I can't wait to get to the Roman stage. Perhaps naively when I began this I thought I'd be to Romans in no time with only 5 families, lol, and I think I have one more round before my second generation even STARTS with the eldest kids. :\ I need to play that tomorrow or something so I can get a move on lol.

Can anyone tell me where to find this realistic sickness mod? I found this site:http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=8062.0
But I can't see where I can download the mod itself...

Go to the link you posted. At the end of the first post you'll find something written about a BestDawn Mod Edit. Click on the link next to it and a new tab will open with a post by pioupiou at the top. Attached to this post you'll find the link to download the realistic sickness mod. You can also download the mod attached to the first post, but that one is more fatal and it's nearly impossible for your simmies to recover. ^-^

@TheFlyingRaccoon: Thanks!!

@samd440: Same with me, I've been playing this challenge off and on for about 2 years now I think and I'm not progressing at all.

It's also that I don't really feel like playing my hood again. because the last time was august 8th I think and I don't remember anything that happened in the last rounds and it takes so much time to catch up on all of that...

Plus, I'm in my final year of high school, which is a hell lot of work..

So I am a long time lurker and downloader on here, but after I started getting bored of Sims again(I go through cycles where I'll play non-stop and then go months without loading up the game) I decided to check out the challenge section of the forum and I think this sounds like a lot of fun. Since it seems like a lot of people use blogs to show their progress I decided to join in and start one as well. I've been meaning to start one for my writing for months now and this was just the impetus I needed. My blog won't be 100% dedicated to simming, but I figured I'm more likely to update it if I'm using one blog for two different things. Here's the link: http://ewurzwriterintraining.wordpress.com/. I've got my homes built and sims made, so now I'm off to start playing.

Frogsnack:
I love how you renamed your families. :lovestruc I just added numbers to mine, like Shanidar1, Shanidar2. But I like yours much better. Adds variety to the names of the lots and you can track the cousins more easily. Wish I had thought of that earlier. Oh well, no use pouting.

As I get closer to starting on the Roman stage, I've noticed I have some confusion with the last step of the Neanderthal stage. If this has been addressed previously, I'm sorry. I did scan the first 12 pages or so, but I couldn't bring myself to scan 72. Do you add up the funds of the families that have the same name (I'm avoiding the skin type element for this play-through), or do you add up the funds of the households with the same name? Several of my second generation heirs have been heiresses, so I have quite a few lots where the founder has one name and the heiress (as per the rules) has the name of her husband. Do I count that household's funds for both last names?

I think an example might be in order. One of my founders was Gonu Gaho. His two eldest were a twin boy and a twin girl named Woont and Weena. I decided to have both of them stay as heirs, and both of them married. Now Woont is still a Gaho, but Weena is an Ij. Do I count the household funds once for the Gahos, and once for the Ijs? Do I count it twice for Gahos (once for Gonu and once for Woont), and once for the Ijs? Or do I only count it once for the Gahos? Or is there another way I'm not seeing?

As you can probably tell, the answer will affect the outcome of the class race drastically, so I appreciate any answer you can give me. Thanks!

Personally if I considered a sim a heir I would have had their spouse take their name eliminating this issue. If i'm correct in thinking that Weena never left her family home I would count the family funds once for the Gahos and be done with it. I personally wouldn't count a families' wealth more than once and would generally go by household name.

I have issues with the original rules (which I believe put one household as the emperor and their extended family as patricians. They're not quite clear) in that the children of all of the patricians and the emperor would be too closely related to marry making it very hard to find rank appropriate spouses (marrying is already difficult enough in the third generation). I plan on getting the richest family to be emperor and then setting up the unrelated families as patricians to make it easier to find spouses without resorting to CAS sims.

My game's reaching an exciting point. The household I'm currently playing through is home to the youngest generation two sim. He'll be a teen before the end of this round which means he'll marry at the end of the next round. His nephew, the eldest gen three sim, is only a few days behind him (which means only a few rounds after this one and I'll be onto the roman era :D) I'm still trying to work out what to do with all of the girls who weren't able to be married (my game has proved unable to produce anything approaching a 1:1 gender ratio) as they'll just clog up their original households but moving them all out individually would be such a bore. At the moment it looks like I'm putting them all together in a lot on freewill and seeing how soon they manage to wipe themselves out which I'd prefer not to resort too as I really like some of these sims.

See, I read it as the people with the last name with the most money were the Emperor's family and that the oldest male in that family was the Emperor. That the family name with the second most money were the Patricians, and so on down the line. It would increase the amount of people you can marry that first gen in Rome before you start having some upward mobility to strengthen the bloodlines. :D

Thanks for your input!

That would only work if you had a lot of sims though. It also says you should have more slaves than plebians than patricians etc. One of the best things about this challenge is how many ways there are of interpreting it.

I agree, the many interpretations is a plus with this challenge.

I think my interpretation probably works best if you are sorting them by skin tones, because I believe statistically at that point there would be a lot more sims with the darker skin tones.

Oh well, I'll probably figure out how I want to handle it in the next rotation or two. It has been fascinating discussing it though!

Since I'm going to be focused on this challenge for the foreseeable future, I've decided to move all the downloads that aren't necessary for the challenge to another folder on my computer so hopefully my game will run faster(for the most part it's pretty good, but the load screens are really long). I was able to take two and a half gb of stuff out of my downloads folder. I have a couple new things that I want to find and download but that should make a huge difference in my game. I've also decided to start doing daily backups of my neighborhood folder so that god forbid something were to happen to the game or the neighborhood itself I would have a recent copy of my game that I can go back to rather than starting all over again. I'll probably keep a few days worth of backups at a time and then delete them as I make more backups.

Sounds reasonable.

I think that it would happen if you get many slave babies to thrive (because lighter skinned may stop having children in some stages) but I would also expect a higher death rate between slaves compared to other social classes, which would kinda balance it out...
I have not started playing this challenge myself (it's still in my ToDo list) so it's just a theory, not sure if it would actually work like that. But maybe you don't get so many dark skin Sims after all...

