Thanks for your answers. I'll definitely go with 10% then.

I use the Sims2DB (sims 2 database) to track my sims' information, have a notebook with random notes, the family trees and lists for each generation with the names of born sims (girls left and boys right, or other way around, can't remember right now) plus the initials of the grandparents to see possible pairings and keep track of relations and I have two exel sheets: one for family founds and one with my progress (time I needed for each round).

@lbsgirl24 Would you mind posting a photo of the floorplan of your keep? I'd love to see how it looks on the inside, if it isn't too much trouble.

I LOVE seeing everyone's buildings! They look so great!

And my Colosseum needs so much work- I have to rebuild entirely, left it with my overgrown Sandsteps world I started out in, it was one of the weird ones that wasn't on level ground and looked stupid in the new islands.

But seeing everyone post together again gives me such nostalgia- so good to see you all; Taliah, VP, FlyingRaccoon, IBSgirl has been here, but you all know what I mean! As one who falls off often and doesn't post for months, forgive me if you were just here the whole time and I didn’t see it. Lol.

New happenings below in descriptions. Pardon the modern outfits, this is what the game did before mods, now I have slightly better control. But the mods did forcibly separate a happy couple and turned the Emperor Kale Cove into a 'Casanova' personality, who hooked up with and married Evangelia away from her husband when I was playing a new family. I wasn't too happy about it, but I did give Emperors a high probability of cheating on their spouses.

The only problem is, Kale is literally THE Emperor, and has only had a daughter. When I go back to playing his family he's married the neighbor's wife! So I divorced them and got him remarried to his actual wife so the line doesn't end... T_T But let him have a kid with her first to shake up the genetics a bit. So the story is- he promised her the title of Empress, married her, and said 'just kidding!' and ran off.

Also, pics of the Cove household. I build as much as I actually play the families, if not more.

Havs anyone tried a family tree/ Genealogy site? The on in my sig is called myhertitage.com, it has statistical features which I love, and can tell you the most common names on the tree, ratio of men to women, married to divroced, percentage of death or by age, etc. It's been very helpful in remembering who is who! I meant to start a blog but the tree site has been so fun to use I've been uploading all my pics and comments to there.

As for keeping track of who is who, I'm still using the orginal names of Cove, Bupkis, Saulson, Edifice, and Fahadeen. I give each male child a different last name before they are old enough to move out so there is no confusion, now I have the following surnames;

Cove, Coval, Covale, Covre, Covel, Coven, Covrale
Bupkis, Bupkisa, Bupkale, Bupkise, Bupkos
Saulson, Saulsoria, Saulsonesca, Saulona,
Edifice, Edifica, McEddie
Fahadeen, Fahadeena, Fahadeenae

........and I just realized that half of these names I have yet to update on the site. whoops.


On an unrelated note, I wanted to show you all some of the weirdest looking sims so far that have come up in my gene pool.

First there was Loki Cova, and now I'm not sure who this next one is yet (she aged up when I wasn't playing her). They both terrify me. Them faces!

I actually do something similar with initials or I used to until the generations stopped lining up and it stopped working. I have been putting of changing the names of offshoot families until the next era which tells me right away if sims are first cousins on their father's side.

Honestly I find family tree sites to be confusing so personally I haven't ventured into them. I think those two are interesting and yes a little bit scary but they're not too bad.

I've put some more house pictures under the spoiler to save on loading times.

Are book shelves and toddler stuff allowed in the stone age?
 

Hi everyone,

oh, a challenge which demands tons and tons of CC and hours to catalogue the CC and then create the starter sims... just the thing for me. By now I have my starter Sims on their lots, a list of recolors I want to do, two rules I'll kick (no skin 4 for emperors? Oh noes) and questions:

in the list of things that the Stone Age Sims are allowed there's no book shelf (all right, somewhat futuristic, but still... skill building?) and absolutely not baby or toddler stuff mentioned: no toys, cribs, changing tables, potties... this could turn very difficult. Is that on purpose or just an oversight?

I'm planning to come up with some vector that mixes money and amount of friends with each other to determine the upper class. Money alone isn't power; connections count, too. I guess something like this:

- count money and friends (double points for "best friends")
- set 100 % money = highest amount of money that any Sim family has
- set 100 % friends = highest amount of friend points that any Sim family has
- set both 0% values = 0
- determine % value of money and friends points for each Sim family
- multiply both values for each Sim family
- highest number = Long live the Emperor!

... it's not as complicated as it sounds, I swear. Honestly.

I think I'll also need an uncomplicated way to change family names. I'm quite happy with the Stone-Age names I came up with (N'Dr'Xo, Conn-Ar, La N'Ga, Grohl... kudos to anyone who gets the common denominator!), but they won't do for roman antiquity.

Hope I'll have pretty pictures soon.

@Frogsnack I would have long since gone crazy, when my sims would run all around town doing stuff while I'm not playing them. Even if I'm not micromanaging them as much as I used to, I still can't stand missing anything that's happening (which is why I need so long to play...).

@lbsgirl24 Your keep looks great and I really like the idea with the villages and palisades.

@alchemist For my neanderthal sims, the only ways to gain skill points were cooking, cleaning, repairing stuff and the third generation had some toddler toys (mostly logic I think). Apart from those toys, I had cribs, changing tables and potties for toddlers and babies. And each household had a doll house, which was mostly used by the kids, though.

