Even though it's been a long time since its initial release, Settlers: Rise of an Empire is still a good city builder. The combat is very basic, but that sure as hell wasn't why anyone bought and played it to begin with. Thanks to GOG's fix, (most of) the textures are no longer blurred and horrible looking, and you can enjoy the game once more. However, performance still suffers. There is a fix, though. You can edit the ini file and run the game in windowed mode. Download and setup Windowed Borderless Gaming (or any equivalent software) and you're good to go! Much better performance, and best of all, no screen tearing.
