Dawn of Man: Full Game Commentary By Time Traveller with God Complex

I played the stone age 'city builder' Dawn of Man. Watch as my village grows, and is forced to put up with the various pitfalls that come from both having free will, and following the will of the mighty sky-Devin. And I get ranty about various topics, ranging from beingly slightly to do with the game, to having almost no connection whatsoever. It's another stunningly insightful collection of video game comments. Enjoy it while civilisation still lasts!
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[@TheSuperPoulet]

Flint running out and needing to be imported is actually more realistic : flint was not that common in the first place (at least not in quantity) and was traded for on a regional basis. So fear not, oh omnipresent authority figure, everything is right in the world.

[@OffyDGG]

Even in my wildest fantasy simulations, flint shortages remain a pressing concern. Huzzah!

[@MichaelCollins-dl5om]

@@OffyDGG There is another game set in the Stone Age era called Ancient Cities that you may be interested in

[@user-ip3pn2lm4m]

running out of flint is not something i run into, i use it only for axes with fairly low limits till bronze age. bone has same stats and already available from hunts or domestics for other tools.

[@BobMcBobJr]

1:18:30 The idea of half the village dying because they 1 by 1 when off on an epic quest to return the corpse of their predecessor is infinitely amusing.

[@user-ip3pn2lm4m]

had a issue with loads of people dying, turns out they were dragging rolling megaliths through a lake.. most were hypothermia and i was clicking the alert and seeing a lake.. ok.. a few years pass still getting same alert hypo.. dead hypo hypo dead lol.. but on the shore 19 mined megalithic rocks.. needing new rollers.. crazy

[@villevalste1888]

If the game had a day-night cycle, I think it would be pretty reasonable to have the people gather around the campfires every evening and be social. And since it's going to happen every day anyways, it wouldn't be an efficiency trade-off the player would have to consider.

[@OffyDGG]

A very good point, that would be a great way to include such a mechanic.

[@user-ip3pn2lm4m]

this should serve as daily meal(at least one), social for happiness, and then should go rest after awaiting dawn. that would solve alot of player problems over working their population

[@prestongarvey7745]

Small side note here. This game is generally pretty chill, but if you want it to be fast chaotic and active. Go for the “Paleolithic Overpopulation” achievement (have 100 people in the Paleolithic era). I think I spent probably 80% of my time looking for food sources; and about 20% building. Mostly burial mounds for prestige I believe.

[@Unni_Havas]

Yeah, that was a fun challenge. I had to send them out to fish in all the lakes and after they kept dying, I had to keep deploying and removing them every spring and fall, and using the rest of the village to forage and go hunting the few animals that still dared to come within half a season away from my city. Also tried to give them leather clothing to increase comfort and increase population growth. Try the challenge, only 50 people and they come in in droves compared to normal, but the only tech you have is food drying. So you are stuck with wooden spears and wooden harpoons for fishing and hunting. No composite tools, so you have to build around the trees, no dogs to act as meathshields , no place to bury any dead, and scarce resources.

[@nobubblegums-1899]

If I'm gonna worship a divine being, the one with a full presentation on theodicy gets my vote, Glory to OffyDeus!

[@BobMcBobJr]

i love his explanation for freewill, "I like to impart my creations with some amount of freewill so that when they inevitably die it's not always my fault." I would like to add to it the explanation that "it's to reduce frustrating and boring micromanagement. You can do all the boring stuff. I'm a god!"

[@robertrodriguezharo1906]

Dawn of Man is a chill and nice-looking marvel of a game for being done by just one person, but I find your points very acurate. While animal reproduction and material culture is quite developed, social aspect of the game is very missing, a thing other games like Spore focus more. I like a lot Prehistoric city-builders and, almost losing hope Ancient Cities will be finished someday, I have found that Astrotycoon2: Ritual does have a social-spiritual aspect I consider interesting. Loving your review, Devin, thanks for the vid!

[@OffyDGG]

Hadn't heard of these, good leads to follow. I want more from this genre, I liked it more than I thought I would. Thanks!

