What did you do? Killed the chief or the beast? If you killed the chief they are certainly not going to work for you.
when you have an upgrade in the works only 3 show as working somewhere (in village management) or being in a horde (in horde management).
That bug was fixed a long time ago. you should not have continued playing from a bugged save but anyway...
Depends what you're doing. Most stuff during the roaming phase are "events" they don't take that long, (like meeting up and fucking a girl somewhere), therefore you can then do something during the strategic phase like go and explore a hex.
You say you only have "three workers to distribute" and that made me think. You actually have a population of 4 because you have a worker which constitutes your first horde...
Well, you *can* disband the first horde and put that worker to work elsewhere. You can see all assigned workers in the two management screens, except when an upgrade is ongoing. Then a worker is implicitly assigned for that, but not visible elsewhere as far as I know.
Take a deep breath. I'm going to guess you met the Pontheugh court. But now you need to gather info on Pontheugh to meet Elaria. Talk to Suk-Yu (Dunes of Sorrow hex) or send a scout To Pontheugh for an info gathering mission. I realize I didn't include that piece of info on the tip about civilized points from Deidra, thanks for pointing it out.
Not the problem. According to the comments that's the next step after you've met her the first time. But I'm not getting an option to meet her the first time. Regardless I did both of those anyway and it didn't make a difference. Scout said there wasn't much info to gather, and Suk-Yu said she knows nothing.
In the dialogues with Lady Krecill at the Pontheugh court, there is this conditional dialogue option:
