The Settlers

Building cities and burning them down in Ubisoft’s RTS reboot

- By Christopher Livingston

Growing an empire is a balancing act. Expand your borders too quickly and you’ll be spread thin, an attractive target for enemy raids. Branch out too slowly and another faction will claim precious resources before you can. Get the balance wrong and you’ll watch your empire burn to the ground.

In the beta build of Ubisoft’s The Settlers, I’ve watched my empire burn to the ground a whole bunch of times now. This is the latest entry in the long-running city-building and real-time strategy series, which began way back in 1993 for the Commodore Amiga. There have been six sequels since, plus a number of spin-offs, including a free online browser game. The past decade, however, has been a rough patch for the series. An eighth game was planned for 2014, but its closed beta was poorly received, and the game was never completed. This new reboot has had some major problems reaching players as well: It was originally intended to be released in 2019, then delayed until 2020, then postponed indefinitely. At long last, The Settlers is now, finally, poised to be released this March.

CITY PLANNER