Virtual Villagers - A New Home

"Newbie Primer", or "Beginner's Tutorial", or "Tips and Tricks", or "What I Learned The Day My Village Died"

Tips / Hints

Technology
The berry bush will disappear before you think. Your first Tech-purchase needs to be Farming. (6000 Tech-points)

Job Assignments
At first, you will need one person gathering food. Everyone else should be researching so that you can build up enough Tech-points to buy Farming.

Game Speed
On the Main Menu (under Options) you can set the speed of the game. Keep in mind, if you are trying to manage two "villages" at once (by switching "Players"), the game-speed setting affects only the currently-selected Player. (If you forget and leave your Village to 2X speed and go to bed, they'll probably all be dead before morning. At least for the first day or two.)

Building
Other than unplugging the well (which should be your first task), your builder really doesn't need to do anything until you've gotten Farming and you're ready to start "Makin' Babies". At that point, you need to micro-manage one or two villagers to get the in-progress hut finished.

Running
If you discover that you have a villager that likes running (check "Details" and quickly scroll through each of them to see what they like/dislike), you have the perfect Forager/Farmer! They sprint between the berry bush and the food stockpile! My son and I discovered this by accident and were very happy!

Breeding
Initially, your villagers will not be good breeders. (LOL!) You're going to have to lend a "helping hand". I find the best place for this to be the empty area just to the right of the "Happy Hut" (the place the couples head when it says they're "going indoors"). Find a male/female pair and drop them off in that area and then center the map there so you can do some breeder-wrangling. They'll complain they're hungry, they'll act like they've got better things to do, they'll run away .. just keep grabbing the one that's making a "dash for it" and drop them back on the intended-partner. If you get the "we're not compatible" line, pick a different partner. Likewise, if you've tried a couple hundred times without success, grab another villager and mix it up a bit. But, otherwise, just keep at it. As you begin, note your current population, every time you get a successful "going inside" response, glance at your population and see if it went up one. If not, grab them and get them "back to business" - cuz they'll just waste time walking over to the hut and you'll not end up with a stork-delivery.


Job: Breeder
If you want (once things are progressing and you've got a steady food-supply, a hut or two built, and you're working on unplugging the lagoon) you can task a couple villagers to be "Breeders". Be advised that this is only a good idea for females. This was another accidental-discovery. I had everybody but "The Runner" set to Breeder (to get the population moving) and shut the game down for a while. I came back to discover that one of the males had decided that Runner would be a good mate -- food-production had halted. Needless to say, the two men in the village were immediately tasked with Runner's duties while the females nursed the infants.

Vials
Villagers (usually the kids) occassionally come up with mysterious vials. You'll be asked to decide what they should do with them. On somebody's help-site, I found instructions that two were bad and one would cause an appearance-change. My poor little bald-headed boy found a "safe" vial, so I tried it. The game reported that he was still fine - but that all the other villagers had been poisoned by a mysterious mist when he opened the vial. Drat! Don't drink any vials - or make sure you have somebody tasked to be a doctor.

Healing
When I have a "sickie", I generally drop them just to the right of the well. (They sometimes want a drink anyway - so they'll like that.) I then pick another villager (assuming it's early and I don't have a dedicated medic) and drop them on the sick villager until they heal them. (Don't do it anymore after they're healed -- even if the person is "tasked" as a Healer -- they'll try to make babies.)


Plants
I don't know how much the plants help -- and this is the only Milestone I can really assist you with -- but there are four (actually, more) strange plants around the area that will (supposedly) let your villagers learn to use the folage -- I'm hoping for medicinal purposes. They're pretty much all located around the outside edge of the map ..


School
Once you have a Researcher that's advanced to the level of "Master" (doesn't have to be "Expert") you can convert the building in the middle of the compound into a school -- which (supposedly) makes your newborns smarter. You can also click the drum by it to get all the kids to show up for class -- although I don't really know what this solves yet.

Building Experience
After you've cleaned up the beach and unplugged the lagoon, you can give new 14-year-olds Building experience by dropping them on the hut to the right of the Research table. At first they'll just examine it. Drop them on it again to get them to repair it and build up their skill.

More Later?

I hope this information helps somebody. Like I've said, most of these tips are things that my son and I discovered completely by accident. Some accidents can be fun (like Runner) -- others (like thinking I was setting both my "villages" to 1/2 speed before I went to bed) were pretty traumatic! (I had renamed all the villagers so that I'd know who they were and what their duties were -- and I awoke to find only corpses. I still feel bad that they died simply because of my ignorance.)

Currently, I have my original village (which barely survived the night -- thankfully with a villager of each gender -- don't even get me thinking about who all of the current-toddlers will have to chose as life-mates ...) and a re-start of "New Chicago" (which is doing far better than the previous castaways that washed up on that shore ..)