Actually they can still have normal kids while still being plantsims. Mine do it all the time. The only time a kid is born as a plantsim, is when you choose to spawn a plantbaby, which you can only do once per sim. At least I'm pretty sure that was stated somewhere, I just don't know where at the moment.
Yes, playing the bills is completely allowed, some of us just choose not to by banning the mail carrier or using familyfunds to refund the amount of the bills.

Anyway, welcome to the challenge. A word of warning, it only get harder from here on out. The more sims on a lot, the harder it gets, but its kinda nice playing in the neanderthal era. To me the beginning of the lots is boring as hell, and I can't wait until my toddlers age up to kids so things can get more interesting. The fact that I'm playing with a mod that extends the toddler age by two days isn't helping (Phaenoh's mod in case anyone is wondering) but some of them will age up in the next rotation or two and most of the firstborns will be children by the end of the round. The Guidry's are the exception because Oakley was very resistant to getting pregnant.

Anyway, I'm going back to playing now, Day 4 of the round is about *checks game time* twelve hours from being completed. Then I think I'll take a mid-round census and see where my rankings are before I play the last three days. T&Q had struck big-time and really shaken up my rankings. I think I need to lower the odds for quads, even if they are in even amount with all the others... ~VP

I got tired of calling the lady so I think I'm gonna let them be a plantsim from now on... It's so annoying. The man of my second family turned into one for the 3rd time on one day. And you're totally right, the babies turn out to be completely normal haha.

Thanks for the tip! Refunding sounds great, maybe I should do that.

Yeah, you have to either let the bugs infest crops, or spray them (and without mods it's really broken and sims will turn back into plantsims almost immediately after being cured) and then let the plantsimmed sim do all the spraying. That's how I don't have ten plantsims right now. In one family both the male and female are plantsims, in one, they just have very buggy crops and no one is a plantsim, and in the other three, only one person is a plantsim.

I'm running it kinda like a test. Since my plantsims fish all the time, and non plantsims have to be concerned with filling needs and whatnot, you'd think the plantsims would be the richer of the families right? Well right now, my family with the two plantsims is the poorest, and the family with no plantsims is the second richest. This might change when I sell off fish and produce at the beginning of the round, but right now it's trying to prove me very wrong. I'm betting the Kaminski's will take top spot cash-wise come Sunday though. They're the two plantsim family, and they had the best harvest by far. Troy managed to talk most of the plants to thriving so they harvested a lot of tomatoes compared to everyone else who did not talk to the plants as much, if at all. It also doesn't help that the Kaminski's had to buy three extra cribs, while the Colson's (the no plantsim family) only had to buy one extra.~VP

I think it does get harder but you get used to it. My two least favourite lots to play are the smallest because nothing happens other than the ghost trying to murder his children and wife and the one with a whopping 11 (do not play with shorter pregnancy and woohoo until you hear lullaby rule) children because it takes me an age to play through. Thanks to this challenge my classification of a normal family in sims is 5 kids, but when I first started out in s3 I found it impossible to play with one child and no cheats and those kids are so much easier to look after.

My plantsim family is the richest, the rest have all given up on gardening but between the plantsim and her daughter the garden is blooming and they fish a lot. However they're also one of my larger families (9 kids) I find that bigger families, and ones with plantsims tend to be richest. Early on the small families do tend to earn more than the middle sized ones though.

Before my computer died in my old challenge, the ones vying for the title of emperor were the ones with lots of plantsims or the ones with lots of boys (and thus had more money per last name). I hate the smaller families right now becasue they're so boring. I used to play no more than six sims on a lot, and now that gets boring quickly to me. Of course now my game is cursing me with quads (seriously three of my families have quads right now) so my original lots won't be boring any more. Although my family with two plantsims is managing to look after one toddler, and four infants, have a thriving garden and still have time to fish. Their only flaw is that they so far have no boy to carry on the last name. Hopefully that changes shortly. ~VP

Later Edit to Avoid a Double Post:
I decided to play around at not using MyHeritage or TribalPages to do my Family Trees, so I'm going to attempt to do them on their own website. The MyHeritage and TribalPages pages will still work, but I'm not linking to them from my site once I finish this round and update it. Nor will I be updating them regularly. The "Family Trees" page will instead link you to the new site. I'm going to try to keep it as bare-bones as possible with no pictures or anything, you can see those on the main site anyway. But if it goes as planned it'll be quick and easy to trace a sim's lineage. For all the nosy people here's the link: http://vptestoftimefamilytrees.weebly.com/ And you can see the families that have been hit by T&Q since those pages list everyone that been born to this point (Round 2 Day 4 working on Day 5). I'mma go either play my challenge or pass out on the couch, not quite sure at the moment. Might pass out while playing the challenge. Let's hope I remember to his the pause button if that happens or I'll wake up to a lot of dead sims... ~VP

Small families are really quite boring to play, but on the other side you're done quickly because there's not happening much. =P The bigger the families get, the longer you need to play through one round. But I wouldn't say it's gets harder to play, especially if you pay attention not to god mode too much. It just needs more time as there is more happening you can take photos of.
I haven't had any spare couples moving out yet, so money per last name doesn't play any role and the smaller families are the ones with highest family funds, therefore first in the ranking. I managed not to get any plantsims up to now, so I cannot add anything about their role in money making. ^o^

In s3, you have a pretty hard time, if you try to play a lot with more than, let's say, three sims. Either you have them running all around the place, which is annoying me because I want to know what my simmies are up to or you let them stay at home, which gets boring really fast (after all s3 is about the open world etc.). S3 is not really meant to play with a lot of sims at once. At least that's what I experienced. >_<

And because I'm a very curious person, @ VP: Did you fall asleep while playing the challenge?


