Meh, I think I'll buy it without a sale. Will be a nice pastime in my nuclear bunker.

(Heh, don't mind, I'm a bit drunk. But really thinking if I should get it now.)

Hell yeah!

Now i know how to spend this weekend :p

The game does not start, can anyone help?

I have the single.exe with 50p core use (= one of my two cores) in Windows XP SP3, but nothing happens.
I have the game on CD as well, and I think installed in German from there, so does that cause issues with the GOG version?
(Edit: Was on the old PC, nevermind!)

Also several DAT files have 0 KB. Is that normal? Did I maybe get a corrupt download but it still installed?

EDIT: Same thing after downloading with GOG Downloader...

EDIT: Also no success installing it on C:/

EDIT: Fixed by renaming S3.exe to Siedler3.exe, i.e. what it says is its original file name, and then starting that file.
Don't ask why that works, but I thought since that is the original file name maybe it does.

Nice, they way you phrased it made me think of a text adventure de-make of XCOM.
And there are some games I mostly play in German that are originally English, come to think about it. Games I played in German the first time, but almost all of them are LucasArts adventures, which had a nearly perfect localisation back in the day.

Thx a lot for this awesome game! Playing on a Win7 machine, no problems at all. Instand buy for one of the best RTS game out there!

Settlers 3 did not originally have a Mac port, all I know...

Ok, now we need Settlers IV to close that gap. And the first one, if you can get it, GOG team! :D

I aim to please.

The french localizations have always been by and large awful - I seem to recall that the LucasArts adventures may have been an exception here too, haven't played them in French for fifteen years or so though...
The particularly dreadful localization of Pagan springs to mind ; and as soon as voice-overs kicked in, we landed straight in brain-melting territory.

The good point is that I became able to read english pretty fluently pretty quickly. Everything to escape le merdique traduction française.

Oh god, don't get me started on german voice overs.
Somehow most german localisations only seem to have a budget that could only pay for 5 Happy Meals, somehow most german voice "actors" in games are even more awful than the garbage on our daytime TV. Unfortunately this is also true for many games made in Germany.
LucasArts was an exception again, the actors for Curse of Monkey Island were great (although they dropped that pirate song from the game which I discovered years later). I don't know about the other Lucas games with speech that had a localisation, I think I played all of them in English because I did not have them back in the day. And it was mucgh easier to get the English versions when I played them in the 2000s.

I only ever played Settlers 1, 2, 6 and 7. I don't remember Settlers 1 very well, did love both 2 and 6, hated 7 and Settlers 3 has all condition to be a great game, if it holds true to Settlers 2 at least. I don't like the glossy/shiny pre-rendered 3D graphics of late 90s, but it has promise.

Settlers 3 is very much unlike Settlers 2.

They have similar elements but yes the core of the tactics has shifted.

Settlers 2 is very much about ensuring you've got your pathways set out correctly and that you get your distribution network setup. Indeed it introduces a lot of micro managing in that aspect.

Settlers 3 strips that out - you still have uncontrolled villagers doing your work, but they don't need pathways now and free-roam. That said you've still got to setup your production chains and having key structures close together can be important in speeding up production. In addition you've got to watch your harvesting and building rate - nothing beats you faster than setting too many structures to build if you've not the workers and resources to complete them.

Expansion is also, I feel, faster in Settlers 3 - you've got to expand quickly with towers to grasp key choke points and resources on the map.

Combat is vastly different as in 3 you can now control your troops on the battlefield. Warriors still automatically garrison towers, but now you can opt to choose to allocate more to a tower (or larger tower or castle). Meanwhile combat becomes a controlled experience as you now have far more importance attached to training up and moving your warriors around on land and over the sea if need be.


Personally I feel that Settlers 3 is improved over 2 as I never could get used to the total lack of direct control that 2 gave one with troop management. 3 lets you control the armies and doesn't suffer from choke points with regard to resource harvesting (a very key factor you had to watch out for in 2).

They are similar games, but their core style of gameplay has some important shifts that makes them quite distinct playing experiences.

Also, in Settlers 3 you have limited resources at any time, i.e. no warehouse where you can stock unlimited resources in. There is however a warehouse for limited resources, but that also takes micromanagement, and is mostly useful for gold. Gold now passively boosts the soldiers' power, instead of being used up to upgrade them. Upgrades are done as a side-effect of creating mana - a new resource that is used by priests to cast spells - but don't apply to old soldiers, i.e. it is more resource efficient to build the army late, but the enemy might build it early and overrun you.

In the campaign, if you survive long enough, you'll win easily on most maps.

You'll nearly always need to produce troops early on since whilst you can hold back, you'll lose swordsmen for the whole time you expand your base outward. So what was first a body of troops is suddenly spread out through the towers and puts pressure on you to make a least a handful of warriors and bowmen to drive off any attacks.