The Great Tribes

[Zemlainin]

I am a bit confused. It is an all of history simulator, from the tribe to space. Okay. But, it also has characters that age?

Timing wise, how will the early game even fit such an aspect? The way of Civ is to show those core early techhes developing over centuries by simply making the first few turns go over decades to a century at once.

will the character system only unlucky last the ancient age or will the characters are by turn no matter if said turn is supposed to be decades long, making it so a king may see the first fire, first wheel, first bronze age weapons and the rise of agriculture all within his lifetime?

Thanks for the great question — this is something we’ve spent a lot of time thinking through.

The Great Tribes uses a mixed-time progression model. In the early game, turns do cover large spans of time (sometimes decades), but characters do not age proportionally to turn duration. Instead, they age by a fixed rule — usually about 1 year per turn.

This allows us to keep the character system consistent across all eras. So no — a single king won’t witness the entire technological tree of early human development in one lifetime.

But: while the world evolves faster in the early game (just like in Civ), personal lifespans still unfold on a more realistic human scale. This creates interesting gameplay tension — your tribe may be discovering fire and agriculture rapidly, but your leader is still just one person, and might not live to see what comes next.

We use this dynamic to show how generations shape and inherit decisions over time. In the later eras, the turn length shortens, so the pacing of world events gradually synchronizes more closely with individual lifespans.

Let me know if you want more details on how this is balanced — happy to share more!

 

[<Nexus>]

Wow! How did I miss this very promising project so far?

I didn't have the time yet to read the whole thread, only the first few posts and this last one...

The Great Tribes uses a mixed-time progression model. In the early game, turns do cover large spans of time (sometimes decades), but characters do not age proportionally to turn duration. Instead, they age by a fixed rule — usually about 1 year per turn.

This allows us to keep the character system consistent across all eras. So no — a single king won’t witness the entire technological tree of early human development in one lifetime.

But: while the world evolves faster in the early game (just like in Civ), personal lifespans still unfold on a more realistic human scale. This creates interesting gameplay tension — your tribe may be discovering fire and agriculture rapidly, but your leader is still just one person, and might not live to see what comes next.

We use this dynamic to show how generations shape and inherit decisions over time. In the later eras, the turn length shortens, so the pacing of world events gradually synchronizes more closely with individual lifespans.

I hope you don't mind a little brainstorming:

How about something like this:
In the very early game (ancient era) your "characters" are not individuals but ruling families, than later (classical and maybe medieval era) they represent dynasties. This would allow a more realistic, smoother timing.
Actually they wouldn't even need to age but could use a somewhat different system, where a family/dynasty becomes less and less capable of ruling until the point they are finally overthrown.

But of course I do not know all the technical details, I haven't even read the whole thread yet, just brainstorming

 

[Zemlainin]

Wow! How did I miss this very promising project so far?

I didn't have the time yet to read the whole thread, only the first few posts and this last one...

It’s no surprise something like this happens on a large community like CivFanatics

I hope you don't mind a little brainstorming:

How about something like this:
In the very early game (ancient era) your "characters" are not individuals but ruling families, than later (classical and maybe medieval era) they represent dynasties. This would allow a more realistic, smoother timing.
Actually they wouldn't even need to age but could use a somewhat different system, where a family/dynasty becomes less and less capable of ruling until the point they are finally overthrown.

But of course I do not know all the technical details, I haven't even read the whole thread yet, just brainstorming

Thank you so much for the idea — I'm always glad to hear thoughtful suggestions. After all, truth is born in discussion!

At one point, we also considered more abstract approaches — like using families or dynasties, especially for the early eras. But in the end, we decided to build the system around individual characters, to strengthen the player's connection to their choices and consequences. Right now, personalities are actually one of the core inputs for the AI system.

That said, the game does feature generational change — characters grow old, die, leave behind heirs, form dynasties, get married, and so on. So in a way, it's a blend of your suggestion and a personal narrative system.

As for declining power — that's a really good observation. We do have mechanics for aging, illness, fatigue, and even loss of influence, which can lead to a change of leadership or internal tribal fractures.

Thanks again for the great brainstorm! If you have more ideas, I’d love to hear them

 

[<Nexus>]

What about music?

I'm a game music enthusiast and have collected a big list of music for my own mod mainly from other games (Age of Empires1-2-3, EU4, Anno series, etc) but I cannot cover everything I want, so...
Currently I'm using I'm using Suno AI to to generate Native American style swing/jazz for the time perion of the world wars and cold war that sort of catch the Bond movies atmosphere (I also like the music of Evil Genious 1-2 and Phantom Doctrine for that era).
With a free plan Suno can generate 10 music per day and allows downloading for non-commercial use. It can create actually pretty good stuff

 

[Mr Smith]

What about music?

They already have 2 albums released. First one's here.

 

[Zemlainin]

What about music?

I'm a game music enthusiast and have collected a big list of music for my own mod mainly from other games (Age of Empires1-2-3, EU4, Anno series, etc) but I cannot cover everything I want, so...
Currently I'm using I'm using Suno AI to to generate Native American style swing/jazz for the time perion of the world wars and cold war that sort of catch the Bond movies atmosphere (I also like the music of Evil Genious 1-2 and Phantom Doctrine for that era).
With a free plan Suno can generate 10 music per day and allows downloading for non-commercial use. It can create actually pretty good stuff

Right now, The Great Tribes has original music create specifically for the game by a composer I work with. The soundtrack blends tribal, ambient, and orchestral tones to reflect different eras and moods.
I’ve also experimented with AI tools like Suno — they can generate surprisingly good results! But for the final soundtrack I aiming for something that evolves with the game’s world, and matches its slower but immersive pacing.

