In the beginning there was a vast darkness. Things changed, and then they changed some more, and they kept changing until we finally find ourselves at a unique and beautiful planet filled with life. One of these forms of life is human: you! You are all the leaders of a sizable tribe of humans as they move from barely subsisting to settling and, hopefully, thriving through the ages. There is only so much room at the top where the lucky few bask in the fruits of the labors of others, and this creates a divide between you, the leaders of this as-of-yet unknown tribe!
At the start of the game every player is a Minor Family directing a nomadic tribe. As time goes on, Major Families will be introduced and voting rules will be adjusted accordingly (covered further below). Both types of families can propose plans of action for the tribe during all four phases of each turn and all generally want their peoples to continue existing. Beyond that, they are all competing for the position of top dogs as the Minor Families try to outmaneuver one another to usurp a Major Family and the Major Families do everything they can to hold onto their positions.
But
how are you supposed to do any of that while you’re also leading what may one day be a multicontinental empire? Find out more in the spoilers below!
Everyone wants Influence. It represents how much sway a family has expressed over their people. Influence can be gained in quite a few ways, and with alarming regularity. Any proposal that is accepted by the tribe grants (or in very unlucky cases, loses) the Family that proposed it a flat amount of Influence. Events may occur based on a number of factors during the course of gameplay that will also result in an opportunity for Families to gain (or lose) influence. Influence resets when the civilization advances to a new age.
Everyone wants Prestige. Prestige represents the legacy a Major Family has left behind and is what determines the winner at the end of the game. Prestige is only gained by Major Families in position when your people pass into a new Age. Prestige cannot be lost.
The Master List is the scoreboard for the game and will track each players Influence and Prestige, as well as any notable events that may have occurred due to their actions. If you want to give your family an in-universe name I won't stop you - roleplaying is fun, but the list will use your forum username for ease of reference. Your character details can and will probably be copied and pasted alongside your other information for posterity.
The first Major Families will be selected at the end of the first turn based on Influence. There will be three Major Families selected regardless of the spread of Influence, however ties (ex. a spread of 3/2/1/1 Influence) or spaces filled at random (i.e. only one or two players with influence resulting in a roll between everyone else) will impact the development of your people. This will continue to be the case throughout the entirety of the game at every Age advancement, with the civilization seeing more beneficial ages the closer the number of Major Family candidates is to three and the general spread of influence at the transition to the new age.
Major Families and Minor Families are only functionally different in how they vote on proposals each phase, but this one difference is significant.
Major Families have a great amount of power and utilize their own votebox where their votes count in their entirety.
Minor Families vote is a votebox separated from the Majors’, and upon concluding a vote the winning proposal from the Minor Families has a singular vote cast to represent them in the Major Families’ votebox. Everyone, whether they join at the start or come in later, is initially a Minor Family.
In the case of a tie vote the proposal backed by the Minor Families will always win. Tie votes within the Minor Families will be resolved as God intended - via coin flip.
All votes are equal throughout the first turn, as there will be no Major Families in play.
Ages are clear partitions in the history of your people, representing periods of great change and an evolution of culture. Ages provide bonuses to appropriate actions, such as Bronze Age providing bonuses to actions involving bronzework, or The Unending Season giving military-based action bonuses. Ages are defined by the actions that drove the civilization into said new age, and their impact is affected by how many Major Family candidates there are as well as the distribution of influence. The most stable ages occur the more evenly Influence is distributed and the closer the number of Major Family candidates is to three. Note that, for the sake of calculating the influence of Influence, players with no influence for the Age will not be taken into consideration when judging distribution. Stacking the deck isn't necessarily bad though - the more ahead of the Influence pack someone is, the more their proposals will stray from average for better or worse (via background modifiers on rolls), and could result in accelerated Age advancement as a result.
While most Age advancements will occur after the Experimentation Phase, extreme circumstances could see a mid-turn Age change.
