The Settlers: Rise of an Empire (German: Die Siedler: Aufstieg eines Königreichs) is a city-building game with real-time strategy elements, developed by Blue Byte and published by Ubisoft. Released for Microsoft Windows in September 2007, it is the sixth game in The Settlers series. In March 2008, Blue Byte released an expansion, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire - The Eastern Realm (German: Die Siedler: Aufstieg eines Königreichs - Reich des Ostens), featuring new single-player campaign missions, new maps for both single-player and multiplayer modes, and an enhanced map editor. In September, they released The Settlers: Rise of an Empire - Gold Edition, containing the original game plus the Eastern Realm expansion, and additional single and multiplayer maps. The Gold Edition was also release