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[Eagle of Fire]

From "Radme.txt" which come with the packaged game on this site:

15. Brief walkthrough of "Chapter 1"

There is a lot to do in "The Settlers II Gold Edition" so keep playing and you will keep finding new things to try.

Once the chapter starts you will get a message window - this window will pop up from time to time to give you new information and tell you what to do next.

The first thing you need to do is to build a Woodcutter, Quarry and a Sawmill. Press the space bar, you will see the screen fill up with golden flags and buildings.* The flags represent places where you can build roads, and the buildings show where you can build each of the three sizes of buildings.

The Woodcutter should be first. Click on one of the small golden huts, above
and to the left of the HQ (tent). It is important to remember that a woodcutter will need trees nearby to cut down. The window that pops up is the action window, it allows you to do many things throughout the game. Right now it shows all the types of buildings you could build at this location. Move the mouse over the building that shows the Woodcutter on the bottom of the action window
and click. A empty lot with a blue flag is now on the screen.

Now you need to connect the blue flag in front of your HQ to the one in front of the soon-to-be Woodcutter. To do this click on the flag in front of the Woodcutter, the action window comes up again, this time with different options. Click the build
road option and then on the flag in front of the HQ, you now have your first road. Builders and helpers will now come out of the HQ and start to build the woodcutter's quarters for you.* You can watch them moving building materials
(wood and stone) to the new building site and begin construction.

Now you need to build the Quarry. The Quarry is also a small sized building. Follow the same steps above but build the Quarry close to the outcrop of rock to the lower right of the HQ. After all, to create stone for building the Stonemason needs large amounts of granite to work with.* Do not forget to connect your new building to you road network.

Next is the Sawmill, where the carpenter works. The Sawmill is the first medium sized building you will need. You must click on the golden icon of a 'L' shaped building on the map and in the activity window.* Build the Sawmill as described above.* Do not forget to connect your new building to you road network.

By now you should see a dove on the bottom left of the menu bar on the bottom of the screen. Now click on the dove to open the Post Office window. You will receive many messages here, from the attack of other peoples to where a Geologist finds new raw materials. To close most windows you can click the top
left corner or right click anywhere inside the window.

If you're not sure what a button does press the 'i' key and move the mouse over the button, it will give you a short description on the button.* You can also click on
the '?' in many windows to get a more complete explanation on what that window does.

Now experiment.* Try clicking on the HQ and to see what you can do there. You can see what raw materials you have left, how many people of each profession
you have and how many soldiers are set to defend your HQ.* You should not need to make adjustments to the HQ often, so be careful, you can unbalance your whole economy here.

Click on the Sawmill to see what stock is waiting to be turned into boards for building.

There are many other windows and functions in the game, you have a good start, pay attention to raw materials and supplies.* Above all else ... Have fun!

16. The Map Editor

When you edit the position of your headquarters, you need to choose the "castle"- symbol.

The distribution of your raw materials are shown as percentages in the test window. Be sure to have two times as much coal as iron and gold. The percentage shown for granite contains only the deposits in the mountains.

If you choose a resolution higher than 640x480 but it does not work, then you may have only 8Meg of RAM or your graphics card does not support this mode. Try
selecting a different mode or switching back to 640x480.

When entering a map name and creator name please make sure to use the ENTER key when done. If you do not the information may not be saved correctly.

Further informations: having a good supply of boards by setting up a sawmil along with several woodcutters (at least 2 by sawmill, and at least one forester for 2 woodcutters) and having a good supply of stone (taking all the stone you can get early is a good thing. You won't need to worry about stone and you'll get extra place for new buildings), while essential, is only the first step.

What you need to do is to think in advance of what you will need and look forward for the future. When you look at your supplies (in your castle) you can see that you have a finite number of item of each kind, if you have any. Any item listed there can be manufactured by you in a way or another.

First, the tools. The tools are the second most important thing to watch out for after the raw materials. While the raw materials allow you to build new buildings, the tools is what allow your settlers to be able to work in them. Even if you do have raw materials and build a lot of buildings doesn't mean that you will be able to staff them all. For example, the first tool you should lack of is the woodcutter axe. Without any, all the woodcutter house you build will stay empty until you build more axes or destroy a woodcutter house which already have a woodcutter.

