I was jonsing for some strategy/simulation lovin' this past weekend. I went on to Steam and browsed around for a bit and found this hidden gem: Dawn of Discovery. I browsed the screenshots, read some reviews and decided "What the hell...". I ponied up my $50 and waited for the 4 gigs to download.
When the download was finished, I fired up the campaign. The graphics are, in a word, stunning. I'm running it on 1920 x 1200 with an ATI Radeon 4670. The oceans are awesome just to look at!
Gameplay is no slouch either. I found the tech trees to be a little intimidating at first. They make Civ look like child's play. In order to get rope for making Trading ships you have to:
- build a Hemp farm.
- harvest Hemp to market
- make hamp in to Rope
- cart rope to market
- build ship
Sounds like alot of tedium at first and it is. BUT, setting up the economics in the game is half the fun. It's a city builder/economic/trading/strategy sim all-in-one.
So far, i've played a couple chapters of the campaign and then started a up a continuous 'sandbox' type game. There's no end to it. You can just keep trading and building until you're ready to start over.
I believe there is a demo available so you can try before you buy. Take a look if this sort of thing interests you.