the settles style and was a lot of fun actually, and played and spent a lot of hours on that game actually... Grahpics were pretty neat aswell..... Rise Of an Empire has really stepped up the graphics a lot! and the CGI videos in it are superb! if you have a 512mb graphics card, you can crank all the graphical features right up.... Settlers is all about economey and being able to watch every single person in your city doing their job, the attention to detail is staggering.....

3 was great imho. i never played the first two though, that was before my time 
 
and i really liked the factions of the 4th, apart from those undead-creep-dudes in the storymode