I find it really helps to have only 1 or 2 tribes going at a time - if you have 5 it's hard to give each one enough attention and in the early stages there is quite a lot of attention required, keeping the stubborn peeps on-task and collecting the collectibles.

I like to go for things which will get me the tech points faster - so I tend to go for Science and Magic L1 early on - but you also have to balance that with the need to keep your tribe fed... the great thing about VV3 is that there's no one "right" way to play it!

You can have either magic OR nature in one tribe - but not both at the same time. But if you're running more than one tribe, you could try one of each!