I finally continued playing after a few weeks and updated my blog. Little warning: I'm rambling quite a lot in my conclusion post.

@TheFlyingRaccoon: No I did not fall asleep. Eventually the friend who was sleeping off being drunk in my bed woke up. I attempted to finish up playing house #3, but eventually gave up, saved and went to bed. It helped that my Mom woke up shortly after I posted and she was out in the Living Room and helping at keeping me awake. That and the Today show featured a book I want to read when I get the money to buy it, but i managed to get the first three chapters for free on my kindle. "The Bone Season" by Samantha Shannon in case anyone's wondering. She's being hailed (by Today) as the next JKR, and the book has a bit of a Hunger Games feel to it. And I need to go get ready for work now. ~VP

I finished the first round yesterday and I've only got 4 families left. Both the man and woman of one my families died, but they did have a child. Another family adopted the child, so that their 'legacy' can still continue. Even though she now has the family name of the adopting family, she'll still get her parents' house when she grows up. I'm starting the next round today. It's gonna be a lot more work with all the kids running around and all of the women pregnant. Never played with this many babies, so excited to see what's going to happen really.

EDIT: I have a question! It's probably been asked before, but what do you do with the kids who normally have to go to school? Do you guys let them or is it possible to keep them at home?

You can let them and make up a story for it e.g. off playing makes a lot of sense. For children if you are playing with the social worker you have to let them go to school so they don't get taken away, unless you use the school changer hack from simlogical to set them to flexi school. Although if you're getting overwhelmed by number of sims, you can always just have them go to keep them out of your hair. With teens it is again your choice but you can have them skip school without serious repercussions.

Personally I don't let the kids go to school.

As to having children adopted, I find it better to move the child into the new family via hacks so she retains her own family tree and name. Sorry to hear about losing a family so early on.

Hello everyone, sorry I have been MIA. Been having some horrible RL drama happening with my family. To the point that I have family members stalking all my accounts under my nickname. I'm going to take down my site for awhile [or hide from view with password protect], because I am tired of all the drama and negativity. I promise to be back one day. I miss all of you and the ToT challenge, but their actions are becoming intense and somewhat crazy. Thank heavens I don't have too many online activities. Hugs.

We're all going to miss you nesxya. I hope everything works out for you.

Best of luck, nesxya, and hope the stalkers cease their activities soon.

Hey guys!

Does anyone know how to shorten the sims lifespan. I found a hack, but it says it might conflict with Inteenimator.\

So yeah, it's been about a year since I last was here, but I'm planning on starting again. On the downside, I only have one week left of summer holidays, which means that I probably won't have much time to play after this week.

@ floor1304: In general, all lifespan hacks are incompatible with Inteen, but you can simply age them up manually earlier (for example with the Sim Blender or boolProp). I do that to shorten my sims' teenage years to 8 days. =)

@ nesxya: Hope it's getting better for you soon. ^_^

@ koestie: I use the school changer to get my children in private school (not as much fun drop, fits better with 'playing with friends' explanation) and my teens in Simlogical Flexi School. The children's homework I'm simply deleting. =P


Nearly through Round 7

@TheFlyingRaccoon: thanks for replying. I guess I'll just age them up manually then. Yay, one more thing to keep track off...

@nesxya: I forgot to mention in my last post; good luck with the family issues!

I use a shorter lifespan with inteen, the only problem I've encountered is that playing with the adult teens option, my simmies are only teenagers for one day. I use the shorter lifespan found here; http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=465335. I've been using it for ages with no major issues although I will have to switch it out soon, 40 being old works for neanderthal and roman age but will not be as suitable later on.

okay thanks! But how did you solve the adult teens problem?

I finished my second round! OMG it takes forever to do a round when they're seven days long. Anyway, my website is all updated.

They are still technically teens just they don't go to school or anything. Since my only hood is my tot and I don't want those teens to go to school anyway I just let them be adult teens at 11. If this bothers you you could redownload inteen and put the 'no adult teens' package in so they'll go to school as normal. By putting in various other packages that come with inteen you can configure it pretty much to your liking. It depends on your game set up. What do you want from your teens?

VP~ 19 toddles? *dies* I probably had that many or more at one point but it still seems like a lot, I love the update

Out of curiosity, does everyone here keep to the game's original 8 sims per household rule, or do you use hacks to increase the number of sims that can exist per household? Do you think it matters for this challenge?

@lbsgirl24: I want my teens to get pregnant, so I guess I'll download the no adult teens pack. If they're only teens for 8 days, it doesn't matter anyway

@samantha-kathy: I use a hack to get larger households. I wanted this hack, especially for the Neanderthal Era, because the rules say to keep trying for babies and there used be very large households in the other eras too.
I don't think it's necessary to have larger households to play this challenge, but it makes it more fun for me.

