Champions of Anteria

The world map is divided into 26 territories, one of which is the player's city base.[5] At the commencement of the game, some of the territories are neutral and some are owned by one of the three factions opposing the player.[7] To complete the game, the player must own every territory on the world map.[7] To defeat an opposing faction permanently, the player must conquer their city base, which is guarded by a boss and can only be accessed after all territories belonging to that particular faction have been captured.[8] Players can only attack territories immediately adjacent to territories they already own, and when an opposing faction attacks the player's territory, the player has one day (in game-time) to prepare before they must play a defensive mission.[4][5] If the player wins, the attack is repelled, and the player retains the territory. If they lose, the territory will be captured by the opposing faction. The game is not over, however, until an opposing faction captures the player's city base territory.[4]

The game is played in 'turns', with the player and all opposing factions allowed to attack one territory per day.[4][7] Playing a defensive mission also constitutes a turn, meaning the player cannot play both a defensive and an offensive mission on the same day.[5] Enemy factions are fully automated and pursue their own objectives, levelling up their city bases independently of what the player is doing elsewhere on the map. In this way, an enemy faction might attack a player-owned territory, a neutral territory, or a territory owned by one of the other factions.[5][6]

Captured territories can be enhanced by the construction of trading posts and fortifications within each territory.[9][10] Trading posts increase the amount of gold and renown generated by a given territory each day, whilst fortifications delay an attack by a set amount of time.[10]

Screenshot of Champions of Anteria, showing the city base HUD. The border of the current sector is highlighted in white, and this sector already has several buildings. A newly added building (highlighted in white) illustrates the importance of slots – the player can only build in predetermined slots, of which there are a limited number per sector.

The player's city base is where the player gathers resources, constructs buildings, researches new technologies, forges weaponry and armour, and mixes potions. The city base generates a certain amount of resources each day, depending on what resource collection buildings and how many of each the player has built.[8][11] As the game progresses, the player can also build one-off buildings - an apothecary to create potions for healing, enhancing stats, and inflicting damage; a magister machinae to create stationary offensive weaponry and healing zones; a blacksmith to forge new weaponry and armour; and a market to trade resources for gold.[4][7] The Alchemist DLC added an additional one-off building, the "Foundry of Affinities", which allows the player to brew five types of new hybrid potions using a combination of resources.[12]

To ensure they have enough residents to populate the various buildings, the player must construct residences, whilst to expand their base into additional sectors within the city base territory, the player must build a watchtower within that sector.[6][9] Watchtowers can only be constructed when the player has access to a "brave person". The only way to attain brave people is by spending a certain amount of renown on the upgrade tree, which is where the player enhances their abilities, unlocks new buildings, and improves the available offers in the apothecary, machinae, and smith.[4] Renown can only be earned by conquering territories, with each territory granting a certain amount of renown per day.[4][8]

The player can level up their city base only by spending renown on the upgrade tree. Levelling up encompasses both the player's castle and every champion in their roster, so players don't need to level up each champion individually.[7][8] At every second level of upgrade, the player can unlock two new skills for each of their champions.[8]

Screenshot showing the combat HUD. On the right of the screen is the mini-map, below which is the objective list, whilst on the bottom left is the elemental affinity wheel. The image also shows the player's four item slots as well as the currently selected champion's action queue at the bottom of the screen. The queue currently contains three actions.

In the original game, players could command five champions each with their own elemental alignment and weapon; Vargus wields a broadsword and is skilled with metal, Anslem is a magic-user skilled with lightning, Nusala uses a bow-and-arrow and is skilled with nature, Oona wields dual-swords and is skilled with water, and Baltasar uses a gun and is skilled with fire.[13] The two DLC packs added two additional champions - Tarn, a brawler skilled with both metal and nature, and Weissle, a mage who can combine any three of the five elements into a hybrid magic.[12][14] Each champion also has access to attacks of a different element than their base element - Nusala, for example, can use fire-arrows, whilst Vargus can do a spinning water-based attack.[10][11]

For each combat mission, whether offensive or defensive, the player must pick three champions.[15] Prior to a mission, the player is told the elemental alignment of the majority of that territory's enemies, allowing the player to plan strategically in choosing their champions. The game uses a "rock paper scissors"-style wheel to determine which element is strong against which other element - fire is strong against metal, metal against nature, nature against lightning, lightning against water, and water against fire.[7][9][16] If a champion's alignment is strong against the alignment of an enemy, they will inflict 135% normal damage; on the other hand, if the enemy's alignment is strong against the champion, the champion will inflict only 65% damage.[4][5][11]

An important gameplay element is "Active Pause Mode", wherein the player can pause the game, but continue to enter commands, which the champions will carry out when the game is unpaused.[6] It is possible to queue up to four commands per champion.[8][17]

Each champion has 13 learnable skills, but only eight can be learned on a single play-through, as every time the player learns a skill, they lose access to another skill.[10] Of the eight skills, four can be taken into battle at any one time. These skills have various effects, such as stat boosts, extra damage, healing, or temporarily altering the elemental affinities of enemies or allies.[4][18][11] The player also has four inventory slots each of which can store a set number of potions and/or weaponry created in the machinae.[10]

The game was originally announced in June 2014, under the title The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria, the eight entry in the city-building and real-time strategy franchise, The Settlers.[24] Blue Byte's Director of Product Development, Christopher Schmitz, said of the game, "by reinventing our approach to the franchise, The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria offers players a brand new experience full of new possibilities to explore. Without a doubt, this is the most innovative Settlers game we have ever created".[25] In August, Ubisoft released the first screenshots and revealed that the game would be a combination of city-building and action role-playing, with the combat sections likened to the Diablo series or a MOBA.