[@robertrodriguezharo1906]

@@OffyDGG Thanks to you, Devin. This genre of prehistoric city-builder/survival has a lot of attractive and future, glad you're enjoying it!

[@ThePrinceofParthia]

Absolutely loved this game when it came out. The only Banished successor I played that I liked more than Banished.

[@Wlexik]

Sky-Devin be blessed

[@siralex2343]

You should look at a game called Songs of Syx, there’s a demo that is the game just a version behind. It’s a city builder where most of the numbers are on the screen, but the ui still needs work… the music is really good though. Despite being early access, it’s really, really good.

[@OffyDGG]

That's a great recommendation, I hadn't heard of it before but after taking a look, it seems really cool. Gonna throw that on my wishlist as a reminder to buy it sometime and give it a go. Thanks!

[@Dahostorynerd]

Love this game, so glad you covered it

[@acg3934]

The way you're making decisions based on how you'd think the future would play out makes me want to see you do a Paradox Megacampaign. PS if you ever do, please play in Wales ❤

[@OffyDGG]

Wales is a supreme choice. Now all I need is paradox to make a stone age game so I can play as the og mesolithic welsh fighting the second wave protocelts migration to Britain, for the ultimate original Welsh start position!

[@jedfromyourlocallibrary]

I look forward to the day, Devin!

[@acg3934]

@@OffyDGG Hell yeah brother

[@BobMcBobJr]

@@OffyDGG I'm sure there's a Wales campaign for Total War: Medieval 2. That said, not paradox.

[@jonbrennan8948]

The crops also produce different amounts of grain/straw or have disease resistance. I'm not sure if the in-game wiki mentions it I remember looking it up online

[@villevalste1888]

The way I worked out how to get back to the village after getting lost was just following the rivers. Not really that efficient, but I know that the village is next to a river and that there aren't too many rivers, so I just go along a river until I happen upon the village. Of course I'd always hope to get a notification that zooms to the village, but they don't always come up at convenient times.

[@user-ip3pn2lm4m]

use the return key "Enter" return view to your town

[@crmesson22k]

this game is really good but still had lots of potential.

[@jonbrennan8948]

I believe that development has already stopped for the game unfortunately. I spent many hours completing all the campaigns and challenge modes but still wish there would be something new added to keep the game fresh 😢

[@ClassicCase]

It took my tribe 3000 years to build 10 huts, despite all the resources being available. I uninstalled and refunded.

[@The-Plaguefellow]

I do kinda have to echo your general sentiments on the game; this game's treatment of megalithic structures somewhat indicates the lacking anthropological and, perhaps, overly-economic focus that the game has. You can just build dolmens, menhirs, totems, cairns, etc. just about anywhere and without any actual valuation for the place-prestige, spiritual, astrological, personal, etc. values that its placement has (i.e. a henge in a flat, open plain for lunar/solar observation, complex cairns for VIPs, totems as wards and/or genii locorum). It's a small-scale-and-scope game with a large-scale-and-scope execution. It should be closer to (but not exactly like) RimWorld where you you become more involved with your people personally in an evolving and open narrative you work alongside and can't dictate absolutely, rather than Cities: Skylines/Civilization/SimCity where the people are distant and impersonal simulations and you have near-absolute control over a situation with absolute milestones and "victory" conditions.

[@mikelnazkauta1317]

At first I read "Dawn of War" And I was like: "Wait, again? I am not complaining." Edit: LoL "Used to be animals" Foolish Devin. We are still animals. We just pretend we aren't to feel special. Anyways, play Dwarf Fortress.

[@manlymollusc6534]

Copper is softer than flint. But in practice it could be repaired. Not sure if that is reflected somehow in this game.

[@ArtanisOwns]

A real comeback story! Beautiful. Please play Majesty and the Northern Expansion if you like pseudo-independent minions!

[@villevalste1888]

I don't remember, if it works like this, but might be possible to change the amount of people that can work in a given work area to 0. Thus, stopping people from working there for now, without having to delete the work area.

