How long do people live in this game?

[ladicken]

I've got a few people over 70. I've got one 72 year old stonecutter. I'm 67, been retired for five years, and can't possibly imagine working into my 70s, let alone as a stonecutter. LOL

Do people "retire" in this game, or do they just have an accident and die?

I'm still learning the game basics, so I have disasters turned off for my current game just to run through it all. Does having disasters turned off lead to this situation? My next game I'll turn disasters on to experience and learn to react to that.

Also, I'm playing on the easy level. Next game will be medium then I'll graduate to hard. I like to have a handle on game basics and city planning before going full bore into a "real" game.

[Ddoge]

those little buggers work until they drop dead! they can live up past 85 I think....not sure i've ever seen a 90 year old...

[RM1985]

Oldest one I saw was 89!!!

[Vrayna]

If people are unhealthy (mostly due to not having a balanced diet with different food groups), they'll die in their 60s from old age. If you have a super healthy population, the average will be mid 80s, with a few reaching their 90s. I think the oldest I've seen in my games was 94. And there is no retirement, so they'll keep working till they drop dead from old age, unless they have an accident first.

The Easy/Medium/Hard setting only changes what you start up with. It doesn't change anything about how much workers produce, how much they eat or their luck when it comes to accidents. It only really matters for the start of the game. If you manage to get through the early years and start trading and get farming stuff, you won't see a difference after that.

The "real" difficulty comes from picking a terrible climate and a mountain map without a lof of nice flat space to expand easily. And variety comes from adding mods with more start conditions, climates, maps and a bit of extra complexity. There again, it doesn't exactly add real difficulty as AI behavior can't be tweaked.