I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone post what seems like an obvious tip (that could almost be considered a cheat).

I'm an impatient sort, and get bored waiting around for the time to progress, so I close down the game, change my time forward by an hour or 2 (or 3), and then log back in. On double-speed (and hard difficulty), I just played a complete 89 hour game in about 4 real hours, solving all 16 puzzles. I birthed 20 babies, and only buried my original 5 folk. Kind of proud of the stats.

The only gotcha is you need to watch out for other time/date-sensitive apps, such as alarms in Outlook. And don't forget to reset the date and time when you are done!

SchneeBaer

That has been discussed many, many times in the forums (not just this one, but the other games, too)! There are also many "horror" stories about how people have totally "broken" their game, because of the complexity of the Virtual Villagers real-time engine. Just do a search on the word clock and you'll find a bunch of them.

So are you implying that when I close down my game, there is something left running in the background?

I seriously did not have a bit of problems, and have a difficult time attributing a game with the capabilities to distinguish between a real-time clock and a clock set with the wrong date and time. Although, I guess if it was programmed to go out on the Internet and check, and then actively cause damage if there was a discrepancy...

And I totally see where there would be a problem if the date and time were changed while the game were running. I always was sure to shut the game down first.

No, there is no component of Virtual Villagers left running when you exit the game. The game doesn't check Internet time, either. What does happen is that the game performs calculations based upon the current system clock setting when the game is launched, and the system clock setting at the time the game was last exited. The game cannot possibly determine whether or not the clock is "accurate" but it can, and will, become unpredictable if it ever encounters a "backwards" movement in time.

The journey is what makes the game enjoyable,,, speed through it and its over. Notice that everyone is commenting on what to do now that the game is done? Take time with your life.... and your game

Many of us have tried the cheat. In the easy mode there are few repercussions, in the hard mode you can lose you village very quickly. The most common problem is the reset of the crop time. Few villages can survive the time between crops if it goes up to 800 minuets instead of 60.

I have 22 people and they are always watering and planting the crops... does that make it faster, or is it better to make half of them scientists for more tech points?

Watering and planting is just a nice little feature which inflluences the crop cycle not one whit... so put them all to science until the crops come in - unless you need one to pick the berries, which you'll have to hand manage anyway

Be careful setting your clock on your computer that way, just to play a game. If you have other programs on your computer that are time sensitive, you can cause glitches in them, or cause them to be wiped out when you reset your date and time.

Very true, many anti-virus and schedulers will get thrown off.

Dont do it. I did it it messed up my old computer im never doing it again.

when i do it i have a FT game when playing VVi puase FT

You will be affected. If you are just starting out a game, I would suggest pausing it. If you are very late into the game, I would not think it will have a huge effect on the game. Most problems that peeps have with time travel happens when they set their clocks back to the correct time. That is when you will get issues. So going up one hour should not affect your game too much, unless you are at the early stages of a new game.

Normally, the time changes involved with Daylight Savings Time don't affect the game, because they occur overnight when most people aren't playing the game. If your game is off overnight, the clock will be adjusted before you start it back up in the morning, and there will simply be one more or one less hour since the game was last run.

The only time you have to be concerned about the time change is when you are actually running the game at the time the system clock is adjusted. It's best just to turn the game off for the night twice a year when the DST changes occur.

bummer, I hadn't even thought of that! *sigh* well I guess that's one night I'll have to leave my villages to their own mercy. How will I cope??

the only problem is i'm an insominac so USA nights are my days.this stinks .oh well i guess i'll just not be able to play for a night, the other games i have will just have to do for that night. thanks for the heads up on that though.

get everyone doing some thing and exit game .come back an hr or two later to check on them(helps if you visit forum to read diffrent posts,might learn something new).

so im assuming its only when the palm itself sets the time nothing is affected, not when done manually, because one day i noticed my palm was an hour fast so i set it back and all my plants died with ages of 29000 and some, MAJOR P/O....

and i noticed somwhere someone has that posted as a cheat, yeah just set your time ahead... and ruin everything...