Still, your idea about era-specific jazz/swing is super fun! Especially for the 20th century chapters — we might play with that later on.

 

[Zemlainin]

What about music?

Feel free to share your work — maybe some of it could even find a place in The Great Tribes!

 

[Zemlainin]

They already have 2 albums released. First one's here.

We already have three music albums for the first game era

 

[<Nexus>]

Okay, finally I finished reading through the thread (Yes, I'm at work, and no, I'm not waiting till I get home )

Yes, such rivers will be available for navigation.

The maximum width of the river is one tile.

Finally a civ-like game that does it right (I'm not impressed by Civ7, too small).
EDIT: Will there be only tile-wide navigable rivers? Would be cool to have smaller streams too on border of tiles (another thing I miss about Civ7: Why only one or the other?!)


I really like that you are aiming a huge game world not just some immersion-poor boar-game imitation. Well done!

Am I right that The Great Tribes are mainly/greatly inspired by Civ4? At least TGT seems closer to Civ4 than Civ5.


Honestly... Now I'm happy I haven't discovered TGT earlier: I would have died of waiting impatiently all along


Another question that is a crucial one for me: How modder friendly will it be?

 

[Zemlainin]

Okay, finally I finished reading through the thread (Yes, I'm at work, and no, I'm not waiting till I get home )

Finally a civ-like game that does it right (I'm not impressed by Civ7, too small).
EDIT: Will there be only tile-wide navigable rivers? Would be cool to have smaller streams too on border of tiles (another thing I miss about Civ7: Why only one or the other?!)


I really like that you are aiming a huge game world not just some immersion-poor boar-game imitation. Well done!

Am I right that The Great Tribes are mainly/greatly inspired by Civ4? At least TGT seems closer to Civ4 than Civ5.


Honestly... Now I'm happy I haven't discovered TGT earlier: I would have died of waiting impatiently all along


Another question that is a crucial one for me: How modder friendly will it be?

Right now, all rivers occupy exactly one tile — whether they’re navigable or not. Navigable rivers are visually wider and can fill almost the entire tile, while smaller rivers take up less space. Rivers can have tributaries, and two small rivers can merge into one larger one. We also have plans to add smaller rivers or streams that don’t allow navigation, but influence things like irrigation or water supply for a region. That kind of visual and mechanical variety is something we’d love to expand over time.

Yes, you're right — Civ4 is my favorite game in the series. I've spent the most hours playing it.

And good news on modding: the game is being built with modder-friendliness in mind from the very start. Our goal is to make it easy to customize data, events, mechanics, and even the UI — with Steam Workshop and offline mod support planned for Early Access.

Thanks for your interest and for the smile your comment brought

 

[<Nexus>]

Yes, you're right — Civ4 is my favorite game in the series. I've spent the most hours playing it.

Than I guess you'll have some some sort of Civic system too. I haven't seen any info about it.

Oh, yes, another thing... The dream of many Civ players: Spherical map? Honestly I don't see much of a chance to it still asking

 

[Zemlainin]

Than I guess you'll have some some sort of Civic system too. I haven't seen any info about it.

I’ll definitely talk about this in one of the upcoming devlogs.

Oh, yes, another thing... The dream of many Civ players: Spherical map? Honestly I don't see much of a chance to it still asking

I experimented with it, but couldn’t find an optimal solution

 

[Kimurae]

Is this still written in Java? The steam listing mentions it only works on macOS until Catalina, is this because of some launcher/bridge? I think the way Minecraft is currently distributed for macOS, it bundles its own 64-bit JRE for macOS and the app is just a bundle with the JRE and relevant files and a shell script. I'd have to go poke the Minecraft app again to figure it out specifically.

Found an article, its a little involved but nothing too difficult: https://incenp.org/notes/2023/universal-java-app-on-macos.html

Granted... instead of doing a fancy universal JRE which is just literally concatenating the two binaries into one, I'd recommend sticking with the shell script, and just having architecture specific releases for Mac with the bundled JRE.

 

[Zemlainin]

Is this still written in Java? The steam listing mentions it only works on macOS until Catalina, is this because of some launcher/bridge? I think the way Minecraft is currently distributed for macOS, it bundles its own 64-bit JRE for macOS and the app is just a bundle with the JRE and relevant files and a shell script. I'd have to go poke the Minecraft app again to figure it out specifically.

Found an article, its a little involved but nothing too difficult: https://incenp.org/notes/2023/universal-java-app-on-macos.html

Granted... instead of doing a fancy universal JRE which is just literally concatenating the two binaries into one, I'd recommend sticking with the shell script, and just having architecture specific releases for Mac with the bundled JRE.

Yes, The Great Tribes is still written in Java, and we're currently distributing the build with a bundled JRE.
The current limitations are mostly because I don’t have access to devices with newer versions of macOS for proper testing.
Thanks a lot for the article — I’ll definitely take a closer look.