First things first
Since you start the game with a very small resevoir of clan magic, you should focus on the bare minimum. It's recommended to gain a decent food stockpile as early as possible - so surprises early on won't send your clan starving. In this tutorial we will play together a year of game time and see how far we get. Mind that I am skipping the events to save time - I can't help you developing a good sense for what's right, wrong, rational and insane in the world and culture of this game. You will have to learn to understand Orlanthi culture and how things work on your own, by heeding your advisors' advice, reading up on lore and other things.
Take heed of the Forecast on the left side - it's generally good advice on what to do or avoid during the year.
Now you finally have control of your clan, but you're not done setting everything up yet. You will most likely have to Reorganize your clan ring's member composition to get the most skilled advisors. We will go through this together, step by step.
We sort the thanes by skills through clicking on the appropirate skills on the top bar.
Our clan's main deity is Orlanth, and our thane with the highest Leadership is too old (60), so we opted for the second best choice, who is only one level behind on Leadership.
But before we continue, keep the following in mind:
Firstly, the clan chieftain (far left) should worship your clan's main deity, which you defined during the clan creation (first question, there were 3 choices) and he should have the highsest Leadership skill possible. It's also favourable if he or she is young.
Secondly, you should have 7 different deities represented on your ring.
Last but not least, you should employ a Trickster.
If you follow these simple rules, you have the highest chance of success during Hero Quests, get more clan magic during Sacred Time, enjoy the choice of unique solutions through trickster magic, and the areas you can allocate magic to are more balanced and diverse.
We continue.
Leika was already the best choice for Animals, - which helps mantaining the herds and their health - manning the second ring seat, but we have to go against the first choice in Bargaining, the third seat - we already have an Orlanth worshipper on the ring, the chieftain. It turns out that the second choice has the same level of skill in Bargaining, and even more.
We continue with Combat.
Coincidentally, our most skilled (non-Orlanth worshipping) warrior happens to be a worshipper of Eurmal - a trickster. We gladly take him into the ring.
It's important to note that the most skilled warrior tends to get caught up in heroic battle events during raids, where there is a chance of wounding. We can't employ trickster magic when our trickster is wounded, or worse.
We continue with Customs.
Our best Customs candidate is already on the ring, for organization's sake we will just move him to the 5th seat, after our combat thane.
The highest ranking Customs thane assumes the role of the Lawspeaker. You should always consider his advice during disputes, accusations etc., as he will be the one who attempts to settle them.
We skip Leadership (already have a chieftain) and continue with Magic.
Having a decent Magic ring member is good for a number of things, of which most are background area and nothing for us to work with.
But this thane will have the most competent advice on supernatural, or magical scenarios - like divinations, spirits and curses.
We continue to the last relevant skill - Plants. Obviously, this one helps mantain healthy crops etc.
The best choice was already selected, so we are mostly done here.
This scenario is rather rare - We employed our most skilled thanes, one for each field, and yet have a spot open. Usually a trickster would fill the last spot, but in this case, we have the choice to reinforce our clan's expertise for free.
Even though we got a free card, the selection of thanes was limited to but a few; We have to keep a diversity of deities in our clan ring after all.
This lady can still improve our herding abilities and is a capable warrior herself.
In a few minutes our clan ring went from THIS to THIS.
What now? - Recommended first steps
This game has incredibly much to do, but on the beginning, you should only focus on a few things. I recommend checking on the farmer situation - how is your food income doing?
Checking all our advisors' opinions (clicking their portraits) tells us we have nothing to worry about. We have a surplus on farmers, so it would be possible to convert some of them into crafters.
Crafters are vital in increasing clan wealth and mantaining the shrine/temple sacrifices.
Before we do that, we will discuss things you see in that screenshot.
Clicking Farmers simply gives you a menu where you can attempt to recruit more people into your clan.
Clicking Weaponthanes allows you to recruit more Weaponthanes, but beware, you need horses to do that.
Your pool of regular nobles/thanes will not increase without horses either.
Hunters are a secondary, yet very small source of food. Their main purpose seems to be reinforcing patrols.
Without hunters, it's easier to sneak on your tula.
And finally, the crafters.
There are a few things to know:
Crafters do not take part in mantaining the crop fields or fighting.
You have limited 'points of direction', the number can be increased in a number of ways though.
Having too many crafters causes a hit on clan mood, since crafters get special treatment. The points can be treated as such; Every point produces X number of goods in the chosen category per crafter.
That means the crafters will produce roughly 3 times as many plain goods as fancy ones.
The difference between plain, fancy and later on special goods is the price they fetch on the market and the reliability of return. The plain goods will always fetch approximately the same price each year, while the fancy goods are valued more, but may return less profit when the market is saturated.
In this tutorial, we will raise the crafters' number to 25 to stock up on Goods early on.
Fire season
Fire season is traditionally raiding season. Raiding is honourable and expected - Raiding during Fire season actually raises the weaponthanes' mood. As you can see here, there are two ways to raid another a clan. Actually Raiding is mobilizing your farmers and weaponthanes and slapping some serious shit, while Cattle Raiding involves sending a small token force to stealthily lead away some cattle from one of your neighbours. Cattle Raiding, in Orlanthi culture, is not a sign of aggression and should not damage your reputation amongst your chosen victims, provided you don't get caught and wound or kill someone during your escape.
