I usually immediately switch to the loser's lot and kill them there. Mostly because if they die on a community lot then their decedents won't get haunted, and I like to torture my poor sims.
I've toyed with the idea of having them die on the lot of whoever killed them though, that way their graves would be "trophies" of a sort, and they'd haunt the lot of whoever killed them. I think it's the best plan, but already had a formula by the time I thought to start doing this.

Finally finished round three of my first generation (have barely played because of school). Thanks to everybody on here I am having much more success with ACR getting my sims pregnant. You can read updates at http://cjar4u.wix.com/bubblesandsims
The last play through of this round was a particularly crazy adventure, one that I've never experienced before. Darita Karr got sunstroke and because of that, all six of the Karr children were taken away by the social worker! :O Now Tumnal and Da'h are completely alone with no kids. If I found a way I would totally consider cheating some kids back in as I miss them so much. Oh well, life goes on I guess. Good way to control the population at least.
I'd love to hear if anybody has thoughts (or moral support for my tragic loss haha).

What you could do to get the children back is have another couple - who have never had their kids taken away - adopt from the ages groups the kids were. The kids that were taken away should be the first ones in the adoption cue. Then, you can use something like the simblender to transport the kids back to their own parents and add them back to the family tree. You probably need to change their last names back too, I think you can do that with the simblender as well.

As for preventing this from happening again, there is a no social worker hack out there. I use it, and it means that the social worker will never come. Children can be hungry, sun-stroked, or whatever, and the social worker never shows up. Be careful, though, as children can now die of hunger since they're not taken away! (Toddlers still can't die, though).

I use the no social worker hack, too.

I think until they get adopted, the kids still stay on the family tree, so you could probably get them back using the teleporter shrub (to bring them onto the lot and then add them to family again.) I haven't tested this myself, but it should work in theory?

I will experiment and see what can be done. I may try using Inge's Teleporter Cat as well, see if that does anything. I don't really want the parents to have too easy of a time getting their kids back though because I guess the point is they shouldn't come back but I'm being selfish >.<

Not selfish, just time-period consistent. Social workers (as depicted in the sims, where they take away children from bad parents) didn't exist until the 1800s at the earliest, although in most parts of the Western world it took until the early 1900s before any child protection laws were made. There was a lot of charity work, dating back to Ancient times, that helped the poor and thus also children, but parental control was absolute for many, many centuries.

I use a no social worker hack too. It's just more realistic especially for this challenge. That and in normal gameplay I tend to let needs drop pretty low before I take care of them, so I get a lot of pop-up warnings otherwise... ~VP

Without social workers, can toddlers theoretically die of hunger? I've killed them with the death creator before, just to test it, but I'm curious as to whether it can happen in the game

Also, I finally, FINALLY, completed round 6 of my challenge! It took months what with university work, haha. The Roman age is getting closer all the time though, which is exciting!

As far as I know, no, toddlers can't die of hunger. They'll go way into the red, but I've never had one die before.

If you don't want that family to get the kids back you could always have a family friend or something adopt the kids by teleporting them to the lot and adding them to household. This does keep their family ties intact. I also don't play with the social worker mostly because it's annoying to see ta sim's great uncle waltzing past the house still not a day older than he was fifty years ago.

I'm pretty sure toddlers can't starve as well.

Well I can highly recommend Inge's teleporter cat to anybody who needs kids back. All I had to do was summon them and then move them in and it was like they were never gone (except for the parents' memories). Which is basically what you all so kindly suggested to me.
I downloaded the nowelfare mod as well but I'm still not sure if I want to use it. With regards to historical accuracy, I was just going to pretend that any kids taken by the social worker were basically killed by an animal or abducted by a rival tribe. But I guess now I realize I'm not strong enough to part with them, at least not when every single one including the heir is taken away.

Oh man, that one set of orphaned twins I played whose (shared) husband was frightened to death by ghosts? Well, looks like both the twins were frightened to death by ghosts too, and now their toddlers are gonna have to raise themselves! It was probably tempting fate to ask if it was possible for toddlers to starve, haha.

I think I'm gonna have them live by themselves until the end of the round and then, on the last day, whoever walks past the lot will "discover" the poor things, and they'll be adopted by them! Adoption roulette, haha.

Oh and RE: nowelfare, I find about 50% of my kids die at some point anyway, usually due to in-fighting, so it'd be way too hard for me to do the challenge without it!

Since in my first challenge when taken away kids were walking past I actually started killing kids when their needs dropped into dangerous territory and say they died of heatstroke or starvation or whatever (a few of my families ran out of fish a few times). It was pretty hard to do but much more historically accurate and better when it came to time continuity. This only happened once or twice and that was a few challenges ago.

I think in my first generation I lost 60% of kids before they could have kids so the last thing I needed early on was a lower percentage making it to adulthood. I wouldn't mind losing some of the kids to the social worker to be honest but losing all of them for one child getting a little hungry was just too much.

Can I ask, does anybody use Trips/Quads and if so what settings do you have them at? I have 2% Quads, 6% Trips, 18% Twins but I already have 3 sets of twins and 2 sets of triplets out of 19 births. Seems like a lot. I thought I had put the percentage chances low enough.

I use the trips & quads mod, and I've got the settings on the numbers that are standard. I didn't fiddle with it at all. Personally, more kids would be welcome in my game. If I really have too many sims, I can always do a ROS to kills some of them off.

The natural maxis percentage for twins is 10% ... so anybody who installs trips and quads without adjusting the default percentages (25% for twins!) will have a looot more babies than they'd ever signed up for! ...Or rather, that they didn't double check to sign up for. 18% is better than 25%, and it lines up pretty well proportion to 6% and 2%.
Since I liked the maxis percentage for twins, and like realism... to a point (I want multiples sometime, game, even though it's not terribly realistic!), I looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multip...s_and_frequency real life chances and... adjusted them. So I usually have a 1 or 2 % chance of quadruplets, and a 3-6% chance of triplets.

No matter what, the chances are going to be higher than usual (can't have fractions of percentage chance). But if you fiddle the percentages to go above maxis 10, then you'll notice the disparity more than usual.

Sorry for my ignorance but what does ROS stand for?
Wow thanks that's very informative. I definitely like lots of kids but at the same time I want to control my population, and realism is always a nice goal to have. I use Hook's Randomizer on MATY to randomize a lot of things like Aspirations and whatnot, maybe I'll use it to get fractions of percentages for the chance to get quads/trips etc. and then just choose in game whatever the result is.

