Tribes Vs. Colonies.

[RoboticManiac]

Tribes are supposed to more difficult. That's the point of them.

[sadpickle]

I'm trying out a tribal start right now. I'm entering winter of the first year and I don't think I'm going to survive, but I made some observations (note: I'm not cheesing with traps or anything, I want to gauge the (modded) difficulty here):

1) There's a quirk to the vanilla tribal start. On the face of it your tribe is dirt poor... except for a single jade knife they carry, which was worth about 4500 silver. I wonder how much this knife impacts raid scaling? It has to be worth more than everything else at start together, so my guess is it's not insignificant. I decided it was pointless cheese since I would just sell it anyway, and modded the scenario to a steel knife (I'll just drop it altogether next run).

2) Early pirate raids are trivial, even a 6-man seige was nothing since I had matching numbers and rushed them. But tribal raids are brutal. By the time I got my first one (about 9 raiders to my 6 tribals) I had a survival rifle. I don't know if I could have made it without that rifle. My rifleman capped at least two raiders before they closed the distance. I had some muffalos and a bear trained up by then so it turned into a brutal melee, which we all miraculously survived (thanks Muffalo 2, you will be missed). This could easily have gone the other way; RNG on drops is important to surviving that first year. Having a couple of strong trainers is also well advised.

3) Research is king. With 5 pawns to start having two with strong research is absolutely paramount. I don't think going into the second year without electricity and turrets is wise. On Randy Insane the odds of getting two strong raids back to back is high. I need gun turrets if I'm not going to cheese the AI. Now, I've modded my tech progression, so researching all neolithic raises your tech to medieval, and so on. My researchers are not the greatest but even with 2, it takes a lot of time modded. What a headache it's going to be to get electricity, microprocessors, gun turrets, etc. with the way tech works right now. I hope the tech level progression will be a vanilla feature going forward. As it is, tribal tech is SO crippled that it's hard to imagine it working out most the time. It's almost winter and I almost have smithing done, we'll see...

4) Despite all this, the thing that's going to kill me, I believe, is the food situation. I got a blight late in summer followed by a cold snap in middle fall. This pretty much killed my food production from end of summer to fall, which was a major chunk from the end of the growing season. At the time this happened I had around 2400 pemmican. Now it's almost winter and I'm down to 1300, with not a single bush to harvest after the cold snap. I might be able to swing it with the odd hunted animal and simple meals made on demand.

To be honest this is my fault. I could have made food more of a priority and had more people on it earlier. But I wanted two people teching pretty much all the time. I feel that tech progression is absolutely crucial to surviving after that first year. I can probably survive by butchering the tamed megafauna; it will be sad to lose the bear. Next run, I'm going to have two people on food production.

The nice thing about tribal starts is, rerolling isn't so hard. The tribal backstories make some EXTREMELY good rolls.

[Britnoth]

I hope the tech level progression will be a vanilla feature going forward. As it is, tribal tech is SO crippled that it's hard to imagine it working out most the time.

Tech level being raised would be a terrible idea. It would make the tribals actually tech faster than others once they have grabbed the first half dozen techs needed to raise them upto industrial, due to starting with more people and having easier recruits often.

For those of us that play without turrets the addition of the magic cooling wood evaporator protecting against heatwaves now leaves tribals as the easier game. 

[Andy_Dandy]

I hope the tech level progression will be a vanilla feature going forward. As it is, tribal tech is SO crippled that it's hard to imagine it working out most the time.

Tech level being raised would be a terrible idea. It would make the tribals actually tech faster than others once they have grabbed the first half dozen techs needed to raise them upto industrial, due to starting with more people and having easier recruits often.

For those of us that play without turrets the addition of the magic cooling wood evaporator protecting against heatwaves now leaves tribals as the easier game. 

Agree, never understood those arguing it should be raised later on. I love playing tribes mostly because it gives me a game with alot longer research times, making good researcher skills and more research benchs actually being something to concider.

