So, I know absolutely nothing about running a village, but the basis of my tactics came from a camp my parents sent me to that basically threw us into the woods with few resources. I died the first time because I did not know how much wood one would actually need and how the rainfall severely affects how much time you need for water collection.
I managed the keep the two in good health. The small-business was really not running, but they had sufficient resources for the two of them. Also, I hiked taxes on the town to 50% because it did not impact Kodjo or Fatou since they did not have much income. Basically just doing everything to survive and nothing more.
However, a little box popped up saying “Attempt to have a child” showed up when they turned around 20/21ish… Well, we have been talking about kids lately at practice because our coach is about to have one, so I thought it would be a GREAT idea to full send one. This was one aspect that the camp did not train me for. Kids are just a liability. Fatou could only work 6 hours while preggo, and then Damba (new kid) needs 2,500 calories which is absurd, along with the girl not working. Only two years passed, and I had to take out a loan that did not even last us.
The major takeaway from this simulation is that kids aren’t ideal when it comes to just survival since they literally do nothing for at least their first 5 years. Granted, if I tried to run my small business and make money, I would have had the funds to support the child. So the takeaway for life, don’t actively try to have a kid unless you are financially capable of supporting it.
I found taxing the villagers to be very effective as well because then the village could purchase larger items that benefited things like their sanitary health. I also experimented with taking out the loan fairly early on in the game to try and see if having money lead to better outcomes.
I chose not to have a child while playing around on the simulator for the reasons you listed above. However, I think something that this simulation does not take into account is that people in Kodjo or Fatou’s position would probably not have proper access to reproductive health care such as contraception and protection. So choosing whether or not to have a child and when may not be as much of a choice as it seemed to be in the simulation.
That was probably a really good idea I did not think of, to tax the village that much. I stayed at like 5 % tax because I weirdly thought they would get mad at me for taxing too much but looking back now, I definitely should’ve taxed more in order to keep my two people alive longer and purchase things for the village, as Tess mentioned above.