Well this is my very first post and it touches on some topics previously discussed.

We have seen recent trends in the video game market place of consultation with the customer in the making of new games and sequels. A prime example of this is the making of Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon which combined the farming elements of the Harvest Moon Series with dungeon crawling and was a complete success. We also know that we, as gamers, need variety in our games. We dont want a remake of Zelda or a different titled version of Age of Empires. We want the unique experience of a series already established and further improved. Evidence of this improvement is The Legend of Zelda hitting the Nintendo 64 and entering the world of 3D graphics - a wonderous day indeed.

So, what has this to do with Settlers? Well, I will tell you. I believe I am not alone when I say that we need ubisoft to produce Settlers 7, in its predecessor and the current title in the series, Settlers 6 we experienced fantastic 3D Movie Sequences with exquisite detail for its time, we also experienced hardships of being denied a map editor intially. If you look to Morrowind 3 you will see how the ability to customise a game with even monotome graphics can keep it alive for yonks of time adding to the joys of gamers and the profits of game-makers.

But besides needing a new experience that improves on the past and provides innovative and clever new elements to surprise and entice us to fall in love with the series all over again, we need to be heard. But what do they need to hear from us? I think that they need to hear what it is that we want to experience in this game, why do we love the series.. what makes us want to part with our cash to experience what their studio spends so much time and money on putting together? We the gamers have said as much in previous threads but need to articulate what we need from ubisoft more effectively - how else will they take us seriously?

Ideas raised old and new:

