Dawn of Man....

Since my last post about Dawn of Man I've been hopping in and out of the game. It's still as much of a time sink as ever before. In a good way. Blink and an hour has gone. Do some planning and the next thing several hours have disappeared. Right now I've made a lot of progress but it's taken time, even at speed times 8.

Previously:

The in between times...

Today:

I've taken more of an overview approach to a lot of things. Distancing myself from a lot of micromanagement if I can help it. I leave them to their own devices with current auto tasks at about 30-40%. They do more if opportunity arises. I guess that's the new patch changes in play. Every once in a while I set tasks to replenish stocks, mud, wood, sticks and the like. Once you unlock crops and animal husbandry(you only need to acquire some livestock to start), your pretty much set for whats needed to grow the tech and population. No more real hunter, gather, lifestyle. You keep sheep for wool, cattle and goats for milk and meat; Donkeys for pulling carts etc. Set your animal population levels right and it'll all look after itself. For the most part.

Overall I've had more success by moving more slowly between tech 'eras' than I'd have done previously. Before moving into a new age I'd built up enough tech points to buy all of the tech in the new age before actually clicking/buying/unlocking any of it's tech. The next move for me is from Copper into Bronze.

Waiting in an era like that isn't a bad thing. It gives me more time to replace/sell items of old tech like flint and bone and replace them with copper items. Nevermind just giving time to think and plan. I'm about 30-ish points off having all I need to buy everything under the Bronze Age tech; But I'll hold off a bit longer. I need to consider the new building locations(extra stables as well). More than likely I'll need to 'unzone' some farm land for those buildings; As well as clear some forest for new replacement farming areas.

Previous attempts at this map would have seen me spread out a lot more along the river. I now realize that was a massive strain on the supply and storage chains. Not just within an extended village but for the returning ore miners in particular.

I'm a tad hesitant as the last time I reached a population of 120-ish they all started to get sick and die. I think I went from a population of 120 to 40 in the space of a season. I've put a lot more time, effort and planning in this time around. I'm apprehensive because as I did my last save 10 deaths occurred due to disease. It reminds me of the last save on this map at this type of population. I don't want my gameplay to have been in vain. Maybe I shouldn't be concerned, that previous save had a lot more extenuating circumstances.

All I can do is push on, what happens, happens. I just don't know what I can change to grow a population if the previous result happens again....