ROS stands for Random Occurence Scenario. Here's a really good explanation, including an example ROS file and play examples: http://plymouthfalls.wordpress.com/...ence-scenarios/ Make sure to check out the sim/household list as well as the neighborhood list (both in the same file on different pages). It's an awesome way to bring some random, fun events into your game to spice things up. And it forces you to be creative when trying to write a story, so it makes sense with what's come before. For ToT, you'll probably need to adapt it, or write your own list.

*cautious wave* Hello, I started this challenge a while back, found it to be too much, restarted, and then got busy with college. o_o; But now that I'm on break, I'm having more fun with it! I started with just three couples: One light-skinned and blond-haired, one dark-skinned and black-haired, and one with skins 2 and 3 and brown and red hair. I don't think I'm going to blog about it, but I may post the occasional update here if anyone's interested. =)
I look forward to simming with you all! n///n

I set my odds much lower than the original. I have quads at 1%, triplets at 2% and twins at I think 12% or something. I like having the chance of triplets and quads but I like them to be quite rare. I used to have the odds around 2% quads, 3% triplets, 15% twins but after the fourth set of quads were born in game (plus one set of triplets) I toned it down a little.

With my original odds 1/5 births would result in multiples and 1/20 births would be triplets or quads which both seem a little high for my liking. Hopefully the next time triplets or quads turn up in my game it will be a happy occasion rather than one that makes me wonder why triplets and quads is out to get me.


Awhile back I was considering writing a test of time ROS for the game. I might see if I can dig up my old files if anyone's interested.

ROS may be just what I need to make my challenge more interesting for me. Again I might generate a list and then use Hook's Randomizer. lbsgirl24 (don't know what to call you) if you have the files I'd be more than a happy to take a look at them to see how I can incorporate it into my game. But if not that's fine, I wouldn't have a problem coming up with my own list.

Welcome faerie! Your challenge sounds interesting. Will you be adding more sims later? Because if not, the grandkids of the founders might have an impossible time of finding someone to marry.

@lbsgirl24 I plan to write a ROS specifically for use in ToT challenges, after I've finished my ToT Challenge Variation Ideas document (2 more time periods to go!). Unfortunately, December is a really bad month for me, as life is exceedingly busy this time of year. Maybe in January we can collaborate on the ROS document?

Thank you! I am actually adding three CAS/Townies per Neanderthal generation - one for each of my founding families heirs to marry. I'm playing it like my founders came from a large tribe where their water hole was drying up, so these six found a new water hole. Some of their friends visit occasionally, and the heirs of the three main families each fall in love with one of them. I'm planning to stop that come Roman Era, though. All in-bred from there onwards, hopefully.

I would look forward to seeing that very much. Just so I can add some variation in my game if necessary.
Sounds good. And yes please update us especially if something wacky happens in your challenge ^^

Thank you, Bubbles! As of two rounds ago, I have officially begun Generation 2. Through much micromanaging, I have lost no one to death or the evil lady of Soshul Werkia. I'm hoping to teach myself to back off now, though, so we'll see what happens. xD;

Haha, love that: "Soshul Werkia". And yeah trying to teach myself to not micromanage has so far been the hardest part of the challenge for me as I am a huge control freak when it comes sims. In other challenges I like everything to be absolutely perfect, but of course that starts to get boring. This challenge helps me because I at least know I eventually have to kill some sims off or my population will blow up. Just not yet haha, I'll wait till the Roman era before I go killing anyone off.

I call the Social Worker, the fae, because she steals children and when they are adopted they haven't aged. It's because they have been in the kingdom of the Fae and time works different there.

I do use the triplet and quads hack, but I have lowered the odds to like five percent twins, three percent triplets, and one percent quads.

For some reason any time I try to adjust trips/quads or pregnancy odds or anything else using the grocery slider method, it only lets me do even percentages (2%, 4%, etc) otherwise I probably would put quads at 1%, trips at 3, twins at 9.

Try sliding it up with the mouse until you reach an odd number and then clicking the down arrow until you get it to the value you want. That's how I set odd values on mine.

I'll try that next time I get on (which will be a while; I'm super busy until New Year's).

Also I did try working on my own Test of Time ROS but I haven't really made it to my satisfaction so I'll probably end up scrapping it.

Please don't scrap what you have Even if you're not happy with it, I'd love to see what you've got. I plan to make a ROS file for the challenge in January, and everyone's contributions will be gladly accepted, even if it's only to spark ideas.

Okay well currently I am just adapting the ROS files found here for the Neanderthal Era (plus I have another one going for Roman, sort of). And of course, adding a few of my own ideas. The two text files that can be found in the link are really made for Hook's Randomizer but for anybody who doesn't want to use that, they also work reasonably well as stand alone files. You would just have to assign each occurrence a number, and then do a dice roll on random.org or similar.

When I get around to it I may upload my version for people to fiddle with.

I've glanced at a couple of ROS lists, and I have a question: What does the "d" mean? As in, d4 or d100?

The d stands dor dice. The number stands for the amount of sides. A normal dice has 6 sides, so it would be a d6. For tabletop games, a lot of other dies are used as well. Or you can use a random number generator. In that case, a d100 would mean a number between 1 - 100.

What Samantha said. d100 generates a random number from 1-100. d6 from 1-6, d12 from 1-12 etc. You can search random number generator in google to come up with lots of good sites that will do that for you.

Oh, okay, thank you both! =D

Hi, I'm really thinking about trying this but I've got a problem, I suck at building. Do any of you know of any lots that I can download?

Do you want period appropriate buildings?

For the Neanderthal era, there's these possibilities:

http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=290993
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=290655
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=289037

And the Simstone collection here on MTS also has some lots.

For every time period, there's something to find that you can download. No need to build.

Yes, thank you. Knew I should have looked here for something first.

Okay, so the Dark Ages description implies that the people who are rich need to lose at least some of their money. Any suggestions for how much I should make them lose? Maybe more for the upper classes and less for the lower ones?

