I bought it on steam and i've been stuck to it.
It's like CIV + Tropico + Sim City.
Love this shit.
Example:
Every island has different resources and you need this resources to build up the tech tree (CIV). But, you don't just need "iron" to build a ironclad battle cruiser. You need to kind of get the iron, turn trees into coal, craft metal, turn the metal into weapon materials, and craft the weapon (Tropico). Because materials are rarely found exactly how you need them, you need a bunch of colonies (CIV).
Each colony has it's own resource pool and you need to ship them to eachother.
Example:
You might have a colony with a river that's needed for a tannery. For your tannery you need (1) salt and (2) pig skins. So, you set up a pig farm near by because they will grow anywhere. But, you run into problems with salt.
You find another island with a salt mine. You need to build the mine, a factory to refine the salt, then the infrastructure to bring it to the coast, ship it to the first island, and have the salt brought to your tannery to make leather.
Now here is where it gets fun. The tannery is needed to make leather jerkins, something you use to satisfy 3rd level citizens, Patricians. Having patricians in your city unlocks new tech. But, getting them and keeping them is difficult. A patrician has needs, and wherever you have a population of them you need to have: Food (fish, bread, and spices), Drink (Ale, Cider, and Taverns), Clothing (Linen and Leather), Religion (Churches and Cathedrals), and I might be missing some. Each progressive class of citizen becomes harder and harder to satisfy because you need to really build up your production chains.
The table below will maybe provide you with some insight. The bottom portion with the goods to the right are a separate kind of building, because in Dawn of Discovery you have two active build trees and you will mix and match your colonies so you can produce everything you will need.
The funnest part of this all is the actual exchange of resources. To manage your empire you will need to set up trade routes, and it's something a lot more complicated than in CIV. You have to manual plan which ports your ships will visit, how much or what they will take and deliver.
I found there's two strategies to this. Early on you will want to have a ship that does multiple stops, example:
Leave hemp and take tools/wood from city 1
Leave tools and take stone from city 2
Leave wood and stone and take hemp from city 3
When your empire gets really big, I like to have every ship take their goods to the capital and return with whatever good is needed for production. Example: a ship will take paper from the colony and deliver it to the capital then return to the colony with wood to make more paper.
Then you have special ships running routes to distribute the finished products or support whatever areas you're building up. Not to mention that you can run routes like this with neighbors except you deal in gold.
The combat in this game sucks, it reminds me of CIV but in real time. What makes up for it is that you're constantly doing quests, not combat. You might have to go assist ships that have run aground for neighbors, salvage goods, or deliver goods. Sometimes you have to attack or defend, but it's always something that happens in the background while you're managing trade.
I feel that most CIV/Tropico/Sim City/Strategy fans are not into warmongering so much and could appreciate a game like this, where the focus is on economy and growth.
This game is at least as good as CIV if not significantly better. I think the scores it received are not accurate.
TRAILER
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IN GAME
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