This was suggested several pages back(I'm slowly making my way through this whole thread because it's interesting to see how everyone else plays this challenge), but I thought it might be good to post it again for people who are new and don't feel like reading all the way through. To make the game even more interesting you can use the Random Occurrence Scenarios(posted here http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...?topic=12374.0). I'm going to do one per family each round to help make it more fun. Some of the scenarios won't work with this challenge, but if I get one I just re-roll.

I've picked up my ToT again. My round's one day old (out of 7) but already I've got four more babies (one set of twins) and two pregnancies. Added to the babies already there, one of which aged to a toddler, that's seven kids. And only two of them are female.... Ack, I sincerely hope I get more females, or several clans are going to die out after the founder generation *snorts* Ah well, it makes an interesting story, at least.

On the gameplay front, my computer is getting really slow with all of these sims on the same lot. So at the end of this harvest I'm splitting up the families and giving each one their own lot. "With so many children for the clans, the space they were occupying is deemed to small. The women don't see the problem, but the males are decided. It's time to move further apart. Of course, what the men aren't saying is that they just can't deal with so many babies at the same time!"

lizzi6692 I was going to work on a ROS for this challege awhile back but other things just got in the way. When I have more time I may start working on it again if time permits.

samantha_kathy I know your pain, my game is unable of having a equal number of boys and girls. In this attempt I had 36 second gen babies born, around 10 of which were males (only 6 survived to marry)) the previous two attempts I had very few girls I'm talking 10 or so born in total out of almost 50 kids. The main things you can do are just keep them having babies, so far your ratio isn't that bad so even if it keeps up if your families average 6-8 kids you'll easily get enough girls to continue with (it'll keep your population at a good level). Also keep rerolling the pacifier because if it so happens that each of your families has a son first and you don't reroll first baby born each time you load up the game will be a boy. Just keep the girls safe and it should work itself out soon enough.

stupid question perhaps, but reroll the pacifier? What do you mean by that and how do I do it?

Rerolling the pacifier is a way of resetting the genetic sequence that chooses which traits of the parents to pass on to the child. It prevents the children of a specific couple (if they are the first children born each play session) from being clones.
The way I do it is to go into CAS when I load the game, create a sim, click randomize a few times and exit cas without saving.

Go into CAS and start making a sim. Hit the randomize button a few times. You can also create 2 sims and then have them make a child, the randomize button for children is a pacifier which is where the term came from but the first way works just as well and is faster. You should do it each time you open the game. You don't have to save the sim.

You don't even have to roll the paci, just rolling the dice works as well.

My very fertile Sand Tribe now have 4 toddlers. (due to my longer ages mod)

Hard to see but the baby is about to become a toddler, the twin boys have 4 days and the eldest toddler girl has only one day left.

For people that are having issues with severely uneven gender ratios with more girls than boys try downloading the SimBlender. The odds of having a boy are much higher with the SimBlender(not sure why but a lot of people have experienced the same), but be warned the odds of having twins are also higher.

Another suggestion if you're having a large gender gap, save just before the baby is born. If it's the same gender you already have say 15 of, exit without saving and try again. It can be annoying, but it definitely works. I've never had "first-born syndrome" affect a child's gender before, and I've never noticed the Sim Blender giving me more boys, but maybe I just haven't noticed it, but still randomizing in CAS, or using the batbox to do the same thing is a good idea. Of course, that means I think I've used it once during this challenge. I really must remember more often. Oh well, I love my clones.

Thanks for the explanation! I'll definitely remember that for next time I play.

OMG it's been forever since i played, or even looked at this thread! But I decided that since I'm off work this week I'd spend some time with my ToT simmies. So I'm half-way done with my current round, and have adopted lbsgirl's teen lot idea. They've had one day there, spent doing the garden challenge. They get really distracted planting in each other's spots... Best part was that they generally were "helping" in a sibling or close friend's space. When a person's 3x3 space was done, I called them done and sent them out of the gardening area (whether or not they had actually done the work in that space. I'll pretend they bargained with friends/siblings to do it). So with the current standings Montana Scalon and Tommy Colson are paired together. Coleman Scalon is the top scoring boy, but since he and Montana are siblings and she scored higher... There are four more challenges, so that's likely to change. I also had a death almost as soon as I loaded the lot. Clifford Scalon had some sort of beef with Ashanti Pineda and attacked her. He lost, so I no longer have any sort of established couple. Kaya Pineda seems to be taking things well, especially since I'm pretty sure she's the one who started skinny dipping first.

Anyway that's the update on my game. I'm going back to start the next rotation in my round. ~VP

So I started this challenge up again. I have the five founding families, each divided by aspiration and play style. After four seasons, here's a brief recap:
The Fauna Family have the family aspiration, can have garden plots and trees, and use the maxis "Try For Baby" (instead of ACR's). Their free time is used to strengthen family bonds. They have 5 kids (2F, 3M) and another on the way.
The Rock Family are a pleasure and romance combo. They can have garden plots and fish. I've also allowed them a small pool since they encourage fitness in their tribe. Their free time is used at their own discretion (ie. free will). They have 4 kids (4F).
The Crystal Family are fortune sims. They can only have garden plots. Their free time is minimized, as they'd rather be working towards making money. They have 4 kids (2F, 2M).
The Wood Family have the knowledge aspiration. Their food source is orchards. Free time is spent handing down knowledge (ie. writing novels). They have 4 kids (1F, 3M), with another one the way.
And, finally, the Water Family are all about friends and popularity. They throw fishing parties as frequently as they can, and rely solely on the fish for their sustenance. They have 4 kids (4M), and another on the way.
A typical afternoon in the Water tribes lands:


(Obviously no specific ToT CC, )

Does anyone know of some natural looking grass clothes for children and teens? My first Sand Tribe child just turned child and is wearing the Family Fun or store grass set but the top is bright blue so it looks more like a dress-up outfit rather than the real thing.