Hmmm, I'd probably do something like take away fifty percent of what they have, or maybe do different percentages for the different classes. Like twenty-five for the Emperor's family, forty for the Patricians, seventy for the Plebeians, and ninety percent for the Slaves? Hard to say, though, since I'm still stuck with my Neanderthals. o_o'

On another note, my ToT Sims had their first death. One of the founders died of old age; he'd aged up badly, so he died before the others. The family is not handling it well; everyone's sobbing between every task, even the granddaughter who just became a child and I didn't think they had a very high relationship yet. And I could've sworn I saw his wife go to sleep in her own bed later that night, but the next time I looked, she had gotten up for some reason and was crawling into bed with her granddaughter. Lonely, I guess? D= Poor things, but they'd better get used to it. I think his wife is about to get a visit from Grimmie too, and I'm still trying to make myself back off from god-moding so more than just old age deaths occur. =/

In my newest update, Obligated to Love You, the Knight Clan has it though. Who said babies were a blessing? Also, there's some adult drame, but not where you'd expect it. Full story, including pictures, can be found on my blogs for the respective neighborhoods. Links are in my signature. Comments are very welcome :lovestruc

Wow, that does sound tough! xD Do you have something that expands the time your babies or toddlers stay in that stage, or something that shortens pregnancy length? Because I know that after going into labor five times, my Sims would have at least two kids instead of five toddlers/babies. xD

Well, I speed up my pregnancies to 1 day, for starters. Then, I've got the triplets and quads mod, so they have a chance of multiples (chance of twins is higher than normal, trips and quads are also possible. I do this so the population gets a boost.

The first time Pauline was pregant, she gave birth to twin girls. Then she became pregnant almost right away again, and gave birth to another girl. And then on the last day of the rotation she got pregnant and gave birth to the only boy of the bunch. So, 3 pregnancies resulting in 4 kids in 5 days. Poor sims

I've restarted my challenge for a second attempt at this. o-o

http://rainbowharley.weebly.com/

Samantha - Ahh, that makes sense! Yes, poor sims! xD

Marshmallow - Good luck! =D I noticed the trailer park challenge on your blog, and now I'm trying it out. xD

I'm trying out a modified version of this. Instead of skin 1/2 dominance, I'm using humans (of any human skin color) and elves (Inspired by Dragon Age). Humans and elves look very different here, though. Elven features cannot be mistaken for human features, to make things easier on me. So, whenever the rules call for S1/S2/S3/S4, I go with the total of all the features, with a maximum of ten elven features.
S1/S2 (since the distinction doesn't seem to affect gameplay) : 0-2 Elven Features
S3: 3-6 Elven Features
S4: 7-10 Elven Features

For the Age of Exlporation, I'm swapping out the roles of S3 and S4 equivalents, because Dalish Elves. S3-equivalent sims will be the equivalent of City Elves.

@meowcatmeowkitty - That sounds interesting. I'd love to see some pictures when you start.

I'm really enjoying your challenges.

I've migrated my Test of Time story from wordpress to my Simblr. The link to my simblr is in my signature, but to see just my test of time challenge, use this link: http://samantha-kathy.tumblr.com/tagged/test-of-time

The last bit I posted on my wordpress blog was 'Obligated to Love You'. Since then, I've posted the update for the Brewer clan (2 posts, including births and some cheating). Then there are 4 posts (picture posts with some text, which is the new format I'll be using) that update everyone about the Sharp clan. Family life is important to this couple. Later today I will start posting the first round of the last clan, the Mills clan.

Ahhhh reading these make me so sad!! My town Ambrosia was about 2 sim weeks away from the Roman age D= But then my computer went kaput, and I don't have my base game with me, so I can't reinstall. =(

Your towns all look like so much fun to play! =D I had a bit of trouble with god-moding too, so to spice it up I rolled for two to three random deaths in town each week, as well as giving anyone who fainted in the cold or heat a 50% chance of dying, and giving newborns a 30% chance, and the mother a 50% chance if the child died. It didn't kill as many as you'd think, but it did keep the population from going too crazy, and make it seem somewhat more realistic.

You could give them gambling problems or assume debt depending on how many criminals they know. That's what I plan on doing with mine. To determine how much they should lose, well if the scenario is debt related, you can go by their weekly rate of pay. If you want a sim to lose a month's wages, just multiply by four. If you want them to lose a large amount, maybe the value of their home in cash? Like a depression? Supposedly depressions naturally occur every 75-80 years where debt becomes too great for people to handle, and they start loosing their homes. This might be feasible at any age where there was settlement.

Frog updates
 

Sandsteps Isle is no more!

So it's been a while since I've updated here, as playing my custom island world in Sims 3 started to become unbearable, and I tried everything i could think of to save it.

I can't tell you all how difficult the decision was to abandon it completely in favor of a larger word- I tried many times to add new lots and it all just started becoming crazy, buggy, overgrown, and impossible. Over the last three years or so I've played these same families I'd grown really attached to my little island as it had few roads, some gorgeous green valleys and tailor made lots for my starting four generations to enjoy. There was even a community orchard, complete with a nectar maker in the basement for the Roman era that I had to wait to unlock. If only I had made it larger! By gen 4 simmies were overcrowding the island, even after killing them off by fire trap and water hazard at the coliseum.

After adding lots in the middle of the ocean and having a worldmap of giant floating squares that sims kept summoning taxi boats to get on and off of, I had had it. There was nothing 'roman' about a world that had everybody using modern boats to get home, or living in homes with permanently-flooded basements because there was no other lot large enough. At one point a kitchen managed to catch on fire while being underwater!

Welp anyways I sucked it up finally and saved and moved every family and most of the lots to my bin and transported them all to Sunlit Tides. I then removed the school and all the stuff that didn't fit this challenge etc.

THEN I finally downloaded some mods- and that saved me! I've been a purist this whole time, but now I'm using the NRAAS Story Progression and Master Controller mods and my game has been running smoother. What.

So here's some of the current happenings now that (after months of tweaking) my game is playable again!

Also, the new Story Progression mod has the ability to set up castes, so I have sims set for potential arranged marriages (depending on their castes- Emporer, Patricians and Pleibs are more likely to have arranged marriages and cheat on each other) and things like dowries are automatic upon marriage.

This time....?
LaShawn Edifica (a slave, gen 3) has a grandson- so gen 5 has been born! Mene Edifica was born to Brennan and Serena, so this somewhat makes up for the death of Brennan's brother Esmond earlier in the year at the Colosseum.

The family I'm playing this week is made up of LaShawn, his sons Brennan and Amandi, Brenna's wife Serena, and their son Mene. I also have it on good authority that Serena is Pregnant again.

