I agree with many of the others. Also, I can understand the frustration with the tech points. I have VV2 set to easy. EASY??? For whom? Einstein? I like the idea of other sources of food to be made available sooner and for a lot less tech points. Jeez, it makes it seem like your programmer likes to make them breed AND starve. The food source is bad enough as it is, not a very good diet. Why can't the kids automatically be trained to keep getting the mushrooms at least. A day/babysitter care and school would be nice when your child population runs amock. Why not add a Teacher that can become a master at that. They really are bad parents and personally I would not go with higher tech for them. What kind of parenting is breeding and then letting your kids get out of control with no supervision?

Things needing serious fixing:

Get the doctors to learn faster and get more tech as an incentive to stop eating, doing laundry, jumping in the water et al.
Have the kids at least be master mushroom collectors on their own, the collections are hard enough to get complete.
Stop putting your elderly in such drab looking stuff, we do like our colors too, you know.
Fix helmut head, and the other hairdo's. Fire their barber/hairdresser.
Have more food sources in all the games and not have such high tech points to achieve for those of us NOT techie enough to want to totally babysit them all.
Make it easier for the women nursing to earn their esteemed elder stuff. They sit on the sidelines too long.
Get a babysitter/day care/teacher master thing going.

Loved Jaruna's idea of the eggs!!!
How bout adding some holidays and have the kids decorate for Christmas, Easter, et al.

Have the parents ACT like real parents. The kids run around and the adults eat all the time!!!

I agree with all of the suggestions here. I have one or two of my own. Why not make the children pick up mushrooms without having to be guided if possible. It would really help with the food and would be less annoying to us Gods. LOL.
Also it would nice if the villagers could show more emotions. Such as men and women that have created children together be seen walking together or appearing to show affection without that virtual kiss creating a baby every time and without having to be prompted. And mothers aknowledging thier own choldren after they turn two. And running wild.

Hi All,

I think the suggestions here are great. Definitely the kids need to be able to gather the mushrooms on their own after a time. It would also be great to see them able to perform some tasks too before they reach 14. I mean really, kids in tribes don't just run around all day doing nothing.

Oh and the moms really need to be able to do other things during the 2 year nursing period. I'm a mom, who's nursed 3 kids, all past the 2 year point and I certainly didn't sit around just taking care of the baby during that time.

One suggestion of my own...How about a way to link couples, so they only mate with each other. We could really create families this way.

Actually in most agriculture-based traditional societies, the women often do most of the farming and produce food for the tribe that way. The men engage in activities like hunting. The balance is that the farming is more reliable as a food source but the food is less nutritionally valuable while hunting is unreliable but has higher calorie-nutritional content.

So I definitely agree with everyone who has objected to the female villagers being unable to contribute to village activities while "nursing." That is an unrealistic situation.

If you want actual primary/journal articles backing this up, I can provide them, though I doubt it's really necessary.

I definitely think there should be skill points while a mother is nursing. She should also be able to cook and do other chores that most nursing mother's do. I agree that father's should be able to attend to their children so that the mother isn't the only one caring for the child. On a real tropical island there are plenty of other food resources besides the one's we have access to here. Please lower the tech points for activities to take place, or at least let us get tech points from the other activities we are participating in. Finally, these collections are driving me mad. The piece I need never shows up. Just have them randomly hidden thru out the island and have the kids look for them. Or at least let the adults be able to find and pick them up also. Maybe you can have an interface and have the folks meet up with the other half of the island in a way that allows for interaction and further play.

I would love to be able to pick those coconut pickers OFF the tree to gat them back to work... heh heh !!

I find that the kids all running around was getting on my nerves too, so I will take an elder and put it on one of the kids so that he/she will teach the kids. Most of the kids will come running to learn (by the fireplace). It gets most of them out of the way for a while.

I have one male and one female master parent! The female is pretty much too old to have babies...but she will still run around kissing the men. I think that this helps by increasing their parenting skills.
I agree that the nursing females need to have something they can do to continue obtaining skills while they are nursing. Maybe they can tend to the other children while they are nursing? Would solve the problem of all those youngsters running all over the place.

It would be nice if when a nursing mother dies that someone would take care of the baby (I hate losing the little ones). When teaching is going on make it so people don't walk all over the kids and if the nursing moms what to join the class have them sit in the back not on the kids.
Maybe give the kids a nap time/area and cut their call of nature time in half.
Also have a mark of some kind on the skills level to let you know how close they are to reaching the next level.
And I miss not being able to keep track of the number of twins being born.

How about being able to purchase a papoose or something for the nursing mothers (using tech points) then they can go back to work while still caring for the baby. Also, once a villager attains master parent status why can't they automatically teach or tell stories instead of kissing other villagers since they don't need to increase this skill any longer.