HOLY HECK!!! THANK YOU!! waiting for sooooooooooooo loooooooong... To be honest so so many of us thought this game had essentially been cancelled! with next to nothing for over a year plus the announcement. Im so glad you guys stuck with this because this game looked like it brought the entire Settlers series BACK! to where it should be in terms of the gameplay mechanics from those two twitch streams over a year ago!

This is absolutely a pre order for me it sounds amazing! I'm liking the new additions to the series, with some sort of emphasis on exploration which is really neat. I am hoping we'll be able to play against AI in skirmish mode if we want to. From Someone who played the original Settlers on the AMIGA back when we had Floppy Disks, I'm both happy, and relieved this didn't get abandoned and you stuck with it.

@sokar832 Why would I cancel? I like what I see. And what everyone is complaining about is only going by 1 German reviewer who basically complained about the most useless crap you could ever complain about. Perhaps you should be less judgmental of wither a game is good or bad until you've actually played it. I pre ordered Battlefield 2042 and not a day goes by I don't ever regret it. People get hooked onto the most ridiculous things and just bash a game completely out of existence because..............reasons.............. because cancel culture.... because of entitlements.. Because thats what everyone else is doing...... Complaining because this game doesn't have enough "Bonus's" for each faction is an absolute ridiculous thing to complain about. This isn't Age of Empires, this isn't Supreme Commander, its first and foremost, a CITY building game which happens to have combat and conquest in it....... Settlers has ALWAYS been that way, and you have 1 person who decides to nit pick every single possible aspect of a game because "clicks" and views, and everyone harps on that and automatically, ahhh this games crap! without actually looking at what their seriously complaining about....... GameStar made a couple valid points, a couple, the rest was talking about complete nonsense! You really going to complain about being able to put farm on rocky lands? Are you seriously complaining about AI behavior in a press preview build? come the f. on...... You guys REALLLLY need to re focus and not so honked onto the most useless pieces of info that some reviewer, somewhere, decided to point out. Don't be so easily persuaded by useless crap... You wanna wait till you actually see proper gameplay? Absolutely no problem with that, in fact I urge everyone to do that......... but don't comment on trying to tell people CANCEL pre orders because of something you've seen somewhere else and just came to an automatic conclusion..... This game very nearly didn't get made, be bloody grateful it did..... its people like this that gets games cancelled that don't deserve it because your own expectations are too high that a game can't ever reach and then [censored] and complain about it for the next 3 years.

@Daranyx Right now fix Skirmish mode, I dont know how on earth you mess up skirmish mode, but they have. You can only play against 1 AI by yourself? lol... but some how can go up against 4 with 4 players (not by yourself) in 4v4? The ability to have a proper lobby where you can set the options of the skirmish mode is needed, that is pretty basic shet.... You cant even select a map? what??? I am confused as to why you can't

@nemecpetthry First and foremost, thanks for not attacking me, muchly appreciated!

Yeah at the time when I wrote that, there actually wasn't any gameplay apart from a very few places. It now seems like the NDA has been lifted so there are actually quite a few gameplay videos now, but still, almost none are in English still so still a little difficult, for me personally, to understand most of what is being said. I have to say, still after watching the gameplay videos, it still looks like a Settlers game to me, is it missing stuff? yeah, yeah it is, is there some minor changes towards RTS over city-economy building? yeah there is, but at its core, it is still very much a Settlers game. I read the PC Gamer article, wasn't super long but after reading through all of it, you immediately go "yup, that's a Settlers game" so despite some of the changes, like re adding magic that none of us really want, its still settlers and wont ruin the Settlers experience.

I just get Honked off with a lot of todays mentality of this quick rush to judgement all the time with almost every game that comes out now, its everywhere! this game very nearly didn't get made at all, and I'm grateful we have a new settlers game again. It's something to build from, and as for it being too late in the day to make changes, not really, you can make lots of changes until release now that games are released digitally, no PC games are released in retail stores anymore so you can work up until final day of release, and then there's post-launch content. Easy stuff like farm placement and AI behavior are obvious bugs and will be fixed before launch. Magic nothing can be done about it, but developers can always add more resources, more maps or even a map editor, post launch very easily. I was just trying to put an emphasis on people just need to calm down a bit.

What should we expect to change since BETA? obviously information is limited right now on exactly what they've changed or plans to change moving forward and the announcement for TTS (technical test server) was pretty vague on exactly what changes they are working on as they're still tweaking those things they've added to the test im sure. So what changes do you think they've done to improve Settlers since the BETA? They've stated they've worked heavily on the Economy side of things and improved rush mechanics, so im thinking that its harder to build up your armies now and requires a lot work in your economy before you start sending out tons of units everywhere but really outside of that, we just don't know exactly what changes have been made. I have to be honest I'm quite excited, I thought this game was cancelled if I'm being honest, even though the devs never stated that, just a bad assumption on my part I guess.