She's such a cutie

@joandsarah
http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=411368
These look a bit more neutral but for girls only.

@Dagwon your families sound really interesting and diverse,

@Violetpadfoot I ended up fencing off the gardens in my game to avoid that. I don't think I've had a round where a teen didn't go on a murderous rampage lol. This round a sim killed the only girl present who was unrelated to the boys and her uncle before dying.

I feel kinda bad realizing just how many sims I've killed so far in this challenge.

lbsgirl24, I downloaded those last night and just checked them in CAS a minute ago! I did a ton of searching yesterday for castaway/islander/primitive/grass clothes and they were all I could find. Although I saw someone's blog (Wish I had bookmarked it) that had clothes I've never seen anywhere before and they had no resource post. Of course they may have made them for their own game. FP's are cute but the top still looks like it was bought from Target. The pale skirts do look a lot more natural though.

That's a lot of dead sims. Do they tend to become enemies during the teen years? I only have 3 tribes and they are all BFF. I dislike killing off playables so knowing how I play I will end up with everyone living.

Some of them do become enemies as teens but most of them were murdered by a low aspiration sibling (or died after attacking a sibling while having low aspiration). Most fights have no slapping or anything just an all out brawl. A single mean and/or low aspiration teen can do a lot of damage in my game as a lot of other teens hey aren't friends with are close by. My sims fight a lot for some reason. I couldn't imagine letting all my sims live but then again a lot of my households have more than 8 kids.

I only have about six dead sims at this point, but most deaths were caused by a low aspiration child. Clifford's was b/c he really disliked Ashanti, and I really don't recall why. And Kelsi starved to death. But generally most of my "fights" stay at the poke one another level, and I don't consider that grounds for killing. Though if I did, I'd have a lot more dead sims as most of my children get poked by/poke siblings almost as soon as they become a child. Most of my older kids don't like their younger siblings due to maxis's weird "Oh a new baby. You're stealing mom and dad's attention from me. I don't like you" philosophy. I've only ignored one fight, 'cause the boy lost and I really need to even out my boy/girl ratio. So I've decided that if a boy looses and one of the instigators just aged up and has bad aspiration, then it was just a little scuffle and there are no consequences. Of course that rule will probably die once my gen 3s start getting born, but right now... ~VP

I don't know how you're still in the mindset of saving sims from fights VP you've had almost twice as many babies born as me. How do you prevent the poke wars from escalating? I don't count them either but after one sim pokes/shoves/slaps another sim they'll likely be attacked by that sim themselves (unless the other sim is insanely nice). I haven't noticed the really low relationship thing, although my new children seem to like all their siblings more than their siblings like them. I wonder if the mean sims will slowly be wiped out from my population, after all they're more likely to get into fights.

There was one instance where I kinda cheated to save the only surviving child of a family when he was killed by one of his adoptive siblings (he was taken in by his mother's lover after her death). I still killed him but I had his guardian plead for him. After he came back to life he fought the same kid again but he won that time. My gen three has just hit teen last round and I'm starting to regret my brutal policy regarding fights a little bit. At this rate all the sims who aren't related to everyone else will be killed off. But I think i'll only let up a little bit I like the idea of slowly having my death rate decrease generation by generation. And yes being an obsessive nerd I've made a spread sheet showing the death rate for age groups and boys and girls and the average number of kids and stuff.

Since I don't want an overrun of population I've decided to implement a stopping point for baby having with my neanderthal sims. If a family has 10 or more kids,the oldest surviving child having completed one season at the teen camp (or they have at least two surviving grandchildren), had at least seven pregnancies and five surviving children (at least two sons) the family line is considered secure and they may stop reproducing unless they have the wish to woohoo/have baby or ACR makes them. In keeping with watching my community begin to prosper I've also decided to extend the adult lifespan by a few days every generation or so.

I've noticed something interesting about my gameplay this time round sons are rare and I'm playing a patriarchal society, before when girls were rare I played a matriarchy. It's funny how the happenings in my game are helping to develop a culture of sorts for my sims.

I don't know of everyone here has seen this thread: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=520266 It's all about prehistoric sims and I love the gameplay ideas of the original poster. Lots of helpful links to CC as well.

[QUOTE=lbsgirl24]I don't know how you're still in the mindset of saving sims from fights VP you've had almost twice as many babies born as me. How do you prevent the poke wars from escalating? I don't count them either but after one sim pokes/shoves/slaps another sim they'll likely be attacked by that sim themselves (unless the other sim is insanely nice). I haven't noticed the really low relationship thing, although my new children seem to like all their siblings more than their siblings like them. I wonder if the mean sims will slowly be wiped out from my population, after all they're more likely to get into fights.
/QUOTE]

I feel like my game is broken- nobody fights in TS3! The most that ever happened was a yelling match, but it seems like it takes a lot of interactions for a sim to go slap someone else- even to yell! And it's ironic, because even though I have a habit of making my CAS sims perfect little angels who are family oriented etc, the moment I stop playing a family in tot and kids are born or age up, they end up neurotic and evil! So I have all these 'evil' 'neutoric' 'emotional' sims running around and all that means is that they laugh evilly form time to time, and never even get violent!

...this is making me not want to buy TS4 when it comes out. Sims need to have out of character moments like everyone else. If my TS2 didn't take 1/2 hour to load because of all my ccs I'd consider reinstalling it for this challenge, but then I'd have to go get a bunch of ccs for it... ugh.

Oh well. If any of you play TS3 at all and want to use the world I play TOT in that I created in world editor feel free (also help me whine about it). lol... it's on the exchange. Sandsteps Isle.

http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail...assetId=8022507

I wish my game only took half an hour to load! It's an hour at least. I can't imagine trying to play this challenge with TS3. I tried an asylum once and it was the flattest asylum ever as hardly anyone passed out, started fires or did anything interesting at all! They would pass out and nearly immediately wake up again. Sims 2 sims pass out in front of the loo or fridge and stay there -drama! So I hope they are making the sims 4 sims AI more like sims 2. if it's anything like the sims 3 AI I won't be playing it much.

