Lmao, what do you think you’re gonna see in the open forums when this game releases?
Aparently uninformed children, it seems. These days, public forums are mostly toxic. This is why I no longer check my YT comments. It’s all toxic. =/
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I bought the game too and have had some fun with it. One problem for me tho is that the people are like robots. I mean they do eat, drink and pray but are pretty much solitary creatures. I mean what’s the point living in a society if you’re going to live like a hermit lol. I wish the game had social interactions between the people, like they could just talk with each other, gather around hearth fire and eat and talk, and form relationships to make babies of course. In DoM the babies just randomly come out of nowhere, like not even the women no who’s the father. I wish Ancient Cities would do better on this aspect. Still a pretty good game.
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I agree completely about the babies. Fertility, maternity and child rearing four major components of prehistoric life, as attested by their art and burial practices. This seems completely glossed over.
I was gifted a copy of that game by family member as my birthday is nigh. I will be posting a detailed review tomorrow in the hope that ancient cities can benefit from lesson learned from their failings
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I have found Dawn of Man, ok. The real lack of natural disasters, people having any kind of personality as said above and the fact that you can not attack anything besides when they raid you gets boring. Now I have only done the normal gameplay through to steel but unless I am missing some pretty big parts of the game. Its 20 bucks for 2-3 days of play or less.
I just cant see myself playing it over and over again as you can only choose from I think 6 starting spots and the game is pretty shallow as in game content goes. I have faith that AC will deliver something leaps and bounds better.
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Dawn of Man
Dawn of Man, herein DoM, was released before Ancient Cities, herein AC, providing a good practice run for the AC developers ( @Uncasual ) . AC can learn from the failures and successes of DoM. It is my goal to discuss a few of them here. Note: I am a prehistoric novelist with 15 years of research into the Neolithic period and professionally a software developer (20 years experience).
The three most critical pros and cons
Pros:
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Easy interface
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Runs smoothly
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Animal part of world feels full of life
Cons:
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Very Linear Play
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Human part of world feels lifeless
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No modding
Historicity – How accurate is the game to the period?
DoM strays heavily from accuracy in both minor and major ways. Normally, games are not held to high historical standards, but when the basis of your game is a depiction of prehistoric life, at least major elements should be mostly accurate. Some of the more blaring prehistoric inaccuracies I noticed were, but not limited to:
- Wrong skin color. A mix of all skin colors seem to exist, from pale to dark. This may seem “PC” but is actually very incorrect. Light skinned people simply didn’t exist in the Paleolithic through early Neolithic. (Reality: People were very dark skinned until the mid Neolithic)
[Whitehawk Woman - Brighton Museum] - Pottery is the initiating technical achievement of the Mesolithic period (Reality: Mesolithic pottery did exist but was by no means a major association with the period)
- Clothing is entirely wrong (See special section below)
- Flint Adze used for the mining of flint. (Reality: hard stone tools would have been used) Seemingly no watercraft (Reality: Boats were used in all periods of the game, to varying complexities from a simple log to a complex boat)
- Cow domestication depicted during the Copper Age. (Reality: This occurs during the Neolithic)
- Pottery (oddly) depicted in the Mesolithic was too large and complex for the Mesolithic.
- Bread and cereal production learned during the Mesolithic. (Reality: Both were known in the Mesolithic, but didn’t become a major aspect of life until the Neolithic.
- Paleolithic (upper, I suspect) has a sling (not sure of the evidence for this) but no Atlatl?
Clothing (A special topic, given my specific knowledge of this topic)
The clothing is not very accurate. I am understand that the ESRB rating prevents accurate clothing, but there ways to be accurate and compliant. The clothing suffers from the same bland Flintstones look other such games have had. Everyone wears a simple leather tunic of one color or another. I do believe the Paleolithic leather winter clothing is very good and they seem to have done that correctly, but only that. Though you see these simple leather garments, which resemble modern clothing, in books and many prehistoric depictions, it just isn’t accurate and is an outdated and mistaken way of looking at prehistoric clothing (read any modern book or peer reviewed article on the subject).
