The Settlers (German: Die Siedler) is a 1993 city-building video game with real-time strategy elements for Amiga and MS-DOS.

Developed and published by Blue Byte Software, the Amiga version was released in Germany in June 1993 and in the United Kingdom in November.

The game is set in a medieval milieu, and controlled via a point and click interface, with the primary goal on each map being to build a settlement with a functioning economy, producing sufficient military units so as to conquer rival territories, ultimately gaining control of the entire map.

However, due to the complexities of writing a codebase which understood and could realistically duplicate such a system, as well as ensuring the computer could handle military and economic matters simultaneously, the game required over two years of development.

The Settlers is a city-building game with real-time strategy elements,[8][9][10] controlled via a point and click interface, in which the primary goal on each map is to build a settlement with a functioning economy, producing sufficient military units so as to conquer rival territories, ultimately gaining control of the entire map.

[17][18] The basic gameplay revolves around serfs (the titular "settlers") who transport materials, tools and produce, and who populate and perform the requisite task of each building.

[30][31] Waterways can also be constructed over small bodies of water in the same manner as roads, although the settlers need boats to cross.

For example, the player can control the distribution of goods by selecting how much of a given resource is transported to a given building, under five separate headings; food, wood, iron, coal and wheat.

For example, if the player has built a blacksmith, and the building is still empty despite idle settlers in the headquarters, pliers will need to be manufactured in the toolsmith.

[35] Knights are automatically created from the pool of existing settlers in the headquarters, with each individual soldier requiring a sword and shield.

[40] Volker Wertich, the game's designer and programmer, was initially inspired to create The Settlers by titles such as Little Computer People, Populous and SimCity.

In The Settlers, the player would be responsible for the raw materials upon which the economic system was built, by way of constructing and maintaining each link in the chain of production.

[41] According to producer Thomas Hertzler, the main driving force behind much of the development was "to create an economy simulation without it being boring".

[37] The game's project manager Stefan Piasecki further explains the reason for the lengthy development cycle was "due mainly to [the] enormous amount of data that had to be inputted.

[41] His biggest challenge was getting the computer to understand and accurately simulate supply and demand, which, once the necessary buildings have been constructed, is handled almost entirely outside the privy of the player.

Each individual settler's head is only 5x5 pixels, the space available for artist Christoph Werner to create twenty-five different looks.

[43] Thomas Häuser, who did quality assurance work on the game, and was promoted to project manager for The Settlers II, explains "the Amiga source code was completely undocumented.

Amiga User International scored the game 97%, calling it "a true masterpiece" and "an awesome piece of programming that could only have been achieved by creative talent of the highest order".

They compared it favourably to Populous, and praised it as the best god game ever made, writing "The Settlers has broken new programming ground and will be the benchmark in years to come for any up-and-coming software writer".

He too lauded the economic system, the connections between the buildings, the graphics and the sound effects, and he too found the game superior to Populous, writing "with so many of this type of title knocking around, it really is refreshing to see a product that is fresh and entertaining".

His only criticism was the steep learning curve, arguing that on-screen labelling of the different buildings would have helped ease the player in.

Although she praised the graphics and sound effects, she was critical of the game's repetitiveness, writing "after only a few days, the motivation drops significantly because the tasks become routine".

[60] The game formed the basis for The Settlers series, leading to nine further titles, and becoming one of Blue Byte's best-selling franchises.

[44] Subsequent games in the series have been released on DOS, Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Nintendo DS, iOS, webOS, bada, Symbian, Android, and online.

Outside the official series, The Settlers has given rise to two free, open source games released under the GNU General Public License.

[62][63] In a 2009 review of Build13 for Linux Journal, John Knight wrote: "Widelands is a breath of fresh air in an extremely stale genre, whose roots ironically stem from way back in the past in RTS history.

Whether you're chasing a fix of that original Settlers feel or just want a different direction in RTS, this game is well worth a look".

[64] Freeserf, developed by Jon Lund Steffensen and made available at GitHub, is an attempt to reimplement the Settlers' game mechanics in C++.

[67][68] In November, the game was also included in The Settlers: History Collection, with the same features and Windows 10 optimisation as the stand-alone August release.