I'll simply control the population rather than have a million babies and then kill them off. I can't do that. This is why I started with only 3 tribes.

Yeah, we are having fun talking about our game play over on the other thread.

So I just had something happen in my game that I'd never seen before. I was using the ROS and on one house it told me to have a sim die of starvation and I rolled a die that had the same number as the people in the house and the mother was the unlucky choice. Then on the next house I ended up with the task of having one sim dump another so I broke up that couple and decided that the woman from that couple would then marry the guy from the other house who's wife died. So I moved her out of that house and into the other house. I'm back around to that house and trying to get their relationship score enough so they can get married. They're inside and I see her ex-husband walk onto the lot. And not a normal walk, he's being all creepy and looks like he's trying not to be seen. Then he walks up to the front door and steals the newspaper with this evil look on his face and then runs away. And it wasn't even the new one, it was the paper from like 2 days ago. Then he did it again a couple hours later. It was so funny and weird all at the same time. That's my favorite part of this challenge is that it makes me see things that in all my years of playing sims I've never experienced.

I've only had 1 fight, and I ignored it. Mostly because it was between to children, and there were several adults and teens around who would have reasonably broken up the fight long before it became fatal.

In other news my gen 3 have started to teen so it won't be long at all before I have to break out the togas.

What's to stop you initiating fights? Or deciding that slapping is rare enough for you to kill sims when it happens. You could also just play with less cc or only themed cc. I only really play with the cave sim set and the simstones clothing.

VP, I also decided to start the teen lot at the end of my Dark Ages generation. I want everyone to marry by rank, so I am creating lots for each class of Sims. I can't wait to see how all of yours work out.

I am one round away from my second generation Neanderthals and I want to change that generation a bit to make it more interesting to play.
I have thought of two options so far.

1. To sort of follow history, start an Iceage, such as Starsaphire has done
2. I'd figured that as the Neanderthal Era progressed, the people/sims would learn other ways of getting food. So I thought I'd give them farm animals like chickens and cows. Also, they'd get smarter and find ways to pass their knowledge on to later generations, so I thought I'd give them books.

I like both options, but I don't know if I can do both. An Iceage would last for about 4 seasons I think, and then there are only 2 seasons left before the Roman Stage. And I'm totally NOT gonna do another generation Neanderthal, I've been playing this challenge for forever and I'm not even through the first genereation.

Maybe I'll do the Iceage first and give them the farm animals after as some sort of introduction to the Roman Era.

Any opinions on this??

I think the ice age is a good place to give them books, if you want to. Because ice age is lots of time spent inside, and thinking, and passing on knowledge. Farm animals...personally, since you've got two seasons after the ice age, I'd introduce them then (a result of the thinking done in the ice age) and then the farming knowledge is 'complete' by the time you get to the Romans. For storytelling purposes, that order makes sense. But then again, it's your game and you need to have fun playing it, so whatever you want goes.

woah, lots to respond to! In regards to not killing sims and having TONS of babies, well I like sims. Huge households amuse me at this stage. And I plan on being utterly brutal in the roman times with my hunger games inspired arena choosing. I do realize having dozens of houses to play once my sims start marrying will be a bit annoying, and i might be less lenient on deaths then. but for now, this is working. Plus i have a shortage of boys, and the damn boys keep dying. And I want it to be as much like an actual civilization as I can, and that in my mind requires a lot of sims. That and T&Q keeps kicking my butt. I have the odds set so high right now that a lost of sims are being born. I drop the odds by a set amount at the beginning of every round, but its gonna take a bit before they drop to the point where triplets and quads aren't so prevalent. Though it would help for me to play more often. But since I can only stand NeanderSims for so long, and have adopted another challenge, my play takes forever. For a time frame, I finished my last round around Christmas (the date I updated my website is Dec 27th) and I'm about halfway through this round. My only goal is to finish this round before I move at the end of May.

As to keeping the fights from escalating, i try to interfere before it gets to the attack stage. If I notice a pair of children poking, I either distract one or both of them with fishing, or use macrotastics to make them socialize to get higher relationship scores, depending on why they're fighting.

And I had something else I wanted to type about, but I can't remember what it was... ~VP

@samantha_kathy: the way you tell it seems like a good historical-ish storyline. I'm totally gonna do that!

if you do do an ice age be careful to keep the fish spread out (ie everyone has a lot of fish they can cook) when I did an iceage i almost lost everyone because the adults were the only ones with fish and I forgot to transfer the fish over to children when they died.

I'm also going to do an ice age to finish up my Neanderthal stage for history's sake, but mine is going to be really short, only one season. I also haven't had a lt of deaths. The social worker has been an issue but since I was informed I can get kids back with the blender, that hasn't been as bad.
I kind of altered the rules a but from the beginning in the interest of slightly fewer problems later on, I created 6 families (they dwindled to 5 after an affair, a fight/death, and a spouse who starved to death after her kids were all taken away) and I created 2 orphans for marrying later on, because I want all of my families to have family trees dating back to the same time if possible.

Soon it will be time to start marrying them all off! I'm going to have a lot of single siblings though, I can already tell lol. My game was also not equal about genders. But it works out, because someone has to stay at the house anyway, so like in my family with two identical older daughters, the eldest is getting married an leaving so her younger sister can stay in the house and be a spinster lol

Also does anyone else keep track of their family trees? I started it in a notebook but my daughter keeps coloring on it and it's not very practical long term anyway lol

I keep track of my family trees. For a while i was using MyHeritage and TribalPages to do it, but I got bored of having to enter everyone in. Now it's a list on a website. Not exactly a "tree" but it will keep track of who is who's parent and who married who. I might switch back to a family tree website in later generations, but for now this works for me. ~VP

I do keep track of my family trees. I use the family trees present in the sims game. I just make a printscreen and write names under it. It's a lot of work actually, but it does look good. I don't know if it's possible for me to use this method later on though. For now, I have 5 different family trees of the 5 founding families, but in generation 2, there will be more connections between family trees and I'd have to make one big family tree that has to be updated after every family, with new pictures as the sims get older, and all the connections would have to be clear. I think that is going to be to much work and it'd keep me from actually playing the challenge.

