First, I go off topic (apparently)

OK, I have this friend who contracted to have his kitchen remodeled in January, and as promised, the contractor showed up the following week, demolished the old kitchen and began to install the new stuff. It's now April, and my friend is still cooking on a camp stove in the garage. What has this to do with having some of your villagers actually achieve Master Parent status on their own? Well, EVERYTHING, it seems.

New Version, New Obsession

So it always bothered me that I never seemed to have any villagers who were Master Parents, but since VS 1.1 came out, with the cool inscribed gravestones, I became determined to get at least one grave that said "Master Parent." (Yes, I have no life; my cats keep telling me this...) The problem is that Breeding skill points are only awarded to the villager who initiates an embrace, no benefit to the recipient (except Going Indoors, of course); and no credit at all to nursing mothers for standing out in the sun for two years schlepping that enormous infant around. What's up with THAT?

It Takes Two to Tangle

Yes, the only way to get that all-important "This villager improved at Breeding." caption is to initiate an embrace. Everything else, (the Slurpy Kiss, the Wild Monkey Dance, and the Going Indoors) is just entertainment for the viewer. The problem is, in order to make Master at any of the skills, a villager has to practice. A lot. But in this case, as the saying goes, practice makes pregnant, and nursing mothers are out of action for two years per offspring.

Island Birth Control

Of course, population will not grow if there is a housing shortage, but villagers are also reluctant to embrace during these times. In VS 1.0, if I remember correctly, it was impossible to get anyone to embrace if there was a housing shortage, but things are a bit different in 1.1. Now you CAN get villagers to embrace successfully, some of the time, but you have to urge them on, they don't always cooperate, and you will frequently will see a green "nag screen", which you must acknowledge, politely reminding you of the housing shortage. More effort than it's worth, and I mean, Really!...

The Loophole

So, population will not grow while a housing shortage exists, but I discovered that IF a new hut is UNDER CONSTRUCTION, the villagers are apparently permitted to be, shall we say, "optimistic", even though population cannot grow until the hut is completed.. So, go ahead, start work on that new hut. JUST DON'T BE IN ANY HURRY TO FINISH IT! While the hut is a-building, any villager that has the "breeding" preference checked (and has been shown how to, um, "do it" a couple of times) will get very busy on her/his own without further help from you.

How to make Hut Construction drag on for Several Years

Basically there are two strategies for making your builders act like real-world contractors, and you should employ both.

First, make sure there are plenty of other construction jobs under way. Builders actually seem to prefer the larger-scale civil engineering projects like stream bed remediation, archeological reconstruction, or landscape restoration. You just need to point these opportunities out to each of your builders, and make sure you have achieved the appropriate tech levels to enable such projects.

Second, give your builders secondary skills. Now the obvious ones are Farming and Research, but if there is already an abundant supply of labor in these areas, your builders will drift back to hammering on that hut project regardless of what YOU think you told them to do. Instead, I suggest Healing and Breeding.

If any of your builders shows an affinity for healing, make her/him a full time doctor. You might think that a doctor/builder will spend time on hut construction when not actually healing sick villagers, but not so. If a villager develops a bit of healing skill and you designate him/her a permanant doctor, what they will do when not healing villagers will generally NOT resemble work (unless you count laundry).

Breeding is the other preferred choice; in fact my first Master Parent was first a Master Builder. While working toward her Master Parent rank, she would indeed occasionally go back to work on the hut she had started, but not often. Usually, when she took a break from her amorous pursuits she would "do laundry," or "complain," or "tell a story." Hmm...

Perhaps Important Information

While Naki (my first M.P.) was working on her, um, degree; I ran the game at slow, with my Palm always on, in the cradle. If I shut the Palm off, I would pause the game. If you leave the game "running" when you shut down, results may vary.

P.S. Once she had succeeded, I made Naki a builder again, and she promptly finished the hut. Next time I checked in, she was nursing, so I switched her back to breeding and left her that way. She died at 77, a Master Parent with ~24 children, and no, I have no idea how many times she actually Rang the Bell, but it was PLENTY. Visitors to my office would ask "What are those little slurping noises?"