The Settlers III (German: Die Siedler III) is a real time strategy game with focus on the player's economy. It was created and published by the German developer Blue Byte and released in late 1998. It features single- and multiplayer gaming.
The original game came with three campaigns of ten missions each, as well as some maps for single- and multiplayer mode. The singleplayer maps featured different objectives as well. Small differences of the races - Romans, Asians and Egyptians - were in building costs, war machines, mana production and mines.
The developers introduced a mana system in Settlers III where the players could either build great temples or sacrifice alcoholic drinks (Romans: Wine, Asians: Sake, Egyptians: Beer, later for the Amazons Met) to gain mana from the gods. With the mana, priests were able to cast spells that had either temporary (e.g., stat boosts for soldiers) or permanent (e.g., summoning items) effects. However, while mana was a nice addition, it was not crucial to win.
Also, unlike in previous games, it was able to expand territory without building towers. Theoretically, only one tower had to be held since otherwise the game would be lost. While pioneers could expand territory, towers had priority so they were not able to expand into enemy territory when it was covered by towers. For the first time, it was able to command settlers manually, like in real-time strategy games Age of Empires or Starcraft. This allowed attacking enemies even if they were not near.
The computer got some serious AI limitations, most notably the inability to manage different territories on different islands. Also, he never used pioneers but it is not known if this was originally intended or not been able to build in.
Some time after the release, a mission CD was published by Blue Byte, featuring three new campaigns as well as a mission editor. Finally, Blue Byte released another addon with a new race. For the first time in the series women were introduced which got an own campaign. Another campaign came with the second addon, too, where the three male races battled the Amazons. The map editor was included on the Amazons CD in a new version so it could be used even if one didn't possess the first addon. The game later reappeared on a platinum collection that included all Settlers games up to The Settlers V with addons.