King of Dragon Pass
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King of Dragon Pass and it's prequel Six Ages are single-player realm management video games where you, as the player, take the role of the ruling council of a human tribe and attempt to lead them to mastery over the other tribes and cultures in the region. The games are significant for taking place in the fantasy realm of Glorantha, one of the earliest and most un-Tolkien tabletop RPG settings. There's some customization regarding your tribe's history and what they're good at, but the choice of who you appoint to your council, where you explore, and which gods you pay homage to have a greater effect. The artwork is on par with the original Heroes of Might and Magic and other management games of the early 90's.
The game was published by a company that normally produced office software, and when they decided they couldn't support it the game went out of print, causing its price to soar to a thousand dollars on eBay. Then the abandonware vendor Galaxy Of Games picked it up and it is now available for free on Android or DosBOX, or for a modest fee on modern PCs.
The game tends to bring weal or woe right after you end your turn using a random roll. This can be defeated by saving the game just before you end your turn, ending it, reloading if you don't like the results, and repeating these steps until satisfied. At least in the older versions, the Android and current PC versions don't let you save whenever you want and only let you load an autosave at beginning of each season.
King of Dragon Pass
Summary
You take the role of the ruling council of an Orlanthi tribe in Dragon Pass and attempt to lead your people to mastery over the other tribes and cultures in the region. Your abilities are limited by which tribesmen you appoint to your Council, which are critical to deciding your tribe's success at growing food, responding to dilemmas, and waging war; and the breadth of sacred lore you acquire, which is necessary for the all-important heroquests in which your tribe conducts shamanic rituals to send champions to the realm of the gods for answers, blessings, and treasures.
Strategy
Do NOT fuck with the ducks.
You Can Never Have Enough Cows
Food and cattle are the foremost priority and many a great playthrough have ended scuffed by not being on top of the food situation. Without enough farmland or hunting grounds, your clan will begin starving and will start killing cattle for food. However, cattle is also a measure of your wealth and power, and having fewer cattle not only limits your economy but also makes you more vulnerable to the AI targeting your clan for raids. As such, your council should at all times have at least one member who is Excellent or better at getting food. Expect to be micromanaging your pasture and cropland every season just like a real Bronze Age tribe. Optimally, you'll start with more than enough land but you may elect not to as you can use your neighbors as unwilling donors.
Keep Your Enemies Close
At the game start, single out a neighboring clan or two as your personal whipping boy who you will exclusively be warring with. This clan is usually a clan whose nature is alien to yours or would mess up your attempts at forming a kingdom such as the First Clan who are typically slavers. If at war with anyone else, offer them horses and make peace with them asap.
War is unoptimal and you want to be at peace as much as possible and losing as little men as possible. To assist this your council should always have at least one who is Excellent or better at Combat, with the council member having the highest Combat made warleader of all your fights by default. Also, when traces of existential threats such as undead or chaos show up, deal with em immediately and preferably under the direction of specialists.
Only raid when you're trying to prove a point, need more land, or your local warhawks start getting bored. Raid your whipping boy too much and they would migrate away out of fear of you.
You've gathered by now that having food and winning battles are highly important and as such your magic should always be allocated for anything that improves these.
With food and combat secure, your playthrough is set. Technicals for Heroquesting, combat tactics, and tribe building are freely available elsewhere and by your own experimentation.
Six Ages
The spiritual successor and distant prequel to KoDP, set in the same world during the age of the gods. Originally released for iOS and later ported to Windows 10, 6 Ages was made with the lead writer and composer of King of Dragon Pass after internet Let's Plays vastly increased the original's fanbase.
Six Ages is an episodic game divided into the titular Six Ages, each of which will cover the development and evolution of a tribe, the Berennethelli, from the earliest ages of Gloranthan myth up to the founding of the Kingdom of Dragon Pass.
Ride Like the Wind
This time you play the Riders, who brought both horse riding (as the Orlanthi were inbred morons who can't wrap their heads around the concept of stirrups, saddles, and general horse-wrangling) and the god Elmal into the Orlanthi culture, and are the ancestors of all the horse-nomads you saw in KoDP. It is the Storm Age and you are caught in an age before Time in the long-running Godswar, with your own Solar pantheon constantly losing. Not to mention, there are signs in the air that the world as you know it is about to change fundamentally.
Lights Going Out
ETA 2023 and is currently in playtesting and acquisition of those pretty art and assets you have been so used to. You still play the same tribe and may even import the playthrough and decisions of your Ride Like the Wind save, only this time you are set to relive the chaos and horror of the Darkness Age before Orlanth returned Yelm to the sky as Chaos direly threatens the world. Shit has now hit the fan. Good luck.
The World Reborn
Will be developed if Lights Going Out is a success. Will presumably be centered around your tribe as part of the Orlanthi Heortlings in their attempt to create and live in a globalized world, fresh out of a genuine apocalpyse.