At this stage of development, the supply and demand-based city-building gameplay was similar to previous Settlers titles, involving economic micromangement, constructing and upgrading buildings, researching new technologies, and gathering resources, with an emphasis on building up a robust economic model, managing daisy-chain economic processes, navigating technology trees, and improving the player's settlement.[26] An innovation in the basic Settlers gameplay at this time was that when the player constructs a building, it is no longer automatically linked to other buildings or automatically assigned a role. So, for example, when the player builds a lumberjack, nothing will happen until the player manually assigns the occupant a section of forest in which to work.[27] Similarly, when the player builds a sawmill, it doesn't automatically form an economic chain with the lumberjack. Instead, the player must manually link the buildings, with each building capable of being linked with only one other building - so if the player has more than one sawmill and lumberjack, they must choose how to set up the buildings' interactions.[28] This was to be the case for production chains involving two buildings or many buildings - everything must be manually linked by the player, allowing a level of control not yet seen in the franchise.[29]

In July 2014, Blue Byte revealed that players would need to remain online while playing; if the network connection is lost, the game will automatically pause until the connection is re-established.[30] This proved to be a controversial announcement, with fans and journalists referring to Ubisoft's disastrous rollout of their 2010 digital rights management system, the Online Services Platform, which rendered The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom unplayable for thousands of players across the globe.[31][32][33] In an October interview with PC Games, Guido Schmidt, then lead designer, defended the decision to make the game only playable whilst the player is online:

The reason for this lies in our intention to create a long-term, cooperative experience. We want players to cooperate with each other over a longer period of time, go on adventures together, and do business. This was a brave decision when we started the project - we were aware of that. But we didn't want to make another classic Settlers game - we wanted to create something really new and innovative instead. Hence the new game structure. A lot has happened since the release of The Settlers 7. Last but not least, we've also received feedback from The Settlers Online players who encouraged us to develop a pure online PC game.[34]

At Gamescom in August, Schmidt revealed that unlike in previous Settlers titles, the player would have only one city, which they develop throughout the game, rather than having to build a new city every level.[29][35] He also touted the game's economic system, which he stated was the most complex in the franchise's history, with some of the more advanced economic processes involving up to 19 buildings.[35][36] Discussing the differentiation between combat missions and city-building, Schmidt said the designers were acting on feedback from fans, who disliked being under pressure whilst they tried to build up their city, as that city could be attacked at any time. With this in mind, Blue Byte decided to completely divorce combat from city-building, structuring the combat more in the vein of a dungeon crawler than the kind of real-time strategy combat seen in previous titles.[35]

The German closed beta began on August 20 and the international beta on September 16.[35][37] However, by late October, it had become apparent that the beta was generating predominantly negative feedback from both fans and journalists.[8][16] Many found the combat gameplay too similar to Diablo games, and criticised the repetitiveness of the missions, the necessity for grinding, the high difficulty level, an unclear tutorial, chaotic fights, non-rotatable camera, and poor AI.[38] They were also highly critical of the game's use of real-world money to speed up construction, buy resources, and expand inventory slots, with many opining that the game felt like a free-to-play title, even though it was full price.[16][39] There was also a strong feeling that the game didn't feel like a Settlers title.[8]

In his PC Games interview in October, Schmidt said that based on feedback received during the beta, the combat portions of the game, which originally made up roughly 75% of gameplay would be scaled back to around 50%; players would level up faster, giving them access to more buildings and abilities earlier in a playthrough; the default difficulty level would be lowered; AI would be improved; and the tutorial would be expanded. He also reiterated that the use of real-world money would not be removed and wait-times for construction and resource collection would not be reduced.[34]

In January 2015, Ubisoft abruptly ended the beta several months early.[40] In a statement on the game's official forums, they stated: "This step is unusual but necessary so that we can fully concentrate on modifications, new content, and solutions to known problems. Many upcoming changes are based on the huge amount of valuable feedback that has been collected to date".[41] They also promised that there would be "information coming in the near future".[41]

However, nothing more was heard of the game, and when it wasn't featured at Gamescom 2015 in August, many speculated that it may not be released at all.[42] By February 2016, most journalists had concluded that the game had been cancelled, despite no word from either Blue Byte or Ubisoft confirming or denying a cancellation.[43] However, in April 2016, Blue Byte published an open letter on the game's forum and Facebook page explaining that Kingdoms of Anteria would be released in August, albeit no longer as a Settlers title, with the new name of Champions of Anteria, and with redesigned gameplay:

After much discussion, we made the decision to steer this project in a new direction, meaning The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria as you know it no longer exists. However, we are excited to announce that we have been working hard to create a new game, a challenging real-time strategy experience that we are revealing to you today, Champions of Anteria. To be clear, the game isn't part of The Settlers series, but a new adventure.[44]

They went on to talk about the style of the game and how it differed from titles in The Settlers series: "With a renewed focus on story, the economic and logistic features are revised and are handled via a homebase management system where you can craft items for your Champions and unlock new abilities". They also stated, "for those who are wondering about the classic Settlers series, rest assured that The Settlers is alive and kicking!"[44] With the negative criticism of the closed beta in mind, Blue Byte had restructured the game entirely, all but removing city-building and economic micromanagement, whilst streamlining the game into a single-player only title.[38]