[@OffyDGG]

I think if you go below 1 it cycles back up to 5, can't entirely remember though. But yeah if it could be zero, that would pretty much be what I wanted.

[@nikoladedic6623]

Huh. Now I am curious on how you would do a NLP for this. A short story from the perspective of the tribe's God? Maybe tell exaggarated stories about tribe's past?

[@colmoe]

The Top Bloody King of Corsica ascends to Godhood, creates a new world, narrates the rise of the perfect Corsican civilization

[@OffyDGG]

Difficult to really use the characters in the game, since you would have to explain why babies born in 500,000 bce become adults in 500 bce... But yeah that's nothing a little time travel can't solve!

[@user-zx3lq3zi7i]

It was good revisiting the "bad old days". But what about the good new days? I think it's time to stop messing around with our lives, and just play some Cae- _Godless Tactics_ !

[@scrub7308]

Is this the narrator from the Kings and Generals KZbin channel???

[@alexandersanford7438]

When storms happen in the game there is a chance a person or domesticated animal get struck by lightning and killed, nothing you can do to stop it.

[@cheekibreeki9155]

MAAAA! MAAAA! The Brits are finding civilization again. MAAAAAAA!

[@andrewyoung8550]

Hey Offay, just a quick suggestion for a review video. "World Warfare and Economics" released in December and I looked into it today but the reviews are somewhat mixed with people who posted positive ones saying it has potential but currently is only worth a buy to support the Devs while the negative one say it has potential but isn't fleshed out enough to justify the 30 buck price tag. If you ever get the chance to review it that'd be awesome since no one else has really looked into it and your reviews are always awesome to watch. I haven't played it myself and will probably wait on it for now but thought it might be a decent idea for a review video if your looking for new 4x games no one else has reviewed yet.

[@BobMcBobJr]

Offy is more of a "on release" reviewer. He doesn't play too much that's still in development.

[@legendairenic6247]

I remember people saying the devs abandoned the game. Idk if the game is going to get updates expanding on some of these systems

[@robertrodriguezharo1906]

Storms are really not a big deal in Dawn of Man, mostly they reduce the moral of the population representing their fear and discomfort, they prevent people from working outside in long periods and degrade faster resources storaged outside. Animal reproduction is an important thing in the game; if you hunt both females and males of a spieces it may not regenerate gradually: it is a significant change to do selective hunting and always leaving enough females and males to breed in the next season.

[@halecaffery7823]

dawn of man may be decent but your commentary was excellent

[@OffyDGG]

Thank you!

[@calvinhammond7282]

I feel like you would enjoy a game called Ymir. It is a similar game in concept, however it goes to the iron age from the stone age. It focuses more on labor and managing it along with very complex trade and economics that grows as the game progresses. One of the biggest hurdles of the game is transitioning into barter and currency without having your population revolting. I think you would find many flaws with it but your videos wouldn't be the joy they are if you didn't spend the whole time ranting about them.

[@OffyDGG]

A similar game with good rant potential sounds like exactly what I am looking for, good tip :D

[@jonbrennan8948]

There is a hotkey to move the camera back to your village, I believe it is ENTER or RETURN but it's been a while since I've played

[@OffyDGG]

This is exactly what I needed!

[@b1indmailman]

Were you being serious when you said you had a masters degree?

[@OffyDGG]

Yes, somehow, was a long time ago now, and I guess it doesn't make being skygod of an ancient village any easier

[@Soudrah]

Its kinda fascinating idea that although we are biologically the same humans as the stone age, we could as 22 year Olds just like be God's with our knowledge but babies with be able to survive??? I want a weird strategy game where all modern humans get transported into a strategy war zone of modern humans attempting their best to manage literally just 7 people. Modern humans can be God's with all our knowledge compared to older humans, but only like a God of 7, any more than that is too many xD

[@andrewcarter4458]

Enjoyed watching this but Warhammer Mechanicus!!!! Let’s goooo!!!!!!