@samantha_kathy: I definitely use a larger household mod (Boiling Oil's mod found over on Leefish's site) It's kinda of necessary if you play with Triplets and Quads, and like to raise the percentage of triplets and quads. It also allows you to keep to the "try for baby as soon as one is born" part of the rules. Or you could do like someone (can't remember who at the moment) does and give your female a break between pregnancies.

@lbsgirl24: Yeah its a lot of toddlers, but T&Q hit and hit hard. Three of my pregnancies this round were quads, and any birth that was twins was technically a T&Q thing too, since the pregnancy scanner told me every pregnancy has been just one baby. The worst household to play right now is the Scalons. They have eight kids, Two are kids right now, four are toddler and two are infants that will be toddlers shortly. ~VP

I'm looking at maybe getting a larger household mod myself, because it would help with the challenge I'm currently doing, but I'm afraid it will break my computer or my game... I don't play with triplets and quads, though, so that should keep the amount of sims per household down a little.

It won't break your game as long as you know the limits of your computer. I've yet to get a family that breaks my computer (and the Tavares family was numbering in the 20s at one point before several people moved out). My computer's limit is slightly more than twice that. At that point the game freezes.~VP

If you combine that with no age of consent tehy still can get pregnant Be careful you don't weird yourself out by having a 10yr old get nocked up accidently.

I give my girls a break between pregnancies, because I use inteen to shorten pregnancy length to a day. After all one of my families did have 11 kids, thankfully T&Q hasn't hit me yet. I also use a bigger household mod. I think most people cannot metally cope with as many sims on a lot as will break their computer. When my families get to around 15 it's not my computer but me who breaks. I think bigger families are fun once you get used to them, if you find that you cannot cope with a full eight sim household with a few toddlers/babies then I wouldn't recommend upgrading.

*points to lbsgirl24's post* what she said. Really large families are hard to play, but they are a good way to break you of the "god modding" habit. Even now in my smaller families, I don't god-mod as much as I used to. It makes sims a bit more entertaining not to god-mod so much, I've discovered. ~VP

Yeah having 10+ sims and trying to speed through a round tends to kill god modding Now that i'm used to families that have at least 10+ sims I find it so dull to play a family with six or less sims.

I'm unsure of my computer's limit, but I guess that if my game freezes when there's too many sims, I can always restore a back-up game. And I doubt I'll get massive families, considering I don't have (nor want) the triplet & quads mod.

I have a hack in my game that allows me to have more than 8 sims, but most of my households don't exceed this limit. Mostly because (without T&Q or shorter pregnancy) a couple can 'only' have 6-8 children, with the youngest being born just before the parents die. Most of my households even have exactly 8 sims. :p

I don't think you have to worry about your computer, samantha. Normally, you can see quite well when your computer is getting closer to it's limit because the game starts to get slower. It's not going to run perfectly and then when adding one more sim it's going to freeze completely. My laptop doesn't even have a real graphic card and as long as I'm not playing a lot with a very big house, it can manage up to 20 sims without problems.

I've only hit the freezing point once. In my first attempt I was on one lot that had roughly twelveish sims and tried to invite over two of my other families, one of which was the very large Tavares family. When the game tired to summon all the invited sims over it froze up. I tried again, and it froze again. Inviting less sims over worked, but it got pretty close to my limit (and the game did slow way down, but they were only over for a few sim hours for a wedding then a good chunk of them went home.) You'll have advance warning if any of your sim families get too large for you computer to handle, like TheFlyingRaccoon said. And as she (I'm assuming you're a she. Correct me if I'm wrong) pointed out, without hacks you're not likely to hit that point with a normal sim family. The only way I can see it happening is if you don't move some of your non-heirs out and they have families. That actually is why my Tavares family was so large. I had two spawned plantsims, one of which married a third plantsim, who had the nerve to get pregnant and have triplets. In addition to the plantsims those two (plantsims #2 and 3) had spawned. Wow that sounds confusing. For anyone who needs clarification, check rounds ten/eleven/twelve of my unfinished attempt, the Tavares family entry(s). ~VP

My computer is pretty decent I can have up to 30 sims on a lot at a time however it does lag a fair bit. As long as you generally move sims out to start new families (and don't decide to do anything silly like spawn a gazillion babies through cheats) you should be fine.

EDIT: Just as I was thinking about how there were no triplets/quads in my tot (even though there have been like 40 pregnancies) a sim had triplets! Yay!
Also are any of you playing without inheritance, its come to killing off elders time and I want them to die of old age but the inheritance money makes them so rich O.o I'm tired of refunding and once every family has a son move out and start a new family I won't be able to. Also this game has warped my perception of a normal sim family. I got to a family, think about how small it is and it still has 7 sims (plus the new triplets) what is wrong with me?

Having a 10yr old pregnant would be pretty weird. I do have ACR so we'll see what happens lol.

I guess I'll finish this round and then install the shorter lifespan mod and age up all the other sims

@VP: Yes, I'm a girl.

