Dawn of Man....

The latest update is out.

My Northlands save/play-through has become my 'main' save. It's the one with the most hard work put in and so the most I've pottered about with since. Any new patches requiring tech unlocks are easy on it due to it being used so much; A handy use for a buildup of Tech points.

Getting to add in the new production didn't prove to much more of a stress on the village ecosystems. Being as late game as can be I'd a good stockpile of resources.

I find the game is as enjoyable in end game as it is in the journey to get there(slim chance it could all go wrong makes for some tension).

I added in three of the new Armorer buildings to enable some mass production.

With plenty of charcoal already. All I had to do was open up a new deep Iron mine and reopen a closed mine that was near. Not that they were really needed but better safe than sorry. Add in some manual production of items (oval shields and mail armour) for an initial boost and that was it.

The village through a year was it's usual hover of 195 to 205 humans. Everything was sown and harvested with no waste. Some new animals were captured and others added to the 'storage'. Balance remains if not quiet the same as it was. The only real problem in production were the shields due to the hides needed. I was never big into shield production(nice to have the better ones). No longer being an active hunter village means that there is limited supply of hides. Which in turn had 'made' my usual animal capture turn back into all out hunting. Which in turn is a massive balancing act to keep the smoothly running village running smoothly. People management it's all about people management. Too many people out hunting as a season changes and the next thing you know your late in planting or harvesting and it snowballs out of control from there. Cause and effect.

There is fun in all the types of management. Safer fun if you remember to save the game as you go(autosave also helps).

Overall they are great additions to the game, I'll be pottering about with it as the day goes on.

While I'd like to see another 'age' added to progress game time and technology it's really after the Iron age that more specific 'peoples' seem to become distinct. Would be hard to see this generic catch all game become a specific country/region/timeframe(Viking/Hellenic/Roman) and I'm not sure a generic 'medieval' period would work, it's to broad a time-frame to push into.... Dev's have their own balancing acts to perform for sure.