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I've played twice now about thirteen years of the game. It feels like my people are doing OK -- I can keep them at 4+ stars and 4+ hearts and they seem to start the game pregnant, so babies come up at first. But then, after a while; certainly by year 10, no more babies are born and the villagers have started dying of old age and my population crashes down below 18 or so which feels like a tipping-point after which I can't generate all the stuff I need to -- not enough people to both mine iron and make tools, and I have to start giving up nutritional variety, etc.

And it feels like there aren't really that many more knobs to twiddle. I'm pretty patient with games, trying again and again with different strategies; I just don't see what I might do differently.

So, are there factors that go into reproduction that I'm missing?

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  • Do have empty homes? Reproduction rates drop if there aren't enough homes because villagers will only get married and have kids if their is a house for them to move into.
    – Wipqozn ♦
    Commented Feb 20, 2014 at 14:23
  • Ha; no! I build homes until there's no one walking around with the homeless icon and then build more if that icon reappears. Sweet, I'll try that. (Make that an answer?)
    – clweeks
    Commented Feb 20, 2014 at 14:43
  • Though actually, if that's the problem, shouldn't my population bob down due to housing shortage and then back up due to vacated properties? It seems like any given set of houses would have a carrying capacity. Maybe my population has to crash further (enough to entirely vacate a house) before I'd see that.
    – clweeks
    Commented Feb 20, 2014 at 14:47
  • Wipqozn is right nad what you described is right as well. Population stagnated because you dont have enough homes, and if you don't build any you will see it slowly decline till homes empty then increase a bit as new families fill them in. Keep building homes as long as they fill up with 2 people for max growth
    – Lawton
    Commented Feb 20, 2014 at 14:54
  • Is the game good? I absolutely love these kind of games, and this one looked good in the trailer. Is it fun?
    – juan
    Commented Feb 20, 2014 at 15:34

4 Answers 4

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Villagers will only marry and produce children if there is an empty home for them to move into. That is, there can only be one pair of villagers producing children per house. As homes start to become available as your population dies of you will begin to see a growth in your population, but it'll eventually stop growing again since the villagers will just run out of empty homes again. If you want your population to continue to grow you'll need to continue to build new homes for villagers to pair off into and begin families. Be careful, however, since building too many homes can lead to your population growing faster than you can produce food and other resources to support it.

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  • 1
    This is pretty much spot on. If there are no children around, building a house should encourage two younger people to move into a house and start a family. For this reason, I tend to build at least one new house every five years even if I'm not eager to have the population increase.
    – quillbreaker
    Commented Feb 20, 2014 at 20:05
  • 2
    Yeah, I've verified that this solves my problem. Thanks!
    – clweeks
    Commented Feb 21, 2014 at 20:39
  • @Wipqozn But do students marry and have children as well? I have 5 students of varying genders but none of them are married while there is a home that sits empty.
    – Utku
    Commented Aug 29, 2015 at 9:14
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Well the game says that once you have a town hall, trading post, and market then occasionally people will start to come ask to be a citizen in your town. it is therefore a great way to boost your population quickly. But also a disease outbreak may occur so be prepared.

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If you're really advanced and have built your town hall you can use the statistics page there to see the number of houses and number of families. Always try to have 1-2 more houses than families, so the younger ones will move out when coming of age.

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I've actually had the same issue. I go good for about 18 years, then suddenly everything collapses due to deaths. What I've started to do is every time I see the children fall under about 8, I build new houses. This isnt always perfect... But it works. This most recent time I played, I actually only really survived because some nomads came through at just the right time.

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  • I eventually adopted the strategy of building a new stone house any time there wasn't a house sitting vacant. It seems like a solid approach but it takes checking on the houses every so often.
    – clweeks
    Commented Feb 27, 2014 at 13:32

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