The Settlers® 4: Gold Edition

For most part the game is solid, except when water transport get introduced, because then game becomes a lottery when (not if) it will crash. Whatever you do do not allow your transport ship to ever get destroyed, it will permamently stop the trading and any attempt to pause/resume, rebuilding an harbour will result in 100% crash.

I've been struggeling with this game now for quite a while now. The mechanics are not very complex - and that makes it really annoying. The AI, even on the lowest setting, is incredibly strong and violent. For less then one hour on a map and it already spams you with waves of entire armies until your small settlement you have slowly and carefully been building, is completely destroyed. And if for once you have an army, you are of course not able to guide it like with real strategy. But your soldiers just stand there and attack until they are all wiped out. Retreat when injured and maybe heal? Of course not! Trade or diplomacy is also not working at all, at least it doesn't seem to have any ingame value. Those buildings are just plain useless. Not to mention the annoying building system which basicly prohibits building new buildings on almost all of the map. All in all a pretty sad experience I must admit. Shouldn't have wasted my money on this.

Now it finally works on Windows 10.

I really loved playing this game in the early 2000's. I was a bit afraid if the GOG release would work when I saw the 2 reviews here that it doesn't run on Windows 8/10, but decided to give it a chance. After all, those reviews are from 2015, now it's 2021, maybe everything is fixed now? The game costs €9.99, so there isn't really a lot to lose. I couldn't have been more excited: the game works perfect on my recent W10 laptop! I have been playing it now for several hours without a problem. €9.99 very well spent! Job well done by GOG :)

Settlers 4 is Settlers 3 on steroids, with everything more and better. Is it really that costly for Ubisoft to remake the last good part of the Settlers series?