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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Modding is probably one of the most important things one can do for a game. It gives life and longevity.
I was dismayed even more so with DoM because I could not find modding tools for it.
If AC has day one modding tools, or at least the ability to unpack the media resources for simple and direct manipulation, people like me will simply create a mods to fix any problems.
I converted my entire Skyrim game into a prehistoric game, though it took over 200 mods LOL
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In theory I could not agree with you more about day one modding.
In truth I believe it would be one of the biggest mistakes a 4 man development teem could make to release modding at beta or even first release.
How I support this statement.
Day one of beta I assume half of the 5,000 pass holders will start playing the game! (they should do a alpha beta to only 50 without telling any one if they were smart)
Day one plus one hour they will have at least 10% or 250 bug reports and screaming players saying.
“THE GAME WONT RUN ON MY COMPUTER”
This will take at least a week to sort out my guess only one of the developers has the ability to correct this so he will be out of the picture for that week.
Day two (We all have binged all night playing) 1% or 25 of us have found the same bug so the other three programmers will sort out and try to make sense and reproduce the bug if they are lucky again it takes a week to fix. Note if alpha was not good enough who knows how long it will take.
The day by day ends hear because with a 4 man teem no one other than form members will be posting or doing any thing .
Day 8 the team without looking at the form or bug report posts a fix and all agree to turn there computers off and get 12 hours of sleep 
Day 9 the AC team wakes up 
to at least 1,000 bug reports 
granted 50% of them are actually Wishlist and nit picking regardless it will take them the better part of a month to get it sorted out with an additional 10-20 reports a day coming in but now 80% will be whish list and nit picking but by now they know who to pay attention to 
If all goes well give it another month and all the bugs and compatibility problems have been solved 
(Did you know I own the Mona Lisa? You interested ill sell it for 100k)
Ok not quite but every one thinks its ready for release or at least ready to take a chance.
Next 4 months developers spend there time completely frustrated because all they are doing is chasing obscure bugs and unreproducible problems. If things go well and sales are good they update there
Any time before 6 months they release modding to even the beta group you can triple the time it will take to get to the general release date not to mention that it will take them a month to write documentation.
Read my post on money for more detail on my opinion of the needs and the reality of AC and there money status.
AC Dev team please read
After you think your in house Alpha is done hopefully out of your backers find up to 10 people who will purchase a dedicated computer to test with hopefully half of who are tried and true modders with the resources to purchase the same tools you are using to develop. hand hold them for two weeks to a month or as long as it takes to work out the bugs they find get at least one of the modders to write a few simple mods and guides. Make this group your form leaders they will save you an unbelievable amount of time, money and head ache during beta and release. By the time the beta is finished the modders should have worked out the kinks of simple mods to come up with a time line of when you can release modding to backers and then eventually general public.
One other suggestion especially if you follow my suggestion of the 10 post Alpha testers release the beta test to 10 people at a time with different video cards and computers to make sure the software installs and runs. (high end computers and video cards first as these are the people who will scream the loudest if it doesn’t install on a general release)
In summery think crowd source for PR, IT and Pre-Release Marketing and support.
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May I ask the name of the mod? Would love to play it.
It was a collection of over 200 different mods. I added at least two dozen, mostly affecting textures or modifying items. I don’t have a mob list, but they all came off of Nexus mods for the most part.
My mods were private and not published. Their purpose was to create an environment just like the one my novel characters exist in. Not only did I find this enjoyable oh, but it got me in the mood for writing.
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O no 
is invaded Dawn of man talk about divergence from time period.
I mistyped mob instead of mod.
Kind of figured that 
But never know new technology or political belief organized crime 
Thank you for your review.
I have a question regarding housing.
In DOM, early tents are made out of sticks and dried anima skin. Later at transition into agriculture, when straw becomes available, they start making huts out of mud and straw. I haven’t seen any structures in AC screenshots made out of anything other than straw. Did people not make tents out of animal skin before agriculture? Did they use other plants?
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