At the same time Stewart Cove (Emporer, gen 4), wed Svetlana Borstescova (A CAS sim brought in as a slave during a Roman conquest because I had too many relatives and the game wouldn't let them all intermarry). She's from one of those northern countries, and will introduce some Russian-esqe genes into the gene pool. I've had fun with the CAS slaves, so each one represents a different part of the world that Rome had contact with and has unique things that no one else has, so I can find out if those genes will get recreated later on. Also, even though slaves can't marry above their station, I've made an exception for slaves acquired through conquest, so they are treated as 'spoils of war'.

Stewart and Svetlana immediately got pregnant and then became homeless (one of the mod settings). When I moved them into a new place I was notified that they had decided to 'live separately', probably because Stewart is the inheritor of his family estate and I have the mod set not to move those, he's got to keep his home.

So it's complicated (and sorry about the longish post), but this game has become so much fun again I wanted to tell you all that's happened!


Edited---------> Added some farewell Sandsteps Isle pics

Sorry to hear that you lost your game. That truly sucks.
On another note, I may use some of your ideas for random deaths to keep my game more interesting (I would probably put the chance of death lower though because I'm not that brave).

How are you doing with your sim town now? Your Zephyr family is gorgeous!

I want to get back into everybody's blogs, too. I haven't updated my own in a while, but you all encourage me to keep at it. Great to see so many people keeping with it from back when I first started out.

Out of Curiosity, where is everybody now? What gen etc?

I'm still on my first generation, but my second generation is starting to get born. I've recently moved to Tumblr for almost all of my sim things (except my Wariwckshire challenge), and added some things to my hood. But I should be getting back to playing this week.

I just finished (and updated on my website) round 4 of generation one a few days ago actually. Actually I finished playing round four two months ago but because I am taking extra classes I haven't had time to update till now. But be warned, round four is not very interesting/poorly written as I am pretty ill right now and so wrote most of it in a half asleep state.
Please keep updating your blog if you can. I love reading other people's stories when I get the chance.

Also craziness happened as I started playing through round five. The Romulus's now have NINE children and Aliah Romulus is pregnant again! I might end up killing myself in round 6 as I already have difficulty playing with more than six children in a household. And it looks like when generation 2 comes along I'm really going to have to implement a lot more deaths to control the population.

I'm currently playing the first round where my precious starting sims are no longer protected. No more food aplenty, no more immunity against disease, no more....anything handed to them, really. It's now officially a struggle to survive. See my Simblr for updates.

I've more or less given up for now. After the reinstall I couldn't get my neighborhood to work. At the moment I'm building a wannabe-medieval hood. If I can get it to survive for a few generations, I may come back to ToT and start from the Dark Ages. I just don't want to play the whole stone age thing again.
Before reinstalling I was playing Roman Age, Gen 4-5. Good times...

Wow you got pretty far along in the challenge. I'm just praying I'll make it to the Roman era before the neighbourhood corrupts.

Well, I had played this neighborhood since 2011, I guess. And I did have some minor corruption, but I was keeping it in check with the Hood Checker, Bat Box and SimPe.

Did you save any of your original families in the bin to use again? That's a shame to be stuck wthout is after so long.

I know how sims games get though. It seems like EA still does not understand their players' needs.

Updated my family tree- stories are in caption form or when you view profiles. Not everyone has a bio yet but the goings on are mostly in picture comments.

Key happenings this week; Brennan and Serena Edifica had four sons (I've lost track of how many apple trees I've planted in everyone's backyards, but apparently it's a lot). Mene was born back in Sandsteps Isle, but while his wife was pregnant with their second son (also named Mene), Brennan was abducted by aliens and he and his wife both ended up giving birth hours apart from each other. Brennan had Tekle, and then immediately sought comfort in his wife's embrace and conceived Parsen.

Mene Mene Tekle Parsen is a Bible joke: literally the writing on the wall that appeared in Persia signifying the overthrow of the city where it appeared and death of the king it appeared to. I thought it would be funny if this sequence of names appeared in the Roman era signifying that the good times would not last, but I could not have planned it so perfectly.

So. Now there's an alien baby. Once the child grows up I'm going to sequester him in a room for his entire life- is he is ever seen he will be killed for his appearance. His only chance of meeting someone and falling in love will be through the door to his little room, or if he manages to sneak out and meet a girl who likes him who is completely alone when they find each other. Good luck there, Tekle!


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Previous family- I played Cemre and his brother Stuart Cove, who were living together with Cemre's new wife Adelade (CAS sim representing the Icelandic people), and their slave Vitus Fahadeena. During a thunderstorm, Vitus was frightened and Cemre came to comfort her. One thing led to another, and she became pregnant. Adelade had just given birth to their first child, and came downstairs in a fit of rage when she found out. Cemre tried to calm her down and apologize for his moment of weakness, but she attacked him and lost the fight.

Horrified that his cheating had cost his wife her life, Cemre asked his brother to help him giver her an ostentatious burial on the grounds of their new estate. They planted a cinnamon tree over her and made offerings- among them an expensive gift from the orient: a magic jelly bean bush. While he was out tending to the gravesite, Stuart ate a single jelly bean. It happened to be the bean of demise. Now Cemre's dalliance cost two lives and left him and Vitus with two infants to care for.

With Stuart's death I also lost a rare lilac-eyes sim, the mark of a pureblood Cove Emperor. Oh well- live and learn!

In my "main" test of time hood, I'm in Roman period - first generation. However, I started two separate main hoods. One for Dark Ages rules (although I'm using an alternate set someone else listed in this thread - less killing) and one for Middle Ages / Renaissance rules. In the dark ages hood, I'm just starting to get second generation teens so the pairing begins. In the Middle Ages hood, I started with two generations at the beginning, so I've got some third generation babies that should be toddlers soon. So not very far on any of my three ToT hoods. :D

I'm so impressed with Frogsnack for keeping up with this challenge in Sims3 - now that's dedication for ya.

After a rather rocky "Warwickshire vs Test of Time vs I just want to play sims dang it!" year I was eventually possessed by the ATOT challenge in the end. I haven't put anything online as yet (still debating that issue; only the sim gods know!) and it's taken me 3 months to finish round one... yes round one... roooound one... *cough* that's 6 sim days each family btw.