The metalworks is the building which will allow you to create more tools for your settlers. The metal works need iron and boards to create tools. While you should have boards in quantity, you only have a very sparse amount of iron at the beginning of the game (and the metalworks is not the only building using iron either). So, you will need iron.

To get iron, you need an iron smelter, which in turn requite iron ore and coal. Both are also in limited quantity in your castle.

So, off to getting iron ore and coal then, isn't? To do that, you need metal deposits, which are found in mountains. To find them, you need Geologists. Create a flag somewhere on the mountain and click on it (hold right-click and then left click on it) then send one or more Geologist at that location. Once the Geologist find a deposit, you will be able to build a mine on it. Coal is black, iron ore is red, granite is white and gold is yellow. The mine you build will search only the mine type of ore, so be sure to build the right mine on the right spot. After you build your first mines, you may notice that they simply refuse working unless you bring them food.

There is 3 type of food in The Settlers: fish, meat and bread. The bread industry is by far the best of the three, but require a lot of investment both in buildings and in space.

Fish: can be found anywhere where there is water. Basically, you will want to build fisheries at coasts and by the side of a lake very early, since it's the most easily available source of food at the beginning of the game. Watch out for over fishing, tough I suspect every game start up with a limited number of fish in each water tile...

Meat: can be hunted down at the very beginning of the game by hunters but require wild animals to be running or jumping around so they get meat. Once the animals are all gone, they are useless. A more efficient way to have meat is to kill pigs at the slaughterhouse. Every pig will provide you with one meat. You can get more pigs at the pig farm, which require grain and water to feed the pigs. You get grain from farms.
You get the water from wells, which require you to find a source somewhere on grassland with your Geologists first. When you find a source, build the well on it.

Bread: the bakery will bake them for you, providing you have flour and water coming. Flour is made at the mill, but you need grains first to make the flour. The grain come from the farms.

So, as you can see, in resume we have:
Food (bread, meat, fish) -=> Mines (iron ore, coal) -=> Iron Smilter (iron) -=> Metalworks (along with boards) -=> New tools.

Second, the weapons. The weapons is the third most important object in The Settlers. Even if you play only for fun and don't have any ennemy on the map, you will still need to build military buildings to eventually expend your borders. You should have a number of swords and shields in your castle which should suffice until you are able to make more yourself, but time will come when all your military buildings are staffed by the minimum amount of knights and that you can't staff your latest guardhouse or tower (when at war it is very advisable to keep the maximum amount of knights on the bordering military buildings).

Manufacturing weapons is similar to manufacturing tools. You will need iron and coal at your Armory for it to produce swords and shields. Each Knight need both one sword and one shield, so having a single shield or a single sword somewhere is not enough for you to get a Knight. Also, the Armory will need both one iron and one coal to produce a sword OR a shield, so you actually need two iron and two coal to have one Knight. An armory always produce one then the other, so unless you have more than one armory working you can't have a sword without the shield to match (unless it is not made yet).

In resume, we have:
Food (bread, meat, fish) -=> Mines (iron ore, coal) -=> Iron Smilter (iron) -=> Armory (along with more coal) -=> A sword or a shield.

The fourth most important aspect to The Settlers is coins (gold). You need coins to train your soldiers so they are more efficient in battle, both in attacks and defense. The raw material for making coins is gold, so you will need a gold mine somwhere first. Then the gold will be used to make coins at the mint along with some coal. Once the coins been made they will be sent to the nearest storehouse (your castle is a storehouse) and they will be sent to the nearest military building. One coin train one Knight once, so you will need a lot of coin to train a rookie (weakest) to a general (strongest).

In resume, we have:
Food (bread, meat, fish) -=> Mine (gold) -=> Mint (along with some more coal) -=> Coins


Those are the fourth most important points of The Settlers. However, there is more to it than only what been said on this post. I leave the rest to be figured out.