I didn't determine the classes for the roman age by money only either. My emperor family for example wasn't the richest, but they have the highest number of friends and a lot of skill points/badges. Another important point for me for the ranking were possible marriages. It kind of makes the game more realistic if your future emperor doesn't have to marry a slave because all the patricians are his cousins. Even if you can always simply ignore the cousin part if you want to. :p

Changing family names (and especially household names) is easiest with SimPE. You can also change individual family names with the sim blender or a similar object, but I don't think there is another way to change household names except SimPE?

I think very few if any of us are playing by the original rules.

For skilling I just let my sims learn by doing. So they learned to cook by burning a few plates of fish, the learned to clean by cleaning etc. I allowed toddler toys from the start because my logic was hey kids are going to go bang on some hollow rocks to make pretty noises (xylophone) or try and build things with rocks (logic toy) their parents or older siblings might even carve them wooden toys or make toys out of grass and leaves for them (small toybox toy) so I allowed some toddler toys from the start. I think it would be very tedious without cribs especially if you're playing by the original rules of no house. Some people sacrificed one bed for unlimited toddler cribs while others played with a limited amount. I think you'll find that your sims don't strictly need to study skills.

I use this painting to change sim names. http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=289073 When it comes to giving new households new names you either need to use SimPe or a workaround. Personally I don't trust myself with Simpe so I use the name change painting to change everyone's last name. Then I move one sim out, move them into a lot and merge the rest of the family in.

Building Update
I built the 'native's lot', the port, a fisher lot and started on a farmer lot.

@alchemist: I'm not going by skintones fro my emperor either. I kinda nixed that rule by using custom skintones with a total of nine colors (babies, toddlers and children are all one color, white, and when they become a teen, their skin changes color depending on what skintone they are and what gender. The whole thing is explained on my website) My emperor will be decided as the male in the family with the most friends. So I have an excel sheet that has two pages. Page Two is a list of every family and every friends of the family, though they only count once. So if two Boretti's befriend the same Giampa, that Giampa only counts once in the Boretti list. Page One though has a bunch of formulas to figure everything out. I input the money and number kids (which is anyone teen and younger still on the lot), and lot worth of every family. It counts the number of friends from page two, and uses a bunch of formulas to tell me how people are ranked. A weighted formula gives me the final ranks, heavily weighing in the favor of friends, then in number of children, and just barely (in comparison to the other two) counting money and lot worth. Its complicated, it took me a long time to piece it together, and only kawaiimarshmallow knows the whole thing because she sat next to me and transfered the data onto her computer to attempt to use to track hers.

Anyway, in my game I need to go do the last day of teen camp then play them all one day back with their families before my round is over. So hopefully I'll have an update for y'all within the week. My Aoki family is apparently destined to be slaves since they have the lowest number of friends and the kids don't seem to be as interested in bringing home friends from school, which the other families do thus have lots of friends. Dunno, maybe the Aoki children can fix this at Teen Camp when its their turns. I think whatever family is in the fourth position when I create them is destined to be my least thriving. In all three attempts that I've made, my fourth family has ranked the lowest every time. I can't remember what was causing the Farrars in attempt #1 to be failing. In Attempt #2, the mom died thus limited the number of kids the family could have. And in this attempt, the Aokis are plagued by single births where the other families are having multiples, and long waits between some of the births. Not that some of the other families aren't having those right now, but since the women are getting older, that's okay with me. Anyhow, I'm off to get lost on the internet. I'll try playing my last day of Teen Camp tonight after work. Or tomorrow, assuming my sister doesn't command my attention as the Birthday Girl. ~VP

That sounds terribly like me ...




Hah. Look up the family trees of some of the early roman emperor on wikipedia, or, if you're hard to shock, Cleopatra (VII) . You'll find a few branches missing, especially with poor Nero - can't say his mother didn't do anything in her power to get him to the top. Other royalties, too. So, cousing marriages in anything between prehistoric and early modern? Go ahead, have fun.


Otherwise:

thanks to everybody for your replies and advice! Especially the name changing painting, it's perfect. As for toddlers: I really think that a few toys and at least a rug for babies make sense; that strikes me more as an ommission in the rules as an intentional decision.

By now my families are up and running (and a few bugs are bugging me, but that is another sordid story), and the heat is really turning into a problem - my poor Sims are sunburned half of the time, and no end in sight. That actually nearly snipped of one of the families before they even made it into the second generation - poor Luana was just happily married and happily pregnant, when she keeled over and the Grim Reaper turned up. Her husband Tor (no, not from Asgard) managed to plead her back into life. That wins him a thousand "best husband ever" points , but with nothing but summer I‘m a bit worried.

How do you guys handle that problem? I have couples which hardly get any work done because the one that‘s still standing has barely time to hydrate his poor crispy-fried spouse before he keels over him/herself. I try to let them sleep during the day and work in the night, but they don‘t need 12 hours sleep.

Apart from the little problems of my poor Sims dying on me - great challenge, and I‘m very impressed at how much great CC is out there.

I‘m toying with the idea of starting a blog about this challenge. Anyone here interested in reading stories like that or would that be purely self-indulgend?

The thing is with game mechanics (first) cousins marrying isn't quite possible and I know it makes me a little uncomfortable to marry cousins to one another.