I have started off with a rainbow of 9 families in the Neanderthal Era but right now they look more like slaves trapped in a permanent winter from the medieval era I have a vivid imagination; I can deal! To make things more interesting I'm utilising the THS and Birth system from the Warwickshire challenge, and to even up the playing field have added a hunting system that affects the men (no free rides here for the troglodytes!). So far I've lost a mother already (was my favourite too but that's usual isn't it! stick it, murphy) thankfully she popped out 3 kids before she went including an all important boy (yay!). And in the very last minutes of the round a gypsy showed up at my laziest family to give them a lamp.......... sims ay. As it stands I have 17 Gen 1s (founders) and 22 Gen2s. Also, I've changed the eras to 2 each - experience has taught me I don't need 4 eras in the Roman era, or any for that matter I'm sure as it takes a gazillion years to get through, and added some extras to make up the 20 Gens; so saying I'm determined to get through this challenge some day before I die dang it!

taliah~ (who will never attend simmers anonymous and therefore never be free of this challenge, booyeah!)

Welcome back I was in a similar boat for awhile with my now imploded BACC and this and various medieval hoods but my tot always wins.

Wow nine starting families that's a lot but in the long run it will be easier to marry gen three and four off. I agree with shortening the eras, I have a few gen five sims now and I'll be well and truly ready to make the switch by the time my oldest becomes an adult and it's not like I've been sneakily chipping days from my lifespan to get to the dark ages faster or anything. I'm going to miss the Roman era like crazy when I finally finish it but I'll get to dig into all my medieval CC

I have maybe 10 or so gen five sims now which is exciting because some genes are popping up out of nowhere. I think I set my lifespan too long hence why I'm taking days off adult and teen spans each round. I only lost my first gen 2 sim to old age this round (she was born in like the second round) and the oldest gen five sim is nearly a round into her teenage span. The intermarriages have been interesting for awhile now but next round what is possibly the weirdest wedding I've ever had in game will be happening. A sim will be marrying his step grandmother (they're actually pretty similar in age)..... they keep rolling the wants and who am I to deny them?

I've finally got on top of that pesky plague so the deaths are dying right down which is good but I'm thinking of using new rules to kill sims off from sickness next era. Rather than just killing everyone who gets sick (in my game this would stop the spread of illness). I've decided to limit comfort soup to doctors/apothecaries/monasteries where my poor simmies will have to go and pay an exorbiant amount for it. They will be able to drink soup any time of the round but there is a risk of soup not working or even killing them. I'm also stopping them from sharing bowls, it's too resource effective.

On the first day and last day of the round they can eat soup. Below are the odds I think I'll be using. They may not make much sense to vary this much but I do want to stop sickness from spreading between houses too much and try to give sims time to pass on the illness. If they roll nothing then they must clean up the soup without eating it.

Day 1: 10% death, 40% nothing, 50% heal
Day 5: 20% death, 5% nothing, 75% heal

It's a good thing everyone (well apart from the serfs) has a nursery where I can lock sick sims to keep their family from getting sick. Sims can still plead but I'll be following my rules (a sim must arrive to mourn the sim without my direction) and for unnecesary sims I probably won't bother. It sounds harsh but my population is due to explode when the current kids and toddlers start marrying.

Thanks lbsgirl24 ^_^

You mention the Roman Era and I'm like "ahh... the Roman Era was such fun..." No no no I've only just started that's a looong way off! Excuse me while I slap myself.

I'm enjoying the simplicity of the Neanderthal Era again, I did miss it at times during the Roman Era. I'm also looking forward to Gen 3 and onwards for the genetic variety and surprises - and the marriages! Isn't it a hoot when you forget certain sims are technically related and then you marry them and it's like "....oops, sorry, didn't realise you were my half-brother/cousin/grandson" how does that even work?! I don't know. Run with it!

It's a bit different playing this time though with the new rules I've set for myself. Playing with the original rules it's easy to have the population just explode from the start and get completely out of control and hair-pulling-ly frustrating. That's why I'm utilising the THS and Birth systems; they're fantastic! Sims can get either healthier or sicker as they age (or go hunting, poor souls, I'm so evil, mwahaha... ) . I'm already hoping to keep my family lots to no more than 30 (this is in the long haul yah) which should be easier with sims dying willy nilly. It's pretty much luck of the draw too - I've had one very healthy mother die, and one very sickly mother survive twins ... I feel like I cursed myself; the family I wanted to do the least well (ie, was planning on making life miserable for them) are doing the best! And my favourite family are struggling - after one round! Why?! I should know better by now LoL.

I like the soup idea. It's too easy to cure them quickly with that. Curious though, are all your sims family sims? That would help; sims are just unable to make the soup otherwise. Originally I used Family sims for all my Neanderthal simmies thinking that would keep them from going crazy too easily; now I roll and it's much more interesting - crazy sims are fun, people! Trust me! (honest!)

If there's nothing else this challenge teaches is that it's too easy to have a population explode. So to anyone new just starting for the first time - let your sims die! No, really... unless you want 400 sims by Gen 3 and no hair left (baldness could be a new trend though so...)

taliah~

I thought I was on top of my neanderthal nostalgia... says the girl who just started a new prehistoric hood.

Luckily other than a few weird step relations I haven't had anyone marry someone they're closely related to by blood but in-laws, step great uncles and great aunts are all fair game. I do check to see if the family symbol shows between two sims before I marry them to avoid the worst of the incest. I have noticed some second cousins display as family so I may be killing some of the more distant family relationships to give some sims more options. How can I have an inbred upper class without a little incest? (Funnily enough the founders of my current tot were extracted from my old tot so most of them were married to their sibling/cousin in the first generation. What can I say? I was too lazy to make more starting sims with the genetics of the original clans)

I like the idea of using the THS but as I found when I was playing the Warwickshire challenge I'm too lazy to actually do it. I may also start a plague or a war for a round or two and kill off some sims at random if I want to thin my numbers. I still want to keep my population growing but I don't want to reach the imminent explosion of numbers in the next generation. Under 30 households I could live with but I'd prefer to keep it to 20/25 if at all possible. I find it hard to keep track of my sims as it is and I have what 12 households?

I always end up cursing my sims. "Hmmm, I have a feeling this couple will be the richest family, I'll call them the Fishers." In the last three incarnations of my tot they have nearly starved to death in the first round twice and the other time they pretty much wiped themselves out. Funnily enough they were the second richest despite their shaky start.

I have a significant proportion of family sims but I do roll aspirations. It just so happens that I only have a household or two without any family sims. I did stack the odds towards appropriate aspirations (like family, romance and popularity) at first but now it's more even. I don't think I could play with all sims having one aspiration.

I think using a restaurant to sell the soup may work better than buying it next era. I just need to make sure my sims don't accidentally get cured when I'm playing another household.

