Gathering Place

Long before any wall or watchtower, the gathering place stood at the heart of every Stone Age settlement — a cleared space of packed earth worn smooth by returning hunters dropping their loads. Animal hides, flint knapping-stones, and dried meat piled here under rough lean-to shelters while the tribe's elders directed who would hunt, who would gather, and who would stand guard. Anthropological evidence from Natufian sites in the Levant and Mesolithic camps across Europe confirms that even the earliest groups maintained dedicated communal spaces for resource pooling and social coordination. In the game it is your civilization's first command and logistics hub: workers deposit every resource here, and the first tribal fighters are drilled in its shadow. Plant it close to your initial resource clusters and protect it at all costs — losing it cripples production before you have a second building to fall back on.