Are you playing with huts? That makes things so much easier. Generally what I used to do was use a hot/cold shower mod and have overheating sims shower, drink water or relax on a bed/chair inside. Mostly this was enough to keep my sims green but it might be harder if you're playing with the social worker.

I probably read way too much Jane Austen, and history, to be uneasy about two of my Sims-cousins marrying, but of course: everybody plays to their own preferences. As far as I remember the rules, we'll be playing with only 5 couples plus one added during Roman Antiquity, so the gene pool will be a bit shallow as it is.



I do have huts, but it's not helping much - I just played one of my couples and they could hardly take care of their baby because five minutes after a glass of water they'd be back in heat-stroke, and as a side effect they were constantly exhausted and had to sleep. But thanks for the advice!

I can see I'll need hacks; or maybe I'll kick that "eternal summer" thing in the prehistoric phase. It doesn't make that much sense anyway - prehistoric humans had to deal with some awefully cold winters. And the last hours of my game-play consisted of little else but keeping my Sims out of heat-strokes - hardly the point of the challenge and it gets boring quickly.

@alchemist I guess that your problem is that nearly all your sims are already overheated and don't manage to get a normal body temperature again. So, maybe you could try resetting their temperature (for example with the Sim Blender) and then you might be able to get a grip on it with the help of the hot/cold shower hack and drinking water. Another useful object is the waterfall shower, because it increases fun and therefore sims are more likely to use it. And it has a 'Cool Down' funktion which also increases fun if I remember right.

The gene pool may be shallow but it is manageable even with nearly losing a couple of families to find non first cousin matches. I had three couples with three or fewer surviving children and fingers crossed I'm over the hardest part of finding matches and I married pretty much all my sims as per the original rules relating to class.

Try having them drink a few glasses of water in order then, the most important thing is letting them cool down completely. Try to keep them inside doing things that don't raise body temperature until they're back in the green. From memory sleeping in a bed will raise already elevated body temperature but napping on a bench inside will bring it down over night.

EDIT I think my game may be in trouble...

Why? Here's an excerpt from my spreadsheet, it's only up to the point where I've updated my blog to but things aren't looking good.

Males: 31
Females: 23

Why is this bad? Last round I had only two more males than females that means nearly every baby born this round was a boy.... which means I may have one round where it becomes very hard to marry sims off. Plus the abysmally high birth to death ratio this round I'll need to be careful to keep my sims alive and having plenty of kids for a few more rounds.

Erm okay I started the Challange today and.... well my Sims keep overheating, any help with that?

Keep an eye on the sims thermometers. When they become red, I usually let them have a drink of water, but sometimes they become sunburned first. Drinking water is the fastest way I know to cool sims down.
I have had little to no trouble with temperatures. I have a very controlling playing style, however... if one were to let loose sims all the time in forever-summer, I can foresee many sunburns in the future.

@lbsgirl24 I've had rounds where all sims born had the same gender, too. Though I've been rather lucky because I first had one round girls only and then one round boys only. So, it kind of balanced itself and everyone can be married quite easily. Maybe you'll be lucky, too? And even if not, I'm sure you'll find something interesting to do with your redundant males.

@Phoenixfire88 Like mentioned a few posts higher up this page: the Waterfall shower with the 'Cool Down' option, the hot/cold shower hack, drinking a lot of water and paying attention that the temperature is going completely down when you take care of it, so it doesn't raise immediately again.
Edit: Oh, and don't let them go to sleep with heightened temperature or they'll likely get an heatstroke.

I suppose, I have my fingers crossed. My death rate for the round is also around my birth rate, maybe a little higher this round so hopefully things pick up next round.

Sleeping while hot is fine as long as the sim is a) inside and b) on a bench or sofa rather than a bed.

Thanks for the link to the waterfall shower TheFlyingRacoon! Now overheating is less of a problem. Haven't finished my first rotation yet, but so far I enjoy it. Have gone the "after the end" route and use mutants in the place of the different skin colours and also added different habitats for them

2 families of purple skinned gnomes (replacement for S1 in the original rules)living in the jungle and profiting from the abundant fruit and water there.
1 family of lizard people replacing the S3/S4 couple living in a rocky gorge, still with enough fresh water for the rock shower, but less fertile than the lands of the gnomes.
And 2 families of cheetah people (replacement for S4) living in the dry grasslands of the local plateau so it is less fertile than the jungle AND there's not enough water for the rock shower...will be interesting.

So far the game has been funny with the welcoming committees. The cheetah people seem to be the most sociable ones, having visited the gnomes and the lizard people already and befriended them. The gnomes and lizard people on the other hand know nothing of each other.

Will also be interesting once the different strands of mutants start to mix, I expect some interesting hybrids to come from this.

Does anyone know where I can find a period appropriate charisma toy for toddlers?

I don't, but if you have the EP that allows Nursery Rhymes, you could have them do that over and over ad nauseum.

This charisma pot is what I use for charisma.

Me Me Me Me Me! :lovestruc I luuurve reading other ATOT blogs to see how other mad simmers are interpreting/twisting/not/coping with the challenge. Pretty sure my blog is self indulged >_> *pondering...* it's good fun looking back on what my sims got up to, because for sure you forget bits and pieces the further along you get, and having pics with stories rather than just hastily scribbled notes is always more interesting. So by all means self indulge away!

