The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom (0)

Story

The story of the game takes place in the land of Tandria, where you take the role of , attempting to free Tandria from its corrupt rulers, thieves and bandits. Throughout the majority of the story you are accompanied by an adviser, Bors, whose guidance is crucial to your success in early levels. The story takes you through various locations on Tandria and features a colorful cast of characters, allies and enemies alike, such as Ramírez, Raspun, Dracorian, Rovyn, Lord Wolvering, Bishop Matheusz, Field Marshall Ludowig, King Konradin and King Balderus.

Gameplay 

The campaign of the game consists of 12 levels, some of which also act as a tutorial for various mechanics of game, ranging from basic economy to more advanced tactics. In early levels only military victory is available, but later when Victory Points come in play the possibilities of varying tactics open up. The map consists of sectors that are either neutral, yours, ally's or enemy's. Each sector holds a single military outpost, but can also be upgraded to place palisades and stone towers next to roads. You can take over neutral sectors with brute force, use your traders to bribe them, or proselytize them with novice clerics. You can freely travel through sectors owned by your allies, but only military strength will help you take over sectors from your enemies.
The logistics of the game's economy is divided into 4 classes, military, church, trade, and building. Each class have their own queue displayed, where you can prioritize, halt and resume objects. Additionally you can also prioritize a whole class over another. Technology research is done with your clerics of varying levels, and are generally used to boost part of your economy and military by reducing production times, providing more resources, or just making your units faster. Establishing trade routes is useful if you are short on a particular resource, but have plenty of something else. Establishing routes requires traders of varying levels.

Prestige points Prestige Points are used to unlock upgrades, mostly for your buildings, but also for stone roads and forest clearance. Prestige Points are automatically awarded for conquering new sectors, researching new advancements and establishing trading routes. You can also build small, medium and large prestige objects of varying price to quickly raise your prestige level.

Victory points Victory Points are the main deciding factor on who wins the map. While pure military victory is possible by simply wiping your enemies of the map, it's much more likely that the victory is received by Victory Points. There are two kinds of victory points, dynamic and permanent ones. Dynamic points are only yours as long as you can hold them. They are generally awarded for holding a certain special sector on the map, having most sectors, having the largest army, having the most money, having most research and most trade routes and other, similar things. You only hold the point as long as you qualify. Permanent points are different in the way that they are generally harder to get, but once you get one, it's yours for the rest of the match. Permanent points are gained by doing certain quests, researching the most expensive technology or establishing special trading routes.

Buildings  Most of  the construction in the game is divided into the 5 class of buildings, each of which have 3 adjacent building slots reserved for work yards. Farm: Farms need a lot of space for their work yards. Grain Barn Piggery Shepherd Stable Mountain Shelter: For various mining related operations Coal Miner Iron Miner Gold Miner Iron Smelter Quarry Coking Plant Lodge: Your main building for various gatherers. Fisher Hunter Woodcutter Forester Residence: Raises your maximum population, your basic living quarters. Paper Mill Weaving Mill Brewery, Bakery Wheelwright Toolmaker Noble Residence: Bigger and fancier houses. Bookbinder Mint Goldsmith Tailor Butcher   Work yards of Farm, Mountain Shelter, Lodge and basic Residence work without food, but it's possible to food boost them to work more efficiently. Work yards of Noble Residence requires basic food just to work, but is also possible to boost with Fancy Food. It's possible to upgrade both residences twice to hold more people.

Special buildings  Storehouse Your basic storage building, but also contains the units that move your resources around the map. Bunch of well placed storehouses are a key to a good economy. Basic storehouses can only support 20 of each resource, upgrading will raise the cap to 50, and second upgrade will remove the cap entirely. Stronghold The building for Military Branch. From this building you will train your military units. Can be upgraded twice to train more advanced units. Church Trains Clerics of various levels, depending on the level of the Church. The only building with three upgrades. Export Office Heart of your Trade Branch, trains traders. Constructor Essential to your kingdom, this building is the home of your constructors. Basic constructor holds only one person, but the building is upgradeable to hold 3. Well You guessed it. Offers endless supply of water.   In most of the maps you will start with a fully upgraded storehouse, a fully upgraded constructor and a tavern. Tavern acts as a place to hire mercenaries (Pikemen and Musketeers), hiring Generals to lead your troops, and to do small trading.

