Child aging inconsistencies

Farthest Frontier Ideas and Feedback
1

Filed as Feedback because I think it might be slightly intentional, but it is inconsistent so maybe there’s a bug in there too. Let me explain.

I took a close look at every person in each home when I had a population of 43 and documented their name, age and profession. Then I took the age groupings as described in the population dropdown screen to determine at what ages people are considered Senior, Adult, Adolescent, Child, and Infant. The first three groups are employable.

With this small sample, I came to the following grouping:
02 Senior (age 51+)
15 Adult (age 26-50)
05 Adolescent (age 20-24)
13 Child (age 4-12)
08 Infant (age 1-3)
NOTE: Gaps in age groups are the result of not having anyone in my population within these gaps.

I noted the month and year number, and then at the same time the following year, took note of each individual, accounting for them moving around between homes (why do this), new births, and deaths over the year. I noted that children and infants may age anywhere from 1 to 3 years in one year while all three employable groups age only 1 year each year. I figure this is to get your children up to age for employment more quickly, but I find it likely detracts from the expected accuracy of this game. Most of them aged by 2 years, and I can see there being maybe a 1 to 2 year aging or 2 to 3 year aging depending on which ones had birthdays in the month that I tested, as if I didn’t catch them at the same time of the month. But to gap from 1 to 3 years is what seems like there might be a bug in this.

I am uncertain at what age adolescence really begins at the moment but I would have thought 12 to 16 would be adolescence as anyone 17 and older would be considered an adult in a period such as this game appears to be set in. Possibly even a year younger.

In my sample, there was one infant that did die, which is to be expected I suppose, but I am surprised only 1 given how early this settlement is (Tier 2 town center in mountain map with no healer).

IDEA: I think there should be an option in the game creation on child aging to allow players to choose weather they would age faster than normal if indeed this was an intended feature.

IDEA: When a child comes of age to join the work force, an information pop-up should tell us this. Before the school is built, there will be no notification like when a child graduates to tell us this. I’m not even sure graduation marks the age of adolescence either.

2

16 is where Adolescent starts.
Ages 1-15 are listed as child.
Infants are those born that year.

The aging I think is fine. Considering 25% or so of my population is children, having it take even longer to reach working age would be awful. I’d be ok with it actually being exact years IF they would become adolescents at the correct age and able to work at age 10-12. That was not at all uncommon in those times. Waiting until 16 is too old for that time period. But what they have is basically the same thing, by just accelerating them to 16.

3

Children are meant to age faster than other age groups, that is by design.

4

Typical children. Just can’t wait to be grown up.

Oh, and TC, you missed a category: Elderly. Not sure on the full range but it usually goes to around 75 where that villager dies of old age.

5

Infants and children are both listed as child in the profession. You have to take a complete inventory of your citizens names and ages and then compare it to the population breakdown when you mouse over the population at the top left of the screen. You will find exactly the number who’s ages are between 1-3 (new births are immediately 1) to match the infant count.

6

Adolescent is from around puberty until around 18 when the body stops growing. Basically what we call “teenager” now. In those days and with scarcity of food puberty was probably later than we see it now.

7

Except I took the list of names and ages into a sorted list so I can use the breakdown provided by the game to count off the two oldest people as senior, then the next however many adults as the next oldest group, and that is how I came to find that adolescents are counted as high as age 24 in this game. The WHO defines adolescence as being from 10-19 presently, but they may have different needs for the game. For example, determining a disease immunity variable based on age groups.

8

Except studies have shown that the ages aren’t different all the way back to Greek and Roman times. The last few decades of earlier development for some kids is likely due to all the hormones they are injecting into our food to make chickens, pigs, etc grow faster.

9

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