Totally delayed response, too, sorry... we had a cyclone whoosh through last week and my internet decided to DIE for FOUR days.... *the horror!* on the exact days I had free to play sims... "Don't play sims, Taliah, you can't update your blog... you'll get behind again and then get mad at yourself... oooh but just ONE family.... maybe TWO will be okay, yeah? Maybe THREE families....." five families later .... honestly, why do I even bother trying to control myself... (finished Round 2 though - booyeah! )

@TheFlyingRaccoon - your lots are amaaazing!

taliah~ (who is procrastinating her blog updating already)

I'm also using the hot/cold shower mod to keep my sims from overheating. having the shower, toilet, kitchen (but not dining area), and all the sleeping stuff (except the bench that no one can use to nap because there's usually a toddler playing the music sticks) inside helps too. I haven't had a case of overheating in a long while, though some sims do develop sunburns from heat frequently. I generally get to sims and get them into a cold shower before they get to sunburn stage though. And I've been playing a lot more hands-off than my normal play. anyone with a really low need get directed to fill that need. and people get told to work in the garden (usually whoever has the lowest in "Fun"). and when they get obsessive about taking babies out of the crib, they get directed to join whoever is fishing. But other than that I'm keeping mostly hands off. Well aside from friend making. any kid who brings a friend home from school is told to befriend the friend via Pescado's Macrotastics. and every day, one sim in each family gets to use the phone to raise any sagging relationships and befriend those he or she has met but not yet befriended. This sim is generally the oldest sim on lot that has relationships that need a boost. And now I really want to play. But I need to go to bed, so play will have to wait until tomorrow. ~VP

@LauriMizutani @lbsgirl24 I downloaded the charisma pot. And I always forget about nursery rhymes, so thanks for that reminder, too.

I've been updating my blog recently, trying to get it up to date again, if anyone wants to take a look. I also made some progress in my roman hood. The only buildings missing for the moment are the aparment houses for my town square and the temple. But I still need to furnish the palace and I'm kind of not really motivated. =P

I had that problem before, with challenges were the number of families are small and I didn't want to marry outsiders. First generation: 6 girls, one boy. What now? I think it's not so unrealistic, but how are the poor girls even to get a date without squabbles and fits of rage as soon as a previous date of the boy walks by?

On the danger of appearing to have very low morals: I'm thinking of introducing matri-central families, complete with "visiting marriage" - not made up, it's done in some places in Asia, like the Yunnan province. Basically means that marriage partners can change more easily, children belong in their maternal family and who exactly their biological father (or fathers) are isn't of much concern. I think I remember there's a no-jealousy-hack around; that would certainly be helpful.

The over-heating, and: what was that about Plant Sims?
 

Hi,

I had the same problem and it reduced drastically once I put in a ceiling and closed all the walls in the hut - yep, due to my building system (I force my Sims to dig up enough bones and stones to build walls from them) they weren't all closed.

I also googled a bit, and apparently in Sims2, rooms directly under a roof, without a ceiling or another floor above them, get very hot. Could be a bug or could be on purpose, I'm not sure.


** Plant Sims **

Ree Conn-Ar has just vaporized one plant too many and is now a (very pretty!) Plant Sim. Dang. Or should I say "good"? I think I read somewhere that in this challenge, Plant Sims are allowed to have one or two babies. But I didn't have the nerve to dig through 90 pages of comments. (I am however toying with the thought of doing that and collecting all the known issues, rule-questions answered and common exceptions / variations to the rules. Because I'm an idiot .)

I interpreted "one small shack" as such a small building that it's just large enough to house two cribs for the babies. My Sims spend the whole day outside -> lots of heatstrokes without the waterfall. I'll be glad when I'm out of the stone age.

The thing is this isn't the first generation and the number of boys has slowly been creeping up for a few generations now leading to a possible problem down the track. Hopefully it doesn't last too much longer. I did something similar in one of my earlier attempts and it was fun I think if I ever restarted again I'd try something different to patriachal societies.

@alchemist There are actually no official rules concerning plantsims, but I think most of us limit plantsim babies to one per plantsim. ^-^

@Phoenixfire88 My prehistoric sims had all their beds plus a bathroom plus fridge, sink and toys inside their hut. Tables, chairs and fire-/cooking places were mostly outside.

@taliahneth I've been catching up with your blog yesterday evening and I have a question: How exactly do you manage the THS/birth system? For example if one of your female sims dies during birth. Killing her is rather easy with the one or other hacked object, but what do you do with the baby? If it's an single birth, you can calculate the different values beforehand and avoid the baby being created, but what about multiples? Can you kill babies with normal hacked objects? Or toddlers?

On another note, my blog is now updated until the end of round 10 (family tree, posts and family funds).

Thank you! Then I'll let her have one plant-baby and afterward probaby change her back to her chlorophyl-free state.

And yet another question: do you use the aspiration rewards? I'm hesitant because I often feel that they make the game too easy, and because the look of the them! The more prehistoric or medieval a hood looks, the worse an eye-sore the thinking helmet is. And I haven't seen recolors anywhere.

@alchemist Just remember that plantbabies grow up way quicker than normal sims (4 days toddler and then adult), so if you want to keep the generations in sync you could wait until other sims of the generation are close to adulthood before you let your sim have the plantbaby.