Instead of a simple tunic, why not have:
- Dresses (leather, textile [a skirt with a cloth wrap around the upper body])
- Skirts (cover breasts with hair or lots of necklaces for ESRB, but remaining authentic)
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/378865387402965286/
- String Skirts
- Leggings (we found these on Otzi the Iceman)
- Loincloth (the most important garment ever invented by humanity is omitted. This is the primary basic item nearly everyone in prehistory wore. You can cover the breasts with hair or lots of necklaces for ESRB modesty, or even wear lather or textile shirts in the cooler months.
Art. Clothing in DoM is blank, without artwork. This is entirely inaccurate as prehistoric people decorated their clothing quite extensively.
[I cannot state enough how important this is:]The characters are missing body paint, feathers and jewelry. These were staples of prehistory and should be found all over each character. They require a few simple 3D meshes and some textures, but are otherwise static and easy to make objects (I’ve made them before).
Game Play
The program itself runs quite smoothly and the user interface is very simple, but sufficient. The feedback mechanisms, such as charts and indicators , are easy to access and very intuitive. AC needs to have a similarly simple interface to encourage game play.
I was very please to find that many of the commands could be performed by the keyboard. Carpel tunnel syndrome is very common these days and mouse-intensive programs deter many players.
I am also very pleased to find women being treated equally in the game. I think the ability to change this in some form of cultural setting would make senses as egalitarianism was likely rather varied.
The game play is very linear. There is a simple tech path to follow and nearly no customization of your culture. This is one of the three Achilles heels of the game. Being able to chose matriarchy or patriarchy, war like or passive, and other such variables would bring so much life to the game, but these rich details are simple omitted leaving a very linear and boring product.
The first major issue was the AI for the people. Workers stop working or stare at you blankly. If a group is selected to perform a task, they often appear to ignore the request without reason. Generally, the AI is very good about tribal self sustainment, which was at least well written.
A major frustration early in the game is understanding how to control your tribe. The hot keys seem to not work and selecting tribe members isn’t easy. A “select all” function may exist, but I have yet to find it. As a result, it becomes easy to lose a member of the tribe and hard to keep track of what people are doing. Easy selection tools are a must for AC, given how aggravating they are in DoM.
One big issue which is encountered pretty quickly is the lack of life to the characters. Users quickly lose interest not because of limited content, but because the content feels static. The people have babies but we don’t see them pregnant. The characters have names, but they don’t respond to each other. The world feels a little lifeless. Here are some changes which would help this issue in AC:
- More sounds from characters (laughter, emotes, screams, crying, etc)
- See life changes, such as a pregnant stomach or a limping from wound
- Have an apparent leader figure (perhaps an elder)
- RITUALS – Having characters simply pray a little to the wooden alter you make isn’t enough. We should have funerals for the dead, marriages, and people praying and dancing for “the spirits” in the fields, each morning, before and after events. This would make the characters feel alive. There should also be a priest or priestess at some point.
- The ability to wed characters. Select two and have them become a family with children.
- A history of the tribe with a family tree. This helps build an interest in each character with the player.
Environment
The world is rather larger, but does not have a mini map (that I can find). This makes losing your tribe and spending quite a lot of time hunting for it both likely and annoying.
Animals are numerous in type and quantity, but there are a number of major gaps in the fauna. Birds, shellfish, amphibians, and small game (e.g. rabbits) are omitted , but were a major source of food. In fact, in many tribal societies, these smaller animals can make up a major portion of the “hunted” food.
The land may be just a little too hilly . It becomes difficult to navigate some of the very rough land. More logs, streams, rocks, tress and less hills would help.
Technical
Modding does not seem to exist in any apparent way. Those mods which do exist seem to be from the developers. Worse, the data files are all packaged using mechanisms which make extracting their contents difficult. A strong modding community adds years of life to a game and is perhaps the greatest addition a developer can make to their program.
The game plays pretty smoothly on higher end test systems, and so far it has handled lower end systems (that are above the minimum requirements). Texture rendering and loading do are seamless, lag has not been present on the medium or higher end systems. The lower end system (a Microsoft Surface Pro) ran the game quite well on Medium graphics mode, though the character animations were a tiny bit choppy. One minor gripe was the lack of ouch screen support.
