From the makers of The Settlers comes... something better than The Settlers.
If you are a fan of city building games, not all necessarily real time, such as SimCity, The Settlers, Civilization, Rollercoaster Tycoon etc. you are likely to fall in love with this addition to your collection, likely due to the fact that this is one of the sleekest games of the genre. It combines economic management on a huge scale with an effective interface as well as some military options. Basically, the main concepts in this game that will sway your opinion or preference are the following:
1. Managing supply and demand over your ever expanding empire.
2. Naval trade made possible via a simple and effective trade route menu.
3. The balance and intertwining nature of two different cultures and the sharing of their resources.
4. Levels of civilization that will continue to challenge you at each level.
There you have it. That is the heart and soul of Dawn of Discovery. You may think that that all sounds a little samey, but in the realm of city builders, the game is made by all of the little things. The NUMBER of resources available. The SIZE of the maps. The EFFECTIVENESS of the interface. These things need to be taken into account because ALL city builders are just that. A game in which, you will be required to build a city and/or manage something. Ok. Now that we have had a look at where it sits in the genre, lets move onto some of the more tangible aspects of the game.
The graphics!! The visual oomph that every game has to master at least to some degree, to give the gamer something pleasurable and easy to look at while enjoying the well thought out gameplay. On a basic level, Dawn of Discovery looks very nice with just one fault that I can think of. The ships have no physical mass. They can all just sail through eachother, but the sea is a big place, so you probably wont run into that issue very often. In short, who cares? The game world itself is colourful and vibrant. The grass is a calm green and it sways as well as the trees. The water is good to look at, which is nice seeing as you will see a lot of it. The architecture itself is fantastic, particularly for the npcs. Lighting is just right given the environment. Lighting even changes when you enter a new region to convey the right ambience, as well as the music. If you have played any other recent games from Blue Byte, the art style will be very similar. Almost like 3d cariacatures for the faces and very detailed scenery. On the hardware side, I'm afraid I can't give you much of an estimate as I'm running on a fairly reliable machine. However, I have experienced no ill effects running at 1080p will full effects excluding anti aliasing on dual screen (nVidia GeForce 9800GT 512mb. Just note that the game does not have dual screen support. Duh. The only strategy game that I know of that has dual screen support is Supreme Commander. Correct me if I'm wrong. Actually, don't. Anyway. Getting off topic. Bad.
The music in this game is of a high quality. You will hear pleasant little ditties that to be honest, haven't gotten old yet. I still enjoy hearing the music while building my empire. The voice acting is also of a high quality, although HEAVILY stereotyped for each character. The sleazy egomaniac with the suave voice. The young minstrel with the godawful chirpy optimism and the "I want to get better" attitude. The pious blonde chick who denounces evil and constantly claims that the angels are talking to her and the old-bat-of-a-nun who sounds like your grandmother was shoved into your computer, looking for donations for the sick and homeless. One thing is for sure, all of the characters have definite personality.
The main mechanics in this game are done quite well. The trading especially has been polished. Basically, the economy is highly modular. You start at the bottom rung and add a supply building. That building supplies a building higher up. Then that building and another building give resources to another building to create a whole new resource that then gets fed to the greedy and moody population. Basically, this system assures that your job is never complete until you hit the final civ level. Rest assured, you will always have something to do in the game. The trading is one of the best parts of the game. There are three ways you can do this. Way number one is for chumps. It involves manually taking resources to a different location. You will probably be that chump for the first hour of the game, as some of the basic resources are hard to come by on newly established settlements. Way number two takes a lot of the workload off your hands. You can set destinations one after the other on a fullscreen map, add resources to pick up and drop off and assign which ships to take that route. This is fantastic as it makes it easy for you to centralize your stockpile, or get resources from A to B to C to D in some cases. Way number three allows you to passively buy or sell resources at your ports. You assign how much of your surplus you want sold, and then whenever other player's ships come to have a look at your wares and hopefully buy something, the game will then automatically make the transaction, leaving a notice in the top right of the screen telling you how much richer or poorer you are. You can even add on this eventually by adding resource taxes that earn you extra resources after a transaction over a certain size is made. The resource stockpiles themselves are not one big counter. Nor are they relative to every individual storehouse as I have unfortunately seen in the past. The resource stockpile is unique to each individual island, and the counter at the top of the screen will change accordingly when you scroll the map to different islands. Ships can hold items that improve their performance or they can buy more items for an island that effects your economy. These items as well as resources can be bought from 3 different neutral factions. The maps themselves are HUGE and the game length is also considerable. The victory conditions are highly customizable as well. In a nutshell, DoD is like other city builders in its class... only better.
I'll be honest with you. The AI is FAST at what they do. You have to be alert for most of the time. For most of the game every game, you will be at peace, but heaven help you if one of the bots decides that they like the look of one of the islands that you have colonized, and you are not prepared with any military or defenses of your own. And don't think that its easy to go down the path of military might. It is a huge investment and you may be more interested in developing your city than stunting yourself momentarily to build up military. It's a tough thing to get your head around, but the AI is definitely quite competent.
If you are a fan of city builder games or games that focus heavily on economy, giving military a secondary role, this is an essential purchase. Unfortunately, there is no multiplayer in this package, but it is added in the Venice expansion. But thats a story for another day. For now, satisfy your inner megalomaniac and play Dawn of Discovery.