I don't use the aspiration rewards, but I don't use them in my normal game either because they make things too easy.

I use the aspiration rewards on occasion, mostly smart milk because I very rarely direct my tot sims to skill and do like for them to accumulate more than a skill point or two.

I'm doing things a little differently with plantsims. When a plantsim grows into an elder I set the T&Q odds to 35 single/35 twins/15 triplets/15 quads for the plantsim and have them grow a plantbaby. It's likely that my plantsim numbers will grow very, very slowly (if all the adults survive to elderhood) but it makes it a little random.

I first thought that I might cure Ree (that's the gardener who overdid it with the bug spray) from being a PlantSim, especially when one morning around 5 her sunlight level was near the minimum and I was afraid she might die away from it. But it's not that easy - I can't reach anyone from the gardner club under "call - service", the matchmaker/gypsy doesn't sell the cure, and no witch in sight.

For that matter - I'd love to have a witch Sim, after all, for most of history there were shamans, witch doctors, healer deities and their priests, miracle cures... and there's nothing against it in the rules. Only trouble: I'd have to send a Sim to a community lot to meet someone magically inclined.


By the way, I made the mistake of allowing my Sims to dig for treasure, because I only let them build walls when the have stones and wood (well, bones) to build with. I think I'll have them hand all the maps, golden frogs, vases and treasure chests to the tax collector. That should allow for a community lot soon enough.

How do you handle digging for treasure?

They can't die from lack of sunlight they'll just pass out on the grass until they wake up. I know some people cured a few plantsims by using hacks or calling the garden club so if you wanted to the option is there.

I'm trying to get a collection of all the supernaturals by the end so I'm probably going to make a sim a witch if they make four genie wishes. Easier said than done in my game since from now on they can use a lamp exactly once (well I may keep a few around for emergencies like if someone wipes out the Morans). I think if someone is magically inclined enough to give themselves wealth, a long life, power to cheat death, and peace of mind from four genie lamps their family earns they deserve the occult status. I still have no idea how to work in a vampire (maybe if a witch ressurects a dead sim or something) but plantsims and zombies should be easy enough to keep going. Witches will be hereditary just like my werewolves but maybe just in the same gender as the original sim or something to keep them rarer. Or perhaps rather than rolling and making it automatic their initiation can have a chance of killing young witches/warlocks.

I love the idea of using stones to build with. If you wanted to give them a free lot I'm sure real Neanderthals went for a walk in the woods every now and then. I didn't use digging at all personally but the money may come in later when it comes to building Rome.

So I started this challenge a while ago and today I made it to the Roman Era... Just to realize that I wasn't happy with my Neanderthal Era at all. I feel like I just hurried through it and didn't play it properly, plus I only had 8 families or so when I made it to Roman. I just wasn't happy with it! So, crazy as I am, I started over. This time I'll be active in this thread about it too. I'm not sure if I should make a blog for it as well, anyone has any thoughts? Are you who blog about your challenge feeling like you're enjoying it more?

Well, anyway, I'm gonna post some pics here and tell some of my progress. I haven't even started the first round yet, but the families are made, the huts built and the rules set so here we go!

I named my neighborhood Winter Valley, and I plan to have a little twist in the weather where the seasons go Spring -> Fall -> Winter -> Winter when I finish the Neanderthal Era. First I'll go Summer -> Summer -> Fall -> Spring to make the tropical heat a little "wintery" and after this rotation I'll start an ice age. I also saw some interesting rolls on some page earler where the wolves might attack, the rain made flooding and such and I'll be incorporating this too! With this, InTeen and ACR I'm expecting lots of drama this time

I have to be honest I cure my plant sims. With the female sims constantly being pregnant a lot of the farming falls to the male sims and so far 3 guys morphed into plant sims. I don't want a whole community of them so they all called on the "wise shamaness who lives in the woods" and bought cures from her.
Thinking of building bigger huts once the 2nd generation rolls around, just to keep the sims out of the sun.

Sorry for the double post, but one of my families (the reptilian one) just collectively died. Apparently the game did not recognize the floor tiles I put on their house as a roof -> both parents down with sunstroke . By the time I realized what was going on the father had already died, then the mother had her twins, passed out again and had all four children taken by a social worker. Then she had another breakdown (the first was after her husband died), another heat stroke and then died.

Since losing a whole family on the second rotation would be bad I replaced them with crimson-skinned demon mutants who moved into the jungle with the purple gnomes. To avoid basically cheating I'll also replace the two cheetah families with another crimson skinned one and a pair consisting of a green guy and a pale blue lady (Elf mutants?) only keeping the purple families around.(since I've kinda grown attached to them) In the storyline in my head the Cheetah people will still stick around on their plateau (I'll just won't play them anymore) and will be driven off (moved to the family bin) when the other families enter the Roman stage.
Is that permissible?

@TheFlyingRaccoon - I might not be interpreting the question right (it may have something to do with reading 2500 pages in two days therefore my eyeballs aren't quite as firmly attached to my brain as usual) but here's the answer to what I think you're asking! Babies all get a free shot at life so no worries about how to kill them. The THS for babies is a 1 to 100, they can't die, if they get a 1 and then as a toddler roll a -1, that gives them 0 and therefore the poor tot dies, but if it rolls a +1 making it 2 then happy travels~ As for birthing mothers - their birthing score is rolled AFTER the birth therefore if they end up with their THS in negative numbers they die and leave the baby behind. Clear as mud? Good good.