I've seen a lot of people over the beta test wanting the game to return to its more 2019 version, with upgradable buildings, walls, making food actually count for something, more stuff in the supply chain etc... Makes me wonder if they've just gone ahead and done this, as a lover of the franchise since the old AMIGA days, I can safely say that economy and building up your city was priority rather then military units and I think if they focus on that side of things more, we really could have a new Settlers game we all have been craving for. I think if we can kinda bring back a lot of the economy options the older tittles gave us (things like Forester / Slaughter House / Weapon smithy / Tool Maker / Water Well) along with upgradable buildings to make the economy a lot more deep and meaningful. One of the best parts of a Settlers game is watching all the lil peeps work all the jobs in the city with all their own individual animations as they make stuff, the more stuff there is, the more immersive the gaming experience will be. Mining ore shouldn't be infinite either, I feel the mining portion of the game does need to be redon a bit, having lots of spots to mine but having them run out forces you to strategize over the world map against other factions for mining spots, and please make them on mountains heh..

Obviously units need some work too, and this was also mentioned in the TTS Announcement so hopefully they've worked on Engineers being everything! adding geologists and changing the siege weapons from being animals to fire magic missiles which was not good lol I am not keen on having Magic at all in the game myself but if it has to be in there I would only really like Hero units only to really use magic..... I actually would be happy with just the old Settlers 1 units where there was no ranged units of any kind at all and all combat was just hand-to-hand but I know im in the minority here for that. I want combat in the game, but I don't want it to be the main focus, and having a ton of units kinda makes the combat take over the core aspect of Settlers. Hopefully they do more about having the different forts and towers that expand your boarder rather then just having to manually select on an engineer to where you want to increase it to...

anyways just some quick initial thoughts now that the game is progressing still....

Love the updates now, if we can get weekly updates on whats going on with the game thats fantastic! It does appear that it sounds exactly like the beta when it comes to Food though. I think making a mine functioning tied to food rather then just boosts is just a better way to go and feels more like Settlers. I don't think food should be a players choice, and instead if you want a thriving economy, you just gotta have food to make mining functionable, I feel that just simply making it a player choice just because, is not the right direction for food production.

The Settlers should be a long, economy building game, that's what it's always been, I think making buildings have boosts degrades the game to an RTS first, Economy Second structure and it should always be about having a good Economy first, the game shouldn't focus so much on building up military as fast as possible but instead a nice slow burn so you can enjoy the city building aspect of the game more, and for longer, and military being the end-game. "Production Boosts" just wreck this aspect of the game as you will need FAR FAR less of each building to make a decent economy.

@Daranyx Right now fix Skirmish mode, I dont know how on earth you mess up skirmish mode, but they have. You can only play against 1 AI by yourself? lol... but some how can go up against 4 with 4 players (not by yourself) in 4v4? The ability to have a proper lobby where you can set the options of the skirmish mode is needed, that is pretty basic shet.... You cant even select a map? what??? I am confused as to why you can't

I'm Happy to hear that the "RocketOxen" is now gone! It didn't have a place in Settlers in my opinion, can't wait to see the new units! these charges were a good thing. The new map looks really nice, I just hope that the final game will have a LOT of maps that we can play on, seems as we don't have any procedural maps going on, we must have plenty for the variation otherwise playing on the same maps over and over again will get old, fast.

I am very interested in what economic research we can do now and what would be considered rare materials, this could be good but definitely need to see this first-hand before I can make a full judgement on it of course. Hopefully I can get into the TTS at some point to help with feedback. Thanks for the updates.

Love the updates now, if we can get weekly updates on whats going on with the game thats fantastic! It does appear that it sounds exactly like the beta when it comes to Food though. I think making a mine functioning tied to food rather then just boosts is just a better way to go and feels more like Settlers. I don't think food should be a players choice, and instead if you want a thriving economy, you just gotta have food to make mining functionable, I feel that just simply making it a player choice just because, is not the right direction for food production.

The Settlers should be a long, economy building game, that's what it's always been, I think making buildings have boosts degrades the game to an RTS first, Economy Second structure and it should always be about having a good Economy first, the game shouldn't focus so much on building up military as fast as possible but instead a nice slow burn so you can enjoy the city building aspect of the game more, and for longer, and military being the end-game. "Production Boosts" just wreck this aspect of the game as you will need FAR FAR less of each building to make a decent economy.

What should we expect to change since BETA? obviously information is limited right now on exactly what they've changed or plans to change moving forward and the announcement for TTS (technical test server) was pretty vague on exactly what changes they are working on as they're still tweaking those things they've added to the test im sure. So what changes do you think they've done to improve Settlers since the BETA? They've stated they've worked heavily on the Economy side of things and improved rush mechanics, so im thinking that its harder to build up your armies now and requires a lot work in your economy before you start sending out tons of units everywhere but really outside of that, we just don't know exactly what changes have been made. I have to be honest I'm quite excited, I thought this game was cancelled if I'm being honest, even though the devs never stated that, just a bad assumption on my part I guess.

