Dawn of Man

[crazy canuck]

I have played through the starting scenario and about half way through on the next difficulty level scenario. 

Even on Early Release, it is a very sold fun game.  It is part survival, part city building, part rts, with some interest design mechanisms that make you want to slow down the speed just to watch the hunters approach their prey.  Then environment is interactive and that plays an important part of the tactics you need to use (and another reason to slow down the speed).  The best example of this through my first play through was early on, when I had only two adult males in my village, a family of Cave Bears started to forage for food nearby.  They were getting dangerously close to my village and so I equipped the males with my best weapons I could produce and moved them to attack one of the bears that had moved away from the rest of the group.  Just then a herd of Mastodon came walking across the same stretch - and the bears attacked.  The bears took down one of the adult Mastodon at the price of two bears killed.  My hunters were then able to take down the remaining two juvenile bears with little injury.   All of that resulted in a large supply of meat, bone and hides for my villagers to eat and work with over the coming winter.

The main weakness in the game is when it moves into the Iron age.  They should have kept it to a Neolithic game as the Bronze and Iron Ages are not well modeled, but that aside, the main problem is there is no clock in game and so you can easily find yourself playing this well past your bedtime --- cough.

[crazy canuck]

Oops, should have been the game forum.

[garbon]

I've been playing this a lot though haven't got beyond copper age. I think definitely has been quite fun.

I laughed a little at a review that complained that livestock preferentially eat straw over grain, even though they can get by on grain. Then it happened to me where in spring, I couldn't upgrade any buildings as all my straw had been eaten.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, it is the biggest quirk I found in the supply management system.  I had huge excesses of grain simply because I needed to grow grains to get all the straw I needed to both feed my animals and have enough left over for building after the winter.  Eventually I just slaughtered large numbers of livestock before winter to solve the problem.

[HVC]

animals don't eat straw. Games broken, won't play.



Looks interesting. there was another game that was supposed to come out along this vein. Ancient Cities I think. Guess they got bet to the punch.

[The Brain]

ARE THE MODS SLEEPING????!?

[crazy canuck]

animals don't eat straw. Games broken, won't play.



Looks interesting. there was another game that was supposed to come out along this vein. Ancient Cities I think. Guess they got bet to the punch.

There are a few that were announced.  Ancient Cities is the Egyptian themed game and that has been pushed back.  There was another stone age one whose name I cannot remember, that seems to be on a slow development track.

[PRC]

I haven't played this, but it looks similar to Banished, which is a good game in its own right.

[crazy canuck]

Similar but there is a lot more going on in Dawn of Man - there are animals that can kill your population and other tribes that will raid you from time to time.  It shares a similar economic and survival model.

[Maximus]

I "finished" a play-through of this. As in I got all the techs etc. Pretty fun, though I'm not sure how much replayability there will be. The raiding mechanic seems really flat, but I'm not sure how much it could be improved in a city-building sim. I probably would have left that out. Job prioritization and AI optimization would probably be the biggest complaints. Hopefully those will be improved.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, my wish list would be:

job specialization;
expanded tech tree so that more decisions need to be made - basically you just tech everything atm.
better way to assign tasks in sequence so you don't the person who made the kill walk away while someone else from the village walks over to do the butchering.  Job specialization may help with that.

[Maximus]

I think the lack of job specialization is actually a great feature that sets this game apart. Especially in the early ages. Actually introducing job specialization in the later ages might be a great feature.

[crazy canuck]

I think the lack of job specialization is actually a great feature that sets this game apart. Especially in the early ages. Actually introducing job specialization in the later ages might be a great feature.

We are in complete agreement. In the first two ages it makes a lot of sense.  I was a bit disappointed when the bronze and Iron ages just ended up being the neolithic with a few more buildings.

[jimmy olsen]

This definitely looks like it's in my wheelhouse, but I don't have much time for gaming these days.

[Caliga]

This definitely looks like it's in my wheelhouse, but I don't have much time for gaming these days.

Monstrous.