Does anyone else besides me prefer a village with a lower population? I find it difficult to manage individual villagers' lives if there are more than about 50. It's nice that you CAN increase to an unreasonable/unrealistic population, but I prefer not to, maybe because it looks too crowded, and/or maybe because I tend to run 5 separate villages :D. It would be nice to have a different bonus reward for achieving all the collections -- something new to discover, maybe?

Tanya

I usually keep the population to between 50-60 because it is easier to manage especially when I am training Elders.

Sharon

You're not alone, Tanya. Count me in as one who runs relatively low population villages. I think I've only had max population in VV1 twice, and never in VV2... tops in VV2 has been around 47 -- for pretty much the same reason, and also, it's kinda hard to keep track of the villagers as individuals rather than a mass of people running around

I aint played in weeks , but today I checked in on my villagers .....thinking they all would be dead... but NO!! I had a population of 115 and in my absence in the stats my highest is 117... hmmm so they dont need me about they seem to be happy on their own lol!

how do you manage to keep the population low? they seem to be always making babies when i'm not watching. even had my first triplets while they do things their own.

None of my males makes the running! The preferred skill of the female as parenting is only set to that until she gets the baby, then it's set back to another skill until I need her to parent again

i never set any villager's preferred skill to parenting. even the nursing moms preferred skill is either set to farming or researching. although i have a lot of esteemed elders with master parenting skills, but their preferred skill is set to either research or farming as well, never parenting. but maybe that's the culprit behind it, once they've learned it, they just can't stop themelves from doing it again. i just wish my females are not always fertile.

I never set a male to be a parent, but always have him set as something else -- anything else. I will set females after age 50 for parenting, though. I think if you have males who aren't set, all you need is one to decide he wants that job, and he will happily keep your population at max!

In a couple of games where my population is maxed out I'm going for as many Elders as possible. Setting villagers to be parents is an essential part of the process, especially as it is virtually impossible to get a master builder once the various projects have been completed. A villager can advance to master parent fairly quickly if the population is at the maximum, even though few villagers actually get to be parents. That doesn't seem to stop them enjoying trying, though, judging by the constant chorus of kisses!

I would add that I only set female villagers to be parents when I'm trying to build up the village, never male villagers. Males are only trained to become parents once the village is maxed out.