StrategyFront Gaming

Best Tribal Strategy Games List

Most strategy games thrust you into the role of a civilized monarch or omnipotent overseeing god. This is all well and good but there’s an alluring charm to being the ruler of a small group of people struggling your way through the world. These are games where societies were no less complex and brutal survival was the order of the day.

Tribal games usually feature a smaller scale of play, focusing on a few hundred people instead of hundreds of thousands. Instead of sprawling empires, you’ll be managing a number of settlements.

It’s this smaller scale that helps with prevent the classic strategy game problem of growing too large to quickly and all challenge leaving the game.

All this creates the ability to get to know your tribe members more personally and allows for more rewarding character-based gameplay. 

Our List of the Best Tribal strategy games

King of Dragon Pass

There’s nothing quite like leading a tribe of fantasy Celts in a deeply hostile alien world. King of Dragon Pass set in Greg Stafford’s world of Glorantha. It provides perhaps the most convincing tribal management games ever made.

The game is part story-book adventure, part-resource management and blends the two perfectly. Unlike most strategy games, victory is brought not through conquests or vicious battles. Instead, it’s brought through having more cattle than your neighbors, by giving them generous gifts, and generally acting like a tribe. You have to coexist with your neighbors not destroy them. 

This isn’t to say you won’t be fighting. You will be doing plenty of that in King of Dragon Pass but the goal is not to conquer more land from your enemies. Like the good Orlanthi, you’ll be playing, you’ll focus on raiding other clans to steal cattle not to slaughter them.

Throughout the game, you’ll be guided by your Clan Ring who advise you throughout your the story-book decisions. Giving you valuable insight into the mysterious world around you. More often than not, your clan ring will disagree which adds a level of detective work in figuring out what you’re supposed to be doing.

Making the right decisions requires you to think like a real clan elder. You may not want to punish two young lovers for their misdeeds but if you go against tribal custom your ancestor spirits will be displeased. 

The tribal management mechanics mixed with the choose-your-own-adventure moments of guiding your tribe through its settlement in this new land. It is truly excellent.

Six Ages

Six Ages is the spiritual successor of King of Dragon Pass. Released in 2017, it is incredibly faithful to its predecessor, often to its fault. It follows the gameplay formula as King of Dragon Pass. You’ll have to manage resources and follow the storybook decisions which will affect the tribe.

Where Six Ages succeeds in making itself instantly more readable than its predecessor. King of Dragon Pass was often far too obscure in terms of how your tribe was actually doing. Besides that, the game changes very little in terms of how you actually play, there’s a new setting, new gods, and a new story but little else for gameplay. 

The game is much shorter than its predecessor. Although that’s not necessarily a bad thing it does mean that you’ll cycle through the events much quicker than in KDoP, and be able to experiment more with choices.

You’re more concerned with building houses and exploring the land than with pleasing your neighbors and completing quests for kingship.

It does improve on many of the obscure mechanics present in KDoP but has a much simpler story and less about leading your tribe through its rise to Kingship and more about leading your tribe through a short period of time. 

Crusader Kings 2: Old Gods

Crusader Kings is an expansive game. While the central mechanics focus on maintaining your feudal lordship and managing your dynasty. The Old Gods DLC adds the option to play as a pagan tribal chief. 

The core of the game remains the same: you are a character managing your family and expanding your realm. But now you’ll embark on raids, form massive barbarian armies, and attempt to reform your pagan faith. 

Tribal leaders will have to maintain good relationships with their sub-chiefs. Since any Tribal vassal may now refuse your call to arms if they don’t like you. 

The tribal mechanics shine when mixed with the Norse religious group. Allowing you to become a Viking warlord pillaging lands across the known world while building your power base back in Scandinavia is one of the finest achievements in strategy gaming freedom.

You must manage other tribal concerns like ensuring your succession as chief and building up the infrastructure of your lands. 

Banner Saga Series

Mixing story-book decision making, caravan management, and turn-based tactical battles is a blend that works well in Banner Saga. You’ll be leading a band of Norse-themed refugees through a fantasy world from a mysterious enemy called the Dredge. 