To be perfectly honest when I first started using the THS for the Warwickshire challenge I was kinda staring at it sort of in awe like "that is SO cool!" and then confusion "ok... how does it actually work..." and then horror "...I am never figuring this out..." and then about a week later I don't even know how I was doing it. So anyone serious in learning more I suggest heading on over to the Warwickshire challenge thread and asking the inventor there~

@abcbok - I'm sorry what? Did you just say you're starting again? Are you crazy?! (don't mind taliah she's lost count of how many times she's played the neanderthal era) ahem... while I've got my serious face on I wasn't happy with how my last hood ended up and I restarted, so all power to ya! I had to think about the blog and I've come to the conclusion that, personally, I find the blog does help, especially in the first few rounds; it helps me get to know my sims, and therefore I care more about them and am less inclined to rush hastily toward Roman Era not knowing a single of the four hundred and sixty seven souls now at mercy of my hand bwahaha... I'm sorry, evil side has been locked up too long, ahem. (467 souls may be an exaggeration... maybe...). But at the same time it delays things a lot, so, it's really a personal thing. Also a blog helps remind me of what's been going on when I get many rounds down the track and have totally forgotten which great-grandparent belongs to who. Changing the seasons is a great idea also; reminding me of the exact reason WHY my sims are not now currently roasting because I didn't give them four summers of hell... (pretty sure the THS is killing them off enough already but we'll see, there may be a climate changing asteroid catastrophe in the near future...)

I dislike plant sims very much

No, actually I find plant sim toddlers too freaking adorable and breed a gazillion of the cute little gremlins... which then grow up what do you do with a gazillion adult plant sims?! XD ie - best to just avoid temptation altogether.

taliah~

@taliahneth That was exactly what I wanted to know, thanks. One last question though: What if you get twins (or triplets) and the mother reaches a health score under 0 after the first (or second) birth? I guess, you simply keep that additional baby then? The Warwickshire is really awe-inspiring. And genius.

@abcbok You could simply try and start a blog. If you don't like it or feel it's slowing you down too much, you can always stop.

Thanks for the replies guys! I just finished the first round, already have lots of things going on I'm gonna try this blogging-thing out just to "bond" more with my characters. Don't wan't to be playing a bunch of strangers haha. I'll post a link as soon as I get it started

To avoid a double post: My blog! Feel free to check it out

lbsgirl talking about supernaturals, made me think about how I'll handle it in my challenge. I would really like to introduce werewolves and witches/wizards during the roman era. But I fear that her idea with the four wishes may take too long? I mean, until now I got 3 lamps in 11 rounds, so the chance that one household gets four lamps is really small. =/ So I might just give the first person to pass the magic lamp after it was brought by the gypsy a 50% chance to discover the world of magic if it is an adult or teen. ^-^ As for werewolves: My problem is that if you're not controling your sims it's close to impossible to get one. So if I get a knowledge sim who's a master of a dog/wolf, I'll probably make him one.

And I resumed and actually finished (I think? at least for the moment) the work on my ROS, which I'll use from the roman era on to make things more interesting.

I updated the blog again today, things are really moving on unexpectedly A lot different from my first neanderthal hood, this time it's truly fun and not just work to hurry to the Roman Era. Going to play the third round now, can't wait :D

Supernaturals are a major part of how I play my game, so I've got about three tons of rules about them. They are actually an essential part of civilisation-building in my world, in that a clan needs to have a plantsim before it can learn agriculture (gardening), a werewolf for fishing/hunting, a vampire for dates, parties and influence, a witch for aspiration/career rewards and an alien for fire (ovens, lamps, fireplaces, etc.)

In addition to the Accidentals (sims who get transformed during gameplay), I have Genetic Occults, who are born that way. I geneticized Astiees's sparkling skins among my normal skin set so I always have a chance of a sim being born with sparkling skin - those are automatically Occults, and must remain so all their lives (no chance to be cured). I either roll to see which type of Occult they will be or pick the same type as that sim's closest Occult ancestor, if there is one.

-Plantsims: Someone who gets turned into a plantsim must spawn a plantbaby immediately, and they are changed back to normal via cheat (Parsimonious potions) right after. The way I see it, the weirdness all gets out with the baby because plantsimism was just the symptoms of Mother Nature having a little gift for that family...
A plantsim is "worth" half a generation, so if a founder (Gen01) has a plantbaby, it will be numbered as Gen00.5, and if it has a plantbaby in its turn that one will be numbered Gen02. That way, it takes two gens of plantsims to catch up with the Normals, so the problem with their aging faster is less pronounced. Sims born plantsims can't be changed back to normal by spawning a plantbaby.

-Vampires: A vampire who reaches permaplat is automatically cured, even if their state is genetic (they're finally at peace with their life and can now go on), which takes care of the immortality problem that might arise otherwise (having a vampire from Gen02 still alive by the end of the challenge would be funny and can still be done, but I'd rather not have all my vampires stick around for that long).

-Witches choose their alignment according to how many Nice points they have, so a grouchy sim will be a bad witch, a nice one will be a good witch and in-between gets neutral witch.