Units

Aside from the various automated workers, you also have access to military, church and trade units. 

Military Pikemen Basic melee unit, available from both the tavern and from level 1 stronghold. Musketeers Basic long range unit, available from the tavern and level 1 stronghold.  Cavaliers Advanced melee unit, available only from level 2 and higher stronghold. Cannons Advanced long range unit, available only from level 3 stronghold. Standard Bearer Support unit, army with him will fight more effectively. Available only from level 3 stronghold.

Church Clerics come in three tiers, Novices, Brothers and Fathers. While novices can also be used to take over neutral sectors, the main use of all the cleric units is technology research. Clerics can also be used to boost the health of your military by sending them to military outposts in your sectors.

Traders       Trade MapTraders also come in three tiers, Hawkers, Salesmen and Merchants. You can use Hawkers to take over neutral sectors with bribery, but the main use of traders is to trade and establish trading routes.

Multiplayer, online & DRM  

The game has your basic multiplayer modes such as against AI and multiplayer against other players. The gameplay is the same as it is in later campaign missions, victory points being the main path to a victory. Settlers 7 is also one of the first games to contain controversial “always online” solution, that requires the player to have a constant internet connection available even during singleplayer campaign missions. If connection is lost on either the player's side or Ubisoft's side, the game will pause and wait for a reconnection. If connection can not be reestablished, the session will be locally saved and the game will quit to the menu. The saved games are also synchronized in “the cloud” on Ubisoft's servers, so the player can continue their game on another computer in another location.

Map Forge 

Map Forge allows you to customize the maps you play in, by changing the amount and type of Victory points, mining resource locations, event locations, and other details of the map.

Castle Forge 

In Castle Forge you can customize the look of your castle for both the singleplayer campaign as well as skirmish and online multiplayer. Various objects that you can add are walls, flags, towers, windows and ornaments. You can also purchase more objects with your points as well as in-game reward currency that is accumulated during all your matches.

Achievements

Settlers 7 has that are directly related to your Ubisoft / UPlay account and UPlay points. 
 

Uplay

 is a service where you earn points and use them to unlock bonus items. Here is a list of Actions (achievements) and Rewards for this game.  

Actions	Points
King of my Castle Define your own castle at the Castle Forge and use it in game.	10U
Against the Odds Win 1 skirmish match in single player mode with a minimum of 3 AI opponents.	20U
Heat of the Battle Finish 5 matches at the SETTLERS Empire.	30U
Hero of Tandria Complete the campaign of The Settlers 7.	40U

 

Rewards	Cost
The Settlers 7 Wallpaper Grants you the exclusive Uplay Wallpaper for The Settlers 7.	10U
Enormous Advantage The "enormous" option is available for resources and start condition at the Map Forge.	20U
Castle Elements Use an exclusive set of decorations for your castle at the Castle Forge.	30U
The Crushed Mirror Get your hand on this 4 player map to prove your skills against the AI or in multiplayer matches.	40U

  

DRM 

Settlers uses Ubisoft's custom DRM that requires an online connection at all times.

System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
• Processor: 2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 / AMD XP 2600 or better (Intel Core 2 Duo / AMD Athlon 64 X2 recommended)
• Memory: 2 GB (4 GB recommended)
• Graphics: 256 MB DirectX 9.0c-compliant, Shader 3.0-enabled video card (512 MB recommended)(*see supported list)
• DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c
• Hard Drive: 8 GB
• Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compliant sound card
• Peripherals Supported: Windows-compliant keyboard and mouse
• Internet Connection: Broadband Internet connection with 128 kbps upstream or faster

Supported Video Cards at Time of Release:
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 / 8 / 9 / GT / GTS / GTX series
ATI Radeon X1900 / HD 2000 / HD 3000 / HD 4000 / HD 5000 series