I just purchased the full version of the game a few days ago and I'm happily making many mistakes along the way. Currently I'm playing on Low difficulty and have 6 adults and 1 child in my village. I've upgraded to Farming level 2, increased Building to 2 and my Spirituality has been upgraded due to an external event.

My problem is this. I cannot seem to get ahead on food to save my life! I have the farm just south of the research table going, but it seems like I'm fighting a losing battle to keep food in the coffers. Even with two people farming and one foraging, I've gone from 400+ food to less than 200.

Right now I've got everyone working on food production except for one Builder, and I'm still just barely breaking even. It's really bizarre. Do I just have really gluttonous villagers or what?

One other weird thing I'm noticing is that my adept farmers seem to wander around a lot. They'll harvest for a little while, then I'll look back an hour later and they're "curious about the ruins" and walking over there. Grr!

Anyone have some ideas as to what's happening? I'm really enjoying the game, but having 80% of my workforce on food detail seems like a recipe for disaster.

The little villagers who inhabit Isola definitely have minds of their own, and they don't always seem as concerned about their situation as you are! Curiosity seems to be a genetic trait of these little people!

The game is designed so that the food supply is a little tight at the beginning, however there are some things you can do to improve the situation. In v1.0 of Village Sim, due to a difference in villager productivity between when the game is not running and when it is, you can improve your food and research point situation by leaving the game running at slow speed with your Palm on AC power. Not everyone can do that, however, since they use their Palms for more than playing games. If you're able to do that for even half a day (or, best case, overnight), you'll see a significant increase in the food supply, research points, and any building projects that may be going on.

Another thing that works to improve your research point production (albeit a boring thing to do) is to repeatedly drag your villagers back to the table as they start to move away. This does two things: 1) increases their skill, which in turn increases the quantity of points they produce, and 2) keeps them from spending time in "unproductive" pursuits!

Thanks for the response, Ladycfii! Leaving the game on and plugged in all day probably won't work, but I'll give it a shot tonight and hopefully will see some results. As it is, I'm somehow down below 200 food AGAIN despite putting all six of my adult villagers to work either foraging or in the farm. How that's possible, I really have no idea. The frustrating part, of course, is that I can't make any progress on construction or research in the meantime.

Ah well, it's all a learning curve. I think the law of random numbers is just out to get me at the moment.

Dragging the little guys back to work when they start to wander off is a workable idea, at least while I'm babysitting the game. Tedious, of course, but it's becoming apparent that this game is going to require a little more attention than I realized at first.

Things really start to pick up once your villagers know how to fish and you can start making new baby villagers like crazy. It just takes a little effort to get your tribe well established!