Dawn of Discovery: Venice Review

this is city building game Dawn of Discovery injects new ships, items, environments and scenarios into an elaborate diplomatic, economic, and logistical strategy simulation. Dawn of Discovery is a deep and complex game that offers players a fun and accessible city building experience. While features like intricate city planning, trade route mapping and resource tree management place this game firmly in the simulation genre, its modest combat and quest systems put it on a short list of titles that often receive the strategy label. Related Designs and Blue Byte Software created the Venice update to add new game play and hundreds of new quests to the game, but this expansion appears to exist primarily to assuage players' demands for multiplayer.

Adding spies to the game does not relieve players from their essential city building responsibilities and resource management tasks; they just offer a new way to attack enemies. Since combat options are limited, the additional choice is a welcome one, but it hardly makes combat diverse. The Base of Operations structure is both the gateway to acquiring access to spies, and the counter to a sabotage attack from an enemy spy. It protects structures within its range just as a Church provides for faith within a certain radius.
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Infiltrating an enemy island is a difficult proposition until the defenses are cleared away a bit. At that point it's anticipated that the player will send in a spy. Soon this routine becomes predictable and players are relegated to a brute force attack or a buy-out. Initially the opportunity to sabotage is one filled with excitement and careful maneuvering, but ultimately it's something that works better when your opponent is already vulnerable.

Boarding ships also requires the victim to be defenseless. The process works like you might imagine: players can buy a single use item and when within range, attack and board an enemy ship. In moments the ship and its cargo become yours. Piracy is a very fitting addition to the high-seas adventure theme of the game. I found this extremely rewarding, and never tired of acquiring a new ship when the opportunity arose. This optional tactic is not terribly complex or nuanced, but its simplicity is welcome in an already very demanding game.

Venice introduced another way to win with the City Council Influence system
For those players who want to test their skills, Venice comes with 15 new PVE scenarios. These maps may focus on development, trade, logistics, diplomacy, military buildup, economics, or adventure. These maps are where most of the new quests and items can be found, and are an excellent way to get familiar with the new game play. In one such scenario players are given islands that cannot grow anything. This means no amount of expanding territory will help the player directly acquire the resources, and in order to advance the population beyond the second level players must focus heavily on trade. Another completely different scenario allows players to focus only on ship to ship combat. Players are given one war ship, and must build up a fleet and take over the map. This scenario is all about survival as you have no shipyard with which to construct another ship. This map gives players an opportunity to focus only on combat without having a thousand other decisions to make. This challenge is a fun change of pace from the demanding task of city planning, but it also illustrates how basic the strategic combat system is in Dawn of Discovery.

With the addition of ship boarding, war ships can now defeat another ship by taking it over instead of just destroying it. Though it is nice to have another option, combat gets repetitive very quickly. A simple formula of attacking with greater numbers works, but many players will find this immature combat system boring.

While there are features such as a new quest type called "Trade Race" that add to the single player game, most of the changes compliment the new player vs. player and co-op online modes. Players can experience all of the new mechanics in a private game

Closing Comments
Dawn of Discovery: Venice improves upon the already successful city building simulation game by adding new combat options and online multiplayer. These types of complex games truly shine when the myriad options create flexibility in how a player can adapt to a situation, and in how they allow the player to think creatively to solve problems. Venice’s features compliment the original game and add even more variables to an already deep system.
There is nothing game changing about the new features. In order to employ advanced techniques like boarding vessels or infiltrating a city, players will need to invest a significant amount of time preparing. These new tactics still require a sound strategy focused on acquiring resources and funding defense in order for the player to survive. Venice has content suitable for all types of players, but its main target is advanced players who want to test their mettle in new scenarios, or play online with friends.