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[Marfagames]

Ok because it's a hot topic and a lot of people want to have a village now too, raising the population and getting golems. It seems a lot of people have problems with it.

In this thread I will help you to get what a villager needs and how to do it.
I will post here some hint's and other importand stuff, and all the requirements.

Hints for when you first arrive at your village:
-put doors in all houses which don't have doors!
-place a lot of torches on the building and some on the surrounding area, so less monster/zombie spawn.
-close over the next days possible earth holes, so villagers don't run accidently down, they will not find back on their own!

Generel hints for more villager breeding:
-Build more houses
-Build more doors into excisting houses (like a backdoor)
-expand the village (houses further away from each other) over 60-100 tiles.
-Build your own house close to the village so your house count's for them too
-secure them a bit with fences, walls, so they have a area where they live in. Makes it easier to controll breeding too.
-repair village
-Villager kids appear in brown robe only after birth till the first save/quit. After the next load their profession will be updated and they get their final robe.

Hints to secure your village population and letting them stay in your village:
-force 2 villager on a roof, or build one cellar and place 2 there, or place them in a cauldron. With this you have allways 2 villager secured which breed back the population if yours get lost.
-Although villager tend to go where other villagers are duo to their socialise behaviour! So if you let some stay in a certain area, other villagers will try to stay near them and don't wander so far of anymore.

What is a house:
Here some samples of houses.

Spoiler:

THE BARE MINIMUM for a house is one solid block in the area left or right from the door in 5 tiles wide and 256 highs and above 1 tile from the ground.
The door doesn't count as a house when there is the equal length of solid blocks on the other side too!
So if left from the door are the 5 blocks filled and right too, is it not a house. But if left are 5 and right 4 then it is a house on the left side.


Here a screen of 2 samples. The right door has one block 5 tiles away and one above ground and is a house. The left one has a block  on the highs of 100(the pillar isn't counted as the house there )


This are 12 houses.


And here left are 0 houses and the right 2 are 2 houses. The doors on the left get not negated through the other door, but through the one "roof" tile only in the range of 5 left and right from it.


Here some working invisible house designs. You can put these in roofes of villager houses to raise the count.
Left are 40 doors, they work because the 2 door rows left and right have a dominant weight side. So one roof tile more then the other side of the door. The right are 2 rows (can be extended endless long too) with one free space in the middle so their weight is bigger on one side.

Hints for houses:
-Be carefull when designing the "roof" of the house. If left and right from a door, the roof is equal long (like 5 blocks left and 5 right) it is not a house anymore. Any solid (not transparent) counts.
-spread them more out in your village area! This raises the general population grows.
-You can place easily a lot of doors on the existing house walls outside to raise fast the villager population
-double doors or doors which are connected to other doors  are all seperated doors(houses)

For small villages here some special hints because villager can easily wander off:
-FENCE in or wall in the villagers or better the whole village
-Build fast more houses to increase the village size
-create more spaces which villagers can reach and travel back and forth(roofs, cellar, even save caves)
-secure at last 2 of the villages by confining them somewhere.

Different village sizes and population grows ratio:
-Small village under 40 tiles wide or long (Villager tend to wander off and it becomes easy a ghost town if you don't help them) (population is around 1 house = 0.35 Villager)
-Normal villages around 60 tiles wide or long (Population is around 2 houses = 1 Villager)
-Big village around 60-100 tiles wide or long (Population is around 3 houses = 2 Villager or infinite)
-HUGE village around 100+ tiles wide or long (Population growth is easily infinite)

Spreading villager over your villager with "hotspots"! (to prevent clustering a bit on one spot):
Because the social behaviour let them go to where others are!

