So I'm trying to do literally any of the first missions and so far I haven't been close to winning any of them. I get stone/wood running, I branch out and get coal/iron, I set up bread production (imo the most annoying and slow part of the Settlers 4) then start weapon/troop production.

That's all fine, but in this time the AI has made an army of 100 and is sitting dormant until I make the mistake of waking one of their troops. I then get stomped as my 50 man army is trampled on by their now 150-strong horde and I can't do anything about it.

Is there something I'm missing? The AI outside of campaigns is crap, they never find the mountain that's obviously there and instead build themselves into nothing and become inactive. Either that or they stomp.

First, I would suggest maybe trying to boost your productions; two stonecutters and sawmills, three woodcutters and foresters. That's usually how I start it.

Once you've got the initial production running, you could begin with the different food chains. As you now have a stronger resource production, you should be able to hande that. Having both 10 builders and levelers should also help out.

While you do this, having already started to look for a mountain and begin looking for its ores is essential. Try expanding towards the most interesting ones using tower(if you send your soldiers to the building place, they will enter it much faster once it's finished).

Other than that, remember to also build a ton of warehouses and use them frequently. This keeps the production flow consistent.

Also, try different thing for yourself! For me, for example, the best thing to do is to begin with a massive gold production, and not recruit even a single soldier until I can start spamming Level 3.

Hope this helps you a little further! This is roughly what I do, and I always am the fastest to begin soldier production(to the point where I have to defend all my allies from the first attack in MP :P ). Good luck with your future games!

I could always play settler 3 and do very well. I'd usually be near the best or right at the top.

Settlers 4 on the other hand can be very difficult. I lose it far more than I win it.

I have tried
1) Rushing production buildings.
2) Building a small residence and getting more diggers and builders
3) Building a lot of glitter buildings to improve my fighting ability.
4) Building high end combat troops as soon as possible

It does not seem to matter, more often than not I get stomped by the AI. I have a very difficult time doing all 4 of those things at one time fast enough to not get flattened.

It is a very delicate balancing act.

Do you know what version your original CD is? Does it have any expansions?

I have to admit that I haven't played vanilla S IV since... Maybe 2005, but I don't remember much changing in term of AI (though it's been at least 13 years).

I am no expert, but it may be interesting to give it a look...


PS: Just to be sure, the AI is set to the same difficulty on both versions, right? It's relatively easy to misclick on the menues and end up with the difficult instead of the regular one.

Make no mistake: Settlers IV can be brutally hard unless you play quickly and aggressively. The AI is quite nasty, especially when you're up against more than one opponent. I only play on Normal difficulty, so I don't remember if Easy is that much easier. I was in the process of doing a Let's Play of all the campaigns, but it's currently on the back burner.

SlaxVice86, my cd is the original retail version. No addons, no mission cd, nothing extra.
The only issue is that game crashes on Dark Tribe mission 6, and after some crashes the savegame becomes corrupt and not readable. That´s the reason I am trying to play this mission again in the hopes could finish it, but no success so far.

Been trying with easy difficulty, and will switch to normal to see what happens.

Will keep you posted.

This is an update.
Was able to run my original CD on linux and AI strenght is normal. Have not finished campaign mission 6 yet, but could manage to defend very well and if there is no crash in the future will be able to finish it.

Definitely something is wrong with the GOG version AI. Someone should look into it.

There is nothing wrong with it. It has just been made too strong in later patches without regard to how this would affect some missions.

Hi Guys, I'm new to the forum, but as I played a lot of strategies (online settlers IV before, settlers VII, Starcraft2, Northgard) the difficulty of modern Settlers IV is just fine for me. Yes, AI is way more difficult - right now it can be a threat to advanced player. You will have to make good economy fast and setup first defensive position. I have never managed to attack AI first - it always starts to produce massive army faster than me.

My advice is to get more archers and defend behind towers. Ussually after the first wave of attack you will be able to counter attack.

To get well prospering economy you shall buld eco-clusters. Which mean - goods shall travel in one direction.
Example:
A -> B -> C -> D
examples:
Farmers -> windmills -> bakery -> mines
Mines -> smelter -> workshops - >barracks

End product can travel a little further bettween eco-clusters. For example if you are running out of space, setup another cluster and try to make end product (C or D) closest to your other important clusters.

during middle game vikings for example can add coal smelters to theirs woodcuter cluster to produce coal.

Dark Tribe mission #6 is unplayable. After an hour into the game approximately 150 enemy soldiers come into my kingdom and smash everything. I was capable to spawn about 50 soldiers but they were quickly anihilated. And that was on EASY! difficulty. Previous missions were doable but this one is impossible.

Hi Martin,

I have played S4 Gold Dark tribe campaign on higher difficulty recently and indeed this mission is tough. Here are few tips: 1. While in the beggining, create a 5-10 thieves and start looting southeastern part of your terriory where next to a shipwreck there are gold and iron bars this will help you delay building iron mines and smelter and help you make tools earlier. 2.There are few small lakes to the west of your base with narrow access path. Delete all your towers and create 8-10 small towers there where the enemy would always strike, but though a bottleneck. No castles or large towers as Vikings will destroy them anyway. 3 Create archers only and at least the medium ones. 4 Make as many mana production buildings as you can. I played ended up with about 20 agave farms being enough. There are 3 access routes to enemy bases. The one in the middle is the easiest to conquer. When you have about 100 good archers you can start creating melee units. But do not mix them up. Have archers go first to clear enemy and warriors focus only towers, otherwise you will always lose too many warriors. 6 Send your damaged units to healer as you will be running low on resources. 7 Dont worry about stone as you can cheaply summon more with priest. Good luck.

I'm trying to beat vikings 1 and this seems really extreme. Even with 2 castles and 3 large towers I couldn't stop the onslaught of mayans, when I had 40 soldiers the computer had 200+, I watched a video on youtube and the guy beat the opponent with only 100 soldiers!

The first roman mission was pretty easy but I have no idea what happened to this one. Frustrating...

For all people which claims that AI is normal, i have question did you actually played Gog version? Or you living in old memories.

I know how to play games i completed hundreds of them and yet..

I tried Vikings 1 mission and got kicked multiple times, im doing quite well, but enemy strength is brutal, when i look at stats they have after hour of mission start 200 soldiers, 450 people, there is really something wrong it.

Especially if someone is saying that original cd version has not such problem.

Is Ubisoft version the same?

I have the original box version of the Settlers 4 and I can remember losing a lot playing it as well. I can't say if it is more difficult in the GOG version because I found both versions to be very tough.