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Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 3:42 am
by dom
Anyone play this?

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.

Image

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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Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 4:00 am
by Ashikiheyun
I thought what you were describing sounded a lot like something from the Anno series. I used to play one of the games YEARS ago. I might try this one, I've gotten back into playing some strategy games ago, mainly Civ IV.

Thanks for the little review, I want to play it.

Dawn of Discovery is Anno 1404

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 4:13 am
by dom
Dawn of Discovery is Anno 1404

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 4:25 am
by Ashikiheyun
dom wrote:Dawn of Discovery is Anno 1404


Yes, what I was meaning to say was that I hadn't realized that while reading your review and then I realized it when I saw the videos you posted.

Is this the newest game in the series?

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 5:21 am
by Amelie
I got this game for my wii, name is different (create a new world) or something like that.

Very addicting game, i dont play it that much tho. I rather to watch my cousin play it.

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 12:15 pm
by -.-
i like too, but no time to play now

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 1:52 pm
by Krevidy
I loved Anno 1503, building my own huge colony was hella fun.
Spend hours watching the central square of my city, seeing how citizens bought goods at the market.

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:46 pm
by -Evan
I too play and enjoy the games of the Anno series, I first found it when looking for a replacement for Settlers since it's latest game was somehow disappointing compared to the older games in it's series.

I don't play it as often as I used due to lack of free time, sometimes when I have paper work that I do on my desk I just open the game up and switch to the "camera mode" which removes the hud to act like some sort of screensaver.

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2010 3:23 am
by Amelie
I hate aristocrats.

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2010 4:21 am
by Brago
Gift it to me and we can play together :D

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2010 12:40 pm
by dom
Brago wrote:Gift it to me and we can play together :D


no

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2010 12:39 am
by Barotix
Sir, I'm the biggest warmonger on CIV ever. Nothing like a domination victory on a cloudy day.

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2010 6:30 am
by Wello27
dom is this game turn based or is it all in real time?

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2010 3:13 pm
by John_Doe
Looks amazing I'm slightly interested now.

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2010 5:17 am
by Wello27
This game is a bit more complex than I thought would be. I'll need to find a tutorial. All these damn farmers and fishermen have goods and can't get them out. And Tavern asked me to transport goods, meanwhile I have no idea what I'm doing.

Looks like a fun game though, but damn does it consume time.

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2010 5:22 am
by piootr
Settlers are f*cking greedy.

They want food AND clothes? BAH I SAY!
Very fun game, nice and lengthy too.

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:23 am
by dom
I wish they had this for my iPhone

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2010 1:04 pm
by [SD]happynoobing
u seem to have every steam game...

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:31 pm
by dom
[SD]happynoobing wrote:u seem to have every steam game...



Me?

Spoiler!

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Sat Feb 27, 2010 4:44 pm
by John_Doe
I just downloaded the gold edition, but nothing happens when I press launch on steam, any ideas? I'm running windows 7 64 bit. This is starting to piss me off **** steam. It say Preparing to launch Dawn of Discovery and than nothing happens I've been waiting for 5 minutes... :banghead: :banghead: Hmm apprantly I'm missing a DX9 thingy.....anyone else download this from steam and face the same problem?

Re: Dawn of Discovery

Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 2:04 am
by -.-
directx 9 is pretty common for games now, just download it from google

I play this from a cd so no steam :D. got the newest expansion, venice and i like it