I seem to be joining lots of things after you leave..
Anyway, in as myself.
"Trees.. So. Many. Trees. And we want to FARM here? We dont even have axes to cut the trees. Oh, what are axes? A large, sharp, blocky blade tied to a handle for leverage. Typicaly made out of metal or stone. What is metal, tied, and leverage? Jeopardy I swear. No, dont ask that. Damn we have a lot of work to do..."
From the first update, I see several issues.
1. We have neighbors very close, and all around. I do not like this, its dangerous to our interests, and caps our expansion. We should move. More on this later.
2. We have, as Sonreal posted, no way to store food, and thus no way to "improve" our situation other than tech. This needs to be fixed as soon as possible. I would go as far as to say it is our number one priority.
3. Government and Tribe name. The fun part.
4. The farmer/hunter split.
5. The lack of intelligence on our neighbors
6. The fate of the body guards.
Sirs, I will attempt to deal with these issues one at a time.
First, our neighbors and the case for migration (lumped with the farmer/hunter split) (I saw something Duke Blackstone posted before he edited his post, so this is his idea. Its a goodie though).
-We need to move somewhere more secure, with better possibilities for food. I suggest the coast. It will allow us access to fish, and give us a wall at our backs. That way, we wont be surrounded and slaughtered.
-To get there, we should move one territory each year pausing in the spring and traveling in the winter.
-This gives us time to both plant and harvest, and that might be long enough to develop how to farm successfully by the time we hit the coast. Also, it will allow us to discover more plants to domesticate, and hopefully a source of SALT. Priority one is finding salt. This leads to point 2.
We need a way to preserve food. This is our most importent problem, and should be fixed before any others. I say we put all our women on the task, and instruct our hunters to look for salt. I expect us to develop pottery or dried jerky, hopefully both. Moving to the ocean will give us easy access to salt, so that will be very helpful. Any other ideas?
We need a tribe name, and a government. I have no preferece on the name, but for the government I suggest a
two prong republic. We, the immortals, will form the upper body, and have control of major issues in policy. The lower will deal with the day to day life of our people, and until we grow, act as a court system, with some tough cases forwarded to the upper house (us). The lower house will be trusted, older men or women, chosen every 5 years. Thoughts? (no establishment of a tax system yet, we arnt big enough to need currency).
The Farmer Hunter rivalry should be addressed dependent on these constants: We have no way of knowing how long it will take to develop successful agriculture. We have no way to cut trees or plow the ground yet. Our hunters are producing a surplus of at least +10 food per turn.
As long as these stay the same, we should not move a large amount of manpower to working on farming. I think we should detail 4 men, our most intelligent and open minded, to learning how to best grow and harvest plants, as well as finding out which plants are best to harvest. Give them a special title, so they wont catch too much flak from the other hunters.
The lack of intelligence on our neighbors is not making me happy. I want trade, and I want warning of attacks or invasion. The best way of doing this that I can see is to use 2 of our body guards as ambassadors. Their job is to find trade opportunities, particularly technological trade, and hints that the neighboring tribes are getting restless. Also, I want them to spread our language, and if we have one, our religion. Give them a special title as well.
We might need a currency sooner rather than later, looking at it this way. What would it be based on?
Finally, we should use our two remaining body guards to teach our hunters how to be better fighters, and to experiment with other weapons. Say, make each hunter train in weapons one day out of 5. At the very least, it should make them more effective in bringing in food. Edit: I want axes
Edit 2: One of the immortals should start creating a religion, with us at its head at least. Better a planned one than an unplanned, foreign one.