We are eager to test our warriors, so we choose to go on a Raid.
Since we just started here, we have no idea which clans are hostile to us. We clicked through all the known clans until we found one with the tag "We're feuding with them". Additionally, we are calling on one of our allies. Taking allies to raids strenghtens the bond between the two of you, assuming you succeed. It also forces you to share the plunder. If they send 1 warrior for every 5 you have, a 6th of the total plunder goes to your allies.
Take note that we are not sending our entire force; We need some men and women to stay behind and guard our herds - Other clans might seize the opportunity and steal some cattle while we are away, otherwise.
Our force was spotted by our foe's patrols and they managed to mobilize every single able bodied warrior for defense. We have very low clan magic reserves, so I'd rather save it up for emergencies or events. We are choosing the tactic Charge with the goal to Plunder as much as our warriors can carry with them.
To fully understand the difference between the tactics and goals, read them up on the wiki.
Brotip: Clan Vidja succeeded on sticking to Skirmish on Defense and Charge on Offense. The reason behind this is simple: If both sides choose Skirmish, there won't be an actual battle; Both sides throw missiles and then leave - wasting the attacker's turn and chance to acquire loot. Maneuvers are risky because they are countered by Charges - Which is the most common tactic.
Not sacrificing apparently netted us a slight advantage - The enemy has the blessings of the gods they managed to reach, though.
A Heroic Battle event ensued. They can be very varied and have outcomes that may vary on dozens of factors, known and unknown, and often influence the end of the battle significantly. To play it safe, but still try to seize the opportunity, we opt for the neutral choice - #2 - which brought us to a success - albeit that didn't help.
Some of our women were captured, the situation is being dealt with here. For the sake of the tutorial, we will not attept to free them in a follow-up raid, but pay the ransom.
Taking more warriors might increase the number of livestock they can bring back, but also increases the chance to get spotted by patrols.
The Cattle Raid was spotted - We are hopelessly outnmbered and have no reason to believe we could put up a fight. Survival + Evade will pull us out of the battle and minimize losses.
Luckily, they did not give in to pursuit.
Earth season
Earth Season is when the clans are busy with their harvest. We are free to engage in trade, diplomacy, exploration or other things. In this tutorial, we will look through interesting blessings, rites and exploration.
We found an interesting blessing we can take advantage of. Vinga's Pathfinder blessing enhances our exploration expeditions and keeps them safe.
How much we should sacrifice depends on the deity, how the deity thinks of us, wheter we allocated magic into Mysteries or not, and other things. We will attempt to learn one of her blessings anyway.
As you can see, the ring members have their own opinions and personalities, although it's the trickster's holy duty to troll his clan and trick people. This can net you some advantages, as well as trouble down the path.
To utilize this blessing, we have to build a Shrine dedicated to Vinga by clicking "Build" when we have her selected. Now you can see why it's important to keep healthy herds of non-cow livestock and a stock of crafters in your clan.
If we were to learn Vinga's Pathfinder blessing and wanted to use both her blessings simultaneously, we would have to upgrade the Shrine to a Temple, which increases the sacrifical costs.
Dark season
Heavy snowfall makes it nearly impossible to send off caravans or raid. Dark season is often used for managing clan-internal things, like learning more blessings or secrets, recruiting new weaponthanes and the like. In this tutorial, we will attempt to learn and utilize Vinga's second blessing, Pathfinder, to prepare for the next season, where we can send off explorers.
As you can see, we are back in the Sacrifice menu.
Keep in mind, there are deities that don't list all of their powers when you scroll through them in the deity list. Some powers they provide are simply not blessings you can build a shrine for, but curses to lay down on your enemies. So do your research well, look at every deity and what they have to offer in this Sacrificial menu and then decide what to spend your time and resources on.
It's still Dark season and we lost a few weaponthanes in the past. We could enlarge our patrols and hire a few more. It's generally not necessary to gift them additional goods, unless you want to raise weaponthane mood. This is mostly for attracting weaponthanes from outside of the clan. Again, keep in mind that if you can't hire more weaponthanes, it might either be because your clan simply can't support more full-time warriors, or you are lacking horses.
Storm season
The year's final season. The snow is melting again, it's safe to send trade missions, even to raid again. In this tutorial we will explore our own tula and the south a little to go through some exploration mechanics.
To explore our own tula, simply don't move the yellow cross after clicking Explore on the map menu.
Assign guards and additional eyes to the expedition leader and tell them how much time they should take travelling. Since we are exploring our own tula, there is no need for haste - they will return instantly. We will set it to Slowly to maximize the chances of finding something interesting.
When exploring our own tula, we can find sources for special crafting resources, which will be explained now.
Special resources like ivory will allow you to allocate a point into them in the crafting screen - but like fancy goods, their price is not stable. Other clans will hear of your discovery and try to obtain access through trade and diplomacy. If you are not planning on utilizing the resource, sell access for an annual fee or do a one time deal for a few wagonloads - at the cost of clan mood, your crafters would become jealous.
Charming fellow.
Here you see a write-up of your approximate success, comparing your herds to last year.
Next up comes the magic allocation menu, and everything repeats.
I hope you gained a good understanding of how to manage a clan in the early stages. There are rarely bad choices, only bad planning or poor priority setting.
Writing a proper end for the guide and a checklist for new clans when I have time.
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