The Settlers III gives you a chance to manage a medieval-style settlement and attempt to expand by conquering the neighboring countryside. While this might initially sound similar to all the other real-time strategy games floating around, such a direct comparison is unfair.

The game comes on two CDs with a 39-page manual included in the CD's jewel case. There is an excellent tutorial provided with the game that helps get you started. However, given the depth and complexity of resource management needed for The Settlers III, the lack of a detailed printed manual in the package is almost unforgiveable. An HTML version of a manual is provided on the disk, but is not as convenient during gameplay as a printed manual would have been. While the tutorial is a great help in getting started, I would have been clueless on much of the resource management details without the strategy tips and guides I found in surfing the Internet. You should not have to do this with a game right out of the box.

Installation was a challenge. First of all, this game demands a significant amount of hard disk space required (about 250 MB...ouch!). After making room for the game, I ran the install program (which appeared to work fine), only to find that the game would not load; to get it to work, I had to download a new driver for my video card (yeah, I know this is a fact of life now, but none of the other recent games I've tried have had this problem). Once I got the updated video driver, Settlers III loaded (slowly) and ran reasonably well with the exception of a video glitch on my screen (perhaps specific to my video card).

The game allows you to play campaigns as either the Romans, Asians, or Egyptians, in increasing levels of difficulty (Romans being the easiest and Egyptians the most difficult). Each race has its own unique features (i.e., buildings and settlers), making the campaigns differ depending on which race you play. Individual scenarios are also included, and can be randomly generated, adding to the replay value. Settlers III supports multiplayer and LAN play. Like all the other real-time strategy games, resource gathering is important and there is a rather complex sequence of building/training to get down into the depth of the game (e.g., to generate lumber you need to first build a woodcutter's hut, then a sawmill).

There are about 30 different types of settlers and 110 buildings available, and the ability to use each of them varies depending on the occupation. Some are simple (e.g., stonecutters, requiring only a stonecutter's hut), while others depend on multiple support structures (e.g., the weapons smith cannot make iron tools without first having an iron smelter, the smelter won't produce anything without an iron mine, and you cannot have a productive iron mine without first sending your geologists out to prospect and locate ore deposits...whew!). In addition, each of the various miners (iron, coal, and gold) require different foods to operate at maximum efficiency. And each race has a specific "god" to appease by making offerings with types of drink, leading to the ability to cast magic spells to improve your race. All this complexity results in a rather steep learning curve; once learned, however, the gameplay in Settlers III is deep and satisfying.

Conquest in Settlers III operates differently than you may be used to. The construction of towers expands the area of your empire (you can also do this with pioneers). When invading, all you have to do to take over new land is to send a platoon of soldiers into enemy territory and take over one of their towers...their land now becomes yours, and all of the enemy structures within the tower's area of influence are immediately destroyed. This sounds easy, but you must remember that your opponent can also do the same thing to you and your holdings, so protection of your settlement is important. Differing from other real-time strategy games, Settlers III is much more a game of developing economically viable settlements and supporting infrastructure than one of all-out warfare.

Visually, Settlers III is a feast for the eyes. Your little workers run around the screen completing their tasks in a manner that looks like a cartoon movie, and it's entertaining to watch them whether playing the game or not. You don't control each worker like you would in other games, rather you decide what you want to build and where you want to build it, and the little guys proceed to do the work depending on their specific occupational skills. This is fun to watch! Before construction begins, some of your workers will arrive with shovels to level the land; other workers carry construction materials to the site (stone and lumber) and proceed to construct your building. Sound effects are appropriate to the tasks being performed and add to the enjoyment of the game.

Bottom Line:  If you have the system to handle it and don't mind a few installation glitches, Settlers III is a really fun empire-building real-time strategy game with a more complex set of resource management tools than other similar games. This makes for a rather steep learning curve on the front-end, but ultimately yields a very satisfying and entertaining game. Recommended for real-time strategy fans.

System Tested On:  IBM-compatible PC with a 133Mhz Pentium; Windows 95; 64-bit PCI-bus SVGA video card; 32 Mb of RAM; 8x CD-ROM drive; Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold sound card; mouse

Minimum System:  IBM PC & 100% compatibles; 100 MHz Pentium (166 MHz recommended); 32 MB RAM; 2 MB Graphic Card (DirectX-compatible); 250 MB free hard disk space; 4x CD-ROM; Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0; DirectX 6.0 (included on CD); DirectX-compatible soundcard; and 28.8 modem (for Internet gaming).

Technical support is available by phone (toll number), fax (toll number), e-mail, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.bluebyte.com or http://www.settlers3.com.

Estimated street price - about $40

Blue Byte Software, 8140 North Mopac, Suite IV-230, Austin, Texas 78759; Phone: (410) 568-2390