I'm playing my game without inheritance, because I was annoyed of refunding, too. I'm using this hack by dickhurt and it's working fine.

Is that hack compatible with all EPs?

In the thread he says it requires the base game only and is compatible with every configuration from base game up to Mansion & Garden.

Missed that completely. I cannot seem to read correctly lately Thanks!

I was playing with inheritance in the old version (it helped several of my new lots have more than 3000 to start with) but since I'm being a lot more controlling with money this time around, I think I'm going to go grab dickhurt's mod. Which I somehow seem to have missed even though I'm sure I scoured this site for any all mods that I needed/wanted especially for this challenge. ~VP

I finally got it all set up and I put up my founder pictures on my LJ here .
I'm starting with six couples, I have no idea why, it just happened. Haha.

I just catched up reading all the posts since I last was here. I've seen some really interesting stuff going on that I have completely forgotten by now, so I will have to go back again lol. Maybe bring a notebook this time.

@whitness: wow six starting families! I have 5 and it's taking me forever to get through a round.

I really want to get playing again, but school starts tomorrow and it's my last highschool year, so I think I'll be too busy to play the sims

On a side note, I just checked the statistics of my weebly page and it said there have been lots of views this past month. I'm shocked that even though I have been absent for about a year, people still check up on my blog.

I'd be one of those ^ you have a link so it's easy to click.

OK my game now has quads as well and do you know what isn't good for a game with a severe shortage of girls? Boy-Boy-Girl Triplets and 3 boy quads. This shall be challenging

I've caught up on your sight Floor1304! I'm really enjoying it I couldn't imagine starting with six couples.

I also think I've realized how my bigger families are richest. In the littler families I god mod less so they fish less. But in bigger families most are either sleeping, fishing, eating or meeting future spouses to get them out of my hair.

I'm also beginning to rethink T&Q, and shorter pregnancy.

@lbsgirl24: I feel your pain on the quads, but mine's currently reversed. Unless a TON of boys are born, my boys will be able to take two brides apiece and probably still have girls left over. And we apparently play very similarly, 'cause my families end up a lot like yours. The small ones aren't fishing as much and the large ones seem to do nothing but. What I need to do is adjust my T&Q odds, These stupid sims keep choosing to have triplets and quads. I'm currently afraid to get one girl pregnant for fear she'll have so many kids again. ~VP

@joandsarah77 Thanks for reading my stories!

@lbsgirl24 I have a shortage of boys, want to trade? I'm starting to think it's good to have only 7 boys, this way I wont have to play 20 lots next generation. And now that you mention it, my smallest family is also the poorest, but I find that my sims do tend to go fishing when I dont god mod them, they just like fishing I guess.

Yeah less boys is good. AT this point I'll get each family to 2-3 households, splitting the spares up so I have relatively small households and not too many. Its also got to the point where I no longer rescue boys from danger except for fires. I cannot buy that anyone is stupid enough to dance around, butt on fire three steps from water.

@floor1304: I'd really like to now how your simmies manage to get fat? o.O Mine definitely don't have enough freetime and food to achieve that. xD

I only have some fit sims because I decided to give any sim who reaches their teen years a 50% chance to be fit (like a genetic predisposition). I was annoyed not to have any fit Neanderthals, who are kind of suposed to work manually all day for their living. But now that I'm thinking about it, maybe it'd be a good idea to check how active their are instead of simply giving them a 50% chance.

I was really lucky regarding gender distribution and only have three spare boys. =) And one of them, I fear, is not going to live a long life anyway, at least not when he continues to argue with random people. Best of all, he isn't even mean or grumpy, nor does he had an aspiration failure. XD He just likes fighting I suppose. The youngest male could maybe marry a generation 3 girl, but I don't know yet, if I want crossgenerational marriage at this point. =/ It'll certainly be getting confusing enough without it.

Moreover, I decided to put a hack in my game that worsens diseases and makes it actually possible that sims die from it to make things a little bit more interesting. Now they just actually have to get sick. x.x Up to now I only had one sick sim in the whole challenge. =P And I need to find out why being scared isn't dropping my simmies needs anymore. >_< I fear it has something to do with Cyjon's ghost hack.


I finished Round 7 recently and started updating my blog. For the next round, I'll have my first Gen 2 spare couples move out. ^_^ I hope I don't get bored to easily with them. It's a long, long time since I played a family with less than 4 or 5 sims.


Edit:
@lbsgirl: Do you actually plan on updating your site some day or have you given up on that idea? And which round are you currently at? :3

I've given up on it :/ It began to feel a little like extra stress which since I'm sitting exams and have been busy with school I can't afford.

I made all of my neanderthals fit, the fat ones annoy me and if any go from fit to fat I kill them. I have a realistic sickness hack and it really helps to kill off sims, one household has 4 toddlers and all adults sick, not a good combo. I'm half way through round 5 which means I already have 7 households

EDIT: I'm thinking of making a ROS for my tot, anyone else interested?

I let them go to school and pretend that they are off exploring somewhere. I use Sophie-David's rougue trash cans http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=435191 so the kids just throw their homework away when they get home after school. The adults throw their bills away too since they aren't working to make money. Every new generation I just reduce familyfunds so folks don't get too rich.

