Like most other RTS games, you're presented with a briefing screen in the beginning of each mission which outlines your objectives (usually to claim the entire land mass and destroy every other living being in the vicinity) and a map showing the area of contention. The campaign mode is split into three difficulty levels, with each corresponding to the three different civilizations ¿ the Roman campaign is easy, the Asian campaign is moderately difficult, and the Egyptian campaign is hard.

When the game begins, you can opt to play an entire campaign or a quick single map scenario. It is your job to lead your people to glory by conquering other civilizations and capturing as many territories as possible. You'll take the role of either Septimus Marius (a Roman boat captain), Tsu-Tang (an Asian rice farmer), or Ramadamses (an Egyptian sculptor). HE (as the head god is referred to in the game) brings Jupiter, Horus, and Ch'ih-Yu before HIM and explains that they must find one among their followers who has the talent, ambition, and far-sightedness to lead their people, otherwise HE will destroy the universe and begin anew with a different set of deities. A messenger sent by the head cheese (bet you never knew there was one guy who ran the whole show for every religion, did ya'?) visits the gods and tells them of the boss' displeasure in their laziness and lack of effectiveness as deities. They're all sitting around on a luxurious floating marble city getting fat, bloated and smashed off of the food and alcohol offerings from their worshippers. Settlers III opens with a cartoonish animation of three gods from completely different mythoi who should obviously never be seen together: Jupiter (leader of the Roman Pantheon), Horus (the falcon-headed Egyptian sun god), and Ch'ih-Yu (the legendary Chinese dragon). Like the others, Settlers III is a good game, but there's nothing really new or innovative here. So, with the release of Settlers III, I was expecting about the same. Although neither of the two previous installments broke any new ground in the strategy genre, they were decent games that provided gamers with some of the most highly detailed economic systems available in any strategy game.

The Settlers series from Blue Byte has been a fairly successful franchise for the company, especially in Europe.

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