Some of my villagers have 20-second attention span or so ... they'd do research for one "cycle" and then go off exploring, and I kept having to drag them back to the research table. (The farmer and builder can work at their jobs longer without taking a break.)

And my food supply went down to 200 and less .... and I observed that the researchers work like beavers at the research table. I took a break to do my laundry, come back and still find them good as gold working at the research table. Hmmm .... is this the trick to make them stick at their job?

I'm trying to accumulate points to purchase harvesting level 3 ... but now wondering whether to "rush it". I guess I'll have to go to level 3 if I want to increase my population. Currently 5 villagers researching, 1 farmer sustaining the the 1xx food level and 2 kids running around.

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Villagers will tend to be more diverse in their activities as the game progresses. You can control, to a degree, which job they will perform most often by selecting a preferred skill for each of them. However, keep in mind that they will continue to show a preference for what they're good at. So, for example, if you try to retrain a Master Scientist as a farmer and change their preferred skill from research to farming, (s)he will still probably be at the research table more often than the berry bush or farm, because they aren't any good at farming and don't want to do it!

Allowing their sense of security to dwindle with the food supply can backfire, though. They could just as easily abandon their jobs and pace in village center, "worried about food."

Individual villagers also display differing levels of aptitude and initiative, be design. Some seem to take forever to "get it" in one skill, while learning a different skill immediately. Some are free spirits, while others are industrious. That can create uneasiness for game players who want a high degree of predictability in how a game behaves. I used to get frustrated with them because they wouldn't do exactly what I wanted them to do all of the time. These days I just make sure that I have each villager "set up" the best that I can, and allow them the freedom to make their own choices most of the time. When I have am occasional "control freak attack" come over me, I can still intervene like crazy and make them do precisely what I want.

Here's my latest strategy: let the food level hover around 300. I have a 2nd-generation adept farmer fishing to feed a population of 13 (including 5 kids). My 1st-generation master farmer is also a master scientist working away at the research table. If the food level drops too low, I will pull the master farmer to pitch in (hopefully with a crab or so) to pull the food level up to 300. The rest of the time he is researching at the research table.

The strategy has worked out pretty well so far. If the food level increases above 326, villagers start wandering off their work. Below 295, my builder sometimes start to worry about food although the researchers continue working except taking breaks to eat and drink.

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