14 DAY TRIAL // 
There’s no more stone to be found in my controlled territory. Loggers are bringing down trees and getting them to the sawmill. My carriers are busy moving coal and iron so that craftsmen can create weapons. I have even secured a gold mine and there’s a mint under construction.
But the stone shortage means I need to carefully consider what buildings I put down. I send my engineers out to secure a spot on the coast, backed by a small military contingent. Once I have the space, I build a harbor and quickly use my accumulated coin to secure more stone to power my expansion.
The problem is that there’s a lot of space to cover between the trading port and my warehouses. My economy is not at its best. And my expansion is limited by strong military forces on two sides. So I choose to put down another pair of coal and iron mines and try to boost my own troops. I still need to get a source of gems, which means there are quite a few battles in my immediate future.
The Settlers: New Allies is developed by Ubisoft Dusseldorf, the renamed Blue Byte, and published by Ubisoft. I played it on the PC via Ubisoft Connect. It is also coming to the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X and S, the Nintendo Switch, and older consoles from Microsoft and Sony in late March. The game takes the classic economic gameplay of the series and adds a new focus on strategy and combat.
The game’s campaign, spanning 13 missions, centers on a group of refugees, who witness and run from a military coup as their narrative starts. With limited resources, they land on a group of islands and quickly meet other factions, including groups of bandits that threaten everyone’s security.
Don’t expect depth or originality here. You get to see what each of the game’s three factions brings to the strategy table. The Elari, the original refugees, have an Arbalist as a unique unit and focus on development. The Maru are traders with an advantage in coins backed by a Javelin warrior. The Jorn have berserkers and more health for their engineers.
Gameplay has the economic element that Settlers has always been known for but with a bigger role for military preparations and combat. Resource chains for wood, stone, coal, and iron are important for the early game. They will allow players to churn out tools, which create engineers, and three types of weapons used to train the three core warrior types.
The engineers are the only ones that can put up buildings and, more importantly, push out the border stones that define the territory a faction is controlling. They will also prospect for the veins of coal, iron, gold, and gems that can only be found in clearly marked areas.
Minting coins will enable trade while getting gems opens up the training of healers and powerful units to destroy buildings. Once players assemble a strong military force, it’s time to take the fight to the enemy, killing their warriors and their engineers. It helps to have a decent mix of units but there are no real tactics in the new Settlers.
Academies, which open up research via guilds, are important for the late game. Try to invest to boost your faction's capabilities and your play style. And do not forget to invest in defensive towers and bastions.
I have not yet mentioned a supply chain for food because, weirdly, it represents a secondary concern in The Settlers: New Allies. Delivering certain types of foods to buildings can boost them, doubling output. But you can get through scenarios without giving any of the carriers, engineers, or military units, anything to eat. I suppose they forage, although berry shrubs are limited and needed for building boosts.
Success in a scenario requires good use of both engineers and military units. It’s also a matter of luck when it comes to underground resource veins. I found that it’s easy to under-invest in engineers at the start of a match and forget to boost the population by building more residences.
My biggest criticism for New Allies is how much it cares about military action, even if the premise is the Elari people are running from a coup. The game also suffers from the lack of an option to speed up or slow down time.
The new Settlers allows up to 16 players to engage in both cooperative and versus multiplayer matches on its skirmish maps. Make sure to learn their layout and challenges by playing a few games against the computer before challenging another human.
The game also includes a shop, where players can use two types of currencies to get cosmetic enhancements for their chosen faction. They have no effect on the actual gameplay. Real money can be used to get credits to purchase the items but also boosts. They will enable players to obtain more shards from matches and challenges, which can also be invested in any of the featured cosmetics.
The Settlers: New Allies is a good-looking experience for its genre. The three factions are not fundamentally different in terms of mechanics but do have a unique visual identity, remixing real-world inspirations in some fun ways. It’s always a pleasure to watch carriers move resources inside a village. The sound design is a little less successful. The voice actors do their best with the lines but some deliveries feel unnatural and the soundtrack never rises above the level of generic background music.
The Good
- Supply chain mechanics
- Skirmish and Hardcore variety
- Engineer strategies
The Bad
- Too much military focus
- Limited narrative
- Forgettable soundtrack
Conclusion
Ubisoft could have used the same gameplay and another name and players might be more interested. But the game does not do enough to differentiate itself from better experiences in the genre. The Settlers: New Allies wants to tweak a classic formula but never finds the best way to do that.
A review key was provided by the publisher.