I also use Sophie David's default replacements for trash cans. http://modthesims.info/d/434542

I kept the 8 per household rule. You still end up with lots of Sims since you keep growing the number of lots. It let's me actually watch the more subtle things that happen with each person like thoughts.

I actually had to find out what ROS stands for, first. xD I had already come across the idea but never really tought about using it. But it seems like a nice idea. Would also be a good solution for making my sims sick form time to time. Now that you drew my attention to it, I even may be trying to do a ROS, too, although I don't actually think I'd get enough ideas together on my own. Regarding the way most of us play the challenge, it may be nice to roll a smaller scenario each household and a worse/bigger one each round. That would mean making two different lists. Or one could simply give the worse scenarios less weight, have a single list and roll each household?

Anyway, if you decide on making your own ROS, I suppose I'd use it in one way or another. ^_^

After reading about this challenge and looking at all your images for it, I decided to start it. I've never done a long challenge before and I'm hoping I stick with it.

My ToT .

A neighborhood and a household one was what I was thinking. If you want we could collaborate on one I don't have that many ideas for it either, especially positive events.

Lisrouge I like the start of your challenge

Lisrouge Good luck with your challenge. And I wouldn't worry too much about having enough boys/girls at this point, there's no way to predict what happens in the next rounds anyway. In my challenge, for example, I had after the first round 5 girls and only 1 boy and now I have a few boys too much.

I've been looking through various ROS that can be found on the internet and wrote down the ideas that I thought would be fitting for my ToT. My list has up to now only 33 scenarios. XD The problem is that I would like to have scenarios that provoke something in my game that could either end badly or not. Like 'Pick arguments with a sim', but not immediately 'Fight with a sim' or a 'Get sick' and not 'Death by sickness' or (some more or less positive example =P) 'Flirt with another sim' and not 'Start an affair'. I don't know whether that explanation makes sense? =/

Hmm I didn't think about that before. I don't remember if I kept to the one-meal-a-day-rule, because it's been a while since I played this, but I think get fat because when they cook the fish they catched, it gives you a meal with sparkles on top. When they eat these really "healthy" meals, their hunger bar fills up more, so they get fat. (I don't know how else to describe this, not fluent in English, sorry)

I've never given much thought to what to do with fat sims, or wether there used to be fat sims in the Neanderthal Era. I just don't like fat sims and I have them jump rope to keep them busy. Actually, now that I read how everyone changes the rules to make the challenge more historically correct, I realise I'm playing mainly by the original rules. It makes me want to start over and make the Neanderthal Era more interesting, but I don't want to play through the first rounds again, since it took me so long the first time. Oh well, I gotta think about this. School is keeping me really busy (yes even these first weeks), so I don't have any time to play the sims anyways.

I had fat neanderthals in the old version, and I'm sure its due to the fact that they're only eating fish, which gets the fresh food bonus. I had mine jump rope 'cause they look bad fat in my spacesuit. Haven't had any fat ones yet this time around, but then I'm also using BoilingOil's realistic gardening series. Which strips the fresh food bonus and cuts the price when you sell fish and produce. Which works for me since Neander-sims don't need to be insanely wealthy. ~VP

Yeah, I forgot about the fresh food bonus. I've got the part of BoilingOil's series that nukes this bonus, too. :p

@lbsgirl24 Thanks!

TheFlyingRaccoon
Yeah, that ratio didn't last for long...lol

Alright. I've tried this challenge before and now I'm trying again.

I have my five families and have gone through 2 rounds. I lost one wife/mother already and my boy/girl ratio is really bad (7/4).

The A Clan has Abner, Adalaide, Aesop, Alison, Ambrose, & Annie
The C Clan has Cara, Cedric, Charlotte, Clarence, Cora, twins Crawley & Crissy
The J Clan has Jack, Jerald, Jill, Joey, Julia, & Jasmine
The M Clan has Mark, Melvin, twins Michael & Miguel, Morris, & Mroz (ALL BOYS)
The P Clan has Pax (mommy died), then twins Perry & Penny (with Amaya of Clan A)

Clans A & C are the light skins and their kids are perfectly orchestrated (Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl & Girl, Boy, Girl, Boy...). So they all have spouses figured out already.

Clans J &M are the dark skins (9 boys/3 girls)

Clan P is the mixed skin (2 boys and a girl)

Not too bad yet. My first round was decent, now I have masses of extra boys so don't despair yet.

@DitzyEkko That will probably even out a bit as you play more rounds. It somewhat did in my challenge.

I got one generation into the Roman era last time before quitting. That was nearly 3 years ago now (when my son was born & I was up ALL THE TIME)

I am hearing a lot about the T&Q hack. I can't believe people are subjecting themselves to that kind of torture. Wow!

My sister created a similar challenge about 5 years ago called "Advancing Through The Ages". She called for a die to be rolled at every early era birth to determine if the child and/or mother survived delivery. Twins had less of a chance. I fear triples & quads would have been fatal nearly always.

Hey guys, I finally managed to play through the first round of my first family. I've decided to just update after each family, and you can read about it here:
http://jumbledthoughts.weebly.com/
I apologise in advance, I'm not sure how I'm writing the story, so I've used a few different tenses. Just a heads up for you.

