Encouraging citizens to have more children?

[TheInvisibleExpert]

I seem to do really well in this game for awhile, but I always get to a point where all of my villagers start to get old and stop having children. What kinds of things will persuade them to populate more?

[BUG ZAPPING SERVICES]

Build more houses and a surpless of the necessary things like logs and food.

[Quorra]

There is also a trick where you can start to upgrade a wood house to stone, then cancel the upgrade. It kicks out all the current occupents, and encourages new ones to move to the town or something. At least that's what others have said in previous posts. I have yet to try it myself (am about to).

[TheInvisibleExpert]

Ok. I'll try those. Thanks guys! :)

[Dawnmist]

Not so much new people to the town (the only outside people are nomads, and you have to explicitly add them via the town hall when they arrive), but it means that either a new couple can move out of their parent's houses to start their own family in the now-vacated house, or the couple originally in the now-vacated house treat it as having "moved into a house" which (if they're young enough, and have less than 3 children still living with them, and the youngest child is a few years old) will cause them to have a child within the next year. I guess they celebrate moving into a house - even if it was the one they previously lived in. ;).

General tip is to grow steadily. After building the houses for your original settlers, aim to build 1-2 houses per year for the first 15-20 years, and then slowly increase that number as needed to keep town growth fairly steady. Initially, watch the people that move into the new houses - if they're aged more than 30, you're probably building houses too slowly - build a few more. If they're aged less than ~16, you may be building too fast. If a single person moves in (and they're not old aged), they're likely to be part of a couple that is now living split across two houses - you're definitely building too fast, so stop building houses for a year or so (but keep an eye on your number of adults - if that starts increasing significantly you'll need to check whether to restart building houses). If you've built the town hall, use the first tab of the town hall to monitor the "number of families" verses the "number of houses" - if the houses falls too far behind the number of families, new couples can't pair up and start having children...so they live at home with their parents until a house becomes vacant, and then pair up - which if that happens after the female of the pair has hit about 40/41 will be too late for them to have children. If the number of houses gets too far ahead of the number of families, stop building houses for a little while - otherwise they'll start to split between multiple houses so they can be closer to areas that need people for jobs. If you find single people in a house, and there's someone else single of the opposite gender and within about 20 years of age of the first person, kick the first person out of their house (mark it for upgrade or removal), wait until they move in with someone else (lack of housing icon in the town summary window goes away), then reclaim the house - if there is a couple waiting for a free house they'll usually be the people that move in - if not, the original couple may split again (representing you have more housing than families). Just be careful that you don't have any spare builders around, so they don't actually tear down the existing house before you get to reclaim it.

[Quorra]

Ah ok. I was curious about that.

[TheInvisibleExpert]

Thanks! :)