Only Germans, perhaps, could make a game about economics  a stylish, intelligent and captivating one at that.

Dawn of Discovery is the best new single-player strategy game I have played in several years. It will not satisfy anyone’s inner warlord; if pillaging, bombing and grinding your virtual enemies into submission is your idea of strategic game play, Dawn of Discovery is not for you. But if building a grand, classical empire spanning both the Occident and Orient sounds appealing, Dawn of Discovery, particularly the Windows version, is the kind of game that can easily occupy hundreds of hours over many years.

It is understandable, if vaguely condescending, that Ubisoft, the game’s publisher, has called the game Dawn of Discovery in North America while calling it Anno 1404 in the rest of the world. (The game is set in an approximation of the early 15th century.) After all, the broad American consumer has never been that great at history, especially when it comes to times before our own. Ubisoft is French, but the game’s developer, Related Designs, is German, and Dawn of Discovery is a quintessential German game.

It almost goes without saying that American media products are far more filled with depictions of violence than European ones. Having experienced war and genocide at home quite recently, Europeans are far less enamored than Americans are of turning violence into entertainment.