8hr and my builder still isn't finished with the first hut... am I doing something wrong? should I have him researching until there is enough points to buy the next builder tech?
Not to mention the ages and ages of waiting for enough tech points to get anything.
I'm running it at 2x, though it doesn't seem like it...

change your setting to easy

thanks, somehow that feels like cheating though

This isn't really a fast game. Just sit back with a beverage of your choice & watch them work. I always put more than one builder on anything, SPOILER: there's one point when you'll need more than one master builder to do something.

Running your game at 2x only makes your villagers age faster and eat more. It doesn't make the game go faster. This game takes a lot of patience.

ok, patience isn't a strong point for me! lol

How do you go about putting two builders on something and still forge for food and research? Right now I have one builder building, two forging and two researching

First & foremost, WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME! You have now officially joined the world of LDW (the people who bring us these neat games) addicts!

I also find that running at 2X "seems" to help them gain skills faster, but not a lot.

Putting the game on easy will make it easier to gain tech points & food, but I'm not sure it will make building go faster. To the best of my (limited) knowledge, the only way to do that is assign multiple builders; farmers; etc to the project you're working on.

If you put several villagers one the same task it will go faster!Seems to me that, at the beginning, food is the most important and you need some tech point to get a new source of food. Building the hut will help you only if you want to increase the population.
(I every time play in 1/2 speed because I want not to see my villagers becoming old too fast!!)

put it on 2x speed and e

I'm not sure why you're building at this point? Is this VV1 or VV2? Its not really a good idea to build or increase your population til you have enough food. In the beginning, I devide the folks between food gathering & research (to incr. food availability). But make sure you have at least one child to gather mushrooms.