I've seen a lot of people over the beta test wanting the game to return to its more 2019 version, with upgradable buildings, walls, making food actually count for something, more stuff in the supply chain etc... Makes me wonder if they've just gone ahead and done this, as a lover of the franchise since the old AMIGA days, I can safely say that economy and building up your city was priority rather then military units and I think if they focus on that side of things more, we really could have a new Settlers game we all have been craving for. I think if we can kinda bring back a lot of the economy options the older tittles gave us (things like Forester / Slaughter House / Weapon smithy / Tool Maker / Water Well) along with upgradable buildings to make the economy a lot more deep and meaningful. One of the best parts of a Settlers game is watching all the lil peeps work all the jobs in the city with all their own individual animations as they make stuff, the more stuff there is, the more immersive the gaming experience will be. Mining ore shouldn't be infinite either, I feel the mining portion of the game does need to be redon a bit, having lots of spots to mine but having them run out forces you to strategize over the world map against other factions for mining spots, and please make them on mountains heh..

Obviously units need some work too, and this was also mentioned in the TTS Announcement so hopefully they've worked on Engineers being everything! adding geologists and changing the siege weapons from being animals to fire magic missiles which was not good lol I am not keen on having Magic at all in the game myself but if it has to be in there I would only really like Hero units only to really use magic..... I actually would be happy with just the old Settlers 1 units where there was no ranged units of any kind at all and all combat was just hand-to-hand but I know im in the minority here for that. I want combat in the game, but I don't want it to be the main focus, and having a ton of units kinda makes the combat take over the core aspect of Settlers. Hopefully they do more about having the different forts and towers that expand your boarder rather then just having to manually select on an engineer to where you want to increase it to...

anyways just some quick initial thoughts now that the game is progressing still....

I'm very glad to see the game is still being worked on! when the release got to put back indefinitely, my biggest fears was that the game would be just cancelled so to see this post, all be-it a week and a half after it was posted, is all but awesome! I really had little issues with the beta test except for a few things that we all got to experience earlier this year. Didn't get invited into the TTS but thats okay hopefully I will at some point, hopefully the progress is going well enough so we'll get more info on a possible launch window or 2nd open beta at some point soon.

@ubi-karl I also don't seem to have access to my moved post either not quite sure why but if you can help that would be great

@alnothur If I want to pre order something, I will. I don't feel bad what so ever preordering when I do and I certainly wont let anyone dictate what I should, or shouldn't do with "my" money and I've seen gameplay thank you, at the time of THAT writing there was only the announcement trailer on youtube so before breaking down everything I say, perhaps get your facts straight first? That was like a week ago now.

Who was talking about Bonus's? GameStar (youtuber) which was where the first initial information/preview details came from which is where everyone who was complaining about this game had been running with before even playing it.

Yes the economy I wish was as complex as previous tittles, absolutely, we all want more! and I for one don't like the idea of not being able to feed pigs or take them to the slaughterhouse n stuff like that, but I need to play it first to see.

I would argue that the 2019 version was much closer to AOE then what Settlers is today, especially when you could just simply build walls all over the place. But I will definitely grant ya that there was some kool new features in the 2019 version I loved that aren't in this version for whatever reason.

So, from your last comment, you didn't like Heritage of Kings? I didn't think it was bad, I didn't think it felt like a settlers game but it had some new stuff they were trying out, it was the first time Settlers introduced Hero Units, and Weather effects that actually effected the landscape like lakes turning to ice so you could move your units across. Settlers 3 and 4, in my opinion, were pretty horrific, especially with the magic, and im not a fan with how the magic is in this new game either, but from everything i've seen, it wont ruin the game it is still the settlers and it seems to play like one. If you prefer they cancel it and re do it, you know in todays gaming industry, that just will never happen, if they cancelled it, it wouldn't get re-made, it would just be done, and im sorry i'm just not okay with that I want the series to continue and I hope what they have here is just the starting blocks for some good things happening in the years to come.

You're opinions are yours, and my opinions are mine. There's no need to be so aggressive about it

@leckig well i'm 41 lol

@nemecpetthry First and foremost, thanks for not attacking me, muchly appreciated!

Yeah at the time when I wrote that, there actually wasn't any gameplay apart from a very few places. It now seems like the NDA has been lifted so there are actually quite a few gameplay videos now, but still, almost none are in English still so still a little difficult, for me personally, to understand most of what is being said. I have to say, still after watching the gameplay videos, it still looks like a Settlers game to me, is it missing stuff? yeah, yeah it is, is there some minor changes towards RTS over city-economy building? yeah there is, but at its core, it is still very much a Settlers game. I read the PC Gamer article, wasn't super long but after reading through all of it, you immediately go "yup, that's a Settlers game" so despite some of the changes, like re adding magic that none of us really want, its still settlers and wont ruin the Settlers experience.

I just get Honked off with a lot of todays mentality of this quick rush to judgement all the time with almost every game that comes out now, its everywhere! this game very nearly didn't get made at all, and I'm grateful we have a new settlers game again. It's something to build from, and as for it being too late in the day to make changes, not really, you can make lots of changes until release now that games are released digitally, no PC games are released in retail stores anymore so you can work up until final day of release, and then there's post-launch content. Easy stuff like farm placement and AI behavior are obvious bugs and will be fixed before launch. Magic nothing can be done about it, but developers can always add more resources, more maps or even a map editor, post launch very easily. I was just trying to put an emphasis on people just need to calm down a bit.

@zorgon789 Where does it state there are no more Walls that you can build?