CHIEF'S FIRE Lead from the fire.Your first ten minutes
- Drag a box over your villagers and right-click a herd, a fishing hole or a tree. Food raises people. Wood builds things.
- Click your village and raise more villagers, then a few warriors to guard them.
- Select villagers and build an Elders' Lodge. Your elder walks in and starts earning knowledge.
- Send your scout out with X and a click. It looks from a distance, then walks home to tell you what it saw.
- Keep your chief near the people you want to command quickly.
Warriors only fight. Villagers do all the gathering and building. If your food stops coming in, check the Idle villagers button at the top.
Controls
| Do this | To |
|---|---|
| Left-click, or drag a box | Select your people. Hold Shift to add. Double-click selects everyone of that kind on screen. |
| Right-click | Give an order: ground to move, a herd or tree to gather, an enemy to attack, a building site to build. |
| Drag with the right button | Move the map. W A S D and the arrow keys do the same. The mouse wheel zooms. |
| Z then click | Attack-move: march there and fight anything on the way. |
| X then click | Scout and return. |
| I / U | Select idle villagers / idle warriors and scouts. |
| Q | Select every warrior and scout. |
| C / F | Find your chief / your village. |
| H | Arm the horn for your next order. |
| Space, +, - | Pause, speed up, slow down. |
How orders travel
This is the heart of the game. An order is not obeyed until it arrives.
- Voice. Anyone inside the gold ring around your chief hears you at once.
- Runner. Anyone further away gets the order when a runner reaches them. You have runners. When both are out, new orders wait. A runner who is killed never delivers.
- Drums. Once your elders remember Drums, build drum towers within reach of each other. Orders and scout reports then travel along the chain far faster than anyone can run.
- Horn. times a match your next order reaches everyone instantly, whatever the distance.
Costs are paid when an order arrives, not when you give it. If the food is gone by then, nothing is raised.
Your people
| Who | Cost | Health | Attack | What they do |
|---|
Your tribe holds people. Each hut makes room for more, up to . People heal when they rest near their own village.
Buildings
| Building | Cost | What it is for |
|---|
Buildings slowly repair themselves when nobody is attacking them. A watch tower holds warriors: select them and right-click the tower.
Skills and elders
Elders studying in the lodge earn knowledge. Spend it there on skills. Your tribe can only remember one skill per elder, plus one for the chief, so a tribe that loses its elders forgets the newest thing it learned. Some skills come in pairs, and you keep one of the two.
| Skill | Knowledge | What it does |
|---|
Ice, beasts and other chiefs
- The ice starts closing on the centre of the map at minute ten. People and buildings caught in it take damage until they die. Build a new village closer in before it reaches you.
- Beasts. Wolf packs go for lone villagers and runners. A cave bear guards a rich herd. Now and then a mammoth crosses the map, and it leaves you alone unless you hurt it. Killing any of them brings food.
- Decisions. Sometimes a card asks for your answer: strangers at your fire, a fever, a storm coming. If you do not answer in time, the second choice is taken.
- Other chiefs. Click empty ground to see the tribes you know of. Once your scouts have found a camp you can send an envoy on foot to offer a truce, a gift or a trade. Envoys can be killed on the way too.
Winning
- Scatter every rival. A tribe with no chief and no one left to take over breaks apart.
- Hold the warm valley. It thaws at minute . Stand in it with your chief and others for minutes while no rival is in it.
- Outlast the blizzard. At minute the tribe with the most people alive wins.