Children?

Hi! Me again.

I had a thought recently. In other games like Banished and Life is Feudal Forest Village, children simply popped up whenever there was enough room to house them.

In Ancient Cities how are children going to be born?? I know this is totally random, but I had to ask. Because I don’t know how the time is going to work. Are we going to have pregnant women walking around the village doing their chores, are children going to be running around driving their parents crazy and just being children? That would be awesome if we could see that, and it would tie into my Neolithic Culture Topic. (how close to the real things are we going to get?)

And on the topic of getting those children made (awkward haha) Is it going to be like Universim where they go into the house and we don’t see the act happen but you know because a new child pops up.
Because I don’t find it weird that new citizens just pop up, it’s just that in this game I don’t know if that would work. And will people continue to have children even though hard times are upon them? Little things like that.

Anybody else think of this? Or is it just me & my awkward self??

Kamisha.

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They could always do the what “the sims” games did and have them make “whoopy” under the cover of a de-pixelated box. :laughing: (please don’t though lol)

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Good idea! Kids are important to a tribe!

Of the innumerable ways in which a person could die in the early Neolithic period, one all too often cause was the act of childbirth. The average life span of an individual in the Neolithic period was perhaps half that of the modern human lifespan. The likelihood of infection and complications during pregnancy in ancient, combined with lack of treatment, likely resulted in a significantly higher mortality rate among mothers. The likelihood of death during the first pregnancy might have exceeded 10%, often due to postpartum bleeding or simply complications during the birthing. Even if the mother survived, the likelihood that her child would die at birth or within the first year might easily have exceeded 20%, though the actual rates would vary considerably from place to place (one of the reasons studies quote different results)

(Pregnant woman from Çatalhöyük, Turkey c. 5500BCE. She wears a flax string skirt, flax shawl and leather sandals. In her hands, she holds a skull of an ancestor for luck, skull worship being common at the time)

That being said, we know that fertility fetishes and practices were very important (not the large number of fertility objects found) to prehistoric people. It would seem almost odd not to include child birth as a possible mortal complication for your people as well as well as the child.

I think it would be fun to see the little people walking around pregnant, nursing, supervising and finally watching their kids grow into new tribe members. Little adulthood rituals could even be performed.

As for the act of making them… two sim people develop a like of each other (some variable) and at some random point disappear behind a bush, into the trees, or into a hut. maybe a little heart floats up or something to indicate what has happened while remaining PG13 lol After that, maybe she does or does not become pregnant.

Kids can help with chores, too. They can fish, gather and watch fields to scare away birds.

In short, procreation is the start of all life and one of the most human things which can be discussed.

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Note, I can dig up those mortality figures if needed. This are pretty common knowledge, but I think I have the peer journals listed in my notes someplace in my lab (under too many papers and books lol)

It would give a more realistic feel for the game to see characters walking/working excreta if they were pregnant. As for the mechanics, in some countries it may change the game rating. But good points .

I think that representing children can have a lot of moral (+rating) repercussions. Reproduction and having children running around the place are just the soft issues to address… imagine how it would feel to see two out of ten infants dying out in your tribe, specially if you are partially responsible for being a bad city builder :persevere:
The absence of children would be very frustrating and unnatural though.

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It may be a good idea, if they even incorporate these sorts of things, to have them as a special check box. It could also be included in their adult DLC they suggested, for folks who want complete realism.

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I think it would be a very cool and make your tribe feel more real, and it would be very cool to also see the elders of the tribe telling them the stories of the tribe.

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I think immersion is extremely important for these types of games. It would be cool to see Children of a Tribe grow up and aquire different traits as time goes by. On the same note seeing the elderly pass away as well overtime to give way to the youth.

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There will be children. They are already i the game, but we have not still clothes for them, that is why they are not in the screenshots. We still have to decide what we will do with children in some limit or violent situations. Probably related to the for adults dlc

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I am glad that there will be children. It can be tricky to implement them and so I thought that there might be a possibility of children not becoming a part of the game. It is great to know that they are already in the game.

Violence is definitely a problem. I hope you figure something out. Children could hide in tents and huts when there is an attack. Depending on the impact of the attack some children could just vanish, disappear… … maybe the survivors can have a burial some time after…
The idea is far from perfect and it doesn’t solve all issues. For instance, what if the tribe has no huts, is migrating, etc.

Anyway, I feel comfortable that the community will come up with some ideas that will be an inspiration and a help.