@ B: That's a really nice start you've got there, but I don't know wether you're able to keep up that writing stile when you start having bigger families and more households. But anyway, I'm sure you're eventually going to find a way to write the story that suits you and doesn't consume all your free time.

@ lbsgirl: Have you been working on your ROS in the meantime? I must admit that I currently got distracted and am not playing my challenge at all. Instead I started playing Pleasantview and it's incredible how fascinating it is to play a modern 'hood after half a year ToT only. XD
Today, I was playing Don and he spent the evening downtown. Daniel, Nina and Kaylynn showed up (together with old Crumblebottom), which is kind of interesting because both guys have an affair with both girls. =P And so Kaylynn instantly persuaded Daniel to follow her into the photo booth for a little woohoo. But when shortly after Don woohoo'd Nina, Kaylynn ran to the photobooth and was making a fuss about Don betraying her. XD In the end both Kaylynn and Crumblebottom were eager to get even with Don. That really was one of those facepalm moments.

And yay for community lots. That's going to get interesting in the roman era, because sims are not exactly very skilled when it comes to choose social interactions; especially when you're not controlling them.

Yeah I'll probably adapt when the bigger families arrive, I can't wait! Bella's my first non-premade PlantSim, so it was fun seeing exactly what the difference was like. Also I'm going to spawn a plant baby when she's one day from elder, so the ages are as even as possible in the 2nd generation. Now I can't wait to play the next family! :D

@TheFlyingRacoon I'm on exams so i've put it on hiatus, i've also taken up a nice relaxing legacy to play when i have a minute. Much as I love my tot it's more strenuous to play through a house with 10+ sims than a nice normal family.

Welcome
 

Welcome B for Running Shoes:
I hope you enjoy this challenge as much as the rest of us have. Remember that this challenge will make things happen that you may never have seen before in Sims if you don't interfere too much in your Sims' lives. There are a few things that you will need to tell them to do. I made a list when I first started. TOT Challenge Things to Tell Sims to Do and posted it to my first TOT website. I played fewer rounds for each age so I am in the early medieval age. It has still taken 18 months to get this far, but this challenge is never boring! Can't wait to see how your games goes.

I do this too, but I roll only for the mother. The child survives always, because I won't kill baby sims. With twins, the mother has a higher chance of death, because I roll for each child. I'm not using any T&Q mod. I also roll in cases of miscariages (inTeen). However, once I have playable sims in the medical career, mothers can get medical support at childbirth: In case of a deadly die roll, they can re-roll once for every doctor in the neighborhood and pay them a certain fee.

My game advances pretty slowly. RL takes up so much time... So I'm still only in the beginning of the Roman Era. The first Gen 5 kids are being born [Edit: Scratch that, that was wishful thinking, I suppose. It's still Gen 4.], the first squiggly lines of doom appear... I try to keep them in check with backups, batbox and Mootildas HoodChecker, though. We'll see how long Elmekia will last. Oh, and I've switched to one-day rotations.

I love this idea!

Also, I don't kill babies either. They were teleported to a placeholder lot that would be deleted when full. That way I'm not a baby killer, nobody cried about a death, & they still showed up on the family tree.

I know that feeling. My game is currently at a standstill due to work, trying to wrangle a lot for Loaf's contest into submission (and failing miserably), and playing other games when that lot (and thus Sims in general) just frustrates me too badly. I've rediscovered iWin games and the tons upon tons of games I can play with that, especially with stealing my Mom's account information and using her account (which is paid for monthly). Of course it's a fair trade (and she knows I'm doing it since I flat out asked her for the password) since she is using my email account for that one. And I have to deal with the "Hey Look! Here's a game to try!" emails. Honestly, should those really be sent to someone who likes playing games as much as me? It distracts me from playing Sims. It also doesn't help that almost all the Diner Dash games are available to All Access members (which Mom is). So I've been greatly distracted. But I think perhaps after I get this stupid community lot for Loaf's contest finished, I'll go play a rotation or two and work my way a bit closer to the end of Round Three. I am on Round Three right? *Checks notebook* Yes it's Round Three. Day One is finished (at least I think it's finished. I need to pop into the Guidry's real quick to confirm that since I didn't put the Kaminski's name down in my notebook. I try to do that to remind myself that I'm done with a particular household for the moment.) and I'm pretty sure I can get through day two and possibly three during my "weekend." ~VP

Um, isn't that essentially deleting sims? In a 20 generation challenge I try to minimize actions that might corrupt the hood.
Not that I'm very successful at saving my hood from corruption, though... Squiggly lines after just 4 generations. I wonder how long it will be playable.

@ VP: My ToT game isn't really on hiatus. I get to play about one hour per week. The one-day rotations really help motivate me, though: Difficult or boring families I don't like to play are over more quickly. Also, besides TS2 I don't really play any PC games. However, when the new Pokémon games are out in October, my sims might have to take a backseat for some time. :lovestruc I'll be coming back though, for sure. Like I've done since TS1.