-Zombies are not allowed to interact with the population; no matter the era, they're still dangerous brain-eaters (I have the zombie apocalypse mod from MATY).

-Aliens: Every night, I roll a dice (odds are 1/10 for Prehistory) for all adults, teens and elders on the lot to see if they get abducted by aliens. If they are and are not already pregnant/unable to have children, they get impregnated - if our modern technology isn't enough to dissuade them from messing around, what makes you think they will refrain from it back in a time where nobody could even detect their presence, let alone try to stop them?

-Nothing to say about werewolves yet, sorry

During Prehistory (I'm still in that era because I'm actually at my third attempt right now), my Occults get treated the same as Normals, but afterwards, there will be more or less strict restrictions proper to each era. Imagine Renaissance and the witch hunts, or certain Occults being treated as the avatars of gods during Antiquity, or them being hunted down to be experimented upon in the Victorian era...

Any suggestions?

@TheFlyingRacoon did I misread that or are you not controlling your sims? O.o how are they still living?

@Eldonyx I'm in awe of how well thought out your supernaturals are. Depending on how rare you want them to be you might find you have a ton of supernaturals by the end though.

Ehmm... no, you didn't misread that? I mean, it's not that I never give them commands, but I try to interfere as little as possible. I'm actually mostly observing, giving them just commands for things they can't do autonomously (like repairing stuff or gardening and most of the time baby/toddler care, too, because they are kind of unable to manage that XD), apart from that I sometimes cancel interactions I don't want them to do, so I'm kind of guiding them in the right direction. And sometimes (really rare, I swear) when they're simply too stupid/annoying, I lose patience and give them a nudge in the right direction. But yeah, generally I'm not controlling them.

Wow...I can't imagine just letting my Sims do whatever, I think they'd annoy me too much if I left them to their own devices.

How do you guys handle pets? The domestication of the dog started in prehistoric times, but the rules don't say anything about it..

Am in my second rotation now, lots of children, lots of farming. But man, I'll be glad once the prehistoric era is over... I just finally want to get to antiquity. .

I played my last neighborhood like that, not controlling them at all, but for me it led to generation 3 being smaller than generation 2 because of all the fights the kids had So this time I'm controlling them a little more... Not much though, I still want the sims to decide what's going to happen ^^

I just posted Round 3, in this round I had my first children die because of the rolls I do everytime they have a thunderstorm Two girls, but now the ratio is 7-7 so it doesn't matter too much... Except both of them were pretty and it's kind of rare in my game I don't like to play with nothing but perfect sims, now I get happy everytime someone turns out to be cute

That supernatural thing sounds pretty awesome. I've read through lots of pages here and gotten tons of inspiration. I'm thinking that all families will be normal humans, until someone gets a genie lamp... Then they have a chance of becoming a supernatural or something like this We'll see!

EDIT: I roll everytime a wolf enters the lot to see if an attack occurs. If it doesn't, they are free to befriend and try to adopt the wolf. Having a wolf can protect them from future wolf attacks

So my sims are expecting generation 3 now I've been posting on the blog after each round so if anyone is curious just take a look
I have nearly two weeks off now so I might make it to the Roman Age very soon *nolife*

Wow you go fast im just starting my TOT and plan to blog about it (even though it's my first time) and lbsgirl24 wow ive also never seen a entire family die without elders before either ouch

@abcbok It's really amazing how fast you're advancing. XD I'm not even in the roman era yet (but nearly there :D) and I started this damn challenge in january '13. >_<

@Theflyingracoon ah that makes sense. I've let up a lot on the god modding with this challenge but I still control sims to make them garden and make friends and sometimes clean as well as the things you mentioned.

@Phoenixfire88 I handle and cats much like I would in a normal game. I have one family with a few (aka 8) wolves from wolves they started adopting in the neanderthal era. To simulate domestication when they had two wolves breed and the pups fully trained in calmness I made a CAS wolf that wasn't aggressive and added her to the family.

I was going to just play with strays but I have pretty bad luck with adopting strays and I prefer the shock of seeing kittens/puppies from the adoption center growing into monstrosities. At the moment most bred pets were bred from adopted pets or from the wolves. At the end of the roman era I'm going to use all my free CAS sims to get pretty, era appropriate pets and then try to keep the pet population going without adoption. Should be fun.

At the moment I don't kill pets for fighting because it's just a pain to do but I may have to start with the rules I'm implementing for the Dark Ages. Do any of you kill pets? If so how do you do this?

@abcbok I tried to comment on your blog but I'm not sure if it went through. Regardless I too am shocked by your death rate. Are you finding all those rolls make for a really high death rate?

@jckgwk I'm still a little in shock about it but realistic sickness does do that. In the past even when realistic sickness wipes out nearly a whole family I have a few toddlers and babies who survive (normally a child as well) to keep the line going. I'm just happy it wasn't one of my core families.


I'm just one round from the roman era. I'm kicking it off a day early because my gen 5 sim grows up on the first day of round 7, I mean come on, I'm not playing through a whole round because she was born one pesky day late. I still haven't quite finished building yet. I need to finish the second lord lot, build a third viking lot and another lot for a vassal and serfs, on a related note since I have so few families I'll be playing with one/two serfs to a vassal. Later when I have more families I think I might let a third serf family live in the protective walls of the town but after that they're on their own. Since I've had all spring/summer up until this point in the Roman era this next round will be in autumn to prepare for the long winter I'll be starting the dark ages with.

