The Settlers: Rise of an Empire - The Eastern Realm PC

The Settlers: Rise Of An Empire - The Eastern Realm is the first official expansion for The Settlers: Rise of an Empire for PC, the sixth installment of the popular economy simulation series. The add-on enriches the contents of the vanilla game and adds several interesting ideas. It also somewhat assimilates the title to probably the most popular, second installment of the series.

Plot

The action of The Eastern Realm takes place after the events of the vanilla game. Basa had dealt with the sinister Red Prince for good and then started to build his own empire in the north. The young state was developed efficiently and steadily under the rule of its king that gladly traded with neighboring nations. Alas, one day, a key trade route, which connects the empire to the lands of the trading tycoon Praphat, becomes blocked for unclear reasons. We have no other choice but send a group of the best knights to investigate. It quickly turns out that the eastern provinces of the kingdom are in a grave danger and our military intervention is necessary.

The main feature of the expansion is a completely new campaign that consists of 8 scenarios. Some of them take place in a new, exotic climatic zone of the distant India. The eastern lands naturally offer suggestive graphics and audio that significantly enhance the vanilla game. The players who prefer other game modes will also find something to their liking—the production comes with a number of additional maps for online gaming with friends and the lone wolves that enjoy plotless gameplay.

One of the main characters of The Eastern Realm is the daughter of the abovementioned merchant Praphat —princess Saraya who plays an important role in the story and expands the available hero list of the vanilla game. It isn’t the only new face in the expansion — older players who played The Settlers II: Veni, Vidi, Vici surely remember gray-bearded men who ran over mountains with great self-denial and kept on hammering the ground in search of underground riches. Geologists make a comeback to the series although they possess slightly different skills — they can now detect additional deposits in places where there are functioning mines already, thanks to which we receive the possibility of further exploitation of raw materials.

Mechanics

Other enhancements directly influence our possibilities of developing towns and villages. We can now build standalone wells, thanks to which it is easier to provide water in times of particular drought. Another noteworthy feature offers some automatization of trading places — a part of our economic responsibilities can be entrusted to our virtual advisors. The expansion also introduces a large set of beautifying elements that can be placed in our settlement to give it a unique appearance.

The developers also prepared an impediment connected to the characteristics of the abovementioned climatic zone. In these lands, there are rainy seasons during which it is harder to mine some raw materials, while some transport routes can be temporarily flooded.

Last updated on 29 August 2008