Cheers

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Good idea, for sure.
They need to simply run away. Depicting what really happened is so tragic that it shouldn’t even be in a realism mod. =/ Just run away and let that be the that lol

As for clothing, I had to invent clothing for the Neolithic child on my next book cover as she wouldn’t likely have had any where she was from until adulthood. Just mimicking the adult clothing with less decorations. I doubt they would have spent the time on shells, beads, etc when the children grew fast.

The children need to have little play scene animations lol

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Even in the late Middle Ages, children were simply considered small adults.
In many cases their small growth was even beneficial, and children were used in mines. In peace, children should not be a problem.
In fighting, children under the age of 12 should not have been among the central opponents who had to be killed first. In any case, it should not be forgotten that a dead opponent was worth nothing for the winner. No ransom, no workforce as a slave, no knowledge-gain, no great craftsman, hunter, healer, pretty, defenseless bride, great cook, nothing. With few religiously driven exceptions, genocide was not the favored goal at that time. And then, please do not forget that mothers bring their children to safety under all circumstances and sacrifice their husbands and themselves without a thought. This is what Nature wants.

Though I have no interest in gore or even very violent films and I have no problem with having realistic depictions of children (with everything that entails) in games that are targeted to adult audiences. I can understand having to censor the content for economic and legal reasons, and if this is what stops this games from selling more and reaching a wider audience and in turn hinders future development I would be OK with any kind of censoring, but if it can be done and there’s an option to turn it off it would be better to have it in the game.

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It would be next-level realism if children develops various forms of psychological disorders due to external stressors such as a parent over-working and then drinking at home or if the father is away fighting wars a lot during early childhood, or if one of the parents dies. Depending on type of stressor, different deviations from “normal” adults may appear as traits.

Also, some events might also shape them in positive/neutral ways. One person might develop a “afraid to attach myself emotionally to others because I lost my mother and that hurt so much”-personally for example.

This sounds great, but also for a huge library for every single NPC. Different games have tried this to a certain limit, but have not come to the “psychology”. Think, huge expense and not decisive enough for the game flow.

Just a small thought that came to mind as i was reading this thread is that making the children make things complicated in or for the tribe will also cause the player to get a little frustrated.

Having the children play and help with chores maybe even have them build their own little huts( A.K.A tree houses) on the outskirts of the tribe would be awesome. Restricting them the freedom to roam around the village at first and as they grow older they will have to go through a coming of age ritual which then gives them more leisure to go hunting too or even help in teaching the younger kids how to help out more. Maybe even give the player a chance to have them practice more fishing than building because winter was coming and we needed more food !

I feel that maybe would gave the game more depth and a sense of showing how every tribe member really had a role.
In general tribes in those times all had a very similar sense of duty and morality which was we are here to make the world a better place for the future generations and teaching them everything they knew). let us not forget in many tribes the kids called all the women in the tribe “mother” and that they were taught to respect their elders role in the tribe.

Yes they might sometime wander too far from the tribe and get lost or die from an illness but those shouldn’t happen too often that it hinders the game.

Okay… relax there buddy, these are children of the Neolithic age we’re talking about. Their psychology breakup would be alot different than the generations of a modern age on many factors. Mainly considering they had a very very different enviroment than us here in the 21 century. What is considered a ‘normal’ adult today is plainly different than what constituted normal for what they would consider an ‘adult’ in the Neolithic age. Plain and simple. People were alot tougher back then.

So… considering the last part of your paragrapgh and with all I have said. I dont think we need to project our insecurities on our video game characters. Let’s just assume they were more different than us.

If you want to achieve realism then you should consider treating children in the game as they were in real life. When a violent situation is encountered in the game via an enemy tribe or a wild animal attacks your villagers. I don’t see why (unless you HAVE to censor the game) children can’t be killed or eaten along with countless of adults throughout the game.

I mean it is the Neolithic age after all… These were enduring times for us homosapians. Are we going to pretend our youth weren’t affected by the everyday struggle to survive during this age?

I am sure Neolithic children were a bit tougher, but I don’t think we can assume their toughness or dismiss their trauma. I would suspect many would undergo issues which caused them mental distress. They would have little to help them and their personalities may have been affected negatively by this.

As for personality issues, this could be expressed (grammatically) as a dispositional factor between other players.

E.g.

if (char.disposition < 50) {
work.speed =work.speed*char.disposition;
} else {
work.speed =100
}

Or something along those lines. Over time, disposition could rise or fall.