If you're one of the people without DRM issues, you'll love this game.
The Settlers 7 itself is a magnificent game and seems fairly polished despite a few minor issues. The campaign isn't really long and plays out more like an extended tutorial that doesn't really feel like a tutorial, which I liked since it helped me to learn the basics of the game.
There aren't a whole lot of skirmish matches but there is a map customizer in the game that allows you to change the existing maps. For one map I made it so the center territory had stone walls, the strongest kind, and had a sizable army. Then I made it so that whoever controls this zone will earn a victory point, the only victory point needed to win, so then there would be a three minute countdown towards victory for whoever held it.
Most maps, for skirmish anyways, start with several basic buildings including your castle, which you can customize in a variety of ways from the main menu and unlock more castle parts as you progress through the game. I was surprised how incredibly complex and yet fun this game is compared to the previous installment. You usually start by establishing a lodge to which you can attach up to three workplaces to, if you're placing your lodge by a forest you can attach a logging camp, sawmill, and if you wish a forester as well, which plants trees as opposed to cutting them down.
Next you need food. The easiest way to get food, though probably not the simplest, is to make bread. You need to build a farm and attach a grain workplace to it, you then need a windmill to ground the grain to flour, and then you need to attach a bakery to one of your residences(house). There are a few production lines that are as complex as this, and some less-so. But it all comes together wonderfully.
The Settlers 7 seems to come back towards a traditional Settlers feel, like a blend between the old (II) and new (VI). Such as how they've implimented the Geologist. Geologists are aquired by unlocking them at the Prestige Tree. Then you can switch a mine building from gathering say gold, to analyzing the mine. This will cause one of three things to happen every time the geologist makes his rounds to the mine. A)He finds more gold(mines current resource) B)He finds stone and brings it back C)He finds nothing. Note that the Geologist cannot mine the resource himself, he can only find more of it which a regular miner will then be able to mine, but he does bring back stone which will become handy later in the match when stone mines start to deplete.
Combat I think was handled much better than it was in Settlers 6. The map is divided into territories, your home territory is where you'll have your first general unit. He leads your soldiers to battle and any units you create will automatically join him in your castle or wherever he's stationed. When you click your general you can tell him, and any troops attached, which territory you'd like him to attack or travel to. If the territory is protected by walls or towers your army will have to stop there and engage them until either it's destroyed or you tell them to retreat. Wooden fortifications required musketeers to destroy, while stone fortifications require cannons. Once your army passes the fortifications any opposition will come out of that territories fort and meet your army on the battlefield. If you win you will head into their fort and take it over, after that you can begin building there, harvesting any resources that may be needed by you.
Another wonderful thing about The Settlers 7 which adds to it's complexity are the paths you can take towards victory. Firstly there's a tree known as the Prestige Tree. You earn Prestige by building buildings and ornaments. Every time your prestige goes up you can choose a new unlock from the tree. If you chose to unlock the church, stronghold, export building (all one unlock) that's when you begin more specifically choosing your path.
Each the church, stronghold and export building are fairly expensive by early-game standards and each one brings distinct benefits. The Church could be classified as the science path, Stronghold as the military path, and Export building as the trade path. Each one leads you on a path to specializing your town to fit the requirements of that path. If you build a church you'll need to purchase clerics which require beer . The export building requires clothing, and the stronghold requires weapons. It is possible to embark on more than one path but since you can only unlock a maximum of ten prestige unlocks you will be short on other benefits you could have had had you specialized.
I'm not sure what to say for if I should recommend this game or not. I mean I definitely want everyone who likes rts's or the settlers to play this game but some people aren't able to even access it because you need to be connected to a server all the time and sometimes the server is down, this is to get into the game at all. The game is a wonderful game and so I will say this; Buy this game at your own risk, maybe you'll be lucky and be able to play like me, if you don't want to risk it then wait for a patch to fix those issues and buy the game then.