Well, usually I get to play for several hours on Sunday or Monday night (my days off), but I've just been trying so hard to get the lot fro Loaf's contest to work that I give up on Sims sooner, then I have to occupy myself somehow, or be forced to interact with my family. Which since all Mom does is play games off of iWin, while watching the same stuff on TV that she's already seen a thousand and two times, that gets boring. And I see enough of my sister what with sharing a room and all. (Can't wait till we move next year. I finally get my own room again) I'm off to attempt this lot again, and maybe get something that looks half-way decent.

And yeah, one day rotations help a lot. That's why I switched to them when I restarted. I was going to use them when I hit the Roman era (and I was so close too. Just two or three rounds) in the old version, but since I needed to restart... ~VP

Never ever delete sims unless you use the bat box and simpe and even then it may not be 100% safe. It's not that it might cause corruption it does cause corruption with the very first sim you delete.

Yep. I guess I'm a deleter. But that was my sister's Advancing Through The Ages challenge. I'm playing this by the rules. No die rolling at birth. No deleted babies.

High Twinning Rates
 

Being that this challenge limits our genetic pool, has anyone noticed higher than usual twinning rates?

I know that there is a twin gene (the twin token) and with all the sims being closely related early on, it should influence the twinning in our neighborhoods.

Some of you have T&Q and other hacks, but those of us who don't might still be experiencing quite a bit of twins.

I am still in the 1st generation of NEANDERTHAL and I already have 3 families of the 5 with twins! Those twins will marry into other twin families, producing more twins.

Dark Age Update
 

Updating Dark Age family

I have been playing for awhile without updating my webpage or blog, and I just started moving over my notes. So I thought I would throw up the link if you want to check it out. I am starting the 2nd generation of my Dark Ages Sims. (Yes, it has been over a year, heading into two years, of playing this challenge, whew!) I am adding a new rule to the second Dark Age generation. Any time someone gets the flu, I roll the dice to see if they will survive. Odds - die, Evens - live. My first generation of Dark Ages were weeded out by Vikings. I needed to find new ways to keep the population down. (Use boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and then Rodney's death tombstone to have them die by disease. Turns ghosts green).

Glad to see so many new faces. "Never surrender, never give up" It is worth the time it takes to play this challenge just to play with costumes and your own rules.

I like how you incorporated the Besieged challenge into this one. If I ever reach the Dark Ages, I think I'll also use the Viking rule like that way. I don't have that many households yet, but it's already taking forever to do one round. I might also do 2 or 3 day rounds. It should help make it less tedious.

Lisrouge, it's easier to deal with the challenge if you have shorter rotations. I started with five day rotations, but that was way too long and I got really bored. Then I started experimenting with rotation length. Four days left me still asking when the rotation was going to end. Three days were probably the best if I wanted to play households for a length of time. Right now I'm using single day rotations, and calling seven of those a round (and updating my website at that time). For me that works best since I don't have time to get tired of a family. It's just one day and as soon as midnight (might change the time in later eras) hits, it's off to the next family. ~VP

my first generation 3 baby is on the way. A combination of me needing to go to the bathroom and having ACR has resulted in an unexpected teenage pregnancy. Adelaide of clan A and Melvin of clan M are the expectant parents. Since they are of opposing skin colors & unmarried, the child will live with the family it most resembles.

DitzyEkko:
I find it fun to create story lines around the unexpected things that happen. It makes me think, "Why did they do this?" "What might the consequences of their choices be?" Like right now I have an elder who hates a baby. Not sure how that happened, but it makes me ask, "Why?" The baby is the result of an affair. Maybe that is why. Hmmm.

@VP - That sounds like a good idea (the one day rotations) for when I don't want to linger too long in one household. There are some of them that I find really boring to play. I was actually looking forward to playing the households before the third generation babies were born. I really wanted to see which genes they got from where. But now almost all of them have been born, I installed the T&Q hack, so the novelty is wearing off.

@DitzyEkko- Something similar happened to me. I was watching TV and just let them do their thing to get the round in that household over with. But one of the males from another household came by... and they had some fun... I sent the girl to live with his father, mostly to avoid the possibility of her becoming a slave since her mom's house is among the lowest in funds.

I now only have one family that hasn't reached 1st generation elderhood.

My boys still grossly outnumber my girls 20:15

The light skinned families finished with 8 and 9 children.
The dark skinned families aren't done yet but now at 6 and 9 children
The mixed skin family is finished at 3 children.

5 sets of twins so far. Clan C had two sets in a row!

I updated my challenge here .

I find the single day rotations have the appearance of making the rounds go more quickly, but have an overall effect of slowing down each generation. I tried this with another challenge and was surprised when after weeks of playing it ended up being only 7 days sim time ;_; and that was with only 9 families... (currently has 24 in ATOT). Just my own personal preference though, whatever makes you comfortable is how you should play after all.

Seasonal rounds work best with ATOT, for me, I can get a lot more done (storywise), and if I find a family dragging (omg what do you mean I still have 4 days left?! I've been playing for aaaages) then tie your hands behind your back, sit back and enjoy the show XD I always end up laughing out loud or banging my head against the desk in disbelief. Funnily enough, I was just playing a Patrician household (which are often slow on my poor old computer), realised how much I was god-handing them, sat back to watch and was then appalled at how much better they took care of themselves without my help! DX god-hand is so unloved....

