I lost my food in one village while checking on another. It was very bizarre... I was in the other village for maybe 30 minutes max and when I went back into the first village they were down to 0 food from 368 with only 9 people. Is this perhaps a glitch? Or did I do something wrong in going into the other village??

Did you change the speed setting for either game before you switched between them?

I also lost food rather unexplainable in the beginning of the game when leaving it running in between sessions. I had to restart a couple of times, because the situation had turned out to be too desperate. Then I decided to pause the game in between sessions until I got level 2 of farming. Then I monitored it for a while and left it on half-speed for an hour or two and checked again, and finally it seems to be okey to leave them at half-speed over night. Still I had to be wary, because of the food resource limit and the farmers' strange priorities. I really could not relax completely until I got level 3 of farming.

I have level 3 farming and about 5 farmers for a village of 32, and level 3 farming in a second village with 3 farmers for 28. I left them both on half speed today for about 8 hours. The first village of farmers must have been having a party because they certainly didn't do any farming. I was down from about 1800 food to 30 which quickly went on to 0 as I watched. My second village of farmers were very hard working though and kept the food count at over 2000. Very strange!!!! Oh and then half my scientists decided to wander around worrying about the lack of food. There wasn't a lack of it, a sea full of fish, about 700 crops to harvest, it's just they were all to daft to go get some of it.

That sounds awful - about the first tribe, I mean. And here I was thinking bad thoughts of mine...shame on myself LoL

I'm almost a bit afraid to start a new tribe now, knowing it could be even more tedious.