Abandon Boys

Stylingirl · 2018-09-30 21:03:23

I've realized recently that new players don't understand why boys should be abandoned. So I'm going to explain it so that lineages will hopefully die off less. Disclaimer: I am not saying every boy should automatically be abandoned, this is just a list to say why you need to think "Should I keep him?"

-Something that should be obvious but apparently isn't is when you are in the early stages of camps or experiencing a famine, don't keep the boys. This is a time when food is scarce and the work demand is high. The only thing you do is waste food pips and time raising baby boys when you should be running around saving the town. Depending on how dire the situation is, you may also want to abandon girls. You starving yourself to raise a baby is not worth it when you could've quickly set up a farm or foraged for food.

-When you have less women in town, your family is more likely do die. Men do help with work but if you have a town full of only men then their work is for nothing. You need to pay attention to how many fertile women and little girls there are, because if a lot of them starve, get old, or get bit by an animal, that means you should start abandoning boys.

-The current lineage ban rules make it so you need to live 30 collective minutes in a family to be banned from the lineage. So if you live one 30 year old life or two 15 year old lives then you are banned. This is actually helpful when abandoning boys because as babies they have practically 0 minutes lived in the family, meaning that they are likely to be reborn back to your family, hopefully as a girl.

TL;DR:
Is there no food? Stop wasting your time breastfeeding and abandon boys (and sometimes girls) and focus on food.
Having 2 fertile women and 8 men in your town means u need to abandon boys or your families' gonna die off.

Jk Howling · 2018-10-01 00:41:55

I mean... The first point is pretty debatable.

Personally I have WAY more success with more boys in early camps than more girls. My longest lineages [about 25-30 gens] have always been because of a decent balance of genders in the eve run, and not because I abandoned every boy at the start so I could get only girls.

Boys can actually commit to a task without interruption, and are very valuable in terms of progression. They can travel out of camp without having to rush back to feed a baby or abandon it on the trip, which is vital early on when you're in constant demand of resources. They can gather food, milkweed, iron, branches- whatever your early camp needs. A good boy easily provides more food than he takes up.

Meanwhile you as the eve, and any girls older than 14, are either stuck at home or on a time limit, where the penalty is another corpse on the pile. Also, this may be my personal experience, but a lot of girls I have in early camps just tend to stay at camp and never dare venture out- probably because it's been ingrained on players not to leave camp when you're an early/only girl, so as to "not put yourself in risk of dooming the camp" or some shit..

They usually end up starving because everyone else was actually focusing on progressing the camp and knew where the food was or how to find it, rather than making sure pretty little princess didn't have to take too many steps to get an omelette. It's rare that I get an actual girl in an early camp that both knows what she's doing, and knows how to survive without me coddling her for 20 minutes.

Also, if you have more than.. I'd say 3 girls at an eve camp survive into adulthood and start popping out babies, you're going to run into famine very quickly, as you're quickly going to run into a baby boom that your early eve camp just can't support. You only need so many fertile girls at any one time to continue the lineage. If you have too many girls popping out children, chances are people will start dying before any countermeasures will be ready.

TL;DR
Boys aren't "a waste" in early settlements by any means- they're a good form of population control, being able to contribute consistently without interruption. They can actually help out quite a bit as far as progression of the camp goes. A good balance of both boys and girls is key in early games.

Stylingirl · 2018-10-01 00:53:28

Like I said before, I don't think every boy should automatically be thrown away but having girls and keeping girls alive is more vital for early camps. If you have 4 sons and you have another boy, the best bet would be to abandon the baby and hope they come back as a girl. Having a balance would be good, its mostly just common sense and looking around to make sure you have enough girls so that keeping boys isn't an issue. My main frustration was with new players just keeping and raising every baby they had with no regards for population control.

parker · 2018-10-01 00:54:30

I really wish boys played a bigger role in child birth. As much as I'd like to see something like an Adam + Eve birth system, that'd make it nearly impossible for solo eves to get anywhere besides their own 60 minutes. A bonus for boys is that they don't have to bear or care for children, allowing them to focus on a job and get it done without having to worry about spontaneous child birth while collecting adobe for their eve mother.

Jk Howling · 2018-10-01 01:56:43

parker wrote:

I really wish boys played a bigger role in child birth. As much as I'd like to see something like an Adam + Eve birth system, that'd make it nearly impossible for solo eves to get anywhere besides their own 60 minutes.

There's already a mod that added in a system where eves always spawn alongside an Adam iirc- or maybe it was just a discussion topic, been awhile since I heard about it. I don't think it'd be that hard to implement though, if Jason wanted to.

