I played the first Settlers to death on my Amiga, Settlers 2 is pretty close, but it's just not the same...

Rob

Can you tell me how it's different? I love S2 but it is just on the cusp of being a little too old school. I grew up with an Apple \\ so don't get me wrong, I love nostalgia, but only to a point.

Basically S2 is an improved an expanded version of it.
There is only one Civilization, medieval themed. Your main building reminds of Neuschwanstein Castle and all of the buildings are of the same style. Graphics are of course not as good, limited to 640x480. Their is no campaign, only open gamen on random maps with some pretty tough AI opponents. They also made some questionable decisions regarding the UI, a "special click" (pressing left and right mouse button at excatly the same time) is mandatory and drove me nuts when I played it.
Personally, I think S2 is superior in just every way, but experiencing where it all started is something different.
Some more info an the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_%28video_game%29
There is also a free implementation of it called Freeserf (is the first game was called Serf City in the US), but still needs the original data files, like OpenTTD before OpenGFX, etc.

Far out, thanks. I'll look into it when I get a little further through my backlog.

It had a slightly less complicated economy, S2 added a few new industries.

I actually dont like the campaign in S2, I like the open ended battle worlds from S1.

I used Special Click all the time to see where one can place buildings. Can you do that on S2? I cannot work out how.

An obvious difference is, that it has the gold/motivation mechanics that are again used in Settlers 3. That made the game more peaceful in the beginnig, because you needed like 5:1 or 10:1 knights of the same rank to conquer something.

Also it had awesome splitscreen mode which you unlikely can use in DOSBOX, but s2 had that too. But it was fun.

The most important reason I still play Settlers 1 are the more elaborate game setup option. Starting ressources is a leveler, not and option. If you set it to zero, you have just the ressource you need to start a settlement and not one thing more. I loved that challenge.
Also, I do not recall s2 to have random map.

Boat mechanics where a bit different whereas routes over water could be of infinite length. AI had it's flaws, but you could give the AI many different personalities. Which is cool.

I wanna know this aswell. I always check if gog have got it if im on the site, greatest game of my youth, and perhaps the first aswell :b

Here's a list of all the differences in between the 2 games:

Only one graphic set for all the people (medieval), the fractions are only differentiated by the colors of their clothes and the one on the flags, no no-man's land in between 2 fractions as the landmarks limitiong each one's territory are just black and not in the respective player's colors.

There actually is a campaign, but it's more of a loose sucession of 30 Maps with increasing difficulty. Each one of these has it's own password to skip them later on. There are also 6 training missions which explain you step by step the different buidings and an unlimited amount (well 10^16*9 to be precise, more than you'll ever be able to play in your lifetime) of skirmish maps in 9 different sizes.

On skirmish maps, you can adjust exacly how everybody will start the game in therms of materials, reproduction rate and, in case of AI opponents, their overall intelligence.

Also, SVGA is actually an option, but all it does increasing the screen resolution from 320x200 to 640x480 without increasing the size of the sprites or higher-res buildings, which means everything becomes really tiny. Only advisable on big screens.

There are over a dozen ennemy leaders, each with their own tactics and personality.

Waypoints work differently in between both games. In settlers 2, you have to put as many flags as possible to increase the number of portes. In the first game, the number of portes got adapted depending depending on traffic. aAlso, no donkey porters and only one porter (or any other settler by that matter) can walk to a flag at a time, which means that roads tend to become very congested if you don't plan very far ahead.

You can put pathways trough forrests, but still no flags or buildings. There are also only 2 building sizes.

All leaders start as ennemies by default. You also don't need to conquer them entirely, if you got a 75% lead in Military power and Land size over all the other leaders combined, you're the winner by default.

The maps wrap around, and can also be much bigger than Settlers 2 maps despite lacking seafaring ships. On the biggest maps you can actually settle for 10 hopurs before even making contact with one of your opponents.

Fishermen never run out on fish, as long as you dont overexploit a lake (there are only lakes, no ocean around the maps).

Butchers, Mills, Bakerys and Carpenters are way more productive than in Settlers 2, meaning you can build a lot of Farms and Woodcutters to "feed" them. Farms also need a lot of Space southwars as they plant something like 20 Crop fields if they got enough space (and need them, too). On the other hand Forresters, Builders and Fishermen work slower. Diggers also need a lot longer to flatten terrain for big buildings.

There are less transport options, less storage options, but more options for the minimap. Combined with the bigger maps the latter actually becomes quite useful to check out your whole kingdom.

There is no set spot where you start your castle, you can choose to put it wherever you want. The Geologist will tell you about about the ressources in the vincinity (in case of granite, he only means what's actually underground to mine) before you set down. This also applies to your opponents, so choose extra wisely. It ain't very interesting to start right next to a much stronger AI opponent.

You can see how many soldiers are garrisoned in a military building by the height of their flag. Very useful since generally you run out of soldiers on bigger maps really quickly, which forces you to micromanage your troops early on. Also due to the fact that the maps wrap around, since it means that your opponents will be all around your little empire.

Not yet implemented in that game: Catapults, Breweries, Fountains, Donkey Breeders, Harbors, scouts and their towers (the map is fully revealed) and hunters.

The game is much more challenging because it's not forgiving you any errors you make starting the third map, especially concerning pathbuilding and later also soldier allocation.

Hope I didn't miss anything out ;)

Thank you for this detailed comparision from someone who played Settlers 1 but not version 2.

Kudos for that post. Probably the most detailed comparison I've ever seen. I didn't know a lot of those myself.
I mostly played S2, as I didn't own a copy of S1 for a long time and only played it occasionally at a friends computer. I mostly remember the copy protection, which was to enter three symbols from a specified page of the manual.

I would really, really love to play Settlers 1 again. I like the graphics better than S2 (though S2 naturally is BETTER graphics technically, they're just not the same) and the soundtrack alone makes the game worth it. I could waste away hours, days and years of my life to that game.

There was one thing I missd in my previous post about the differences between Settlers 1&2: The different leaders.

In Settlers 2, The different pictures for the leaders are just a cosmetical option. In Settlers 1, each one has it's own personality and tactic.

For instance, the pirate is very greedy and will attack your gold mines as soon as he can, and his chosen starting spot is generelly somewhere where there is also lots of gold to begin with.
The cleric, on the other hand, is very definsive, who puts extra care into the defense of critical buildings like a smithy.
The Lady, your first opponent, is just plain bad at everything, while the king is the exact opposite of this.
The warrior is naturally an extremly offensive player, but can't mange his kingdom very well
The advisor plays a bit like the king, but more defensive - and attacks when and where you expect it the least
The jester is very erratic and difficult to predict, which can make him very dangerous.

I might have missed one or two guys, but as you can see there is a big difference in between the different leaders in the game

Also, the soldiers: In Settlers 2, you need Gold to promote them. In the first game, they do so over time, the bigger the place they are the faster they will do so. Gold will only raise their morale, thus working mostly like beer in the sequel. However, the gold will be stocked in your forts, so when any of these fall expect a drop in morale due to this.

I never had the chance to play the first game of The Settlers. It would be really nice if it will be avalable here. The Settlers 2 Gold Edition was my first PC game ever and it is still one of my favourite ones.

I would also like to see the original game here as well. Was one of my all time favorites!

Let us hope for the best.