High End Configuration:
I7 Quad Core
16GB RAM
twin nVidia GTX770 SLI Cards
SSD Drive
Mid Level Configuration:
I7 Quad Core
8GB RAM
Single nVidia GTX770 Card
Spindle Drive
Low Level Configuration:
i5 Mobile, single core.
8GB RAM
Intell HD Graphics 620
SSD Drive
Conclusion
The game is enjoyable for a few hours or days, but soon loses interest due to lack of modding, lifeless characters and a very linear progression. The historical problems are significant enough to be potentially problematic for archaeologists and prehistoric enthusiasts, but I don’t think most lay people would notice. A lot of potential was wasted providing a somewhat fun and short lived game where a very fun and long term game could have been made. Hopefully, AC will fill this gap.
16 Likes
On a side note, my brother purchased this for my birthday (soon) as a gift. He knows how much I love prehistory, but didn’t know I wasn’t going to buy it lol
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Agree with most of this. I bought it a couple of days ago and have been playing it since, and it’s reasonably entertaining. But I never had the expectations for it that I have for AC. In terms of depth, detail and beauty, the two games are not in the same league.
One particular fault in DoM (seems to be a common one with city builders): I’d expect tents/shacks to need flat ground, but once you start building houses with foundations you should be able to place them on hillsides. As long as the doors are at ground level (or above, with steps) then foundations should be deep enough to cope with a slope. There is a picture in the media section of the main AC website that seems to show a bunch of houses rising up a moderate slope - that’s what I want.
And I do hope that AC will be totally gridless, as the main picture on the website appears to show, with buildings at all angles and positions relative to each other.
Anyway, DoM is OK for now, but I doubt I’ll play it again once AC comes out.
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I think both game will learn a lot from each other, and push both game into the best version of them self. I also think AC is harder as there are more AI and a eco system there is so well made
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I find it enjoyable for what it is, and worth the price; same as Molly, I also pretty much agree with the review. The animal ecosystem is cool, and to my taste there is a good balance in terms of progress that pushes you through the first playthrough (only played once so far) with unlocking new mechanics that change the gameplay enough to keep it interesting, but not too rushed to make it trivial. This, peppered with some achievements/milestones, is what can attract me to a sandbox game, otherwise I am not a fan.
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I can’t say anything bad about the animals. I love that they included little baby animals and the like. lol Also, unlike the people, the animals feel alive.
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Well done,
I came to give my impressions on Dawn of Man… but you all already did an amazing job with it… 
I agree with all your views, and I’ll just to point a couple of things which looked very odd to me:
- No burials
I read somewhere DOM developers didn’t add any burial practices because they thought it would add too much weight for the game system.
Beyond disagreeing with their point of view, even though I cannot have any idea of how the system works and how to judge that, but I think it looks incredibly weird when people and animals laying dead all around and not spreading diseases. I think the game should, at least, include people digging a hole or burning them to be minimally consistent.
Off course, I also would like to have an option to put some raiders’ heads on poles outside my gates… but maybe it is just me… 
- No pottery production
I think it wouldn’t hurt to have some place for pottery dry at sun first, and then a kiln to burn them. It’s even weirder if after you achieve pottery, you start to collect water, but just abstract everything in its production process.
Also, it would be an accurate good to be exchanged with the trader.
As I’ve said before, I don’t have a clue about how they built their game engine, but I think those reviews are a very good opportunity for Casual Games to focus Ancient Cities marketing on their many differentials.
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I totally agree about thr burials and pottery!
Well, I do know how game engines work and I see no reason why burials would be a problem. They have code to carry objects back to camp.
If someone dies:
Nearest worker goes to body.
Body removed.
Generic “body” object carriee back to tribe.
Tribe gathers.
Scripted event with dance/song
Burial occurs.
Land used lock as a structure.
Nearly all of that logic already exists in their game.
Good review, and I agree so much regarding burials! I can accept all kinds of abstractions in the rest of the system, but a dead guy lying on the ground before simply disappearing after a long while … no, that was weird.
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True, I felt the same, it seems you can not choose to hunt for a specific difficulty, I would say its the entire battling system that needs some rework. Fighting invaders feels inefficient and not well scripted, towers can not be automated / assigned so basically useless. I hope they take notice of these issue in the future.