I think the bigger problem would be incest, if he were to do that. A town would only survive by repopulating with each other, once the adam and eve are gone. There might be ways to be a bit subtle or vague about it, but I don't think there'd be a way to include reproduction without at least implying it.

pein · 2018-10-01 02:36:18

abandon boys when you dont have farms, im totally ok with that
at least say ''sry'' or ask to try again as a girl, honestly i wouldnt come back as a girl, your timer is reseted so might as well keep the kid, this doesnt benefit you in any way, you can still have a kid, you can tell later to a guy to try to reborn

keep an eye on the population, its a delicate balance, if you see that your girl is alive and doing fine, you need 2-3 girl, if one dies, replace it, if reaches 14 and starts having babies on its own, you are almost infertile, so might as well go and get iron, and abandon all babies on the way, tell the kids not to keep every baby, this might work if you tell every each

its not about the boys, its about the population and level of advancement, when your girls are 14 year old and you still dont have an axe you are in trouble, each of them pops 6 kids, the axe never gonna be made if they focus on other things like clothing or food

if you are a good player, you can make up for it, carrot, corn, bowl of berries
if your son farming and your girl cooking eggs you can afford a few more people, if you or them cannot make tools, keep the population low, below 8 before axe, below 12 after
first 4 iron: hammer, axe, shovel, hoe
next 3 iron: froh, adze, chisel
next 2: file, saw
pickaxe, shears when needed
i think 8-12 is good enough until you got carts and sheep pen, 15-20 gonna compete for food and people die even if they are decent
its not their gender, its their skill, if you abandon the only pro player, the next 6 generations will farm berries and die eventually
this is a difference between good and bad players
the heavy focus on soil and natural food is short term solution
deserts and composting is a long term one, now i can make all tools or i can make the farm or i can even make a pen ifwe got shovel and camp is going okay
stew making, clothing, roads, pies are unnecessary luxury

branches, clay, ropes, iron thats what an eve camp needs

you can get milkweed from further away, the ones that are planted go to bow-arrow (or total 3 arrows), buckets, carts

and if you are not helping smith by gathering iron and branches dont disturb him at least

FeverDog · 2018-10-01 04:28:19

The only reason that would make me agree is the suiciding baby phenomenon (and yeah, I'm guilty too).

But otherwise, then you should keep all males and as few females as possible. One or two.

Personally, I prefer playing a male. I can contribute without interruption and I can eat while ranging. Eating while ranging is an extremely valuable skill in the early game. It's much harder as a female.

Dodge · 2018-10-01 04:28:27

Bad idea imo, usually girls when they start having babies stay by the forge or fire and become unproductive for at least five minutes also it usually breaks they're work circle and after the first baby they tend to chat instead of work (which can be useful in big cities but not in eve runs).

A good player can work and have a baby at the same time, so it really depends on the skill of the player, ideally it should be : new players --> boys and good players --> girls also new players tend to die of starvation, so if you raise a girl and she dies before fertility you just wasted food.

But yes if you get only boys at one point you should just tell him to come back as a girl.

ShadouFireborn · 2018-10-01 04:43:45

For my part, the Onelife Plus family health window helps a lot when I'm trying to decide whether to stay as a boy or try to respawn as a girl. If I spawn as a boy and I see less than around 4 total fertile or young girls listed, I suicide and try to come back as a boy. If the family is healthy, though, I'll stick it out and get some work done. Boys can do a lot of work without having to worry about suddenly having a kid to take care of.

That said, I don't think that boys should be completely discounted as viable in an eve camp. I had a son (bless his heart) that made sure that the nursing mothers had enough food lying around. Burdock roots, eggs, wild carrots, and onions. And it made me realize... that's something I can and should be doing as a boy in an eve camp: Providing for the mothers!

On the other side of things, I'm getting better at caring for a kid while I'm working... assuming the kid wants to be taken care of. I've started to decide, "I just ain't got the time to chase after runaway babies". But I've had a few kids that I've taken care of while still managing to gather a full cart of rabbits.... with the assistance of the pie I stuffed in my backpack, haha.

In any case, a well played boy is as much an asset to a camp as a birthing girl. I understand wanting to preserve the family line, but boys shouldn't be abandoned just because they're boys. If you have a few fertile girls, keeping a boy could mean the difference between starving or not... as long as that boy is smart enough to help provide!

Which comes back to communication, I guess. Especially in an eve camp, you need to communicate needs. Nursing mothers need food. Send someone to get food.

Last edited by ShadouFireborn (2018-10-01 04:46:14)

Aurora Aurora · 2018-10-01 05:36:11

But I love my baby boys!

The_Llamacorn · 2018-10-01 07:06:43

You can only have a limited amount of babies so you better keep those you can! Babies often die in early camps so if you just abandon every boy you get you'll end up with like three noob girls who just keep having babies and then you die from starvation.

