Joe Dodson, strategy guide author here again. So, you’ve just bought and installed Dawn of Discovery, and you aren’t sure what to do first. After all, this is a big game with three compelling options. In my opinion, you should definitely begin with the campaign. Dawn of Discovery is so big that it can be overwhelming if you just try to dive in; the campaign will introduce you to its details and elements in a logical progression. It does a good job of making sure you’ve had time to familiarize yourself with one idea before moving on to another.

With the help of the campaign, you’ll quickly go from this…

If you’d rather simply explore city building, you could either begin a continuous game or a scenario. On the continuous front, you could easily begin a preset easy game, or you could enter the game settings window and browse through all the different elements that compose different levels in Dawn of Discovery.

If you decide to play a scenario right out of the gate, choose the Elector scenario. It’s a nice and easy mission with no rivals to compete against. On the other hand, if you jump into a medium scenario, or heaven forbid a hard one, you might be destroyed in a matter of minutes by your aggressive and intelligent foes!

…to this!

One final thing to remember is that you can take it easy in the first several missions in the campaign. The game will try to tell you that time is of the essence and that the world is going to end, but unless you see a timer, you have all the time in the world. We mention this because overextending yourself is one of the easiest ways to get messed up. You always want to make sure you have a positive balance and adequate resources before you make any major leaps or take on any new challenges in Dawn of Discovery. Oh, and picking up Prima’s official strategy guide can’t hurt, either…