Once upon a time, there was a mighty ship called the “Torius,” on its way to deliver cargo to the Laetonic provinces. Nothing seemed to stop its run through the smooth surface of the ocean. But then, just four days shy of its destination, a strong wind came up in the “Treacherous Sea of Storms.” It blew the Torius far off course. The Torius then ran aground on an unknown island, far away from popular trading routes. Your role is that of of “Octavius,” Captain of the Torius. Your goal is to establish a temporary settlement, explore the island, and find a way home to Rome.
Don’t let the name of the game fool you. You didn’t miss anything. There is no Settlers I; at least, not for the Mac. It came out for the PC some time ago and was a huge hit. It was so popular that BlueByte decided to come up with a Mac version of its sequel “Settlers II—Veni, Vidi, Vici,” the Latin form of, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” oft attributed to Julius Caesar.
Once you start the program, it is easy to tell that Settlers II is a “PC port.” Actually, the evidence comes even earlier. There is no installer. You have to create a new folder on your hard drive, then copy the application, map, and data folders into it. Nowhere is this process explained. The authors assumed that users would run Settlers II from the CD-ROM. You can do that, but it limits your options. For instance, command-Q ends the current game, but doesn’t quit the program. The interface is a collection of a main window and smaller tool windows that behaves like a mixture of windows and palettes. Overall the interface is weird, but it is possible to get acclimated.
 
The manual is short and not very helpful. It mostly says how, but not why.
One thing that distinguishes Settlers from other strategic simulations is that you don’t command units. Instead, you give orders by setting priorities and guidelines. Your units try to follow them, which seems confusing at first. Basically, you don’t select a worker and tell him to build a house at a particular location. In Settlers II, you order that a house be put at a certain position. Your units will do what is necessary to build it. You don’t select a soldier and tell him to attack a building. Instead, you click on the enemy building and choose attack from the floating window. You specify how many soldiers should attack the building and whether to use experienced warriors or new recruits. Other units (e.g., woodcutters, hunters, and foresters) do what they want, but you can guide them by building their homes close to resources. You can specify a flagged destination for your scouts and geologists, but once they get there, they take off in whatever direction they want.
Transportation is the most important concept in Settlers II. Without roads, nothing moves. For me, this was a painful lesson. I played before reading the manual and put buildings all over the screen. Then I waited. For about five minutes. Nothing happened. As it turns out, you have to connect buildings with roads to your headquarters before your units can do anything. Once roads are in place, your units can start transporting resources from headquarters or the storehouse to the next flag down the road. There, the next unit takes over and brings the material (e.g., stones or food) to the next flag, and so on…This chain system is your major means of transportation.
Flags and building squares are the second most important concept in Settlers II. There are three different types of buildings: small, medium and large. You can only build a large building in a square that allows large buildings. How that is determined is a total mystery to me, but if you press the space bar, you’ll see an overlay of flags and building squares on your territory. The overlay shows where you can build what. You can build small houses in large squares, but the converse is not true.
Be warned! Building a street or a house changes the flags and building allowances around it. If you build a street right next to a large square, it will probably be reduced to a medium square. The best thing is to put a large building there first, then construct the street. Streets can only be placed between buildings or between a building and a flag.
There is one helper per flag. This helper carries goods to the next flag one by one. Therefore, it is more efficient to put many flags on a road to shorten the distance between two flags. This way, the helper carries more efficiently. A heavily used street is converted automatically to a donkey trail, provided you have donkeys. If not, you have to build a donkey farm.
 
Zones of control are another important concept (see picture above). Building is limited to within your zones of control. How do you get a zone of control? By building a military building. This is a bit of a paradox. How can you build a building that is needed for building? Put a military building on the border of an existing zone. You extend your zones of control piece by piece.
Military buildings house your soldiers. They are the only buildings you and your enemy can attack. Military buildings can hold different numbers of soldiers. There is even a catapult that destroys enemy buildings in a certain range.
When a military building is captured, all the opponent’s buildings within that zone are destroyed and their units flee retreat to their remaining territory. You cannot attack civilians, only military buildings. Your patrols can attack incoming soldiers. The military system is very simple. Soldiers are the only military unit, but they come in six different flavors, i.e., strengths. The strength of a unit depends on how much beer and gold coins they get.
The military system is simple, but the economy consists of numerous goods.
For construction and tools, you need stones, trees 
chopped, delivered to the saw mill, and lumber
produced. You need to mine iron ore, coal, granite,
and gold. Raw materials are converted to finished
metals, from which weapons (swords and shields)
are produced, tools (around 15 of them) crafted,
and gold coins minted.
Your fishermen need the line and hook tool to catch
the fish that feed your miners. Your farms produce
the grain for the mill, brewery, and bakery, and
for feeding livestock. The slaughterhouse makes
ham out of the poor pigs. For some reason, miners
are the only “units” that need food.
Playing Settlers II is frustrating at first, but once
you have figured out how everything works, it is a
lot of fun. The graphics are nicely done. The back-
ground music plays right off the CD. Your citizens
are very cute; you can just lean back and watch
them do their jobs. You can zoom in on the window,
however that merely magnifies the graphics pixel
by pixel without adding detail. The game has an
“accelerate” key (2x), should you feel hasty.
In an attempt to keep the game interesting, there
are multiple missions and custom scenarios.
However, I found them a little boring over time.
Settlers II is great for children. There is little or
no violence. However, it will take them some time to understand the whole game. I’d advise parents to assist their children in the beginning.
Settlers II is a good game. The idea is excellent. Implementation is good, but could be better. It has an in-game help function that can occasionally spare you some consultation with the printed manual. I doubt it can compare with giants like Civilization II or Warcraft II, but it is certainly worth a try and the new concept is quite entertaining. Adding multi-player games in the future would be a huge plus.
