Dawn of Man: brain dead and buggy or low-key charm?

I’ve played for about 8 hours now. I’ve had zero bugs, but lots of fun.

This game is a slow burn at first. Choices aren’t plentiful, because you’re a basic paleolithic era tribe just trying to survive. Hunt/fish/gather and grow your tribe. The challenge is in keeping everyone alive and morale high. There are choices, but yes at first it’s pretty basic and obvious. Like any other colony management sim, things get more interesting as you unlock techs, and advance your tribe.

Once I hit the metal ages (copper, bronze, Iron), things got much more challenging. Instead of being invaded by weak raiders, as had been the case during the first three eras, I was now facing much larger tribes. They were better equipped and more deadly. While I was able to ignore defensive structures early on, once Copper age began, this became a necessity. It was obvious that I would be quickly wiped out if I didn’t get my tribe better equipped and defended.

That’s where I am at currently. I’ve unlocked 5 of 10 milestones during this first “freeplay” mode, but haven’t gotten into any of the other modes yet. Just to give an idea of what’s available to me now, there are 4 new game play options: A new freeplay biome called The Northlands, which states that it will be more challenging than the initial biome. There is 1 new “Challenge” Map titled “The Long March”, and 2 new Creative mode maps simply called Stone Age and Metal Age.

My plan is to pause the first freeplay game for now, and jump into the Challenge map. I’ll report back with how this differs.

I just started the challenge map, “The Long March” and boy is it not what I was expecting.

Here’s the in-game scenario details:
"In this scenario, you control a herd of Mammoths. You can select them, then issue various commands:
-Right click on terrain = go there. Double right click = sprint
-Right click on other animals = attack.
Beware of predators.

Reach the river fork. Every mammoth must survive."

LOL. This just got interesting!

Oh, this is feeling like a good game so far, just 2 hours in. It’s doing a very nice job of pushing back and pushing the player forward, something that the flawed and disappointing Banished never did.

And it looks like its currently sitting perched atop the Steam Top Selling chart for the weekend.

RPS review will go up later today, apparently, and it’s favo(u)rable, apparently. They also make it official that Dawn Of Man was the #1 grossing game on Steam, which for a game that goes $21.50 USD and 16.50 GBP is pretty good.

If you’re a game design studio kicking around the idea of making some sort of strategy game, those kind of numbers are hard to ignore.

This was my weekend play. Got the first playset done w/all cheevos not to get them but since it was the first after the intro, figured it would give me a complete picture.

Pace for me was Slow start- Nice midgame- Slog endgame, pace felt like a Civ game with worse combat and a smaller tech tree.

It is pretty.

Managing the villagers goes from:
“YAY! no micromanagement!” to
“OK what you are trying is very stupid”
“ACK!, I can’t micromanage you to get you to stop the stupid.”
(or at least not easily and in some cases not at all)
Seasons matter (good and bad) as the variation is nice, so some is just learning not to queue things they shouldn’t do just yet. And one of the better ways of stopping the stupid is going to the Task manager and killing tasks. But even once you learn that it gets bad. I had people die from hypothermia from trying to move a far monolith in winter, from starvation from going to go do a far away task when they are already starving when leaving town, and starving in town randomly surrounded by four full granaries (?!?!?). So stupid, and stupid buggy.

I began to wish for more granularity in control like Rimworld or ONI gives you.

Speaking of Rimword, the fight AI leaves a bit to be desired esp. compared to that. You get more raiders later sure, but they are very stupid and difficulty just means “more raiders, stronger attack damage”. But it is good attackers are stupid, since the defenders are worse. And then you go back to the “not micromanaging” being a negative. The guy that ran up to the gate with a bowl of pulses equiped (???) could be made to attack rather than stare at the attackers and, I guess, wonder how to apply veggies?, by the select and right click. But the guys up in the defense towers too far away to hit the attackers are happy to stay there and let your guys be picked off. You can empty the tower to get them to the fight, often too late. The defenders sometimes all rush to the wrong gate to defend. You can send them to the right gate. Where they often dribble in and get picked off, and you can’t send the dogs (which are the literal meatshields), so they run over even later.

The worse part of the endgame was where you did have to micromanage. The animals. You need to micro the slaughter, and while you can see the detailed animal headcount in a nice list, you can only select them to slaughter by finding them on the map. I really missed Rimworld’s UI for that, or ONI’s automation, or even Banished sidestepped it by per field. No these critters are everywhere, half inside huts/structures only visible from certain angles, the click all only selects local proximity. I spent most of my endgame playing “find the goat”. The highlight view helps but not nearly enough.

But the mid-game is great, and it is pretty. For that price, I can get my money’s worth out of it and don’t feel bad. If these things bug you, wait. Once it has some more endgame and UI polish, and some AI improvements it has the potential to be quite nice. I can’t tell for AI, but at least for UI, some things already are nice, like the customizable bars, so I think they can improve it.

I don’t think they have been ignoring them. There are an astonishing number of citybuilders of one sort or another coming out soon or released in the last year or so. When you compare the scene to five years ago, when it was basically Anno and the SimCity we’re all trying to forget, it’s a remarkable turnaround.

Quill18 Let’s Play:

TechRaptor review.

And one from The Indie Game Website.

RPS review is favorable.

I agree with what you’ve said. I like a laid back game, but I found this game was more boring than laid back, and when I had to deal with raiders or stabled animals it was ANNOYING. Going to try a different map now.

No more “find the goat, no THAT goat” as the endgame! They did add stable limits and the village people (probably not the correct term) will auto slaughter and keep them managed, and do fairly well. Raider AI is still sketchy, but at least still equally stupid, them and you. UI and tooltips were nice for the changes as I randomly played the game w/o reading patch notes.

Part of the patch notes said something about overall goals being no micromanagement, and they are much closer. Can I get these guys to do Stellaris’ sectors maybe? Makes playing it at a faster speeds easy, and I can often finish maps fairly quickly, esp. if I buy tech. Next time I pick it up will try harder game.

1.1 update:

Question for people who’ve played this awhile: do the mechanics feel different from any other city builder in a way that reflects the prehistoric setting?

That’s an interesting question. Although I’m not a fan of the game I’d say the dynamic hunting (animals will travel, you have to track them down and actively manage that part of the game) and all the seasonal harvesting/gathering and the stockpiling to make it through the winter felt quite unique and fitting.

I had this from a bundle or something, finally installed it due to a historical city builder itch and I’m disappointed… First of all, this does not even come close to a city builder, it’s a colony sim/manager. After being spoiled by Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included, I disliked many of the gameplay elements. The production chains are too simple, the tech tree is boring (just get each upgrade in each age, the order is pretty much irrelevant). The combat is broken… the moronic AI will go straight for your gate every time, there is no need for walls in most cases, just place rangers on the gates/towers and let the dogs handle the melee combat (win every raid with 0 or few human loses). There is no variation in building choices (building placement is irrelevant too), no paths/roads (!!)… As for the items, assuming you have a sufficient supply of tools/clothes, there is no reason to build anything other than bows as they are best for both hunting, trading (higher value than most items, easy to make) and combat (thanks to dogs soaking up damage).

There’s just nothing interesting to do, no interesting choices to make. I think the only reason why it has good Steam reviews is the very low number of alternatives in the game’s niche. Oh well…

Yep, that’s about what I thought too (some people still talked about it in the ‘city builder thread’). Nevertheless I think it’s an relaxing ‘game’ - it’s nice to watch for a while.

This is exactly how I felt. Hard to believe it’s the same people who did the planetary space game. Felt like they totally phoned it in.