Dawn of Man....

Dawn of Man. A game I've spent and continue to spend time in. Another game I turn to long-term for some short-term fun. I've a lot of posts about the game and to distill the game down to a phrase it would be "fun to be in". Watching a village run all by itself (more or less once you've gotten it up and running) is satisfying.

Yeap I'm waffling. I've been doing a lot of return visits to games I'm constantly into in the long-term.

Dawn of man is 'complete' both as game development and my gameplay goals playing the game; And while it was fun to go back after patches and see the updates and new content that hasn't been the case in a year. 

Not that it being 'complete' has stopped me from playing it. I like that it's reached it's max potential, but it has made for a less of a what have I missed, excited/interested to see 'new thing' return factor. Again not a bad thing but it did get me to play the game more. No wonder MMO's keep constantly changing. Not that is kind of annoying in it's own way; But that's another story.

It's been a journey and I'm glad to go back to old saves and see it all again. Progress, progress, progress, patches and progress. So yea; Old save, new save or just escorting a heard of Mammoths. Another game to 'just' enjoy in it's doing every now and again. 

A Casual Carebear Gamer

Dawn of Man....

While I've an ever increasing number of games that are a longterm mainstay; Dawn of Man is definitely one of them. Having only been in and out to check new patch content it's been a good few months since I was back to the game properly. So no wonder when I got a hankering the last few day's to put in a bit of time with it. Which I did. It's a great game to 'just' be in. To watch, maintain and manage it's future. That type of gameplay isn't for everyone but if your into it this game gives it in spades.

Even with all the changes, patches and additions to the game it's as fun now as it was then. My Northlands map save is still my 'goto', to be on. It's not a perfect village and there's still some 'manual' micromanagement that needs to be done; But I'm happy enough with it overall. 

The armourer update for the long shields and chain-mail armour is great; The newer cheese making not so much(no massive milk production for it to be really useful on this save).

Still fun in watching it all work away; I guess I've a good setup. Here's a full year of that village. Autumn to Autumn (at x8 speed); no comments, no interactions, 'just' the village doing it's own thing....

A Casual Carebear Gamer

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.

Dawn of Man....

With the experience of the latest patch changes to farming being well and truly part of the furniture now; I saw my Northlands village was close to an achievement. Gaining a prestige of 1000 points. Time to get to work on building some great works to gain some final prestige.

Even if they were being built in the middle of nowhere and far from the village.

The village and surrounding area's became littered with cheaper prestige poles/totems and mounds.

Prestige was the main goal and after using up many, many lives in creating those great works(villagers hauling megaliths became hypothermic, dehydrated, starved were killed by predators). I was left scratching my head as to why the prestige value was decreasing instead of increasing.

The reason - All the lives I'd lost in making those great works. Prestige is a combination of all buildings and their state of repair as well as the population and their health. Not just big works for the sake of them but your entire village as a whole.

Lessons learnt. Time to run a village properly(again)!

Even in the best of times a large population was always a problem for me, hovering around the 160 to 180-ish mark in this save was a massive improvement. Taking good care of a villages population and getting a population of 200(and it's achievement) seemed like a more attainable goal. Two birds with one stone. Prestige and population!

So yea, I played and played and played. Overcoming all meaner of weak points, coming out a better, healthier village for it overall.

The last mile is always the longest; And it felt it. Maybe 3 or 4 full years of seasonal cycles with a population in the late 190's and a prestige in the 990's. Each accidental death a massive blow to progress.

Till the right circumstances(birth's, joiners, no deaths) combined into getting both achievements at the same time.

The population hit 200 for a split second which in turn made the prestige hit 1000 and both achievements popped. 

So with those achi's done I'm in the top percentiles of the game on GoG. 1.5% have gotten the 1000 prestige points; And 2.2 % the 200 Population. Nice.

Dawn of Man....

Must be the 5G...... Too soon?!

https://www.facebook.com/WHO/posts/3049850971726932

Dawn of Man....

More great additions to the game. The new update brings plowing and a hitching post system.

Both really great additions to the game in practice. really surprised at the way they improve things.

Plowing saves so much time, freeing up population to other tasks. I also like that it can be used with either horse or cow.

I've had sledges, carts and animals spread out and seemingly abandoned. Having a place to 'gather' them is a great time saver, not to mention a better micromanagement workflow spot.

Small but massive update, well received by this player.

Dawn of Man....

While I completed the overall scenario achievements. I'd not fully finalized the Northlands map/scenario from my own gameplay points of view, one milestone remained; The iron age and all it's tech upgrades.

So, yet more pottering about with the Northlands map saw entry into the Iron age. I'd maintained the village population hovering around the 130 to 150 mark by over micromanagement in the copper age. The greatest problem with maintaining a high population was due to the miners. Some mines were far(but not that far), yet villagers would go to or be in the mine in 'summer' clothing then only return to the village hauling ore and die of hypothermia because the season had changed. I worked around this by doing a call to arms just as autumn ended; That way the population would gather in town; Then when winter had just begun I'd end the call and they would head straight to the store houses and get wool clothing etc before restarting their tasks. Not perfect but it helped.

I also found it handy and more effective to search for young animals on the map that could be 'captured' rather than hunting the adults. It's an easy, quick way of gaining the same food value and maintaining your own stabled animals. It saves the danger of the hunt.  I also think but not searched for info online that doing so stops disease from popping up and killing your domesticated stock. So it's good to keep capturing some wild versions of the animals you keep. Which does make sense.

Going into the iron age I was able to unlock all but three of it's tech in one go, which felt good. The last of the tech was gained by trading.

Once bought it popped up the last Milestone.

In getting to the Iron age I was able to 'enjoy' the map a lot more. I think that was down to only really needing Iron instead of Copper and Tin for Bronze(closed those mines down). Also with the added bonus of Steel production, again without the need for extra mines or minerals(same resources as with normal iron production).

Sticking with the copper age for tech point hoarding in retrospect works for all other ages bar copper. The faster you can get to Iron from it the better.

Some metalsmith to blacksmith upgrades as well as bloomery upgrades were easy. Deep Mining makes the iron mines last longer and for me they were a lot closer than any other minerals to mine. Happy days indeed.

Add in a few ovens and the change from copper to iron age is a massive workflow improvement. 

Just a bit more faffing about with the village to do, for pure enjoyment of a great game.

Dawn of Man....

Mission accomplished; Right before a cascade failure, just like last time.

My village popped 150 population just before I had the roundhouses needed; But the achievement appeared as the last hut upgrade completed. Then the 150th villager promptly got a disease and died. 

Still mission accomplished. All scenario challenges unlocked.

That's when it all really went downhill.

Having spent a good bit of time with this map/village and it's struggles I wanted to salvage it and finish off the remaining tech unlocks.

In trying to get a handle the situation the population went down from 150 to 50 in a year. All the while popups bringing new disasters to attention.

Winter hit killing a lot via hypothermia even with a lot of surplus wool and extra wool clothing in the wilderness.

A large raider attack then disrupted activities and killed villagers.

Diseases also started to hit the population, human and animal.

75% of crops then failed where no crops had failed before(had good mix and spacing).

With no farmed crop/straw in stock the animals started starving and dying.

Overworked villagers? Nope; Active jobs was constant at 45%(88% when planting)  

The year went on and for the first time villagers started dropping of dehydration even with many wells and an entire freaking river beside them.

Cascade failure for sure.

I abandoned my attempts and returned to a save about two thirds the way into the hut upgrades. Once an achievement unlocks for the map reverting to a previous save doesn't undo what you have unlocked. So I'll potter away and unlock the tech from there keeping an eye on all going's on...

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....