Each turn is divided into four distinct phases that take place over a wildly variable amount of time - months, years, or even generations can pass by over the course of a single turn. The first turn is the only exception, with an extra phase at the beginning for selecting your starting tribe. The tribe starts as
Nomadic, with special rules in the spoiler titled "READ: Nomad Rules".
Make sure you read it, especially if you're a returning player. Becoming a
Settled tribe will replace the known special rules with new ones, but you don't get to learn those until your people do (:.
The Exploration Phase is the first phase and lets you propose plans for exploration of the world or developments to specifically enhance and advance exploration. Early on your people will only be able to explore 1 Space from settled territory, but as time goes on and your explorers can cross multiple tiles you will need to chart an exact course. Sea-based exploration needs to have a course charted that starts and ends on a settled coastal tile. Should trade become a possibility for some reason, it will also be taken care of in this phase.
Exploring Land and Shallow Water will reveal any resources available that your people would be able to identify, acquire, and utilize at the time. Details of Land terrain will also be revealed upon exploration. Exploring Deep Sea for the first time will result in a number of rolls to represent exploration into the great unknown. This "random generation" can provide boons or maluses to your exploratory efforts, wipe them out in a mysterious storm, discover new lands, and much more! If nothing of a more permanent nature is discovered, Deep Sea will be converted to a plain Ocean tile. Both Deep Sea and Ocean tiles represent much larger areas than other tiles, making progress through them slower if not properly prepared for. Tiles with a mix of Land and Shallow Water are considered to have Coastal Waters, which function similarly to Shallow Water with a lower bar of entry. A technology that allows only Coastal travel can cross from one landmass to another so long as they are not separated by a complete water tile.
You may decide to develop new techniques or equipment to improve their scouting or prospecting abilities in lieu of exploration during this phase. These proposals need to have a basis in presently available Resources and Technologies, and may reveal new Technology upon their creation depending on what is available and how well their rolls end up. Proposals for advancements are developed and integrated into society based on a roll of 1d10, where a 1 represents terrible construction, craftsmanship, execution, or adoption, and a 10 results in a brilliant final product with a major impact on the nature of future exploration...and perhaps the direction of your people as a whole. These developments may require resources for upkeep in order to continue gaining benefits from them, but can be "defunded" and "refunded" for no penalty during any Exploration Phase based on current needs.
The Expansion Phase is where you directly influence civilized society (if you consider yourself "civilized" or "society"). You can choose to spread your people to a grid square with a Resource upkeep cost based on the terrain and your people's own skills, technologies, and equipment. Distant settling and colonization will also occur in this phase if you develop means to do so. If, for some reason, you'd need to fight a war, decisions on where to strike would occur here.
Instead of expanding your borders you can use this phase to develop your people and their society in a wide variety of ways. Things like spears, hospitals, and a code of laws can all be proposed during this phase. You can also create techniques to refine base materials into a more refined resource, such as developing an alloy after figuring out how to use metals and getting your hands on a few of them, potentially expanding the potential of your technological and societal advancements. These proposals need to have a basis in presently available Resources and Technologies, and may reveal new Technology upon their creation depending on what is available and how well their rolls end up. Proposals for advancements are developed and integrated into society based on a roll of 1d10, where a 1 represents terrible construction, craftsmanship, execution, or adoption, and a 10 results in a brilliant final product with a major impact on the nature of future expansion...and perhaps the direction of your people as a whole. These developments may require resources for upkeep in order to continue gaining benefits from them, but can be "defunded" and "refunded" for no penalty during any Expansion Phase based on current needs.
The Exploitation Phase allows you to grow your economic capabilities. At the start you are able to choose one additional known resource in controlled territories to gather every Exploitation Phase.