I think regarding the starting out thing new members do need to keep most of the couples around long enough for kidlets if they want to avoid tons of CAS sims.

hysterical! I've got imaging; it's not good XD Yes, do please produce lots of kiddies first.

I don't know how you've managed to keep it down to just 12 by the end of the Roman Era but I need to know that secret. In my old tot I had a mass plague epidemic that wiped out entire families in some cases and still ended up with 18 lots. That was with Gen 5 kiddies wandering around.

Today I managed to finish an entire family in my second round and somehow they have 6 kids already and the two eldest boys have THS of 1, yes just 1, one was born with it and the other aged up to it I fudged the second boy into a 22 (ie, re-rolled) because he is TOO CUTE - his personality kills me already and he's only 2 years old XD

taliah~ *who is apparently trying to invent A Test of Time Apocalypse Challenge*

I think it may have helped that I pretty much lost two families really early on so while they had just enough kids for genetic diversity they didn't have eleven kids like some of my other families. I somehow managed to kill 64% of my gen two sims before they were adults which may have helped. My population really exploded in one of my previous attempts and the one after I pretty much killed everyone so I think I kinda found a balance. The main things I do to keep my population down are try not to play favorites (I still do but only for sims I really like or I have plans for or have rare genes), I stick by my pleading and resurrection rules even for my favorites (Exception: I will do everything in my power to ensure the last descendent of original lines survives), I use realistic sickness and don't heal sick sims except for their twice a round soup and I don't discourage murder in my game. I think it's so much easier to start with a small population and start controlling the population early than to have to kill tons of your favorite sims down the track. I considered limiting the number of kids for awhile but where's the fun in that?

Love your signature quotes!

And thank you, but I only have peace of mind now because I'm finally cheating and using NRAAS Story Progression and Master controller. I didn't play most of this last year as the lagging of a game trying to keep up with so many families combined with the stupid stuff that families would have once I stopped playing them (I had slaves buying boats worth 22,000 simoleans) got crazy to manage. There is a way for the Story Progression mod to force aging like it was back in TS3, but I'm afraid to enable aging- I've been adding 7 days to their lives for every week I play and aging them up by force once they've hit that mark.

Seems like most people restart in the Roman era so I hope I can man up and let more die as they should- I really want to get to Vikings!

I also love the idea that somebody just mentioned where they started out with more families. Maybe even just 6 instead of five, and that way I can add another skintone or something (Like make an Irish couple with tons of freckles or pinker skin). I don't want to play occult-type sims because the 'play through history' part of the challenge is just too good!

And LauriMizutani- HOW many neighborhoods did you say you were playing at once? You're brave!

...Is there a record of anyone getting close to finishing this challenge?

I hear ya >_> easier said than done though right?! XD

I don't think anyone here would hold mods/hacks/cheats etc against you, Frogsnack! Is there a way to play without that?! Don't answer that - if it's possible I might cry *crazy enough as it is* It's still impressive. Hang in there! Vikings here we come~ *cough* in a few years *cough*

I shouldn't read other players' blogs - I'm in mourning for the Roman Era. ...seriously



The only one I know for sure is.... *forgot username - sorry* was nearing the end of the Dark Ages soon to get into the Renaissance but I haven't seen that person around for a long while. And from memory someone (a long time ago) mentioned that they had finished which is freaking insane! And they must be BALD!

In today's episode of Sim Mania I had two females survive "certain death!" pregnancies; and the second of those families got a lamp! That's two lamps for the challenge so far and I fully intend to utilise them - there is now a war going on peoples! Most-Unloved Sim Family VS Most-Loved (since I cursed the last loved family) for the position of Emperor in the Roman Era.... coming.... in... uh... like maybe 18 months or so I dunno I got nothing >_> but it's still exciting! Right?! *super excited*

taliah~ *who really shouldn't spend ten hours on sims in a single day*

Too many. But ToT hoods? I have 3. The first I played from Neanderthal to Roman, a second that is Dark Ages only, and a third that is Renaissance.

Hi again, after months of computer issues, I was finally able to re-start my Sims 2 game but lost everyone. At least I was only one round in so I didn't lose much, but I've made five new families and this time I will do the challenge and get farther in than just five days!

Welcome back Good luck with your new attempt

EDIT: Over the last few days I've been updating round 4 like crazy, I'm mid-way through round five but I'm kind of stuck not wanting to play the next household in the queue. They're down to two boys and their mother who was resurected later in the round and moved back in. Two kids on the direct line to the founder. That's it. All it would take to wipe out the whole family is for someone to get sick or for one boy to attack the other or for a fire to burn them. They're one of my original five families and I don't want to lose them.

Hey everyone o/

Yes, I'm still lurking around as well, but haven't really made any progress with my challenge. With universitiy and exams I hadn't much time to play and now that I'm off inbetween semsters, my *veeery nice* graphics card is giving me a hard time. >_< after playing a short amount of time the driver starts crashing constantly and after that my computer simply restarts *sigh* I tried older driver versions, but those aren't working any better. Oh well... I wanted to upgrade to a 64 bit for some time now anyway (so that I can actually use the 8gb ram my laptop has), so I'll probably do that today and see if it helps.

If I get my laptop back to work (or rather run the sims), I'll probably manage to finish my roman hood during the next 2 weeks or so. I actually feel really motivated to build for once. Which makes me even angrier that my computer isn't working correctly right now. ._.

Edit: My laptop was apparently in a really good mood today, or something I did yesterday worked after all, I don't know In any case I could play
I built the house for one of my patrician families (Monsa2). I didn't label the rooms, so if anything is unclear feel free to ask. And I'm sorry, if I'm annoying anyone with my house photos (I don't now, are they interesting for anyone? I would actually love to see more of your houses, but that's maybe just me?), but sharing my progress kind of helps to keep me motivated, so... yeah :D

It's really authentic looking. I love it. I was actually planning on starting writing about my buildings on my blog today. None of mine are very fancy, I wasn't in a building mood when I started building for the roman era. I've been builing dark ages stuff for awhile now so hopefully the new era will look a little more authentic.

EDIT: I was wondering whether adopting pets by phone is against the rules?

I wouldn't think it's against the rules. A closed economy or something similar isn't required for this challenge and if you're allowed to get money out of nowhere, I think you should be allowed to 'import pets from another neighbourhood' or something along those lines :p

Maybe its listed in the forum already, but I really don't feel like going through 92 pages just to find the answer. If a sim gets sick in the neanderthal era does that automatically kill them or is that the dark ages only?