The Atmosphere of dread as your ragged tribal band make their way through this land is memorable along with a cast of well written characters. The game’s narrative is well written and it’s characters each have their own motivations. 

The management portion of the game is simple but effective as you lead your band through a hostile world. You’ll often need to make difficult decisions to stay alive, and not everyone will make it. 

The tactical battles require more fitness and are where the game really shines. Your units are divided up into different classes, and the massive giant-like Varl takes up multiple spaces on the board. You’ll need to balance between attacking armor or health to claim victory. 

John Shafer’s At the Gates

To me, the most fun part of civilization was always those first few turns, when you’re people had recently settled and things were still unsure. When you grow into a powerful empire is when the game starts to get more formulaic. John Shafer, one of the designers of Civilization V, decided to turn those first few turns of the Civ experience into an entire game. 

At the Gates puts you at the head of a barbarian tribe during the fall of the Roman Empire. You’ll direct your clans to gather resources, build up your infrastructure and raid your enemies. Survival itself will be tough, as winters hit especially hard and if you aren’t prepared can ruin your entire tribe. 

You’ll have to balance your characters’ traits to prevent inter-clan feuding. You’ll have to carefully manage this alongside the fact that  resource nodes are depletable meaning you’ll have to move along once those are exhausted. 

Something to note about the game is that it often still feels like an Early Access title, bugs are prevalent and not all the features have been fully implemented, leading to frustration when tooltips and menus are filled with placeholders. 

Age of Empires I & II & III

Age of Empires starts you off as a small tribe of people, as you collect resources and advance the ages you slowly start to build up your civilization and begin to dominate your enemies. The first slow moments of AoE as you begin that journey are so sweet. 

Leading your small tribe of Stone Age villagers fighting your enemies with clubs and primitive arrows is the sort of low-tech high-intensity gameplay which is what I find so compelling about these tribal games.

As you begin to expand you’ll grow out of the tribal roots and eventually become a medieval powerhouse in your own right. The Age of Empires games are classics of the RTS space and well worth your time. 

Age of Empires III also features the Native American tribes, who are playable and use less advanced tech then the European nations.

Dawn of Man

Dawn of Man sees you in charge of a group of neolithic people who have just set down their roots to form a settlement, abandoning their hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favor of the sedentary lifestyle. 

You’ll need to balance resource production with defending your settlement from raiders, natural disasters and plague. You’ll also be able to hunt boar, bears, and mammoths. The prehistoric world is filled with danger. You’ll want to take every precaution with your vulnerable settlers but even still you won’t be able to save all of them. 

The progress in advancing through eras is rewarding. You’ll go from a few hunters fending off wolves with simple sticks to a bustling settlement surrounded by thick stone walls. 

The struggle for survival and constant challenges you’ll face along that path will keep the game interesting, although the lack of any significant endgame challenge is disappointing. 

Upcoming Tribal Strategy Games

Ancient Cities

Ancient Cities is a city-building survival game in the same vein as Dawn of Man. You will have to lead your prehistoric people through the late Neolithic era into the dawn of civilization. 

You’ll be doing standard things like researching new technology, surviving, and defending your settlement but the game will feature politics, religion, social classes and family structure in an attempt to simulate ancient society.

From the Alpha footage so far the game looks promising, you’ll start out building small wooden huts and eventually advance up to stone buildings as your society increases in complexity. 

Neolithic: First City-States

Neolithic is a city-building based on the likes of Age of Empires I, Civilization & Caesar III. The game looks promising, featuring warfare, character building, and an open world with multiple cities and villages. 

You’ll be able to customize your citizens’ appearances but your main focus will be on keeping your people happy and prosperous to attract more migrants to your city.

Since the game is open world, you’ll be able to conquer other settlements on the map, forcing them into vassalage, or trade and conduct diplomacy with them.

The developers plan on featuring an endgame where you will be tasked with building a giant temple or ziggurat and then defend it from invaders during the bronze age collapse. 

Conclusion 

We need more tribal games.

The draw of tribal games is not necessarily managing a sprawling empire but instead a group of small closely-knit people with relatively simple tech which increases the stakes for your decisions. 

These where my top picks for the best tribal strategy games, let me know what yours are in the comments below.