Hello, I was wondering wether it was normal that crops do disappear from time to time ? This is the second time it happens (I managed to make my sims survive the first time), now the sims are planting crops and watering them like hell, but nothing grows (yet). The first time it finally reappeared but now I'm beginning to worry. My food supply was around 560 and now without the crops it went down to 260. Is it normal is it a bug will the crops come back after a while ?

I saw a post dated from January the 18th 2006 describing the same kind of problem. To give some insights on my situation, I have 6 adults, 1 teenager (14 years old) and 3 children, I only play in normal mode but since I like to control things I usually let the game paused when not playing, meaning the game can be paused for long periods of time. I don't understand how this is relevant but it seems to be important on the post of the 18th. Appart from that I reached level 2 in science, building and of course harvesting, I have 1 doctor, 2 scientists, 2 sims harvesting (well planting and watering only right now) and 1 female builder currently nursing. I'm very satisfied with my actual population and ongoing game, things went quite well untill to crops disappeard out of nowhere (i.e. it is not linked to any island event), is there a way to save my game to avoid restarting from zero if this is a bug ? Please help my sims survive this situation

How long has it been since you last had crops, and how long do you usually leave the game paused?

Warren is right that the farm's crops are cyclical, and that you will usually see them depleted and regrowing on a regular basis. However, it seems to be possible to disrupt the normal crop cycle. I did do quite a bit of testing on the scenario that you referred to, and found that there are some circumstances that can cause the farm to enter a different cycle from the normal, predictable one.

The specific scenario that I tested was to simulate playing the game only during working hours and leaving the game paused for roughly 15 hours a day. In one of my games, I paused it the first time when the farm was empty, and it remained empty for several "real" days before producing crops again. In the other game, the farm was producing crops the first time that I paused it, and they never failed. They were so constant, in fact, that I was able to grow my population to several dozen villagers and complete all of the puzzles without purchasing Level 3 of Harvesting. I played both games for about 2 weeks, and the crops did come and go, but the cycle was prolonged and unpredictable.

I believe that it's best not to leave the game paused for extended periods of time when the farm is empty, to avoid the possibility of famine! As to whether or not you have encountered that situation, and whether or not you can salvage your current game, only time will tell. I was able to continue playing my "famine" game, but I had built up a decent surplus of food before the farm took a vacation.

Hello thanks for your fast and efficient feedback. Well it is difficult to say if the crops depleted before they came back growing again. The only thing that I know is that when I restarted the game they had disappeared and similarly when I switched the game on yesterday evening there was something (while there was nothing when I switched off my palm or to be precise when I entered the options to pause the game the last time during the afternoon yesterday). I'm now back to a normal situation. Considering my way of playing I actually monitor most of the time my sims meaning that when I'm not playing most of the time the game is paused. It is actually paused most of the time, but I understand this is not the proper way of playing the game. I especially realised that when I saw that 50 000 tech points were required to buy level 3 of harvesting. It took me 2 weeks to get around 35 000 point only running the game between 30 min and 2 hours a day. I guess that to progress it is needed to let them accumulate points "in the background". However as I mentioned I like to be in charge and monitor their behaviour otherwise they're not always doing what you want them to do.

You can certainly play Village Sim in that manner, but (as you've already noted) your progress will be much slower than it would be if you allowed the villagers to work while the game is not running. Even though the villagers seem to goof off a lot when you're not controlling their every move, they are actually very productive. I've found that once a villager is trained in a skill, and I set that skill as their preferred skill, they will stick to the job well enough to produce results. Different villagers will have different levels of industriousness, but I've found that, overall, they will get the job done if I leave them alone. I still sometimes micromanage the little peeps when I'm actually running the game, but I don't usually pause the game when I'm away from it.

The only real problem that I've discovered with leaving the game paused for long periods is the one I described with the farm. Under normal circumstances, the farm (which has a finite supply of food with each crop cycle) will be depleted periodically. If you have few villagers and only 1 or 2 farmers, they may not be able to gather enough food to harvest all of the crops before the next crop has grown. In that situation, you will see crops on the farm continually. If you have a lot of villagers and many farmers, it may take very little time to harvest all of the crops, at which point the farm will be empty until new crops grow.

The best way to tell if the food supply is adequate and reliable is to monitor the food that's available in the bin and check the "Food harvested" statistic on the stats page (which will tell you how much total food has been gathered).

good point, I'm gonna let the game play in slow mode, following your explanation I wonder if I do not make my sims harvest too much too fast thus depleting the crops too rapidly (even if my food bin was only filled up at around 580 units). Since I'm controlling then I sometimes force them to harvest instead of goofing around ..... 2 options then either by just keeping the crops above 300 unit to avoid them to be "worried about food" but not too much I won't have the problem anymore or it rehappens and since I won't have enough food in the bin they'll die. Anyway I backed up up my game thanks to a toolkit I saw referenced on this forum, thus I do not take too much risks with my ongoing game :-) thank you again very much I'll keep you informed if you want

Sure - we always like to hear people's experiences playing the game in different ways!

Your comment about backing the game up using the toolkit makes me wonder which version of Village Sim you're playing....as I understand it, that toolkit only works with v1.0 of Village Sim.

well I let the sims do by themselves 24/24 7/7 and everything goes right since my last post, crops come and go but seem to follow a cycle as you mentioned. Now I've all level 2 and Harvesting and Building in level 3 thus no food problem anymore thanks to fishing.
The game is even a bit "long" now that I need to wait on to reach a high enough number of tech points to buy some new skills. Anyway life seems sweet on the island apart from a tornado which left my beach dirty :-) ... but the sims took care of it and everything back to normal.
To answer you question yes I started playing with version 1.0 and didn't know you could upgrade to version 1.1. Anyway as I understood savegames are not compatible I prefer to finish my initial game.
Thank for your help

It's good that your game is back to normal - it's easier to finish that way!

You are correct that the v1.0 and v1.1 savegames are incompatible. In fact, if you were to install v1.1 while you were playing v1.0, your savegame would be deleted by the new version. I really recommend playing again with the new version, once you finish your current game. You can download the new version from here: http://www.ldw.com/zips/vs1_1.zip Of course, your v1.0 reg code will work with v1.1!