Spoiler:

A hotspot I have in a tavern/cauldron ( I didn't forced them in, they got in on their own)


one of the 2 basement hotspots, just placed a trapdoor over the ladder which leads down. ( I didn't forced them in, they got in on their own)


One of the 5 roof hot spots, they climbed up the ladder which where in the initial houses and got stuck above. ( I didn't forced them in, they got in on their own)


Here one of my 3 fenced area hot spot, it's a secluded area on my farm, can be reached through the fence gates. ( I didn't forced them in, they got in on their own)


One of my party hotspots! The suffocation pillow station 1.0. It's one of 3 suicide party hotspots. ( I didn't forced them in, they got in on their own ) seriously everytime I go past it, i need to take a peek for some seconds to watch how the villager just happily jump in.

You still can't get golems or villager to breed? Post a screen of your village, and say how many houses you have and population. I will look on it and help. Please use spoiler tags for your picture.
You can do them with [.spoiler]picture [./spoiler] without the dot.

If your Village population gets too high
and you don't want to kill them off with tnt because you like your village, here some funny solutions! Because sometimes hundreds of villager are just to many! Lot of people complain about lags because of them.
Suicide bungee jump tower and Crematory 2.0 solution:
http://minecraftforu...6#entry13205746
Pillow suffication station 1.0 solution for daytime suicide:
http://minecraftforu...1#entry13254271
Villager Death Parkour 3.0 solution for daytime and nightime use, villager killing each other:
http://minecraftforu...1#entry13341601

Golems spawning requirement:
-minimum 16 villager (generated or natural doesn't matter) for a chance to spawn one, the next on 32,48 etc.
-They sometimes need just a lot of time to spawn, this means maybe some mc days.
-Houses: At least 21 "houses"(doors that count as houses) must be in the village.
-They spawn randomly in a 16x6x16 area around the center of the village (center is the average coordinate of all houses, not villagers)
-A higher golem limit doesn't effect the spawn rate. The spawnrate is a fix value regardless on how high your limit is.

Your village died out or you created your own village, what now?
-Build it up a bit more if it's died out and use the above hints to secure a living area for the future villager
Now you have 2 options.
-Get 2 villager, or more from a other village and repopulate your village
-or use a mod and spawn 2
-Here a thread how to transport villager to your own village, they doesn't care if the village they live in is a natural or a generated by you
http://minecraftforu...port-villagers/

Minecraft wiki for villager and golem (beware it's not all 100% right there and not everything is stated there too).
http://minecraftwiki..._and_Population
http://minecraftwiki...wiki/Iron_Golem

Useful Mods related to Villager, Villages, houses and Golems:
-[SSP] Villager Info by trunkz
  gives various information about the village you are currently in, like villager, houses, golem count, the size of a village and the center of a village. It's ideal for checking if you fullfill conditions for breeding or golem spawning.
http://minecraftforu...p-village-info/


Have fun!

Thanks trunkz, KyoShinda for getting the stuff right.

[Vickal1]

oppositing doors facing each other negates the house? Thats new for me. Can you explain this more? How many blocks do you need in between the doors so they dont negate?

[Marfagames]

Vickal1, on 03 March 2012 - 01:33 PM, said:

oppositing doors facing each other negates the house? Thats new for me. Can you explain this more? How many blocks do you need in between the doors so they dont negate?

you need at last 5 tiles between the doors so they don't negate each other.
That was a rule which was even before 1.2 in one of the older snapshots. Sadly it's not listed anywhere and I BET! that is one of the main reason why people can't get their villager to breed.

[CoffeeCow]

That explains why I had such a hard time getting them to breed... I made a ghetto of small houses directly across from each other along the path.. doors were 3 tiles apart (across the path)

ty for the info.

[Marfagames]

CoffeeCow, on 03 March 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

That explains why I had such a hard time getting them to breed... I made a ghetto of small houses directly across from each other along the path.. doors were 3 tiles apart (across the path)

ty for the info.

Glad to help you. I have seen some village designs by now from people who couldn't get them to breed, and this was the main reason for their lack of breeding behaviour.
And after they had fixed it, their villager started to breed a lot

[rowanlad]

Will houses that are raised by one block make a difference? Plenty of my houses have one block of steps leading to the door as most of the village spawned one block above the ground.

