I understand that women are monogamous. However, if a woman's partner dies, can she take a new one?

Also, I have noticed that my two females have not acquired any skill at breeding, despite producing 18 children between them. Is this normal, or have I had a bad install (or a corrupted download)?

Breeding in Village Sim operates the same way that other skills do when it comes to gaining experience: the villager who initiates the activity gets the experience. So, if you have some male villagers who are *ahem* trained in breeding, they will continue to exercise that skill and improve with each encounter. If you want your women to gain breeding skills, they are going to have to initiate some "kissing" with the guys!

While the villagers do have a preference for a certain mate, if that mate ends up in the graveyard they will take another.

As an aside, the breeding facet of Village Sim has generated the funniest discussions of any topic in all of the forums!

"Male breeders will impregnate many women, but female breeders will only seek out one mate"

I think I misunderstood this. So female breeders will allow themselves to be impregnated by more than one male, although they, themselves, will only seek one mate. That means that all my males may get a chance to contribute to the gene pool, although one will have to hurry!

Paul

In order to have a good pop. and to find some secrets that aren't supposed to be in the game get your breeding to max and resaerch on genetics all the way up!

I started by appointing a male stud, who has fathered 18 children, I think. Now to get the genes from the other three original males, in their fifties and sixties, I'm going to have to get them to try to breed with an 18 year-old female.

Or risk my two elderly females.

hmmm... i get it. so the males do the researching?

Males and females are both able to be trained in research.

The basic difference between males and females that is being discussed here is how breeding skill is exercised in the game. Since a male villager doesn't spend 2 game years caring for a baby, he can be considerably more prolific as a parent than a female can. A single male, trained as a breeder, could keep all of the mature females in the village busy caring for babies!

Gotta be careful there, though. Training a male breeder can very quickly take ALL of your females away from their tasks when you're not looking!

I have one female that goes around embracing males. She does this on her own with no promt from me. She has gotten pregnant three times this way already. Is this normal?