When it comes to fighting mechs, I have no trouble getting firearms for my pawns from pirate raiders and traders before mechs arrives.

[Mutineer]

Personally I never survive first summer with tribe. I do not know how anyone else reporting, but last game I die to first  big raid, which coincided with heat wave and phy drone. Even no one of my colonists die in raid itself, they all one by one went besserker and die form heatstroke and wounds and I have no tools to handle any of this issues.

[Britnoth]

If people are injured, you need to have them go to bed and have a doctor treat them.

If it is a heat wave, you need to build something to keep a room cool and have your guys sit in the room to recover from heatstroke for an hour or so.

This stuff is pretty basic. Isn't the new tutorial teaching this?

[Mutineer]

Please what tribe can build in one month to cool them self? Off couse they went to bed and offcouse non back up doctor was healing main doctor and then main doctor first heal back up doctor and went berserk from hoot, heat stroke and die to attacking torture. Back uop doctor vent drop from heat stroke, then cook went berserk and attack mastodon. then phy drone abated and heat wave finished. From my 6 colonist 3 dead 2 in bad can not move and Cassandra drop second raid that finish me. Nothing tribe can do against combination of heat wave, drone and raid.

[Britnoth]

I just told you what you can do.

If people are injured, treat them.

If people are hot, build one of the 2 cooling buildings that you can build from the start.

if they are angry, maybe do one of any number of things to make them less angry.

The game is difficult, not impossible. Need to stop complaining it is and start learning how to play.

[Mutineer]

sorry I play this game for a year now in 13 when there were no tribes i did reasonably well, but with appearances of tribes i come to conclusion you can not survive as a tribe. If you have different opinion - it is your opinion, there is mine. I suggest you remove your offensive, false tone and learn to discuss thinks in civilize matter.

[Britnoth]

i come to conclusion you can not survive as a tribe.

You conclusion is clearly wrong.

If you have different opinion - it is your opinion, there is mine.

It is not an opinion. It is fact. Others play with tribals just fine. This is a fact.

I suggest you remove your offensive, false tone and learn to discuss thinks in civilize matter.

I am telling you you are not very good at the game, that it is your fault if you lose, and the game is not unfair. if you take offense to the truth, it is hardly my fault. Nor concern, to be honest.

[re1wind]

Hospitality. Makes tribals much more interesting and fun to play with.

Tribes have the benefit of not caring about comfort, space, etc. which is a double-edged blade as you can no longer use beauty/spacious areas to buff moods.

[Spingitore]

I am very new to the game with only 3 tries, but so far it's the opposite for me: the tribe that I am currently playing has been quite easier than my two previous (standard) colonies. Maybe because I am new and learning rapidly from previous failures, or maybe because I had very bad luck earlier, but my tribe is thriving and the colony is very successfully and very nicely built up.

I am only at the second winter, so maybe the worst has yet to come, but for what I have read here it looks like the worst for many is at the beginning, where I did not have many issues, actually.

Again, maybe it is pure luck, I am not expert enough to say.
Just to say: I did not had any raid with huge numbers until recently, about one year and a couple months in the game, when a tribe came chasing for a refugee, with about 12 members against my 7. The problem for them, is that at this point I had assault rifles against their bows and it turned out a massacre (and a lot of nutrient food for my boar horde ).

What helped me a lot in respect to my previous attempts, is having learned (from this site too) how to set up defenses, with the "spiral walls" method, lot of traps inside and sand bags in the last corridor that my guys where camping just at the exit, slaughtering anyone trying to get to them. Choose mountain terrain: so much easier to build good defenses there and you're basically inside a fortress.

[gadjung]

Tribes are pretty much op on non-extreme biomes. Boost from having more ppl to do stuff highly compensates lack of electricity (which is pretty much not needed if You don't want to go full-bionic tribe with assault/sniper rifles)