According to the rules, you're supposed to kill sick sims in the dark ages only. In all the other ages (and also in the dark ages if you really want) you can handle sickness any way you like. Most of us are using a more realisitic sickness hack, which makes it possible that sims die from illness, if they don't rest. Some also use the health system from the warwickshire challenge, I think (taliah, if I understood/remember that right?). And then there's of course the comfort soup you can incorporate.

Okay thank you, one of my founder sims got sick and I wasn't sure if I had to kill her or not, she at least gave birth to an heir and another boy but this makes me feel so much better. I'll take a look for that hack though thanks.

I think I may need to restart with all new families again... despite the fact that my five original families were lost from the game, it kept all the original lots and its possessions. So even though the original sim's that lived on that lot don't exist anymore, the one grave still does. And the ghost of that grave, one River Stone, scared everyone to death leaving the social worker to come and collect the two boys and ending my family line. I aborted before this could happen, but something tells me that I'm gonna have to move any Sims who want to live there to a new lot. Worse comes to worse, I'll have to move the two boys to the only other family I've played (which actually works, as they are the only one far enough along that the days are the same and the two families talk on the phone with the wife constantly).
Maybe I'm not suppose to be doing this challenge after all...

How can you lose the families, but not the hood and the lots? o.O

And I'm not completely sure why you want to restart again? I mean, you haven't lost the challenge. The family had two boys, simply move them in somewhere else and that's it? And concerning the grave: simply put it to some community lot before you move the boys out, then you can continue using the lot later on. Or am I missing something?

Technically I think if any one of your original family lines die out that's it for the challenge so I recommend doing anything possible to keep them alive! Or bring them back from the dead - got a lamp? =/ I suggest not restarting unless you absolutely have to as it can get tedious after a while. And there's no supposed to about it! I'm afraid since you're here you're already a lost cause *pat on the back* good luck though, it's a doozy (says the long lost cause).

I thought using the THS from Warwickshire was going to kill off my sims too easily but after reading lbsgirl24's blog I'm thinking the realistic sickness hack is more horrific! (I'm still in mourning over Syd, damn you *needs a tissue*)

As I've just restarted I only have the one lot FlyingRaccoon and it's pretty ordinary =/ but I DO enjoy seeing others buildings for the different eras so I encourage you to post at will!

taliah~ *who is twitchy from an entire 24 hours without her tot sims*

That was my thinking with the pets but I'm going to use all my allowed CAS sims to make some kitties and dogs (you know ones that actually resemble their species) and try to keep the pet lines going. What about pet fights? Do they equal death as well?

@Fireflysong so your sims just vanished apart from a ghost? I'm no expert but missing sims sounds like a corrupted hood. Restarting in a clean hood may help keep your hood uncorrupted for longer but it's your call. Maybe you should see if the vanished sims are a sign of corruption or not.

If you do want to continue as @TheFlyingRacoon said it isn't the end. Early on I had one mother die in the second round leaving behind one boy, three children of another family who were orphaned and had to move in with the widower (two died soon after) and a third family with only three surviving children. You can always make it work especially with the roman CAS sims (which I haven't had to touch even with how badly I screwed up the second generation)

Seriously? If they die that's challenge over? Gulp. Now I'm triply concerned about keeping my little Morans alive.

I was going to post some of my houses and community lots on my blog but I'll probably post some here as well. My Roman housing is pretty lacking though. I built them all inbetween the two eras so I was more interested in getting to the point where I could actually play.

*pops back out from where she vanished to* Concerning seeing lots, I'd love to see more people's lots. I greatly suck at building so seeing everyone else's lots gives me a model to base mine off of when I get to start building for the new era. And I'll continue to keep my ToT site updated with my buildings as well. If you go to my site and click the "Neanderthal" page instead of skipping past it in the drop down menu, it shows my regular and teen lots (Wait, did I put pictures of the updated teen lot ion there? I can't remember) And once I hit the Roma Era, I'll be sure to keep posting pics of my lots. I'm likely to have one (or two if I really feel build-y) lot that each class gets to use, But I'll be sure to note where individual families make changes to their homes (probably on the rounds pages when the change happens. Maybe I'll have a list on the page with the houses)

Concerning my own ToT, well it got put on hold as RL attacked, then my game developed an issue with mods, that has finally (as in yesterday) been resolved. But I think now I'm going to stop playing in my TestHood and move onto a real hood. Plus I miss my ToT simmies... *runs off to switch neighborhoods* ~VP

I'm torn as to what kind of housing I want to build. At the moment the housing I have for the nobles and royalty are much more suited to the later middle ages. I could easily change my vassal and serf housing to be more appropriate by using a different wall paper so that's fine. I'm kind of tempted to make small wooden castles for my nobles, like ones that would work for the keep of a motte and bailey castle, and then leave the more elaborate manors and castles for the next era. I'm not sure whether I want to drastically lower my sims living standards for historical accuracy.

At the moment my slave sims will have slightly better accomodation a serfs. They'll still be in one room but the room is a little bigger, they get a fireplace, have more things to do on the lot and they will have more space to run around. Similarly my plebians will still be sleeping in one room as vassals. With my patricians and emperor they have plenty of bedrooms and space. If I was to do this 100% accurately they'd be sleeping in one or maybe two rooms as nobles which doesn't feel much like progress to me so I just don't know anymore. Maybe I'll just give them two bedrooms off the solar and a nursery or something? I really have no idea anymore.

Here's one of the vassal and serf apartment lots, this lot, another vassal lot and a few viking lots are the only ones I'm really happy with. Pictures are under the poiler because I may have gone a little overboard.

If it helps at all - I think of the Dark Ages as a step down from the Roman Era rather than a step up. I see the Dark Ages as an era that is going to be rather gloomy and depressing; life is going to be a struggle for all walks of life. Just check out the rule basics:

If you look at it that way it's not going to be pretty like the Roman Era was. So by all means make life difficult for the Lords and Ladies of the realm!

I love the idea of little wooden castles! What you have so far looks awesome, too.

taliah~ *who is possibly just being vindictive towards the Roman simmies*

PS. Dang am I looking forward to vikings or what *currently halfway through Round 2 Neanderthal* aha...