Stylingirl · 2018-10-01 17:40:57

Yeah, or, the boys come back as girls so you don't just end up with having 4 sons that feed you yet you become fertile and its just an old lady and 4 boys. Just because boys can work doesn't mean they will, and just because they can work without interruption doesn't mean that they automatically get a "you can live" pass. Use your heads, look at the current population and use your judgements. Don't just blindly defend boys, determine if keeping this baby boy is worth the food he eats and the time he wastes for his mom. If males greatly outweigh females, dump his baby booty and apologize. You don't have to act like he'll never be able to play again, he's just going to click "login" and play as someone else's kid, and who knows, maybe be reborn as your daughter.

Jk Howling · 2018-10-01 19:21:38

Stylingirl wrote:

Yeah, or, the boys come back as girls so you don't just end up with having 4 sons that feed you yet you become fertile and its just an old lady and 4 boys.

Part of what Pein said suddenly made me realize: It literally doesn't matter whether you abandon or feed the boys. Your pregnancy timer has already been reset by having him. Killing them off doesn't make a baby girl come any faster, or increase the chances of a baby girl being born, or anything of the sort.. It literally does nothing, except throw out a player that'll probably be born to someone else.

If you have 4 sons, abandoning them doesn't change the fact that you had 4 sons. It doesn't suddenly raise your likelihood of popping out a girl next. Actually, chances are they jut hit rebirth before your cooldown timer got anywhere near finished to have another baby. Chances are they're not going to come back to you, girl or otherwise- you just pushed them onto the next family.

Instead of being an old lady with 4 sons, you'll be an old lady with no kids whatsoever. Its not that much of a difference I suppose- you're fucked either way. But abandoning those four boys wouldn't have made your chances of a girl any better.

So honestly your only argument is that they take up food- but a good player, boy OR girl, provides more food for the family than they take up. Chances are if you've got a decent son, he's bringing food back to camp so you can continue to pop out babies in hopes of a girl.

Last edited by Jk Howling (2018-10-01 19:24:41)

Stylingirl · 2018-10-01 19:42:23

Jk Howling wrote:

Stylingirl wrote:
Yeah, or, the boys come back as girls so you don't just end up with having 4 sons that feed you yet you become fertile and its just an old lady and 4 boys.
Part of what Pein said suddenly made me realize: It literally doesn't matter whether you abandon or feed the boys. Your pregnancy timer has already been reset by having him. Killing them off doesn't make a baby girl come any faster, or increase the chances of a baby girl being born, or anything of the sort.. It literally does nothing, except throw out a player that'll probably be born to someone else.
If you have 4 sons, abandoning them doesn't change the fact that you had 4 sons. It doesn't suddenly raise your likelihood of popping out a girl next. Actually, chances are they jut hit rebirth before your cooldown timer got anywhere near finished to have another baby. Chances are they're not going to come back to you, girl or otherwise- you just pushed them onto the next family.
Instead of being an old lady with 4 sons, you'll be an old lady with no kids whatsoever. Its not that much of a difference I suppose- you're fucked either way. But abandoning those four boys wouldn't have made your chances of a girl any better.
So honestly your only argument is that they take up food- but a good player, boy OR girl, provides more food for the family than they take up. Chances are if you've got a decent son, he's bringing food back to camp so you can continue to pop out babies in hopes of a girl.

Population control is still an issue. I'm still not suggesting that we abandon all boys, and if you're not an Eve chances are you're surrounded by a ton of people. You still need to see how much food you currently have and know the ratio of male to females. Just because it doesn't raise the likelihood of having girls doesn't mean it doesn't benefit your family. Plus, there is no way to tell who is a good player and who is not. You can't just assume that every baby you keep will be a skillful, knowledgeable hard worker. I've seen plenty of people either complain or tell stories about being born to the same family over and over again, so the chances are still higher. You keeping a boy means a 0% chance they will be a girl, abandoning them gives them an extra chance to be born to your lineage as a girl. It's like the Monty Hall problem, taking the chance to switch is better than keeping the one you have.

UnnoticedShadow · 2018-10-01 20:31:17

The only 2 times I have raised a successful eve camp, I have abandoned all children except 1-2 girls, so perhaps I should raise boys when I have the chance! I just get super paranoid about food.

TrustyWay · 2018-10-01 20:49:10

To summerize all this that I haven't read.

You can kill some boys if girls know how to play or food is short.

Then, it's better to know if you can keep a child rather than kill him after a moment. I rather make a child my farmer slave than my knifing ball, even if I like knifing balls( aka babies) better

Last edited by TrustyWay (2018-10-01 20:55:11)

coriander · 2018-10-01 20:52:34

Classic forum topic. Never gets old.