You may opt to propose new techniques and equipment to improve the exploitative measures of your people. More advanced means of identifying and gathering resources is the quickest and easiest way available to identify new useful resources. Your proposals can be general, but more specific creations will have the potential to provide much more potent benefits. For example you may choose to create iron tools to provide a general benefit to your people, but proposing an iron pickax instead will potentially greatly improve extraction of ores and perhaps discover new ones. These proposals need to have a basis in presently available Resources and Technologies, and may reveal new Technology upon their creation depending on what is available and how well their rolls end up. Proposals for advancements are developed and integrated into society based on a roll of 1d10, where a 1 represents terrible construction, craftsmanship, execution, or adoption, and a 10 results in a brilliant final product with a major impact on the nature of future exploitation...and perhaps the direction of your people as a whole. These developments may require resources for upkeep in order to continue gaining benefits from them, but can be "defunded" and "refunded" for no penalty during any Exploitation Phase based on current needs.
The final phase of every turn is the Experimentation Phase. This turn does not have a variety of actions to perform, and is instead used solely to propose new Technologies, techniques, tools, social constructs, just about anything you could make in the previous three phases and then some. Unlike the designs proposed in other phases, the proposals in the Experimentation Phase do not necessarily need to be based on existing Technologies. Straying further from your existing baseline will make the action less likely to have major successes. Both positive and negative outcomes leave more extreme marks on your society than advancements proposed in other phases.
Proposals for advancements are developed and integrated into society based on a roll of 1d10, where a 1 represents terrible construction, craftsmanship, execution, or adoption, and a 10 results in a brilliant final product with a major impact on the nature of future experimentation...and perhaps the direction of your people as a whole. These developments may require resources for upkeep in order to continue gaining benefits from them, but can be "defunded" and "refunded" for no penalty during any Experimentation Phase based on current needs. Proposals in this phase will grant the Family 2 Influence when chosen as opposed to the 1 attained in other phases.
The Experimentation Phase ends with a summary of your peoples progress as well as any changes in Founder status or the Age.
And here's some more spoilers covering a few other things!
Until your people decide on a location to set up a more permanent home, if they ever do, they will be considered Nomadic. The Exploration, Expansion, and Exploitation phases all have extra considerations when playing as a Nomadic Tribe.
Exploration: Nomadic tribes travel together. When Exploring as a Nomadic Tribe, the entire tribe can, but does not need to, relocate themselves during the Exploration Phase to the Explored area.
Expansion: Nomadic tribes still grow, so it may eventually be deemed necessary to expand and split the tribe into two groups. You can use your Expansion action to develop a new group of Nomads in an area adjacent to their parent group.
Exploitation: While Nomadic tribes don't cost much in the way of direct upkeep, they still need and use resources. Nomads will automatically exploit the available resources on their current tiles. The downside is you will have to choose one resource in each area occupied by a Nomadic group to temporarily exhaust every Exploitation Phase until the tribe leaves the tile, with a one turn grace-period when the tribe moves in (so you can actually, you know, actually use all the resources for a turn). There is an additional risk of permanently losing chosen resources, although that chance is initially <0.1%. Note that if, for example, a resource that provides both food and gunpowder is affected by exhaustion when you decide to exhaust gunpowder it will not remove the Food unless/until food is the selected resource. The same is true for materials providing multiples of the same resource.
Nomadic tribes automatically exploit all exploitable known resources in the zone they occupy. Borders can be expanded but are not automatically exploited, although these resources can be selected for exhaustion.
Nomadic Tribes benefit from lower upkeep costs in general, but suffer due to less dramatic advancement and reduced resource stability.
Settling is not required, and while downsides will never disappear, you won't be directly punished for remaining nomadic for as long as you feel. You may also revert to a Nomadic civilization once you settle should you and your people decide that living in one place is not their cup of tea or tea-adjacent drink. The transition will likely include growing pains in either direction.
Settling a tribe is a large step in the progress of your civilization, with hardships aplenty to join the benefits. You are now considered Settled and some rules have adjusted accordingly.