I'm a little bit of a medieval nut tbh which isn't helping at all haha. Like I get that technologically the dark ages was a step down and all but it kind of depends on who my sims are meant to be historically. I need to get it into my thick skull that these are sims and their history will be vastly different. I think I'll just make them miserable in cramped wooden castles. Well I have an old castle I built ages ago with a cool floorplan so I may just remake that for my monarchs.

I'll probably give my lords one small master bedroom (maybe made to look curtained off) and either a separate nursery or another curtained off area (maybe the tots can sleep in with mum and dad or something) and everyone else can just sleep in the solar. I build enough pretty stone castles in my medieval hoods so they can probably live in simple motte and bailey affairs this era and then get all fancy later.

I suppose with sims as long as they don't have screaming tots waking them up at all hours and have the privacy to woohoo they couldn't care less about how many sims they're sleeping with.

@taliahneth I actually don't know why I'm surprised but it's kind of nice to see I'm not the only one who keeps track of pretty much all the information and seeing your stats page, I opened my progress sheet (with the start and ending dates of each rounds) and realised that 1. I actually finished playing the neanderthal era more or less 6 months ago and 2. the next household that I need to update on my blog? I played it a whole year ago I think I'm going to die before I come around to finish this challenge and I'm not sure whether I should start laughing or crying. XD

@lbsgirl24 My prehistoric sims all slept in one room, without any privacy or 'protection' against screaming toddlers, and they survived, so I guess, yours form the dark ages will be alright, too.

Edit: Oh, and little wood or stone castles sound awesome. I kind of want to build one now. XD

LoL @ TheFlyingRaccoon - I did that in my last challenge, got busy with life and had little time for playing, got caught up in the game when I did play it, and before I knew it... oh heck an entire year has passed and I'm 2 and a half rounds past the last update..?! Um... ? It's terrifying isn't it?! It goes something along the lines of "Why did I take so many pictures?! What are my sims even doing in this picture... Korbl Faulkner that is completely perverted! You shameless sim! Omg I don't even know who that is anymore.... oh well, hopefully it's not your mother..." As for laughing or crying - do both, way more exhilirating!

Also glad to see I'm not the only stat crazed simmer, I don't know why I do it really, it's like a compulsion some days. I guess it helps me remember the sims more quickly, with so many of the little bunnies running around, and in future play time I like looking back and going "ohhh so that's where your nacissistic oedipus world dominating tendencies came from..."

taliah~

Does anyone know how high the chance to get twins is? It's kind of easy to find the odds for sims 3 or 4 (they are around 10%, if I remember right), but I couldn't find those for sims 2 anywhere, except estimates (which are around 10% as well, though). I wanted to get TJ's triplets & quads and intended to set twins to the normal chance, triplets really low and no chance of quads (at least at the beginning). If no one knows something specific, I'll simply stick to the 10%, but I was curious whether anyone knew it or not. And does anyone know whether you can adjust the odds on the random only version, too?

On the hood building front, I finished my colosseum yesterday. I still need to furnish the palace and the second patrician lot and I'm missing the temple, the port, the town apartments, fisher and farmer lots and the public baths. And I'll probably redo my 'town square'.

Might try and convert this to Sims 3, Btw, TheFlyingRaccoon pictures are epic

10% is what I remember reading somewhere (possibly the Prima guide). I don't know about the random only version, I wasn't brave enough to get that.

I might try having babies not separated from older sims in some households then. How hard can it be? Don't answer that... I probably don't want to know. Not in my apartments though because I'm not quite game enough to have it that way without the option of chickening out.

I think everyone gets behind at some stage. I was about a round and a half behind recently (not much when you've got under 20 households and decent notes) and it was stressful enough to get everything caught up. I'll probably get behind again as I try to build, play and update.

I'm kind of wanting my gen two to all get old so I can finish finding the birth, deaths and marriage stats for that generation.... *is excited for the stats*

The random only version does allow you to set the odds just be sure to make them global or you'll have the original absurdly high odds in some households. I remember seeing 10% as the percentage for twins somewhere but I have my T&Q set around there and I feel like they're a bit more common now than they were pre T&Q.

Wow @TheFlyingRacoon Your buildings look amazing.

I'ma statistic person too. I HAVE to keep track of what's going on and who is who, mostly b/c I'm prone to taking long unexpected breaks, and I can't have the little pixels wondering why their SimGoddess suddenly doesn't remember them. Currently my ToT is open in another window and sitting next to me are TWO notebooks. One keeps track of what's going on, what people aspirations are and what color outfit my toddlers got put in so that I can find that later if I forget when a sim ages up. The second is keeping track of who aged (and what age they aged to) so that I don't have to do as much page flipping in the big notebook when trying to update my generation pages. I swear there is way more information in that notebook than makes it one my website when I update.

Now I'm off to find more clothing for my plantsims as they say they want a bit more variety then get back to playing the last two days in this round. And next round: the cut off for Gen 2 and the start of Gen 3. Once my Gen 2's start having babies all babies born no matter the parentage will be Gen 3. Just like right now all my plantbabies are Gen 2 no matter if their parent is also a Gen 2. I'm just excited to feel like I'm getting somewhere. But my first round of Teen Camp is almost over then they'll all move to their partners lots (and in one case off to their own lot) and start the next generation. So hopefully I get Gen 3 babies in Round 5, it all depends on when these guys age/get pregnant. ~VP

I'm not so big on stats on individual sims as I am on hood wide statistics and general trends. I do have a few word documents I alt tab to, one for documenting the happenings in each family each round, another for organizing marriages, move outs, plans for the next era, my rudimentary tax system, which households need live in servants, which slaves are eligible to be servants and a list of sims by class and gender who are eligible to marry. Besides these I have an excel sheet for keeping track of the number of births, deaths by age and gender, number of sims to marry, number of families and average number of siblings for each generation. I also just started tracking births, deaths, number of families, number of sims and average family size each round in the same spreadsheet but in my mind I kill sims too quickly to keep stats on individuals other than a picture or two.

I also did a little more building.

I ended up going for something a little different for my monarchs to what I originally had planned. It turns out it's very hard to make a decent looking shell keep in sims or to make a square keep (aka a three story high box) look like it isn't a rectangle with some fencing on top. I'm going for a more open plan thing at the moment so they don't have it too comfortable until they can afford to build rooms. At least they have plenty of space unlike the lords who couldn't just build walls to make rooms if they wanted to.

Game default odds for twins are indeed 10%.
T&Q has the default twins odds to be 25%, though... a weeee lot too high for me.