The Settlers® 4: Gold Edition

The Settlers IV is a great game in which I have spent a lot of hours. I remember trying to reinstall my CD version many times with hopes that it would eventually work on my modern computer. Naturally it didn't, but I was very satisfied when I came across the game here at GOG. Sadly, the game, as it is here at GOG, is again starting to get old as the game will not work on windows OS 8 and 10. Hopefully this will be updated in the future, but don't get your hopes up. I'll give this game 5 stars, because the game is a 5 star game. _The maintainance of the game's re-release, however, does not deserve 5 stars._

The GOG version was patched for compatibility with Windows 10. I managed to run it, yet the game lagged so hard it was unplayable. I had to use DXGL, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to play. As far as the game itself goes—unless you’re already familiar with the title you may have a hard time with it. The biggest problem I have are the combat mechanics (which lie at the core of the game). Once a specific period of time passes the AI begins to send troops to attack you. The enemy will attempt to storm your fortifications. This can be easily countered by building a lot of big towers close to each other, each fully manned by third level soldiers. There are several issues with this. First of all the enemy archers cannot shoot the archers on the towers. They just stand and get shot, since only swordsmen can storm the tower. Secondly, the AI doesn’t use siege engines which hardly makes sense and isn’t challenging. Attacking is even worse than defending. Once you capture an enemy tower (or recapture your own) the AI sends all of its troops after you, literally swarms your land with soldiers, which is ridiculous. You practically cannot command your army, only point them in desired direction. Once they see the enemies they become fixated on them, and cannot be called off. This most often results in the army being decimated since they don’t follow your orders. Among other things to mention is the fact that the game doesn’t tell about the possibility to speed up gameplay with numpad keys in the tutorial or anywhere else (only about the 1-minute time jump, which is useless anyway since it makes you vulnerable to enemy attack).

Do not believe some of the commnets here - game does not work on win10. I tried each fix I could find on the internet - never got it to start-up

Does not start, continuous graphic errors, by now a game should NOT BE SOLD that makes you have to try to find a workaround, ESPECIALLY when both the OLDER versions AND newer ones work "out of the box"! And this was with the download installer, NOT Galaxy, as I really abhor client based games and installs. Would love to be able to rate the game based on merit, but if it won't work, installed as Admin, from the downloaded installer, on a Windows 10 machine with fairly good graphics, without having to search for any other "fixes" that should already be WITH the game, this is the best, most honest review I can give! Settlers II anniversary edition works fine, just dull and stupid AI, Settlers III works, although it asks for a serial key (shouldn't those be able to be edited out by now? Archaic drm system!), Settlers: Heroes works beautifully...why doesn't THIS one? I'll change my review when they fix this issue, as it stands this is what the game deserves, even on sale...and really if it can't be played it's not even worth the sale price just to say you have it.

I bought this when it first came out, and re-purchased the game on Gog to avoid having to hunt for the CD every time I played it. Years later, it remains a favorite. I tend to cycle through games, playing the best intensively for a couple weeks and then moving to another. The Settlers IV is always in the rotation. Even today, a well-designed game with 2d graphics and a small set of resources can be very addictive--and just watching the little characters carrying out their tasks can be entertaining! The maps (see below) vary greatly in difficulty. Some let you focus on building up a strong settlement (or several outposts); others require you to fortify as quickly as possible. Some games are over after a couple hours; others take days. My preference is for a build-before-fighting long game, but with over 2000 maps available, it's possible to find whatever balance you prefer. Ah yes--the maps. The built-in maps are OK, but the treasures are to be found in the Settlers mapbase at https://www.siedler-maps.de/s4maps/. There are over 400 pages of maps available for download there, and it's that mapbase that keeps the game fresh. Over the years, many users have complained here and in the forums about problems with running the game under Win 10 & 11. As TerraTi suggested years ago, search for DXGL settler 4 OR elishacloud/dxwrapper on github for an easy fix. I'm playing it with Win11 and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 card and running it at its max resolution (1280x1024), with the landscape engine set on hardware and texture quality on high. The game is running with no problems, and all the characters that should be selectable (pioneers, geologists, thieves, etc.) can be selected with no issues. I'm not using any compatibility settings. To those who cannot get it to run--the zipped package you download from github has 3 files. These need to go into the directory that has the S4_Main.exe program, not the directory with S4.exe. That may be the source of the problem.