IV, released for multiple operating systems. The next game was the seventh entry in the main series, The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom. In the early stages of development, Blue Byte looked at the two previous games, Heritage of Kings and Rise of an Empire, both of which had been unpopular with fans, to see why they didn't work as Settlers titles. Whilst Heritage had gone too far in the direction of real-time strategy, with far more emphasis on combat than city-building, Rise had restored the centrality of city-building, but also featured a significantly simpler economic model than any previous title in the series, with little focus on the daisy-chain economic processes upon which the first four Settlers titles were built. In the lead-up to the release of Paths to a Kingdom, Grindel admitted, "with Settlers 5 and 6, we lost many loyal fans, despite having a larger base target group." With this in mind, the designers looked both forward and backwards - introducing new game mechanics such as a Victory Points system and greatly improving the graphics, but also going back to, for example, The Settlers II for the centrality of building a good road network and The Settlers III for the complexity of the production chains. Lead designer Andreas Nitsche explained that the importance of the Victory Point system would mean combat is no longer more important than economic micromanagement: "It's always been a pity that behind every fish that was caught, every iron ingot that was cast, there was only one motivation - to fight the enemy. This situation has been changed by the Victory Point system. Now there are many ways to use your economy to win, not just totally annihilating the enemy; now, economic competition for technologies, trading posts, or land can lead to victory". Blue Byte also hired Bruce Shelley, co-designer of Railroad Tycoon and Civilization, and lead designer on the first three Age of Empires games, as a design consultant on Paths to a Kingdom, specifically with an eye to making the game more appealing to a North American market and correcting some of the perceived problems with Heritage of Kings and Rise of an Empire. Anteria and New Allies (2010-2023) The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria was announced in June 2014, with Blue Byte citing it as "the most innovative Settlers game we have ever created". In August, Ubisoft released the first