Die Siedler

Serf City: Life is Feudal — The Settlers

What is it?: A medieval build-up game, 1993, Amiga and 1994, DOS/VGA, SVGA supported.
What computer or emulator will it run on?: A 386. I'd recommend a Pentium for SVGA.
Tags: Roland, Gravis Ultrasound.

The original title of this game is Die Siedler; the English title for Europe was The Settlers, for the USA Serf City: Life is Feudal. There have been three follow-ups, all of which bear the title The Settlers in the USA as well as in Europe.

It was released for the Amiga in 1993, for DOS the following year, and was pretty advanced for its time. Graphics are cartoony, but feature a realistic looking hexagon based landscape with elevation and trees moving in the wind, IMHO better than in SimCity 2000 or even Enemy Nations.

There are two main problems with this game:

The controls are anything but intuitive and require intensive study of the voluminous manual. For example, you choose the various buildings by picture, and there is no telling from the pictures what their functions are.
Both SVGA and VGA mode use the same graphics, therefore sprites in SVGA are very, very small. On a modern computer this would be no problem, but this is a DOS game and will not run on a modern computer, and on a 14" screen it is hard to see what you're doing.

There have been three sequels to this game. As far as I can judge, the first sequel (Settlers II) is the best. There was a collection of all four games in a nice metal box, which has become pretty rare.

The Settlers Series

The Settlers	93	94
The Settlers II		96		97
The Settlers III			98