The Settlers III/Controls

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The Settlers III | Table of Contents | Walkthrough

The Settlers III can be controlled entirely by mouse. This guide will assume you do so. A list of hotkeys is at the bottom. Note: If you don't have both addons installed, there are small differences (you won't be able to choose the Mission CD campaigns if you don't have the Mission CD, for example).

[edit] Out of game

Note: Clicking is done with the left mouse button

In the main menu, some buttons can be clicked.

Tutorial - Starts the Tutorial
Campaign - Starts a campaign that originally was in the game
Mission CD campaign - Starts a campaign that was introduced with the Mission CD
Amazons campaign - Starts a campaign that was introduced with the Amazons CD
Campaign: normal - Choose a difficulty. Possibilities are normal and easy. The walkthrough assumes this is normal.
Single Player - Play alone on a random, single player, multi player or own map.
Multi Player LAN - Play a multi player game via LAN
Multi Player Internet - Play a multi player game via internet. You'll need to create an account if you play for the first time.
Load game - Load a saved game or replay a campaign mission you've already won if you have the Mission CD.
Manual - Read the HTML manual. You need a HTML reader (normally a web browser).
Hints - Read the HTML hints file. You need a HTML reader (normally a web browser).
Credits - Shows the developers' names
End game - Exit

[edit] In-game controls

On the left top side are some buttons. From top to down:

ABC - choose chat partners
Map - Toggles map display (land + water, geography, political)
Soldier - Toggles settlers display on the map (none, directly controlable, all)
House - Toggles house display on the map (show houses, don't show houses)

On the bottom there are five buttons. From left to right:

PC - Game options (save game, leave game)
The other four appear when you get messages

In the middle, three buttons appear. Clicking one will result in four more buttons. From left to right:

Build - build menu
- Raw material buildings - Mines, quarry, sawmill, woodcutter, forester
- Food buildings - Buildings for food
- Military buildings - Expansion, production of war machines, soldiers, ships, healer
- Town buildings - Residences, temples, storage and market

Goods - goods related
- Overview - Shows all goods
- Tools and weapons - Toggle production of tools and weapons
- Goods control - Click on the buttons to set where goods should be brought to
- Transport - Priority of goods when transported and if they should go into storage areas

Settler - settler related
- Statistics - Shows all settlers
- Occupations - Control the percentage of carriers, builders etc, make pioneers etc
- Recruiting - Upgrade soldiers (if enough mana was created) and set recruiting to automatic or manual
- Production statistics [not in early versions] - Click on a button to see how many goods per minute are produced.
- Mana [only in early versions] - In early versions, instead of the production statistics here was shown how much mana is usable for spells. This can be seen by clicking on a priest now only.

[edit] Hotkeys

Menus:

Q - open the build menu with raw material buildings.
W - open the build menu with food buildings.
E - open the build menu with military buildings.
R - open the build menu with town buildings.

A - open the goods menu with overview.
S - open the goods menu with tools and weapons.
D - open the goods menu with goods control.
F - open the goods menu with transport.

Z or Y - open the settlers menu with statistics.
X - open the settlers menu with occupations.
C - open the settlers menu with recruiting.
V - open the settlers menu with production (or mana in early versions).

Other:

T - see a timer in the bottom right corner that counts time since mission start.
P - pause and unpause the game
F12 - skip a minute (the actions are calculated before the skip, the screen freezes for a short moment). Warning: Calculation may take very long if you skip too much time at once by pressing the button too often.