These are all good suggestions. Obviously food first but you can make other choices after that and still make the game work. I am considering trying to run 3 games at the same time and try buying the skills in different order to see what happens.
That sounds like a good experiment. Will you post to let us know which one seems to work the best?
Right now, I'm trying to get enough tech points to buy the final stage of medicine (I'm kind of sick of my villagers becoming elderly at only 58!!!!), but it's taking a long time. No twins or trips yet, but, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And now I've got three or four villagers letting their energy bars deplete, and I've decided (cruel though it may be) that if they don't want to eat, then I'm not going to force them, but I'm not going to use them for breeding stock either, so, I'm kinding of going with the Darwin theory, "survival of the fittest", and let the strongest survive, and the weakest can die, because I'm sick of trying to force them to eat (which takes FOREVER).