I would keep a tutorial, but not a hand holding one:
You start with a very small visible area of land. Everything outside is space / gone white pure so you can't even see the shape of the land. It's just not there to see.
You start with two people on the shore of this small land, and they get up and wander around a bit, and the sculpting is left for you to discover.
As soon as you make enough space for a tent, the followers point at it and build on it real quick. There are no icons on the tent, just the tent.
If you hover the mouse over the tent, the cursor changes to show that something different will happen if you tap it.
Tapping on the tent pulls a person out of the tent, they explore for a while before heading back if they can't find a place to put up another tent.
If the people are hungry, they will go out and look for berries nearby.
If the tent only has one person in it, it will take some time, but will grow another.
As the followers move around the land, more land becomes visible, based on how high up the follower is. Once a certain amount of land is discovered, the first threshold is reached, and the power of compulsion pops up. Compulsion power would be like the totem. It will engage the followers to go towards a location. All followers nearby will be able to feel the pull. With this power, you will be able to force the followers to explore more and more land.
As the amount of land you have discovered increases, more powers become open to you. Powers charge up over time, like in magic carpet, and the rate at which they charge is based on the respect of your people. Respect is earned through use of power to help them, or punish their enemies. We all like powers. We all like to improve or destroy in miraculous ways.
As the number of people increase, sometimes a follower will have a bright idea, these ideas can be extinguished by killing the follower, or nurtured by elevating them to prophet status. The ideas would be the technical advances such as fishing rods. As an example, extinguishing fishing rods would make your people tend towards building sea defences, and taking to the hills. Elevating the fishing rod idea follower to prophet would lead to boats and other sea based actions, but would pull away from agriculture. Leaving the follower to themselves will lead to the median path, where boats and agriculture are discovered at a more casual pace.
People will hunt down resources to make larger buildings, build better boats, smelt and all the chain of things you find in a game of settlers. In particular, the chain to get to steel is really important for swords, which you need for handling other natives.
Expansion brings new powers, people's respect and their number brings the ability to use those powers, discovery of new people brings conflict or opportunity. First contact can be made aggressive or passive with powers, and will affect that race's impression of your people. War is good for innovation, but bad for resources. Peace is good for resources, but makes your people fat and less good at war.
The world should be procedurally generated, but everyone gets the same seed unless they choose to play a custom game, that way the community can find things and share.
Once the number and size of a population has reached the gameplay limit (must have acquired the latest age, and have more population than any other known enemy race), it will become possible to ascend the land and consume all the friendly souls. These souls will be used to pay for upgrades to powers or unlock new ages for the next play through. In the beginning, all the races will be limited to iron age, otherwise new players will get nuked by hard AI hiding in the corners of the map. In the later games, influence and vision radius will be massive, the ability to force inspiration on your followers will make them rapidly climb the tech ladder, and total domination of a planet should take little time, at which point, you will be able to gather enough souls to create a multiverse, and then you will be invited to play with the other gods.
Hubworld: take your powers and unlocks with you and duke it out on the shores of a procedurally generated infinite world where to be the god of gods, you must take the land in the centre of the world, and the only way to do that is by war or allying yourself with other gods until you reach the centre, then stabbing them in the back to claim the goal for yourself. Every new player adds land to the shore of hubworld, making the land ever expanding, and harder and harder to get to the centre. Lose all your followers, and you go back to the shore. The god of gods totem is slowly, but constantly, moving. This gives us the technical ability to prune lands as they become unloved and too distant to ever reach the centre, but also means that there will never be a way to passively win the multiplayer.