So if anyone has a good family tree website, which allows to upload photo's as well and makes a nice tree looking thing (so not a list like VP has), please tell me!

Family Echo, perhaps?

So, I came up with a way to avoid having the children that were taken away by the social workers just floating around in the world, not growing but alive, so that generations later I would still be able to see them roaming around as children. When the social worker takes them, I say another tribe kidnapped the kids, so I decided to create a new lot with someone to "keep the kids in line" so that they can grow up when they're supposed to, but I won't have to keep cheating and giving them back to their families. Currently he has kids from three different families, ranging from teen to newborn, but it's an interesting lot and I think I really like it. I started playing and in basically no time at all, the round was over. He'll basically be considered gen 2, but an older gen 2. He's in-between one and two age-wise but I like it.
Life is a bit harder for Sims on that lot, they only eat once a day (they can have juice as needed, but only one meal) and I won't let them have a composter or anything so no fertilizer --> worse crops, but I figured that's more realistic.
I think starting generation two, I might introduce some kind of progress for each family--some might be more skilled at cooking, some might have a higher level of fitness, etc. I still have one round left before my Gen 1-ers are elders, so... exciting! Finally getting somewhere lol

That sounds like a really interesting idea. Out of curiosity are they still marriage candiates or are you considering them removed from the gene pool?

Meanwhile in my hood I've just finished the second to last round of neanderthal (that is assuming the game doesn't decide to wipe out all my teens due to age up this season). It seems rather pointless for me to be setting up new yhouses for the teens who married last round for a single rotation. The family i thought safe from destruction has been dropping like flies. Both parents are dead so their mother's widowed sister in law had to move in to stop the kids from starving. So far i've killed 11 gen 3 sims, mostly from that same family.

I haven't firmly decided, but my idea is that they will be able to marry if they "escape"/I need them for balance/they're the only sim another age-appropriate Sim that I want to see married is attracted to, otherwise they remain as captives/slaves at the Whitman house until they eventually die out. Right now there are two boys and two girls on that lot so for now they're even. I just have to see how the other families work out. It's also possible that not all of the captives will survive the harsher conditions and make it to adulthood.

Aw, I hate when Sims die in my favorite families. The patriarch of my head family tried to die on me last night, lol. He wouldn't stop heat stroking and before anyone could get to him to douse him, he would wake up, and then after like 3 of them he died. But his wife saved him by begging the grim reaper, so... aside from their one kidnapped child (and his dead ex-wife), they're doing okay.

Well, then, it's official. I am 11 houses away from the Roman Era. One rotation. I'm a bit excited about that. :D

I'm in a similar boat I'm on the last round and have played 4/9 households so excited.

I'm finally starting the 2nd generation of my neanderthals! My first family has become elders and the eldest daughter is an adult now

I'm not advancing very fast in my challenge at the moment, because I'm in my final year at school, started baking lately and went on ski holiday. But this weekend I have some spare time and I already started updating my blog and played the 2 first days of my 10th round yesterday. ^_^ If Kane, my eldest gen 3 sim, isn't going to bite the dust in the next two rounds, I can start the roman era from round 12 on. That means about 20 more houses to play. But it took me quite some time to get here, considering I played the first household in february 2013.

@samd440 I really like your idea for the 'kidnapped' children and may do something similar as I have still 3 Onsen children floating around that were kidnapped in the fourth (?) round. And about those favourite families: It's always them who suffer the worst fate. :p

Oh, and I started building a temple for my (future) roman simmies:

So how do you all lose children to the SW? I don't have fights, deaths or child loses. When they get hot I just bring them inside, or aren't we supposed be controlling them?

Since I started this challenge, my gameplay actually has changed a lot. I used to micromanage my sims all the time, but now I like controlling them as less as possible, because then the game is more unpredictable and therefore more fun for me. It gets an own dynamic and there are for example a lot of interactions you are rather improbable to see or notice otherwise. But in the end it's all about your own preference. If you prefer to control your sims, control them.

But I would recommend you trying ou to play without controlling your sims at least once. Have you ever tried to make for example a household with a huge number of sims (if possible around 20), move them in a big (but basic) house and then just let them do their thing? Especially with ACR it's really funny to observe... and sometimes a little bizarre. XD

This challenge really changed my playstyle as well. I stopped having to control sims all the time and stopped needing to have all their needs green and their mood plat/gold. If my sims are going to be stupid I let them kill each other off. I stopped looking at the wants of toddlers and since I don't teach them any skills or give them skill building toys they grow up badly and attack a sibling. I don't intefere with slap matches I let them progress because seeing what the sims do is half the fun of the challenge. I play with the milder version of realistic sickness and don't try to heal my sims (exception is they're allowed a grandma's comfort soup at the start and end of each round to protect them from other families and other families from them) so many sims die this way. My teens run around on free will most of the time so a lot of them die as well.

@Thefluingraccoon I love that temple It's very pretty.

I've finished building my roiman homes in case anyone's interested have some pictures.

I've started playing this round and in between houses I'll make the rest of the lots I need.

Realistic Sickness is making its mark
 

This is 1/3 of a round & all that I noted was one marriage, one birth, & 24 deaths (6 fire, 1 fight, 17 flu)

The 1st third (upper & middle class families) had 2 marriages, 4 births, & 9 deaths (2 fight, 7 flu)

The last third will be the 2nd half of the slave families. I expect to lose a similar amount since they don't have access to medicine.

Rounds are also going faster since household are being decimated.

