Flori- You need a very focused strategy. First off, when you start a village, you really need a lot of time to babysit. Later on, you can leave it for half a day, a few days or whatever at a time, but in the begining you need to really focus on being the guiding hand.

If you read the pop up that occurs with the algae, you'll see that your villagers create the problem. You can delay the problem by monitoring the actions of your villagers. In the interim, it takes a fair amount of technology points to get all the things in place to resolve the problem. Therefore, you need to focus on technology and food for a very long time. Be very careful not to populate too much before you have a stable food supply. Keep your villagers working on food and technology at all times.

Hope this helps!

Tess

I agree with Myari, check your difficulty setting. I started my first tribe on the hard setting because I thought it would make the game last longer, but it was touch and go for the first part of the game. I lost 2 villages before I got one to survive. It took a lot of planning and guiding my little ones, I was with them so much my husband said it was like I left him for them! So if you don't want to be chained to the computer you should opt for the easy setting right at first. Don't give up, this is the best VV. Good luck!

I just pause the game whenever I'm not home to check in every hour or so. That's the only way I made it. I got a runner in my starting group and put her--and her only--on fishing. Put one guy to learning building. Put everyone else to researching. Upgrade building first, then farming (so you can build the dam and farm), then forget everything else till you get the highest farming level. Teach someone to make a fire, then teach 3 or 4 people how to gather firewood so they'll do it before the fire goes out. Don't have any children unless you have to so that you will have a child in the village for mushroom hunting. I had 2 babies 12 "years" apart out of necessity before I got my algae problem solved. Also, the farmers are dunderheads. You can't leave them alone and expect them to farm. Not even the master farmers. That's why I say pause the game when you're not around. You have to keep plopping your farmers onto the crops to get them to harvest or they'll go gathering coconuts instead and sit around right next to a full garden "worrying about food" while everyone in the village starves. Time your visits to coincide with crops, make sure they are all harvested, then do other things until the next crops are due. Pause any time you aren't available to babysit. You have to do this for the whole game unless you want your village to starve.

I have 2 villages on Easy and 1 on Normal. I don't let anyone build until I have enough tech points. 1 fishes everyone else researches.

" teach 3 or 4 people how to gather firewood so they'll do it before the fire goes out"

How do you get them do do that on their own?

It's not a given. Some people seem to "learn" from being shown where the firewood is how to gather it and renew the fire. Some don't. That's why I teach 3 or 4 people to do it, because I've seen that one or two of them will gather firewood on their own. I've had fires with 3 hours left that had 14 hours left next time I checked, so someone is feeding the fires
You do need an adept builder to make the dam, but you can do that after you get the building tech raised, if you like. Point is to put the majority of your people on tech, build that dam and start farming ASAP, then shepherd the farmers so they actually harvest crops and don't go kiting off after the coconuts. You really do have to babysit this game, it doesn't run as well on auto-pilot as the last one does.

Hi Guys, thanks for your tips and hints. Unfortunately I cannot keep my village numbers to 12, basically because I cannot get them up to 8! They seem to start with 3 adults and I do have the setting on Easy!

I try to get one adult collecting wood for the fire, whilst another gets the grass and the first one starts it. Then I have to put one adult to fish and everyone else on research. If I manage to get enough points to get coconuts, try to avoid over fishing, by alternating fishing and coconut harvesting (got to avoid that algie!) The last time I got a village going, I managed to get a dam built, but by then, all the villagers were dead - again!

Goodness, it has been frustrating!

Flori

Getting the fire started is a 5 minute one time project. After that you can have someone add some wood when the fire gets low (click on it to see how much time is left). When you're down to 1, 2 or 3 hours, someone can get more, then get back to "real" work.

Be sure to be the guiding hand and have your younger children collect every mushroom and seashell and butterfly they can. Mushrooms add to the food stores, shells and butterflies that are duplicates add to your tech scores. Keeping the fire lit also helps to gain tech points. When children reach 14, they can start learning to farm or research as well.

Keep after it. The game is definitely "win-able", you just have to be patient and priortize properly.

Tess

I went after the dam first, then the coconuts. Seemed to be more of a payoff. You do have to upgrade to the coconut level to be able to farm, but if you start harvesting coconuts, it takes a lot of time for very little food return--time you could be using doing research for more tech points. Fish and gather mushrooms like crazy, upgrade your building first, then build the dam ASAP. Put your fisher on the research table when the algae comes and only upgrade your farming when you absolutely have to (when the dam is built). Don't let your people waste their time gathering 8 points of food per coconut--it takes forever to get any appreciable amount of food. You can harvest 800 food units from your first garden in way less time than it takes to get 200 food units from coconuts. My first 2 villages starved that way. Coconuts seem like the best thing to get after the fish run out, but it's a false economy. Get that dam started instead.
What I meant about teaching people to gather firewood is to use a different person each time the fire runs down low to get firewood to feed it. Someone will eventually start feeding it themselves, but don't devote a lot of time to it. It's just a convenience, and if you just keep a watch, you can rebuild the fire easily. That's another reason to not leave this game run when you're not actively monitoring it (not necessary to watch every second, but just at least able to look in hourly whilst at home doing other stuff).

I agree with building the dam first. In fact, I don't buy coconuts until I buy farming 3 - I hate the things. I have bought them as a stop-gap before I knew how to get rid of the birds, but since I've figured that out, I don't buy farming 2 at all except because I have to to get farming 3.

Also, I recommend playing at half-speed - it makes things a lot easier.

Ditto.