It's been another productive week, more so than I realized now that I'm looking back on it.

Splitting and Settling Tribes

You're no longer limited to a single tribe of semi-nomads. There are two new options in the tribe details window (as seen above). Split lets you pick some pops to split off into a new tribe. This tribe moves, grows, and tracks resources independently of it's parent tribe. Settle lets you settle a tribe down into a settlement.

Settlements are tied to regions in the world, currently just the regions you have pops in while settling, but eventually they will be able to claim additional regions afterwards. Urban Centers and ports now can only be built by pops in a settlement, not by pops in a tribe. Right now settlements aren't very useful, but in the future they'll be one of the core ways you can progress your empire.

Exploration

After that, I added line of sight and exploration tracking. No longer can you see the whole world, but only what your Pops see. Additionally, since all of the calculations happen at the end of each turn I took a bit of extra computation time to account for different elevations and vegetation reducing line of sight.

Here you can see one pop moving up in elevation from plains to highlands. Once up higher, his unobstructed view can see significantly further.

Lastly, I added shadows to areas you've previously explored, but can't currently see. In addition the features of the land (structures built, forests, etc) can become outdated. The world renders the area as it was the last time you had visibility, regardless of what's changed since.

Milestones

I've sketched out a series of Milestones for Bronze Age: Tribes to help me organize and focus development. These milestones aren't tied to any dates, but are each focused around a single theme. Last week (shortly after Weekly Update #5 actually) I wrapped up and closed Milestone 0. This week is the first for Milestone 1.

• 0 - basic gameplay
• 1 - ai and animals 
• 2- characters
• 3 - expeditions
• 4 - cults, religion, and magic
• 5+ - the rest of the game

The major theme of Milestone 1 is adding AI to the world. This will start out as primitive tribes and groups of animals, similar to the bandits and wild animals of Bronze Age 3. The immediate next step is adding a system for notifications, but following that will be adding the first AI groups to the game.