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?

Yes, it's perfectly normal. If they know how to do something, they'll occasionally do it even when it's not selected as their preferred skill. That's why it can be so risky to have male breeders - there's no stopping them once they know how!

In like 8 children my tribe had (several different couples), none were males. Is it normal? Now my game is screwed since no males survived and I have a women-only tribe.

Sometimes, just as in real life, there's an imbalance in the gender of babies that are born. In the game that I'm currently playing on my LifeDrive, I've had the opposite problem. For most of the game, I've had only one female, and I've had to carefully take care of her and manage my population to prevent an all-male population. Normally the population isn't quite THAT unbalanced.

All is not necessarily lost, though. There are 3 Island Events that could bring just what you need.

Monogamy is not true!

I have had 1 woman after leaving the hut with one guy seek the affections of another instantly. She has been amerous with all 3 males of age and has had 6 children from 2 men.

One time after some odd dragging she entered the hut with 2 men and came out with her 7th child. So nobody knows the father of that villager. My oldest suitor Juro even produced offspring with 2 of his own daughters just before dying. THis is kind of morally corrupt don't you think?

I don't think a man should be able to produce children with a female and then produce children with his own female offspring 18 years later.

I decided to train one of my men in breeding. I came back 2 hours later, and he had fathered 8 offspring! So then I decided to train some new fathers, and rotate them to mix up the gene pool. None of my villagers seem at all monogamous.
I can't keep track of who fathered who...

How do you guys keep track of who's offspring is whom's? There are so many (I'm up to ~25) that I can't even keep track of who the partners are, much less the kids! Especially since many of them look alike. It would be helpfull if there what a "family tree" screen. Of course, with all the polygamy I don't think one would even be possible!!!