The main focus in Settlers: Rise of an Empire is once again on city management. A frequent problem in this type of games is lack of spaces when trying to heighten the production rate by placing extra buildings. In this game it is made a bit easier, production building can be upgraded some levels. Extra settlers will come working and therefore the production rate increases without using more space.

Some resources, like deer, run out quite quickly, usually even before you had the chance to expand your territory and find new hunting places. Sometimes this is not a problem because there are different source for only one of your settlers’ needs (like fish, meat and bread provide in food for the settlers), sometimes it is, when it is an important resource, used for many different things. Consequently production stagnates, until the source is replenished (which is by the way only the case for ‘living’ resources like deer).

Still, blockades are easy to find thanks to an short overview of the resource collection and production rates. For instance how many of the grain makes it to the bakery to become bread. Interpretatig those figures correctly helps you finding out where problems occur.

There is also some kind of hero in your town, who can be given a new title and function (like Sheriff) in function of your town’s progress. New titles bring new buildings and possibilities, but new needs too. One of the prerequisites for a new title is always creating already a stock of future product needs (like clothes).

A new title for your hero means having a party at the market place. Those parties can be organised on a larger scale at some time in the game to make your citizens happy and have them find wives. Wives help their husbands in their job and therefore increase production rates.

However, this preview version is absolutely not free from bugs. The first time a game or a mission starts, the loading takes very long. Furthermore there are multiple sound and gameplay problems.

I was for instance asked to lay roads, but that didn’t work in any way and certainly not while using the explained way. It also happened that the mission did not continue, although all assignments were fulfilled, probably because the next event was not triggered right for some obscure reason. Restaring the mission a second time apparently is possible remedy.

Sound and music also need more care. Often there are missing words in spoken sentences and quite a lot irritating background noises (ressembling the sound heard when pointing a microphone towards the boxes.