1. Improved graphics akin to the movie sequences of Settlers VI.
2. A new customisable playable hero character that is you in the game - i.e. the King/Emperor or Queen/Emperess. Clothing, race, hairstyle, focus (building improvements, resource collecting, military benefits).
3. The introduction of new resources - copper mines, gold mines, silver mines, gem mines, clay fields, salt fields, sugar cane farms, silk worm fields, cotton tree fields.
4. The introduction of new types of refiners - i.e. jewellery maker (gold/silver/copper/gem), pottery makers (clay), cake maker(eggs/flour, pastry shop, dress maker (embroidered outfits using silk/cotton), flour mill (flour), chicken farmer (poultry/eggs).
5. A better range of embellishments that could give small bonuses other than look good - i.e. statues of different types (possibly for achievements in game), fountains (gather water from them), flower garden, park (different types), pond with garden, wood fencing (the kind in the game already but you couldnt make it - usually around cathedrals).
6. Bridges to cross water (wood/stone).
7. Decorations to buildings such as thatch roofing, different coloured tiles.
8. More diverse castle improvements - i.e. add towers to certain sections and build them up (think Disney)
9. More cathedral improvements - i.e. grander buildings or built in statues like the romans did, or murals on the outside (think Black and White 2) - upgrades to shrines... the function to go inside your cathedral and experience the sermon (internal upgrades add benefits like gold donated... settler movement speed bonus or resource consumption).
10. Diverse alignment options - i.e. good ruler, neutral ruler, bad ruler (who doesnt want the option to enslave people or save them - the previous game allowed you to steal from good people or to not steal from them...)
11. Introduction of horses for military troops and the inclusion of a horse ranch and cavalry fort.
12. Introduction of children to the game, make it look real - if a settler is at max happiness with a spouse then a kid is produced (which cannot be attacked) and it interacts with other kids and play games if they are happy... this would mean you could have a toy maker (wood) to achieve this.
13. Introduce stand alone towers that can research a particular technology like gold smithing to enable the jeweller - lose the gold smith tower (where all the know how is) and lose the ability for jewellery makers to make goods.
14. Show jewellery (a prosperity wish) glinting off spouses when it is bought. The same with dress makers (silk, cotton) - show improved clothing on the settlers, we would love to see our people more refined than our enemy.. it adds to our smug sense of superiority and achievement.
15. Enable street lanterns to be made, a lantern shop would be good (wood/silver) - enabled after silver is mined. Also this could be put on trade and resource carts to light their way at night and speed up delivery.
16. Add dawn/afternoon/evening/midnight to the game. Settlers wake at dawn, work in the arvo, eat at the evening and sleep from midnight. A sense of realism is good even if they can build a castle up in almost the same time they spend making a broom makers house then why not?
17. Add a random map feature where you can select to verse any number of computer or lan connected players... maybe up to 4 players max?
18. The interactivity to make irrigation channels and dam rivers in certain areas to deny your foes water. Results in flooding which has to be managed... i.e. your town floods and you quickly undo your dam less you get washed away or your settlers are slowed down by the mud and puddles.
19. Play mode victory conditions: kill the players ruler (King/Queen) and you win.
20. Option to build additional castles or forts of some sort.
21. Option to build an additional 1 or 2 town centers for those far flung villages.
22. Docks to receive goods. Build ships and have a ship maker which is built as an updrade and enables you to send your goods out to other docks. Like outposts docks can be captured or destroyed.
17. Further additions to your city for prestige points, for example: Museum, Library, University, Dungeon (for captured heroes aka knights, preventing respawning - a successful infiltration of a thief can release them and they respawn at your main castle), Merchant Bazaar (like a colourful mini marketplace that increases the consumption of goods and thus your income, not for less advanced cities).
18. A colosseum structure... so that you can force a captured enemy knight to duel caged lions, wolves or your own knight and a squad of men defending him/her - entertains citizens and if the enemy knight is killed he/she respawns at their main castle.
19. A better enemy AI. No more building of wooden fences that leave enemy troops dumbfounded if the scenario hadnt accounted for it. You want enemies to be sneaky, on the watch for thieves and stealing your carts willy nilly - what better excuse to wage war?
20. Customisable architecture. You should be able to select a particular colouring of your stone, decorations and borders and the like as well to research when building stone walls. Architecture types shouldnt be limited to the climate zone you are playing.
21. If you want a personal library built onto your castle, a greenhouse garden for your personal delight you should be able to do so to your main castle... and be able to look in through windows to see what they are doing... we have the technology to make this happen and with the softened pretty 3D graphics we can do these days it wouldnt be too much work.
22. More antagonists. We need enemies (to save innocents from), we need to make enemies (when we are playing the conqueror/enslaver) - yes we need to be able to capture settlers and imprison them in our dungeons until a thief frees them or our dungeon is destroyed.
23. Events cant always be triggered by exploration... no more building up your city to a mighty stage before playing the rest of the campaign map (the time limit impress the Grandmother of Grandmothers was the only real challenge for me in this game - but I love the game nonetheless).
24. Dialogue options. You play as your ruling character and select orders which are voice acted for your king/queen with different voices to pick from. This also means, by playing your ruling character that if your castle/cathedral/storehouse is destroyed then its not game over. Anyway, with dialogue options what you say affects your alignment - i.e. if you say "Let the villagers starve." they may protest(protesting would be fun to watch if it could escalate into a riot and could be quelled either by providing what ever good/resource caused the issue or sending in your troops to dispatch or disperse the mob). If you dispatched the mob naturally your population goes down and you get tyrant points. Think Neverwinter Nights 2 and how dialogue options made interaction with the game so intensely interesting and amazingly fun.

Okay, Ive rattled on long enough. So tell me what do you think?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Galmordagan,

I think some lesson could be learned from the Stronghold games.

1: Instead of bandits issuing idle threats/capturing carts, have them actually attack you settlements.

2: Having to deal with two or more enemies at once as the game progresses.

3: More diverse range of troops, dedicated seige engineers/seige equipment.

4: City walls and towers built as seperate options

5: Seperate resource/food production for knight.

6: A Justice system to deal with crimes commited by the settlement

7: Fruit production.

8: The ability to build smaller storehouses in territories - this would mean you can place basic things like food /clothes production for the settlers there without their need to come back to the main settlement for those items.

9: Better Maps, whats the point in having territories you knight doesn't need to visit/claim during a mission.