Catfive · 2018-10-01 21:04:37

It's a balance. had 7 girls earlier. kept 3 and 2 had kids, 1 was super productive and worked as well which is always a blessing. one acted as wet nurse a lot which is good but we didn't have sheep yet so... can't really afford idle at that stage. When I saw my productive daughter had baby girls i let my last 2 girls die with a 'sorry we have too many'. It's knowing the state of your camp and judging it. Boys can be a massive help when you have the girls you need!

Jk Howling · 2018-10-01 21:10:01

Stylingirl wrote:

Population control is still an issue. I'm still not suggesting that we abandon all boys, and if you're not an Eve chances are you're surrounded by a ton of people. You still need to see how much food you currently have and know the ratio of male to females. Just because it doesn't raise the likelihood of having girls doesn't mean it doesn't benefit your family. Plus, there is no way to tell who is a good player and who is not. You can't just assume that every baby you keep will be a skillful, knowledgeable hard worker. I've seen plenty of people either complain or tell stories about being born to the same family over and over again, so the chances are still higher. You keeping a boy means a 0% chance they will be a girl, abandoning them gives them an extra chance to be born to your lineage as a girl. It's like the Monty Hall problem, taking the chance to switch is better than keeping the one you have.

Usually those people who complain about being constantly reborn to a family, aren't being reborn to the same person over and over again. A lot of the times it's into already-established large towns, with a bunch of fertile women, and they just keep bouncing back and forth between them all. I know this well. I suicide constantly out of these situations, because I dislike large city lives.

I'm specifically talking about early eve camps, which you pointed out as being a "abandon boys til u get girls" situation. It's really not, unless you're either still searching for a campsite or in a bad spot without warm tiles/a decent amount of wild foods nearby.

You keeping a boy and you killing off a boy makes little difference. You keep going on about how "well they'll never become a girl reeee" but at the same time- when does this EVER matter except late at night with low player counts? Who cares if that one person specifically is reborn to you as a girl or not, when there'll always be other players that'll take up the slot of your next child?

Abandoning them does nothing to affect your next child. It doesn't make your next child come sooner. It doesn't increase the chances they'll be a girl. It does nothing, except save food in low-food scenarios.

parker · 2018-10-01 21:43:38

Jk Howling wrote:

It doesn't increase the chances they'll be a girl. It does nothing, except save food in low-food scenarios.

but in the end isnt that the main reason boys are abandoned in ECs?
also shame on baby sewer slide.

Last edited by parker (2018-10-01 21:44:03)

Jk Howling · 2018-10-01 22:13:09

parker wrote:

but in the end isnt that the main reason boys are abandoned in ECs?

Actually most of the time when I get abandoned as a boy, it's because they want a girl. At least, I tend to get a lot of "come back as girl pls" or "sry need girls" which is what I was mainly addressing. Abandoning your boys doesn't affect this.

Honestly, if you don't have enough food to be able to raise one or two boys in an eve settlement, then I highly doubt you have enough to raise a bunch of girls either. Especially when those girls are either going to starve in 5 minutes, or sit around camp doing nothing but eat and make babies once they hit fertility.

Girls also take a lot more food in the longrun, especially if you consider the hunger pips they'll loose feeding babies, and the food those babies will consume- provided they don't starve as soon as you can't breastfeed them, which seems to happen in eve camps constantly.

Overall I think you need a healthy balance, and that balance might not mean an even mix. It wouldn't hurt that badly to have a couple more boys than girls- or, the way I see it, a couple more workers than breeders.

MinnieMoocher · 2018-10-02 16:04:46

I don't like having too many girls when I'm starting out because they're going to grow up and have babies, too. So, if I have five daughters and one son, for example, I might have a population explosion twenty or twenty-five minutes in and go into a famine. It's better to keep a balanced number of male and female kids, I think, so the men can do the work that requires a lot of time or long distance traveling, and the women can keep the camp going and care for babies.

But, that's just in my own little perfect world. Your results may vary.

gabal · 2018-10-02 20:03:23

I think population control in early settlements are necessary. Why would you single out boys in particular I don't know. Sure, you need at least one girl but you are potentially abandoning an experienced player who could really make a difference.

Rohen · 2018-10-02 20:39:26

gabal wrote:

I think population control in early settlements are necessary. Why would you single out boys in particular I don't know. Sure, you need at least one girl but you are potentially abandoning an experienced player who could really make a difference.

Especially considering that girls might not understand population control.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-09-30 21:03:23

Abandon Boys

#2 2018-10-01 00:41:55

Re: Abandon Boys

#3 2018-10-01 00:53:28

Re: Abandon Boys

#4 2018-10-01 00:54:30

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#5 2018-10-01 01:56:43

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#16 2018-10-01 20:49:10

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