Step by step guide for making a tribe.

So how exactly does one create a tribe? Read this guide and you'll find out.

## Step 0: Be familiar with the canon tribes.

The common knowledge of tribe makers. Get to know all the tribes and mechanics that are already added in game. Especially the special tribes. if you can't or don't want to buy them, just read on the official Polytopia wikia.

* Aquarion
* Elyrion
* Polaris

## Step 1: Have an idea.

Idea is the concept and theme of your tribe.

### Is my idea good?

To decide that, How to make a good fanmade tribe is the guide for you.

### Is my idea original?

Whether having an original idea is important for you or not, you decide. If you are curious if your idea is original, you can scroll through the All Fan-Made Tribes list, but here are the most frequently suggested concepts and themes (in no particular order):

* native american
* fire / lava / volcano
* australian
* rainforest / tiny islands [Kickoo cuckoos]
* taiga / cold desert / slavic
* robot / futuristic / alien / cyberpunk
* demons / undead / dark otherworldy [avoid Vengir-like things!]
* sky / clouds / flying
* pirates / evil watery tribe
* angelic / light / wizardic
* swamp / ogre / troll
* insects / bugs
* mining / dwarves

It's also possible that your idea is a mechanism or graphical element, in which case it's more difficult to prove originality or to judge if it is balanced or not. Best is to ask an expert if you really want to make sure.

### Rules to follow if you want to have the chance of your tribe being added

These are confirmed by Midjiwan, the developer, or Zoythrus, the community manager.

1. There won't be any more human tribes added, so only make special tribes.
2. The tribe has to not feature any questionable content, such as real world politics or religion, cannibalism, slavery, etc. And no NSFW content either of course. This is a family friendly game, keep that in mind.
3. This game is set in the era before guns, so no elements from moderner eras than that without good reason. Time travel is no good reason.
4. They can't have multiple starting techs, as well as no tech tree expansions, only tech modifications.
5. Make it as distinctive from other tribes as possible.
6. Special tribes are not only meant to change some things about a tribe, but entirely change the way you think about Polytopia and introduce a wildly different gameplay experience.

**The following steps can be made in any order, and making all of them is also not a must. Length of description of a step correlates with how frequently people make it.**

## Step 2: Graphic design

You should still make a design and describe it even if you can't or don't want to actually draw it.

### Tribe colour and colour scheme

One of the most defining factors of a tribe's appearance is their colours. For their main colour wich they use as body and border colour, choose one that is as different from other tribes as possible. If you are familiar with the RGB system, try to choose a colour that only uses FF, 80, (40,) 00 in its RGB code, since the canon tribes do that too. Never use more than one colour for the body.

### Things to draw

If you want to draw every sprite for your tribe, here is your to do list:

* Headwear
* Terrain: field, fruit, forest, animal, mountain
* City: Capital castle + 5 city block elements
* Monuments: 7 wonders (Altar of Peace, Emperors Tomb, Eye of God, Gate of Power, Grand Bazaar, Park of Fortune, Tower of Wisdom)
* Special thingies for special tribes.

### What software to use?

That really doesn't matter, Photoshop, Paint.net, Procreate and Blender are popular, I use MS Paint, but hand drawing on paper is cool too! Well, not for copy pasting in the game but it's enough to display and show us your vision of how it looks.

## Step 3: Mechanics

### For human tribes

Every human tribe gets a starting advantage that is something that any other human tribe could get later in the game. This is a tech most of the time, but can be a higher capital or a more advanced starting unit or a bigger discovered area, etc. They can not have any disadvantages except from low resources.

### For special tribes

Every special tribe must have a unique super unit. They can have as many modified techs, buildings, mechanics and even terrain as necessary. Still can't start with multiple techs and can't have expanded tech trees, only replacements. They are expected to change the fundamental way the game is played.

### Midjiwan says:

1. Dragon will forever be the only flying unit and only unit with splash attack.
2. No stealth units or anything that the enemy can't see even though the area is discovered.
3. No more human tribes.
4. A tribe should not exist on the only sake of countering another, all should be compatible and balanced with any other on it's own.
5. Polaris will be the only one with terrain modifying skills.

## Step 4: Text parts

This contains the name, the city syllables and the description.

### Naming a tribe

For good examples, look at the canon tribes of course. Quetzali is made from Quetzalcoatl, a mayan god, Zebasi is made from the word zebra, etc. Some don't seem to resemble anything, like Xin-xi for example. The most frequent name endings are i, r, s, o.

### City name syllables

You will need 5-15 of them, best to try out many combinations. There can be non-letter characters like a hyphen or apostrophy, but only use one of these maximally. There mustn't be any inappropriate combinations.

(Keep in mind syllables are only 2-3 characters. All canon tribes follow this rule except for ∑∫ỹriȱŋ, which uses a few one character syllables.)

### Description

Can be from a short sentence to a half page long, but has to fit in window in the game. Should feature some general description to give an idea of what kind of tribe this is, the description is also the place to tell some lore.

## Step 5: Music theme

A short loop of sound that suits the tribe's ambience and feel. Can be made with any software of your choice, or if you have microphone and editing software, just make it with real sounds. As a starting concept you can even provide a link to some music you found on the internet.

Ambient sounds also contribute to the tribes atmosphere so it's best to include them even if just as a short description.

## Step 6: Source code

If you want to absolutely complete your tribe, so that Midjiwan only has to copy and paste it into the game, you can also write the programming of the special elements.

### Terrain resources

One inner mechanical thing that we often add is the resource rates in the tribe terrain. For this, make a list of resources and grade if they have much less (--), less (-), more (+), much more (++) or unchanged amount of that resource. Everything unchanged is the Imperius terrain.

## Step 7: Finish

Now you have a complete tribe. What to do now? You can make an article for it here, if you don't know how to do that, read TESTTRIBE or ask somebody who has made many articles. You can also post on the r/Polytopia subreddit and on the official Polytopia discord server in the #suggestions or #fan-content channel, and if people really like it, it might get implemented in the game. After long testing of course. It is more likely that Midjiwan will base off a tribe from your idea and give you some credit. An example for this is the Yadakk tribe being inspired by the Moriton.

Have fun and good luck!