Rich DoD, Poor DoD

There’s a great financial lesson in Dawn of Discovery that is especially timely today: If your assets are greater than your liabilities, you’ll be rich. Conversely, if your liabilities exceed your assets, you’ll be poor.

So what are liabilities and assets? Well, an asset is anything that makes money, and a liability is anything that costs money. In Dawn of Discovery, houses are assets; each one generates a steady stream of tax revenue that goes directly into your pool of gold coins. Production buildings are liabilities, because they cost money on a regular basis.

Houses make money.

As you play Dawn of Discovery, you’ll build more houses and production buildings than you can possibly keep track of. Fortunately, there’s a handy figure in the bottom left corner of the screen that tells you exactly how you’re doing financially; this is the balance figure. It subtracts the money you’re spending from the money you’re making. If it’s positive, then you’re making more than you’re spending. If it’s negative, then you’re spending more than you’re making.

This is the most important piece of information in the game. Every financial decision you make begins with the balance number. For instance, let’s say you’re making way more money than you’re spending, and you have a balance of +500 gold coins. You have a wide enough margin there to build any production building you want. If you build one with a maintenance fee of 10 gold coins, you’re still 490 gold coins above breaking even. On top of that, you’re regularly adding about 500 gold coins to your savings. You’ll be rich and powerful in no time!

Production takes money.

If, on the other hand, you have a balance of -25 gold coins and you build an extensive production line that costs 250 gold coins in maintenance fees, then you will have a balance of -275 gold coins. This will quickly chew through your savings, and then you will go into debt. So, you have to finance those production facilities with new assets. That sounds fancy, but all it means is that you need to make more money if you want to spend more money. To do that, simply build a bunch of houses to increase your tax income. Once you’re above a balance of +250 gold coins, you’ll be able to afford that facility without tipping your balance in the wrong direction.

To learn more, you could read an econ textbook…or you could just check out Prima’s ridiculously informative Dawn of Discovery strategy guide!

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