Dawn of Man

Dawn of Man

35 ratings
Paleolithic Overpopulation
By baransu
A few brief notes on how I eked out this ridiculous achievement
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Notes


- It's very important to not overwork your people beyond maybe %130-140 workload, as this will result in increased deaths due to starvation, hypothermia, dehydration

- there WILL be lots of deaths, beyond about 70 or so population it becomes slower growth because even with groups of 4 immigrating, the immigration is really just balancing out the constant deaths that you have to accept. be paranoid and hyper-aware of how many pregnant female adults you have at all times.

- in order to minimize deaths resulting from people travelling too far, you want to have work areas around you in all directions roughly equidistant at their furthest points. this way you can still cover a ton of land area but you aren't sending people to mars trying to chase that quick-footed ibex.

- take advantage of the lay of the land, locating work areas for fishing in deltas or convergences or whatever will allow you to cover more usable banks.

- it's okay if your people are overworked all year if they are almost all working on gathering food. this means you can support them, and it's safe to grow a bit

- I like to produce %125 bone spears and warm skin outfits to avoid situations where I have enough work for 90 people, but I only have 88, however only 61 have clothes and it's winter so we are falling behind because I have 27 non-working pigdudes eating my food.

- It's valuable to think about available manpower as a resource with it's own limit (population) but that costs increasing amounts of other resources to produce. sometimes you need to slow down growth to catch up with equipment production or something, other times you really want to facilitate growth by having more than enough bedspace. there seems to be an automatic birth control system built into the game that enforces abstinence when all the available housing is full. if you have enough food for everyone, but workload is at %145 or something, it's time to grow.

- most of the game should be spent with about %80-110 workload almost entirely food. you should have enough production and crafting buildings to keep tools and clothing balanced with your population at all times, try to avoid a backlog in the crafting huts. it helps to have one dedicated exclusively to skin outfits and set to high priority, while the other one(s) do more generalized crafting, and may or may not be set to high priority.

- I don't craft wooden tools for trading, slings are enough. I tried to minimize trading because even with a low comission, you are still losing value relative to processing the resources yourself.

- no flint spears, bone ones are just as good and bones will be abundant in this scenario, because we are hunting so crazily

- you need to be constantly mindful of flint income, as when a work area depletes you could find yourself in trouble if you don't soon create another to replace it. try to avoid having more flint than necessary, people's labour is usually better spent on food production or skins production for the repair of all these gross little huts

16 Comments
REDÆPE 31 Jul, 2023 @ 3:10am 
Can regularly push my settlement too 600+ in this game on the chesapeak bay map, population limits on the basegame maps are so lame :{
OutcastNumber18 23 Jan, 2023 @ 6:48am 
good tactical information. hopefully we can improve quality of life for these cavemen. :bad_beauty:
Fenra369 17 Feb, 2022 @ 7:17pm 
One thing I guarentee is the abstinence at max housing is real. Once you max housing no one gets pregnant, I'm fairly certain you don't get immigrants either, but that was a long time ago.
fuzzy duck 9 Apr, 2021 @ 4:48pm 
Just did it today. Very satisfying achievement. I agree use bone spears, keep flint coming in and set LOTS of hunting areas. Plus manually send groups out after dangerous prey - keeps the plains safer for gatherers as well as providing meat =)
Ontrose 8 Apr, 2021 @ 5:47am 
Oh and be pro-active in terms of hostile wildlife. Im playin on hardcore. So i get raiders too. Currently on about 60 pop
Ontrose 8 Apr, 2021 @ 5:46am 
Well, buy every piece of flint you can. Best use for trading.
Make manual hunting parties. Killing 4 mammoths? Yes, if your unlucky you lose a guy, but dang, your set for a few seasons on meat and hides.
Shazbert 10 Jan, 2021 @ 12:21am 
what population did you make it to? is that 100 in the image?

I've had serious problems with random deaths due to starvation etc, even when close by or in the middle of my settlement.

I've actually got up to 267 pop, on Ancient Warriors, on the Plains of Conflict map. It's probably the most favourable map I've played, as there's so much land right next to the starting spot that you can easily expand to, and farm. that 267 was Iron Age, but I've also redone that and gotten to 260 with just the Bronze age. Had to give up after that with all the ridiculous deaths, absolutely outta control.

good luck!

my only real tip is that animal domestication is the key to bigger pops, but with that comes a reliance on wheat...
Alex 30 Nov, 2020 @ 4:58am 
Rule No. 1 for me: harvest. I built too much yesterday in autumn so that only 1/3 of the fields were harvested. Well .. 50% of my animals died of starvation. No cows = no milk = no cheese. No sheep = no wool = no clothes. No meat! = Dangerous situation.
Ethereal 2 Jun, 2020 @ 5:10pm 
Focus on food and clothing will make it more ezzzz. The best settlement position for this achievement is at the northeast of the first map, which contains 3 lakes providing enough fishes and animals. Do not build houses too much which may cost more unnecessary hides.:SG0_OK:
Zachattack0318 24 May, 2020 @ 7:18am 
just be patient i guess get lots of food and you should be fine i did it way back when and apparently i didnt have struggles