I've got 5 or 6 noses in a walled and well lit village with about 12 houses in it and they don't seem to be breeding. Iv checked my doors by the way and none are facing each other like you showed in your example.

[bobcat521]

Mine are spaced out.
They Dont Breed.
AT ALL

[Marfagames]

rowanlad, on 03 March 2012 - 02:01 PM, said:

Will houses that are raised by one block make a difference? Plenty of my houses have one block of steps leading to the door as most of the village spawned one block above the ground.

I've got 5 or 6 noses in a walled and well lit village with about 12 houses in it and they don't seem to be breeding. Iv checked my doors by the way and none are facing each other like you showed in your example.

Yes raising one side one block makes them into 2 different houses. I although have a lot of houses which are 1 block higher or 2.

For 12 houses 5-6 villager is the normal maximum. You need now more houses to raise the villager population and increase the size of your village. With size I mean how far your houses are spreaded out apart and how far your villager can spread out. They recognise stuff around 50 tiles for breeding.

Normal maximum is 2 house = 1 villager for small villages
Bigger villages where houses are spreaded out around 60-100 tiles. 3 houses = 2 villager or even a infinite population grows (slowly)
huge villages (over 100 tiles big villages). Easily infinite population grows.

bobcat521, on 03 March 2012 - 02:17 PM, said:

Mine are spaced out. They Dont Breed. AT ALL

Mind giving a screen? How many houses you have, how high is your population?

[bobcat521]

I have 4 I spawned. They are in a jungle biome, and the homes are pretty spaced out. They go in at night, and i made golems, but they only play in the forest, and go indoors at night. Ill try to put a screenshot.

[Scorpio Spork]

Marfagames, on 03 March 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:

you need at last 5 tiles between the doors so they don't negate each other.
That was a rule which was even before 1.2 in one of the older snapshots. Sadly it's not listed anywhere and I BET! that is one of the main reason why people can't get their villager to breed.

Thank you for posting all this information! I have to go rearrange all the doors in my village now. Now I know why they've been shunning so many of the homes!

[Epicness1324]

I built a 'village' using the houses in the first picture, spawned four villagers, one ran off so I killed it and I penned in the rest of them in a fence around the homes. When night came one of them started going into love mode but the others didn't. Then the other two did and I'm not really sure which two were the parents of the child that spawned.

[Marfagames]

Scorpio Spork, on 03 March 2012 - 02:59 PM, said:

Thank you for posting all this information! I have to go rearrange all the doors in my village now. Now I know why they've been shunning so many of the homes!

Allways glad to help =),

Epicness1324, on 03 March 2012 - 03:40 PM, said:

I built a 'village' using the houses in the first picture, spawned four villagers, one ran off so I killed it and I penned in the rest of them in a fence around the homes. When night came one of them started going into love mode but the others didn't. Then the other two did and I'm not really sure which two were the parents of the child that spawned.

You actually can't tell which are the parents of the child. Villager have no bond towards their own child. The only difference they make is, that they wait till the child is grown up, before breeding again. But they only to this when the population is rather low, and the houses arn't much too. Later when you have over hundreds of villager, they will start mating everything what can walk lol.

[KyoShinda]

Wow, that explains why I got an odd population with this set up:


(each with 4 doors in each cardinal direction to add up to 24 doors)

The odd thing is though, I ended up with 6 villagers, not 3 like the 'opposing doors' rule would calculate out as.

[Marfagames]

KyoShinda, on 03 March 2012 - 04:13 PM, said:

Wow, that explains why I got an odd population with this set up:


(each with 4 doors in each cardinal direction to add up to 24 doors)

The odd thing is though, I ended up with 6 villagers, not 3 like the 'opposing doors' rule would calculate out as.

