Work more to make you earn more, this could be the motto of the Settlers, a community that grows spontaneously as long as you build a few buildings in the countryside. Self-proclaimed regent of a kingdom in the making, you have a few reserves of materials and a handful of gold coins, which you will devote to building colonies on the surface of an imaginary medieval world. You start each mission with a few buildings, usually a castle and a warehouse, around which you will erect a proud city that your neighbors, mates, will admire. To achieve this, you must support your followers by establishing a whole host of shops, shacks and other industries, and by taking control of a number of resources scattered throughout the maps. Each build attracts a few settlers, who move in, run it, and expect to be rewarded in some way for their hard work. The hunter kills wild animals, which the butcher reduces to smoking sausages or the tanner transforms into very becoming leather garments. However, the hunter will only do his job correctly if he can... eat sausages and dress in animal skins, while waiting for something better. There is all the magic of the series: all the professions, all the Settlers are interdependent, and your cities cannot function if one or the other is absent.
Help each other
However, the complexity of this relational game has been steadily decreasing for several years, and the production of a finished good no longer requires the prior establishment of twenty-four different stalls. The micro-managerial dimension has also been reduced to a bare minimum. Thus, your hold on the local economy is only due to your ability to roughly readjust the taxation of your little settlers. Apart from this ability, you can do nothing: neither adjust the production methods of the different goods, nor interact directly with your settlers. Presented as one of the big novelties of this episode, the appearance of women does not really enrich the game. By throwing an – expensive – party in the marketplace, you attract not only your workers looking for entertainment, but also all the damsels that lurk in the area. After a few pas de deux, the couples disappear into the night and the next day, the now wives relieve your men of domestic chores, allowing them to devote themselves fully to their work. No child will leave this home, however, and this while the management of entire families could have considerably enriched – and complicated – your mission. In this case, The Settlers: Empire Builders is a simple and particularly repetitive game, in which each card is an eternal restart. The mediocrity of the objectives – to provide so many goods to such a nearby village – associated with an exceptionally flat scenario do not encourage them to persevere. To put a little spice in your daily life, and not to completely decide with a resolutely warmongering fifth component, your Settlers will however sometimes have to defend themselves against the onslaught of looters, or even attack a rival faction. This military dimension, inherent in each component, has never been the strong point of the series, and this new adventure will not convince the warriors any more.
War without nerves
Before each game, you must choose a general, who will represent your authority in the field. Six in number, these heroes each have a very special skill that will slightly change the way you play. One, a seasoned trader, will get good prices if you have to buy goods from your neighbours; another, an exalted mystic, will turn every church collection into a financial jackpot; a third, Viking bon vivant, will enthuse your settlers with his drinking songs, and encourage unions at the end of local festivals. This variety is theoretically good, but in reality, the generals are too numerous, it is difficult to really attach to one of them and, never really knowing what to expect, we hesitate for a long time between the different gifts before each mission.
All of them still have common skills, and in particular can set up outposts on the different territories of each map. Once the post is established, the area is yours and you can build anything you want there. A proud fighter on the other hand, your general will not be able to defeat the enemy, often entrenched behind fortifications, without the support of a few soldiers. Military units are the only ones, with the hero, that can be controlled directly. Trained in garrisons, equipped with weapons produced by your blacksmiths, they move in inseparable squads of six men. Nothing but very classic, except that your Fighting Settlers are pathological morons. The AI is truly catastrophic, you can't adjust the behavior of your troops and controlling them on the battlefield is downright tricky. The adversary is fortunately seldom more cunning, but your losses will always exceed your forecasts.
Neither a real good management game nor a decent strategy game, The Settlers: Empire Builders does have the advantage of being a damn fine product. The developers did not lie to us, we can indeed spend hours watching the settlers go about their business. Shepherds shear sheep with large scissors, rabbits leap through the green grass and the game respects the cycle of the seasons. In the far north, the winter is long and harsh, accompanied by pretty snowfalls, while in the southern regions, the climate is much drier and sunnier. As always, beauty comes at a price, and only those who have a machine less than three months old will be able to play all the options fully without encountering slowdowns. It is just unfortunate that by taking too much care with its effects, the Blue Byte team has neglected the staging of its work, and delivers an extremely soft title with no real charisma, visibly intended for complete beginners and which will completely disgust the great veterans of the series. If such a choice can, economically, be understood, those who prefer a good game to a beautiful title can only regret it. 
