do i have to feed them myself because it seems the food doesnt go down unless i pick them up and put them there and the next day when i check on them there all dead. i have no idea how. but i seems like if your going to leave them running 24hrs a day they would do normal stuff on there own. and how long does it take a child to grow a year and a baby to go weined. thanks bk

Your villagers will eat when they need to. While you can feed them if you wish, it's not necessary. You need to train your villagers to gather food and increase their research so that they can become more and more self-sufficient. Setting their preferred skill on the Details screen will help them stay more focused on their work. There are some strategy tips for getting started successfully in this post that might help you.

How quickly your villagers age depends upon the game speed setting. On normal speed, they will age 1 year every two hours, and a baby is weaned at age 2.

I think almost everyone had that experience, It wasn't too long before I figured out how to pause the game when I wasn't around for more than a few hours! There's nothing worse than your 5 year old daughter saying "MOM, YOU KILLED THEM!!!"