The fire, illness, and unhappiness in the Etruscilla household left 1 child out of 6 standing. Mom & dad died too.

The Joque & Atilla families have only their youngest living (only because babies & toddlers can't get sick): Armand Joque & Athamas Atilla.

Next round we may be able to get some medicine to the slaves because they keep infecting the wealthy . Don't say your Emperor doesn't think of the little guys

Wow that's a lot of dead sims. I've just been allowing everyone to eat soup at the end of a round because it prevents them from infecting other families and in rl it's not like a kid will be sick with the flu for it's whole childhood.

I've played the asylum challenge a few times, but I usually play to sims wants, so even my toddlers have their skills. The only sims I play mostly hands off are in my self sufficient hood and only those of low motivation. (done by adding neatness, activity and - playfulness) I have 8 days to train toddlers due to a double age mod so even though there is no smart milk they still get taught and grow up platinum. I'm using counting stones and rhythm sticks for toys. I think I'd want to chuck it in if I had kids taken by the SW, I haven't had that since the first 6 months I started playing, right after the game came out. Temperature is something I keep an eagle eye on. Adults can pass out though lol.

That requires a family Sim. Maybe there could be a bright side to having family aspiration for my little simmies.

I will start doing that. Thanks

I lose almost all of the children that get taken to heat, because I don't realize they're outside fishing behind the house where I can't see them, and as soon as the pop-up that tells me my Sim kid is overheated pops up, I try to hurry them back inside the house, but literally before they can even get in the door the social worker is there. It says I better cool them down quick, but doesn't give me enough time.
Or if I'm busy with my adult sims outside gardening and my Sim kids start jumping on the bed, they get overheated and here comes the social worker. I also try to micromanage much less than I typically do for the sake of the time period--Neanderkids would have had to be tougher, more independent at a younger age so I let them do more for themselves.

As for fights, I've only had 2. One was a kid who grew up badly and was mad at the world, and the other was my first Gen 2-er who turned into an adult. At her birthday party, she randomly attacked her neighbor who came to her party. The fight lasted like one second, and it totally took me by surprise, but I think I might know why it happened. I recently downloaded a beer keg and I hadn't tried it out yet, so instead of the fruit punch thing at her birthday party, I placed the beer keg to try it out, and in the description it did say something to the effect of letting sims have beer kegs at parties and them "doing things they wouldn't normally do" but I just figured they were saying that as part of game play, like, you can have beer at a party and in your storytelling, say the beer made them do things they wouldn't do, but now I'm thinking it ACTUALLY triggers them to do something like start a fight, lol. There's no other reason I can think of that Gerta would have done that, she didn't dislike the woman she attacked and there was no provocation, so...

But I actually don't think it's a terrible idea, especially as the generations progress and my families get large. Maybe I'll make it tradition that when the oldest child becomes an adult, I throw a birthday party and have a beer keg, and if any fights break out, then that's that. Thin the population a bit.

@TheFlyingRaccoon: I LOVE that temple!!!!!!!!!!! I'm super jealous, lol

This almost sounds like the unpatched version of seasons sowo. I think they fixed it in a patch, or that someone has a fix somewhere. Generally I have time to get them at least a glass of water or two. But you got to be careful because if you're running on speed 2 or 3 and have a slow reaction time (like me), you can get two or three warnings before you get a chance to react.

I tend to switch from sim to sim pretty much constantly to check on their temps and only play on speed one or two. I tend to take the kids inside as soon as their bar goes to red, it should go up again before you get a pop up. Are you patched? If you had just one pop up you should have time to get them inside and get a drink. I know in another challenge which is a large household of 14 I did get the heat pop up over a child and I took him inside and gave him 2 glasses of water.

I did not get the patch, no. When I initially got seasons, I played it on a computer with no internet connection, and by the time I installed the game on this laptop, the Sims 2 site was LOOOONNNGGG gone.
I don't mind it for this challenge though, because life is supposed to be harder on my sims, they aren't all supposed to survive. It isn't like a normal neighborhood, I actually want things to go wrong sometimes.
My one house that I just played has big problems with heat, they must be having a heat wave because the majority of the time I played, someone was having a heat stroke, even just from sleeping under blankets in bed. My kidnapper sim tried to die of heat stroke! A teen sim did die of heat stroke, and no one saved him because he was kind of a jerk and smacked the girl who lived there around for no apparent reason other than he grew up badly, so... we won't miss him too much.

samd440, the patches are available from MTS (by following the link in "patches" in this post). So you can still have a patched game even without the Sims 2 site working.

No, you need the patches, some fix critical game glitches. The Season Patch is one of the essentials as it fixes the Ottomas and Critter pregnancies. They are broken and will effect any hood they are in. Without the patches your hoods will go up in smoke long before they should.

Do you still need the patches for seasons if you have all of the other expansion packs? Because the last expansion pack is apartmentlife, so if you have that one, don't you only need the patch for apartmentlife?

No, you need the patch for each and every ep you have. the patches only fix that one ep, not any of the others. ~VP

Okay thanks! I might have to download some then, I don't remember installing any of them...

There is a patch for each and every EP and SP, and you need them all. The easy way is download them to your desktop and store them in a folder, that way you won't have to download them again as it's the downloading of them that takes quite some time.

Oh I didn't know that!
Isn't there something you can also download To see if you have conflicting mods? My house that I'm in right now is glitching REALLY badly, the characters can't even walk across the floor without glitching and I've never seen that before. But it does not seem healthy :/

If you have been playing unpatched for awhile it could be hood corruption. You can download and run Mootilda's Hood Checker which can check the state of your hood and fix some things. Do you have Boiling Oil's No Sim Loaded? That burns tokens and fixes some things with the sims on loading the lot. I use that, the Bat Box and the Hood Checker to help my hoods/lots last longer. I always burn rubbish memories, gossip, fix stuck fishing spots with the Bat Box.
If you think it's conflicting mods you can try Simwardrobe's Hack Conflict Detection Utility. http://www.simwardrobe.com/ Under Sims 2 programs. I don't know if it's because i have too much cc, but it will never run for me anymore. I see others not having issues with it though. Sometimes hacks play up simply from loading order and chnging when they load by adding some zzz to the file name can fix the issue if that is the issue. Make sure you have the critical MATY fixes of no corrupt death and no unlink on delete.

