I made pretty good progress this week, I definitely have the spark of inspiration back. A slight change to the world generation screen lets you specify the name of your empire and tribe.

And a gameplay mode has been added, with the skeleton of the UI (still largely non functional) and displays for your initial set of pops. I was originally planning on having 3D models representing the pops in the world, but the 2D display was much quicker to start with and it's growing on me. I might go back to try and add 3D models, but I might not.

Empire and Tribe?

In Bronze Age 3 Empire and Tribe were synonymous, you controlled a tribe/empire which contained one or more settlements. In Tribes, however, things are a little different.

The "top level" organization unit is the empire, but below that are two types of "Administrative Groups." These are the sub-units of your empire, much like settlements in Bronze Age 3. There will still be settlements in Tribes, but there is a new flavor of Administrative Group, the tribe. Unlike settlements, tribes aren't limited to a region of the world. They can be nomadic, slowly moving over the world and extracting resources as they go. Tribes can form settlements, allowing them to grow larger and more fully develop the land, but at the cost of no longer being mobile.

Pops

As I mentioned last time, pops are the main way of interacting with the world. Each pop represents about 1,000 men, women, and children. Pops exist in the world, and work tiles to produce resources. Each pop will have their individual happiness, health, culture, and caste.

Right now pops are just placed in the world, in the coming weeks I'll add the ability to move them to different tiles, interact with the tiles, and grow new pops.

What's Next?

Next on the list is actual resource production, and related mechanics. Hopefully by the next week or two this game will actually start resembling a game.

Jobs

What a pop actually does in each turn is determined by the job it's assigned to. Jobs are represented on the map as slots for pops to be moved into. Each of the 3 pops in the screenshot above is sitting in a "job" slot.

The basic job is Foraging, where a pop produces resources based on the features of the tile it is placed in. Each tile can support one Foraging job. However, there are several ways to change available jobs.

There will be a variety of interaction possibilities on tiles, such as clearing forests or building a development. These interactions will replace the Foraging job with another, appropriate job. If you order a pop to build a farm, for example, the Foraging job will be replaced with a Construction job to build that farm. When the farm is constructed, the Construction job will in turn be replaced by a Farming job. The assigned pop will then farm instead of forage, producing much more food than it did previously.

Resources

Resources are produced by pops working in jobs, most of them aren't stockpiled from one turn to another, and most are limited to affecting the pop's settlement or tribe.

 - Food, used to support population. Any extra food boosts population growth.

 - Production, used to construct some developments and to support some jobs. Any extra boosts trade value.

 - Luxuries, some castes may need luxuries for upkeep. Extra luxuries boost pop happiness.

 - Trade Value, converted into Wealth and Luxuries by trading between settlements or tribes.

 - Wealth, mostly produced from Trade Value and used in a variety of areas. This resource is stored in an empire-wide stockpile.

- Legitimacy, tied directly to the empire's ruler. This will function largely like it does in Bronze Age 3.