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.