I feel the same as you on what you said Ryan…
Almost all of my deaths (so far, I’m still in the early game) have been to random animal attacks. My people will walk right next to a cave bear or other dangerous animal to harvest some fruit (and there’s no way to tell them to avoid certain animals)
The game will designate animals in the hunting areas far before there are any people available to hunt them, meaning the animals have often walked a long way from the settlement by the time my guys run after them, instead of choosing closer targets.
The game also reduces stats when a need is unfulfilled, but gives us no way to force a villager to fulfill that need before the stats get reduced. There have been so many times their morale is getting low and they are right next to a totem pole, or they will be about to get hungry, then start a long hunting trip instead of eating first.
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I have experienced some of the same problems and find slowing down and keeping around 100% the solution.
I agree they are one of the most polished for a beta but as pointed out by Ryan it is lacking in a few areas of the AI which brings me to the point the AC group needs to hold fast to no public alpha and a very controlled and limited first pass beta.
My take on Dawn of man is great game released just a little early which may turn into the number one game of the year provided developers can produce a few needed AI improvements this year and follow up with a major upgrade end of year or early 2020.
I agree with others that DOM will if any thing help sales of AC and in truth AC will help sales of DOM provided AC provides the depth as planed.
After maybe 50 hr of very enjoyable play excepting a few starved hunters to stupid to eat 
before going out hunting I will wait for a few more patches and maybe a update before giving it any rating. Again good reason not to release to soon.
Great review thanks for all the effort enjoyed reading and agree for the most Part especially
Also think your are correct on
Granted a little critical but your are 100% correct but I think once the modding group kicks in this type of thing will be improved on. I also point out Northern Europe Neolithic was considerably different than for example Australia for one and even Southern Europe. And by some accounts North America actually stayed in Neolithic times until European’s arrived 
so unless you qualify a game by saying Europe Neolithic times there is a fair amount of latitude that can be given to dress tools and skin color without technically being wrong.
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There is no way to be sure of the exact setting as the company does not specify (other than, “Ice Age”), but the building styles are loosely European looking, as are some of the technologies.
It seems like a mix of European and semi-Asian prehistoric settings, but not really Paleo-American (they have different names for their periods). The clothing is unknown for Neolithic Europe and Asia, but we can make some good estimations (I do so ad nauseam in the Clothing thread lol). The skin coloring would vary as you say, but the very light colored people should not exist until at least the middle Neolithic, at the earliest.
Those details were nothing I expected the game developers to get into as they are going for quicker money. I am hoping the AC dev’s are more inclined to make better looking clothing (hope!).
As I said I agree with you about the skin color but my guess is the developers made the choice based more on money then authenticity the lighter skin color relates to more “Paying” gamers. We will see within the next 18 months if the DoM group are in it only for the money or the craft as I believe they have generated enough interest to finance the next round of updates which could be fluff or corrections to the AI, realism, more historic accuracy with enough fluff to maintain interest.
I also agree to hope! AC improves on clothing and period Correctness but more importantly they concentrate on getting the AI & UI correct and let the Modders take care of things like Clothing, Pottery, Tools, Totems etc. to make them period correct.
Just remember you only get one first chance and missing on period correctness will not doom the game but messing up on fundamental AI could very well.
Lets see I have a good supply of food I am hungry but not starving I think I will run 3/4 of the way across the map to hunt food that I wont eat till I bring it back to camp.
On the other hand I have a young female hunter in a long white beaded tunic and head dress who grabs a quick bite to eat some supplies and another hunter then takes off after game 3/4 of the way across the map to hunt.
The first scenario can doom the game because many may not give the game a second chance the second scenario some may laugh at but it is playable and most may believe correctable in future patches or updates
Both of fixes have about the same difficulty but the first scenario will result in countless complaints bug reports costing waisted time and effort and may never get fixed because of money.
Second results in comments like “Games great but get real women in dresses hunting Mammoths hope they get it right next time” but they will continue to play which means more money and hopefully enough people putting period correctness on there Wishlist that either Modders or developers can address. One thing it wont generate is bug reports which means the developers can concentrate true bugs and improvements.
By the way experience has taught me in modding there is a 90-10 rule of what can be done 90% of aesthetics can be changed but only 10% of the AI can be changed. (Truthfully more like 50-2%)
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