Exploration: Your tribe is no longer able to migrate during your exploration.
Expansion: Settling is no longer restricted to spawning another group adjacent to an existing one, and you can instead found a new settlement anywhere within the tribe's borders.
Exploitation: There is no longer mandatory resource exhaustion, although passive exhaustion still exists.
Settlements incur an upkeep cost based on the developments in use, and at a more noticeable (that is, extant) rate than nomads.
Technological advancements will have a much greater impact on society, with more widespread potential effects than the advancements made by a nomadic tribe.
Semipermanent Resources are now permanent/treated normally.
The tribe may choose to revert to Nomadic at any point, however there will likely be issues resulting from such a decision based on your internal and larger geopolitical situations.
All proposals require a name to identify them as well as a plan detailed enough to be comprehended by the GM and other players. Proposals for technologies, equipment, and the like should clearly describe the desired outcome of the project. Adopted proposals in every phase grant 1 Influence, save for the Experimentation Phase which gives 2 Influence instead.
There will be two voteboxes active after the first turn, and you are only allowed to vote your singular vote in the proper box depending on your standing as a Major or Minor Family. A votebox is a quote box listing the proposals being voted for during that phase where you add your name next to the project you support as well as adjust a number representing the amount of voters supporting said item. Major and Minor Founder voteboxes will likely appear very similar, so they should be clearly labeled to prevent confusion. Provided below are two examples of acceptable voteboxes and one example of what not to do:
Owl Ranch (2): Birdman, Manbird
Money (1): Fedboy
Help We're Dying (1): Minor Families
Floorpills (2): Dr. Floorpills, Doc Galactic
Monkey Translator (1): Rathen
Help We're Dying (3): Shitsec, Checkers, The AI
In the above examples the victorious proposal would be the Owl Ranch. Help We're Dying was the winning proposal among the Minor Founders, so a vote was tallied for it in the Major Votebox. Note that both examples have clear titles indicating which group they are for.
Egg Scrambler (4): Larry, Moe, Curly, Joe
Scramb Eggler (4): Pinky, Brain, Moe
This is a bad votebox. It does not clearly identify which tier of Family it is associated with, the numerical tally of voters does not match the amount of voters, and Moe has voted twice!
While there is a vast multitude of resources to discover, uncover, and create, these can generally be broken down into three groups:
Food is any resource that provides sustenance for your people. This can include but is not limited to game, fish, wild berries, and crops. Food is usually used to pay upkeep for settled territories.
Economic Resources are most other resources used in the development and maintenance of your society. Examples of some Economic resources are tin, marble, clay, wood, and cotton. Certain Economic Resources, such as tobacco and opium, will (de?)buff your civilization with passive effects while they are being Exploited.
Special Resources are resources only found in large concentrations in very specific areas of the world. These Special Resources defy our own laws of the physical universe and can lead to very creative and interesting advancements. Special Resources have undefined reactions, allowing players to come up with unique solutions to whatever problems might arise. The base form of a special resource does not mean other forms would be ineffective or impossible: it is up to you to define what the liquid form of your special gas can do. Special Resources are the only ones you will be made aware of before you have the capacity to gather or utilize them.
Water, while not technically a Resource, is not available in some territories. Any action taken within them will be more likely to fail until a means of bringing water to distant lands is developed.
Resources you know of but do not have the means to exploit or can exploit but have no Technology to use them for will be identified by their red text in the Resources spoiler. A resource marked with ?? denotes a resource with unknown or variable products based on how you decide to approach exploitation.
Each Resource will be persistently tracked in their own spoiler alongside the amount of the resource you have available and the amount of the resource total (Ex. Iron (2/4))
To make things easy on youse, you will be able to search TURNTURNTURN in the fancy search bar up on the top right in order to find all updates in this thread.
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Topic: Founding Families - A Semicompetitive Civ Building Game [Explore IV] (Read 11095 times)