OVERVIEW

Basically, Settlers IV is much like Settlers III, although there are some significant differences. One of them is the story: Morbus, the bad guy of the game and the leader of the Dark Tribe, has insulted HIM - the highest of the gods and therefore was sent to Earth - the worst place in the whole universe. The problem is that Morbus hates everything that's green. In fact he is destroying forests and meadows. Your task is, of course, to stop him. The only way to achieve it is to recruit gardeners and send them to the destroyed lands. Morbus certainly won't like that so you have to provide some military escort for the gardeners. There are three nations in the game: the Vikings, Romans and Mayans. Each nation has a special military unit and some unique buildings. Also, each uses other amounts of resources to build structures. The Mayans need more stone and the Vikings - more wood. There is no difference between the nations as far as the tactics is concerned.

GAMEPLAY

Settlers IV is first of all an economic strategy. The goal of the game is to eliminate the enemies, but the real challenge is to build up a strong economic mechanism that will allow recruiting army. Throughout the game you'll also face lack of resources. Those situations will require from you some intensive thinking - but that's what it's all about, isn't it? In the beginning you have some settlers and a few resources. First thing you have to do is to provide a steady flow of stone and wood. Build two woodcutters, one forester, one saw mill and one quarry. You can build more of them later on. Next thing to do is to build medium or large residence (that's for additional settlers). After that look for coal, iron ore and gold. Iron and coal give tools and weapons when processed at the iron smelters and smiths. Gold makes your soldiers fight more eagerly in the enemy land. In the next stage of the game you can build temples and structures producing alcoholic drinks. After that all you have to do is to locate and destroy the enemy - that is capture all their military buildings like towers and castles. All those instruction seem quite easy but that's not true. The game is fairly complicated - especially campaign includes some interesting and challenging scenarios.

STRATEGY AND TIPS

• try to keep this proportions: one saw mill for two woodcutters; one iron mine for two coal mines; one coal mine for one gold mine; one mill for two bakeries;
• place your final food buildings (bakery and slaughter's house) as close to the mines as possible; you'll save time;
• pay attention to the amount of free settlers - you need them for recruiting warriors;
• the Mayans need a lot of stone, the Vikings need a lot of wood;
• avoid building in areas with white dots (hills) - this takes too much time; look for flat land and green dots;
• remember: to promote your soldiers you need manna - you can get it by supplying small temples with alcohol;
• if you don't border computer players try to have only one guard tower (or better: a castle) and concentrate your whole army around it;
• if you send your army across whole map to attack the enemy remember that your bowmen move much slower than the swordmen; here's the result: when the bowmen arrive at the battle, your swordmen are already dead;
• to increase attack strength you need gold;
• vine grows best on a sunny slope;
• honey grows best on a flower bed;
• agave grows on a desert ONLY;

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Minimum Requirements

• Pentium 200MHz Processor
• 64MB RAM
• 4MB graphics card
• Win 95/98/2000/Me/NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5

CHEAT

There are no codes for this game either.

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