How to maintain reproduction?

Question

I have created a city with everything fine. more than 12k food left, enough firewood etc. and health and happiness at 5.

The problem is my population. I have around 10 stone houses and had a population of 40 citizens. But after some time, most of them died at old age, leaving most of the houses free. Butt the other ones are already 50 years old and do not reproduce anymore.

I have two families of younger people with children and i thought, that will save me, as they could survive for eternity. But both households have split up with mother-daughter and father-son occupying two houses and not producing any new child's...

what can i do to maintain a steady reproduction with an equally distributed demographic population and do you know how to get there from my situation?

Answer 1

In my last builded town, I started by creating 1 stone house every year. Not more!
This helps to avoid the overaging.
If you build too many houses in a very short timespan, there is big risk that citizens will die in the future also in a very short time (citizens with age around 80).

Answer 2

Well, the daughter will eventually move out and live separate when she comes of age. And a lady even when living alone, will reproduce.

Answer 3

You shouldn't need to micromanage the families. Start with the number of homes as you have families (medium difficulty starts with 5 families). From there build a new home for each food producing building you create. Put this house near the food producing building. This will get you started and once your population has grown, it should never be a problem again.

Building too few homes leads to the problem you are experiencing, but building too many homes too quickly leads to starvation. Try to stay just ahead of your population. If you see adults with there parents, you don't have enough homes.

Note: according to the Banished Wiki, the only difference the houses type (wood or stone) makes is on how much firewood is consumed. Otherwise, the stone houses are more expensive in the beginning. I don't normally start building with stone until after I have a quarry.