Lead an ancient people through four ages of stone, tool, copper and bronze. Feed them, clothe them against the winters, heal their sick, and outlast or conquer three rival peoples.
Choose your people
Survival
Rival skill
Victory
Endure until
Three rivals of other peoples are chosen at random. Best played with a mouse and keyboard. Press F1 in game for controls.
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Units:0/0
Stone Age
Spring, Year 1
Paused
How to lead
Controls
Left-click or drag to select. Shift adds to the selection. Double-click selects all of that kind on screen.
Right-click to move, gather, build, attack, heal or convert. With a building selected, right-click sets its rally point.
Arrow keys, screen edges or middle-drag move the view. Mouse wheel zooms. Click the minimap to jump.
Command buttons have hotkeys shown in their corner. A then click is attack-move for soldiers.
Routes: hold Shift and right-click several spots to give units a path of waypoints; they walk to each in turn.
Fishing: right-click a fish shoal by the shore with villagers. Build a Fishing Dock on the bank (it must touch water) to drop fish off close by.
Upgrades: select a finished wall piece or tower and press Upgrade (W). "Upgrade whole wall" (E) does the entire connected line. Drag a box over walls or towers, or double-click one, to select several. Palisade → Stone Wall → Copper Wall; Watch Tower → Guard Tower → Bronze Keep. No villager needed.
F2 or the Tech tree button shows every building, unit and technology. Ctrl+S or the Save button saves or loads a game. Space jump to the latest attack, . next idle villager, H Town Center, Shift+1-9 save the selected units as a group, 1-9 select that group again (press twice to jump to it), Delete dismiss, P pause, Esc cancel.
Surviving
The north is tundra, the middle temperate, the south-east steppe. Winters bite hardest in the north, summers burn on the steppe.
People far from a hearth (Town Center or House) lose health from cold or heat. Clothing, researched at the Town Center or the Hide Lodge in four levels, protects them; the last level removes the harm entirely.
Sickness spreads between people standing close. Healers from the Temple cure it. The Lodge's medicine helps too.
In winter fields lie dormant (except on the steppe), stored food spoils, and on Harsh or Brutal your people eat from the stores.
Advancing an age needs food and copper, plus several kinds of buildings from your current age.
Walls: pick Palisade, Stone Wall or Copper Wall from the villager's build menu, press where the wall starts and drag to where it ends (or click both ends). Select a finished piece and choose Make gate to let your own units through.
Once in the Copper Age, a Temple may call the First Parents, Adam and Eve. Only one people in the world can do it.