*waves to all the new peeps recently sucked in* Good luck! ^_^

taliah~

I just read your blog. Loved It!

Good job. Keep 'em coming.

Some challenges I use 1 day rotations. Especially in neighborhoods where I'm not trying to attain any goal and therefore like time to pass organically. However in my BACC and TOT I'm aiming to age the neighborhood so longer rounds work well. I find that a season rotation works well, i generally don't get bored until just before the end of the round. Also on my old slow computer I'd spend just as much time waiting for a family to load & unload as playing through the day.

Alright I'm trying to keep a little blog of my neighborhood too.

www.ditzyekko.blogspot.com

I am really new to this. This is my attempt.

I enjoyed reading your challenge. Although I'm a bit confused with how you're running your round, if you're changing on the birth of the second child won't the ages of the elder children get out of whack haha or am I missing something. Nice challenge though.

Good luck working out the gender imbalance

Just saying you may have to marry some of the light skinned girls to dark skinned boys, otherwise you may lose some families.

Hey guys, I'm back to fiddling with my ToT again, and I had an...interesting event.

A cat painted like a skunk named *NPCSkunkSkin walked onto my lot, followed by Mrs. Crumplebottom, whom I've never actually seen do walk-by before. She proceeded to lecture one of the kids for being in his underoos, lol.Hopefully this isn't a sign of bad things to come!

Same thing happened in my old tot. I don't know if it was related but I did lose that hood to corruption :'( hopefully it's not a sign of corruption. You could try checking the hood with the hood checker.

ROUNDS ....The way I see it, we don't all marry a spouse who is exactly our age. A few sim days here and there aren't a big deal. But that was just for the 1st gen. With all the new households I need to play, I'm going to have to start doing something more organized.

SKIN COLORS....I know that and I'm not opposed to it personally. But I know that in the next stage (Roman), I will need to have a clear divide of skin tones to set my social classes. The way it is looking now, the dark skinned families (and all their sons!!!) are racing to the palace.

I only have one more pregnancy to complete and the 2nd generation will be set in stone.

Clan M had 9 children and their very last baby is their only girl (8 boys, 1 girl)
Clan J is on their last pregnancy and already have 3 boys & 4 girls.
Clan C had 9 children (3 boys, 6 girls)
Clan A had 8 children (4 boys, 4 girls)
Clan P had 3 children (2 boys, 1 girl)

20 boys/16 girls

Bring on the grandsimmies!

I wasn't wondering about relative ages more that, baby A is older than baby B but baby A's parents have more children quickly so he doesn't age as much. By the time they marry baby B is the older one. That kind of thing would drive me insane haha.

Yikes! I ran the hood checker, and it did pop up some errors, unfortunately I don't really know what they mean. At this point I guess I'll just keep playing and hope for the best!

My game was going so well but then it all came crashing down.

Lietta Raiken was due for her finally baby before becoming an elder, they had a good number of beds and cots so everyone could sleep comfortably but then the unthinkable happened.
SHE HAD QUADS!

So now we've got 3 cots to 4 babies. One has to be out at all times and they keep getting overheated so a Social Worker visit is inevitable.

One time in another challenge I had twins and only one cot/crib and a tiny hut for a house so i had the adults take turns holding the baby who wasn't in the cot. I did that so the other adult wouldn't get out of bed-one large room, but also because I couldn't put the baby outside as it was snowing. It was tedious but it worked.

With no social worker I just chucked extra babies and toddlers outside. I know not ideal but I always imagined the toddler would be splashing in the shadows while dad was fishing or something so i didn't feel too bad about it.

Okay the final count for 2nd generation is in....20 boys/18 girls

I've updated the blogger page here....http://ditzyekko.blogspot.com

I'm not encouraging teen pregnancies but they are happening. I do not "try for baby" until both partners are adults.
I so far have 3 grandsimmies and 1 teen pregnancy still gestating.

I was digging around on my desk looking for a pencil sharpener so I could sharpen my colored pencils and continue coloring, when I came across a filled notebook that found it's way on the bottom of a drawer, probably because I could no longer write in it. Anyway, I started flipping through it to see what it used to be used for. And apparently it was in use when I first found this challenge. And I discovered that there were point values to be used for scoring purposes. I'm assuming Swallowtail/Anna omitted them at some point since it's very unlikely that ANY of us will actually score this thing. We just want to make it to the end. But I thought I'd share. And no, I did not find a pencil sharpener yet. I know I have at least three, and all of them are hiding from me. Apparently Ariel has to live with having a white mer-tail for now. ~VP

Wow that's so interesting. I'm curious as to what would be scored, in a challenge like this it's hard enough getting past the first generation.

Alright, I'm trying shorter pregnancy and a more realistic lifespan. I don't know what sort of effect this is going to have on my sims.

Wish me luck.

Well that sucked!! 91 days as an adult! Whatever. I will have to manually keep Perry of Clan P inline with everyone else. Lucky for me he has a twin (Penny lives on another lot so she was not affected), so I will just age them up in the same round.

Trial and Error

Also Shorter Pregnancy seemed to have no affect at all (on current or new pregnancies)