Ok actually you should come out with 5 villager max, 10 doors, but we all know it somehow is broken anyway lol.
Yeah that's 10 houses. Maybe you didn't refreshed (logged out and in again) the doors. so some doors where still doors. That could explain it. Guess one or 2 of them where still not refreshed. That would end up in 11 doors or 12, and the system would then round up and breed up to 6 villager.

[PsychoIncarnate]

So as long as there is  5 blocks between the doors they don't negate?

Good thing I used a 5 block road

[Zaibach]

It also seems counter intuitive but removing the doors and leaving only one or two houses for them to gather in seems to kick start the process of villager propagation as well. Not sure if its the doors can be glitched or having too many doors as options at night with too few villagers retards the process.

So as a last resort.

Remove most of the doors (again leave one or two for them to hide in at night spaced around the settlement)
Let that run for a night or two and leave the doors in a chest (no clue if the chest does anything I just didn't have the inv space)
Replace the doors after a few nights.

It hit me that over the few days I had been working on it and the few minecraft weeks that took that I hadn't had any villagers breeding in my town until I saw the first NPC kid run by after I had taken down and replaced most of the doors in my village.

Marfagames, on 03 March 2012 - 03:57 PM, said:

Later when you have over hundreds of villager, they will start mating everything what can walk lol.<br />

I have started to notice that and I'm only at like 25ish

Also really good to know about that 5 block thing I was about to start putting houses on the other side of my 3 block paths now I'll probably offset the houses some or add additional paths

[KyoShinda]

Marfagames, on 03 March 2012 - 04:28 PM, said:

Nothing ood, its all correct =)
24 doors-7 doors= 17 doors/2 = (the system rounds up) 9 so you still should be able to get even 3 more with that setup .

Woops, I mis-informed. xD
I forgot to mention that the roofs were glass and the homes were spaced 3 apart from one another. When I changed them to solid blocks they spawned up to 8 like normal. The thing is, that was in the snapshot.

I tested it with these homes:

I ended up with all 4 villagers.(homes are spaced 2 blocks apart)

Edit: I forgot you mentioned it rounds up, I'll have to test that more.

[Marfagames]

PsychoIncarnate, on 03 March 2012 - 04:33 PM, said:

So as long as there is  5 blocks between the doors they don't negate?
Good thing I used a 5 block road

Yes it should work fine with it =)

Zaibach, on 03 March 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

*snip*

Don't forget to refresh your game with save and quit and reload when you do stuff with your doors.
The system only then refresh them correctly.
It's allways nice to hear that a village is growing well =)

KyoShinda, on 03 March 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

Woops, I mis-informed. xD
I forgot to mention that the roofs were glass and the homes were spaced 3 apart from one another. When I changed them to solid blocks they spawned up to 8 like normal. The thing is, that was in the snapshot.
I tested it with these homes:

I ended up with all 4 villagers.(homes are spaced 2 blocks apart)

Edit: I forgot you mentioned it rounds up, I'll have to test that more.

You answer just to fast! Seriously! XD My text was plain wrong I corrected it now.

ah ok now it works, i can count 8 houses in your screen, that leads to 4 villager.

[Gigermann]

Has anyone determined what causes "runaway breeding" that some have experienced? For example, in my village, there are probably ~100 villagers now, and climbing, and not nearly that many doors, even if you count my wizard-tower some distance away. It's just a "standard" village with a defensive wall, and one extra "inn" building I built—nothing terribly fancy.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to do a "purge" of the village inhabitants

[KyoShinda]

Marfagames, on 03 March 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

ah ok now it works, i can count 8 houses in your screen, that leads to 4 villager.

Wouldn't it be:
12 door - 2 door = 10 door / 3 population growth = 3 1/3 villager rounded up to 4? Wait, it would only round up if it were half or more .

I'm doing a new test with 4 homes with 16 doors. If 5 spawn, that means a full house negates the 'opposite door'. If 4 spawn, that means it's true. 16 / 3 = 5 1/3
or 16 - 4 opposing doors = 12
12 / 3 = 4

So 5 if it's false, 4 if it's true.