Make sure you are also not doing any of the known VBT (very Bad Things)
-Moving an occupied house (sim and or graves) into the bin
-Moving sims between hoods
-Deleting sims from the bin or deleting graves/urns
-Removing any cc using the remote control car which makes an NPC file. For example Rebekas animals. If it moves it's suspect.
-Never make a universal character selectable-that one can fry your game not just your hood (Crumplebutt, grim, SW)

I'm sure there are more, but those are the main things.

I downloaded the hood checker but wasn't 100% sure how to install (plus I had to back up my game first) do I just put that in my downloads folder?

I've been unpatched this session of playing for a year but I never placed the Ottomas household.
I have (once, just earlier tonight) made the newspaper woman selectable so she could take a picture... :/ I've never made any other NPC selectable though.

I do not have the boiling oil mod.

Ugh I didn't know any if that. Other than my first TOT good that disappeared, I've never had an issue with my hoods, so I was very surprised to learn about this lol! Thank you so much for all the help! :D

It doesn't go in your download files, I have it in a folder on my desktop. You just click the exe to run and show it which hood you want it to check.

The newspaper girl is just a regular NPC, you can make her selectable, send her to uni, or marry her in. One of the tests, although not full proof is if the NPC doesn't have the full range of options when clicked on even after a lot of interaction and does not have a proper name they are risky to mess with. The universal characters like crumplebutt are actually objects in your object folder in your installation files. There is one for the entire game and if you mess them up you mess up your installation not just your hood.

You don't have to have No Sim Loaded, it's just a good mod to have. It just keeps the game tidy and prevents the Super Duper Hug from ever appearing. But you only ever risk that if you download lots or use and remove a badly made social hack. It's not game breaking just a pesky Maxis code used by modders that you shouldn't see.

Oof, scary. I usually don't mess with those just to be safe, good thing!

Ok, I put it on my desktop and ran it but it won't check the hood I wanted it to check (my TOT hood). Also won't let me check my other main hood, every time I click it, it checks the neighborhood above it instead. Removed a lot of invalid stuff from my pre-made hoods though. Now I have to go make sure they work, lol

But it deleted my sims and houses in those neighborhoods, lol, so maybe that's a good thing!

Question: is it safe to remove downloaded mods? I don't see how it would really change anything...but I wasn't sure. I feel like more has gone wrong in game since I downloaded the last mod I downloaded so I was thinking about removing it, but don't want to mess things up.

I've decided to start another site for my tot challenge . http://justanothertestoftime.wordpress.com/

Edit: I need an opinion on who should be heir to a patrician family. What happened was the heir of one family was married and had a baby boy. When I was playing another lot the heir was murdered. Not wanting to have an extra household I moved in the heir's younger brother and wife. They also had a boy. Since by default the heir's younger brother is the titleholder in the roman age would his son inherit the title due to blood or would the nephew inherit it? Or should I have them fight to the death?

I personally would give it to the younger brother. Makes the most sense.

I'd say the younger brother's son. If you want a story, there could be a rivalry between the two, though. :D

Did you make a backup first? I've never had Hood Checker delete sims or houses and that's very strange with it not checking the hood you want. There is a Hood Check user thread where Mootilda will answer questions with it.
Don't remove any mods that make NPC's, custom foods, custom careers or majors if sims are in them.

This challenge is so epic, I must do it! Now to get some caveman clothes...gotta look the part and all.

Well, I managed the last rotation easily enough. But all the organization needed to get the hood ready for the Roman Era took a bit longer. However, now I have things sorted and ready to play. The rest of the post is just a summary of how things played out and what changes I'm incorporating, so don't feel like you have to read it if you aren't interested.

The Gaho's won the race for Emperor, and Gonu took the throne, promptly changing his last name to Gallus. Of course, the rest of the founders followed suit. Since I didn't choose to use skin tone to choose the emperor, only money, I divided the classes up by a percentage of the population. The Galluses quickly filled up the top two tiers. Ip Ij, who changed his last name to Iunius, filled up the plebeians with all but one of his children. The youngest, I fear, fell into slavery. The Eefus, Cuds, and Abs (now Egnatius, Cato, and Avitus) were all relegated to slaves. All my teen/adults were married except for 6 who were related to each other too closely for the game. I made 6 CAS sims for them, and then stuck them with their future spouses in six of my Emperor/Patrician households. I've changed everyone's names, clothing, and put them in their new houses.

I've made a couple of changes for my own enjoyment. First, if a slave or a plebeian attacks a patrician (or higher), then win or lose they're killed for committing treason (they attacked the Emperor's family or a member of the Senate). Second, I'm not going to kill a slave just because his master sees him in a romantic interaction, only if it's with a patrician or higher. Third, a lot of my sims, including the slaves and plebeians have a lot of money, so I'm going to be using some of that for things like bribes, taxes, higher education, dowries, and so on. Some of these options might alter the rules slightly (like if a rich slave gets chosen for death at the Colosseum, he might bribe the officials to choose someone else), but I don't think enough to drastically alter the balance of the challenge.

Well, long story short, I've got things set up and ready to play.

Your setup seems interesting

Since I organized my ranks by who could marry (so the emperor could marry at least one patrician family etc) my ranks are kinda messed up when I think about it. For example I sent three of the neatest, activest slave children into working for patrician/the emperor's homes. That was when I realized that two of the children (who were actually part of quads) were actually working as slaves for their grandparents. (The eldest son moved out and married the eldest daughter of the other family and then they were really poor). If my slave population wasn't so low I'd start a list everytime a slave breaks a ruld ie attacks a sim, steals a newspaper, or kicks a garbage can (thanks to realistic sickness this is pretty much attempted murder) and have those ones fight it out in the Colosseum. However I don't have enough slave sims for that so I'm letting them be for now. With the wealth I let the patricians and emperor keep all their money. Took all but 3000 from the plebians and all but 100 from the slaves after the garden was planted and sent it to the emperor.

