1. Budget for Expansion

Before you go and build a bunch of production facilities, build up a strong, positive budget balance. Then, build production structures until that balance gets close to zero. This way, you’ll never outstrip your cash flow.

2. Short Roads

Roads are the simplest and most important things you can build in a game. You want short, cobblestone roads; this will increase the speed with which you harvest goods. If your roads are long, it will take extra time for your resources to be gathered and stored. Also, you’ll usually find that you have surpluses of stone as you play. Put that stone to use and pave your roads with cobblestone; it makes your resource collectors move faster!

3. The ideal Housing Situation

As you play Dawn of Discovery, you’ll probably tinker with a lot of different housing layouts. The key is to waste as little space as possible; you always want the spaces between your roads to be two houses wide, so that you never find yourself in a position where you either don’t have enough room for a house, or you have a little too much room. As your civilization advances, you’ll need to squeeze as many houses as possible into the space you have.

4. Some Needs Are Wants

The extent to which you fulfill your inhabitants’ needs dictates whether they move onto the next social level, regress back to the previous level, or do nothing at all. So you could say that the things that will keep your inhabitants at their current level of advancement are the actual “needs,” while the things that would take them to the next level are really “wants.” The point is that you can only meet a fraction of your population’s needs and generally be okay. Nomads, for instance, say they need everything from mosques to milk to carpets. But those are the things that will allow them to become envoys; the only thing nomads really need are dates. As long as you provide those, nomads will keep moving in, and never move away.

5. Tower Power

It may look silly, but you don’t need to place watchtowers anywhere near a wall. Rather, you should put them on the field of battle. Towers are a great and cheap way to boost your damage, especially in defensive battles.

6. You Don’t Need to Connect Everything

When you first begin playing Dawn of Discovery, you’ll be tempted to try to connect everything with roads. You don’t need to do this. If a market building connects and stores a resource, that same resource is instantly stored at every market building. Depositing resources in market buildings is like depositing money in a bank that way; it isn’t actually stored in the ATM, it’s stored in the metaphysical pool of funds that is available from any ATM, or in this case, market building.

7. An Island Is Truly an Island

Your goods are shared between market buildings on any given island, but your goods are not shared between islands. So if you decide to start developing on one, you’ll need to supply it with goods from another until it becomes autonomous.

8. Speed the Game Up at Your Own Risk

One impulse, especially in difficult levels, is to speed the game up to see how you’re doing. This can sometimes be a tempting mistake: if there’s a flaw in your system, accelerating time may exacerbate it to the point that it becomes a major, crushing issue. In other words, sometimes patience can be a virtue.

9. On-Foot Deliveries

Many farm buildings, such as hemp plantations, crop fields, and herb gardens, don’t deliver their goods by road. Instead, they have workers who deliver their products to other production buildings as long as those buildings are in range. You’ll want to be aware of whether or not a building requires a road connection, because if it doesn’t, you’ll have a lot more freedom with its placement.

10. Auxiliary Fleet

This is a somewhat advanced tip, but the auxiliary fleet can be your best friend in a continuous game or a scenario. For nothing but honor, you can instantly order small fleets from both the Orient and the Occident. If you’re under attack and have no other defenses, auxiliary fleets can save your life!

For tons more helpful tips, tricks, and strategies, check out Prima’s official Dawn of Discovery strategy guide!