I'm sure your slave population will increase very soon. :D

@lbsgirl24 It's nice to see you started another try to document your challenge and I hope you have the time to keep going this time. ^_^ I've been reading through what you've posted so far and I really like it, but there aren't any photos showing up for me in your latest post? o.ô

I've been eagerly looking for roman CC the last week or so and I think I have most of what I need together. Furniture, walls and floors are rather easy to find, but nice and accurate roman clothing is sadly pretty rare. =/

And as my gen 3 sims start turning into teens, I've set up a list with their names and, as someone else suggested here, the initials of their grandparents to see who I can match up with whom and... it looks pretty bad. XD Nearly everyone is related to everyone. Buuut I have a really nice gender ratio. =D 8 boys and 8 girls up to now. Well, I will see what I do once I've finished playing the (nearly) two remaining neanderthal rounds. I don't think I'll get around introducing some fresh blood in my hood. :p

It is indeed pretty rare. And since slaves aren't supposed to have togas, it makes it more challenging. I also had to end up going into SimPE and adding several categories to what I did find so I could use it when I needed/wanted to. One thing I did was use some of my medieval outfits with tunics and roman sandals. It's not perfect but it did at least give me some more options for my slaves, and male teens.

@ TheFlyingRacoon adding images is kinda stuffing up atm so ill have to try and reupload them when i have time.

It is hard to find accurate clothes so im just sticking with anything vaguely appropriate.

Alright. I just wanted to make sure it's actually your post not having any photos and not my computer doing funky things. =P

So I started using the ROS. I rolled my first two and kinda debated leaving it for a generation or two, but then I decided keeping the population down was a good thing, knowing my attention span
Water: Moshe (third eldest, male) is killed by a satellite.
Wood: Willow (Mother) picks a fight with the sim she has the lowest LT relationship with: Malachite Crystal; won.
Crystal: Career roll; Cannot complete. Amethyst (eldest daughter) won against the grim reaper for Malachite's life. I consider that as her binding his wounds. (I know, I know, cheating... but I've never tried to save someone from the grim reaper before and I was curious.)
Rock: (Mother) has Date Nights; Three dates with highest LT relationship
Fauna: Roach infestation! 5 Roaches placed on the lot (I thought this was going to be scarier than it was. Leo (father) and Falcon (second eldest son) both got sick. No one died. It was kinda chaotic without their help around the house until they were better, though.)

How are you guys figuring out matches? This is the first time I've played without just going to a community lot, scoping, taking home someone with 2+ bolts. This generation I've forced matches (to get a nice mix between the families), but I was thinking for my next generation something different. Will matching up eligible people based on signs work? Aspirations? Pay attention to who they roll wants about in childhood?

I found matches for the second gen by running a series of challenges and awarding sims points and marrying off couples with the most points. For tge third gen im working out all the marriages myself otherwise my sims would have to marry cas sims and im trying to keep population low. Third gen is trickier to find spouses in so you'll have to be mindful of not marrying all the potential spouses of one family off to different families.

For the second gens it was pretty much who was available when they became teens. My gender ratios were fairly lopsided at times, so at least 4 girls ended up marrying my founders after their first wives died. For the third generation, one or two got to choose their spouse (I used bolts), but the ones that weren't married by the time I made the switch to the Roman era were done a bit differently. Once I figured out who would be in which class, I went to the highest rank single male, and he chose a female he had high chemistry with. Then I preceded down the list by rank. Anyone that didn't get matched (too closely related) got a CAS sim. I think my Roman matches will favor those that want to move up the class system, if all the prerequisites are fulfilled.

Is anyone running out of places to build houses? I'm worried I'm going to run out of room.

You can always add a business district for more housing if you need it

I haven't yet, but I have wondered if my hood will run out of room before the Dark Ages. As lbsgirl said, you could add a subhood. I've also thought about cloning my sims and rebuilding my hood. Another option might be to move two small families of the same class in together. Reuse houses as much as possible. I know that I left/moved as many of my slave families as I could (11) in the Neanderthal houses. If you're still in Neanderthal stage though, you have to think of how what you do affects the Emperor selection at the end. Anyway, I wish you the best in finding a solution.

I'm in the Roman age. I guess I will just keep playing and see what happens.

Probably the best thing to do. I'll let you know if I have to take any drastic measures.

Well, the job I have has been eating into my play time. Not to mention a few other hoods that have wanted some attention. But I have made it more than half way through my first rotation in Roman times. So progress!

My previous game died. So I just started a new one. I'm on the second round of the Neanderthal Era on the new one.



Oh! Can I know what sort of challenges? This sounds interesting.

Since I stole her idea, I'll answer.

As to how I'm handling things, I set up a spreadsheet ( I swear I use them for tracking everything in this challenge) with two pages. The first is the teens on the teen lot this round, and keeps track of how they finished in the challenges, ranked from 1st to how ever many sims are on the lot. Once all the challenges are over, they'll be assigned a total rank, based on how they did overall. The boy with the best score is paired up with the girl with the best score, continuing down the line until all sims of one gender are paired off. The remaining sims have their score transferred over to the second sheet, and will be used for the spares in future groupings (again going in order of score, but paring off the oldest sims first.) The only way a sim is not paired with a sim of the opposite gender that has the best score is if they are related. For instance, my current leaders for each gender are siblings. In that case, they marry the sim with the second best score. I'm fairly certain I had something more to this, but seeing as I've been obsessing over my Prosperity Challenge 'hood, and not my ToT one lately, I can't quite remember all my details.~VP