Notebooks saved my Sims' lives
 

Thanks for sharing your stories and ideas about the game. I think that those of us who are still playing this challenge two to three years later are all a little addicted to our notebooks. But I have to say how happy I am that I was keeping really detailed notes because when my hard drive got fried, I was able to rebuild all of the couples who were getting ready to get married right where they were a year ago. That way I didn't have to start all over with a new set of five families. I also use a single color for my families based on what "country" they live in. Green for England, Blue for France, Red for Spain, Brown for Germany, Yellow for Romania, Purple for Italy (King) and White for Turkey. My King and Dukes wear crowns, my barons wear headbands and my peasants wear cloth caps. That way when someone wanders onto a lot, I can tell their rank and ethnicity.

What does everyone do to help keep track of your little Sims?

Family Trees
 

I used a My Heritage for awhile until I hit the 200 sims limit and then I didn't want to pay for more. Does anyone know a good free site that will allow for more names? I imagine at this point that my full tree would have about 1000 names on it.

I found that I had to have a small hut with a roof (floor tiles to make a ceiling and not just a decorative roof). I tried to have them sleep in tents, but I lost so many Sims that I had to build more families.

I've finally decided my rules for getting witches and vampires. Any sim gaining the power to cheat death and peace of mind successfully and then get struck by lightning will turn into a witch. If a sim wishes for power to cheat death and a long life successfully or not then they have a chance of turning into a vampire. Maybe 1/10 chance or something.

@TheFlyingRaccoon Haha well, it's not necessarily a good thing Me and my boyfriend barely have a social life outside of our computers and each other ^^' But hey, at least I can play sims all day ._:

@lbsgirl24 Hm, no, I don't think I recieved any comment from you :/ I think my death rate is low, at least compared to yours haha My rolls are the only thing that kills people so far, I don't have realistic sickness or anything (yet). I'm glad I play with them though, would be really boring if nobody died
And I did kill a wolf, the only way I found was possible was to age her with boolprop and then Set to birthday again when she was an elder. She did get two or three more days, though, but she died in the end.

@cespencer That thing with the colors is really smart, I might use that later on. So far they are only 6 households though, so I still recognize everyone ^^

That description fits me and my boyfriend pretty accurately, too, so no excuse there. XD I guess, the main reason why I'm advancing so slow is because I have phases where I don't play the game at all and which last sometimes for a few months (or half a year *cough* hasn't played between september and february >_>).

I also pretty much have no life either. It just takes me forever to play a round b/c like TheFlyingRaccoon, I take long breaks to do other things. Like play games on my playstation that I've already beat at least two dozen times so far. I have managed to get my fourth round/week finished, but my internet is being annoyingly slow so updating my website is exceptionally annoying right now. Especially since I changed how the pictures show up on my Generation pages (that took for-freaking ever do due to crappy internet.) However, I'll probably be back either in an hour or two, or possibly tomorrow to announce that I updated.

In regards to colors, I might use colors when I hit roman times to denote classes. I know at that point I'm going to pause playing for a short while while I find and make some era appropriate clothing in the proper colors. There's an idea rolling around in my had to make some togas in separates so that I can mix and match different styles of tops and lengths of bottom. And possibly use a sash thats an accessory to denote class... This bears some thinking on, and I have like four to six rounds before I need to work on this (so at my rate of play thats like a year or two from now) But for now, the colors are just because I made my suits in eight colors and each sim wears one color their entire life, so I keep track of that. And only Gen Two gets a random color assigned. The Gen Threes will wear the same color as their same gender parent. ~VP

Edit: And I'm back a few hours later to announce an update to my site. Details are on my Updates page, but its just Round Four, and a change to how my Generations Pages look. Oh and an addition (I think it's only one) to my links page for new ToT sites. If anyone sees that I haven't got them listed on the links page (and you posted about your blog/site on this thread) let me know. I'm trying to keep a comprehensive list of all of us, but sometimes I miss things. Also if I missed you, a link would be appreciated so that I don't have to sift through a bunch of back pages to find you. ~VP

Haha, so we're not the only ones
I just recently started playing The Sims again after playing WoW for nearly a year. Our private server died though, so we had to find new hobbies I played some Sims 4 before realizing it only made me miss Sims 2, and here I am Can't get enough now :D

Oh, that link collection makes me realize I should put one on my blog, too

That link collection took forever to compile. Mostly b/c there are so many pages on this thread to sift through. I may have had to steal a few from other people's sites too...

I dabble in Sims 3, but I keep coming back to 2. I just can't play S3 b/c I can't stand my sims being out of my control. Frogsnack gets major points for managing to play this challenge in that game. ~VP

I did a list now, but I only took the links I found on the last five pages of this thread. I might have missed someone. If someone wants to join the list, just tell me!

I like The Sims 3, but I get tired of it pretty quickly. Nothing beats The Sims 2!

Just finished Round 9 and if I calculated correctly I only need 3 more rounds for Fulvia Zima (my firstborn generation 3) to become an adult! She's a teenager already But now I have 8 households and the ones with 8+ sims can take 2 hours to play... But I am approaching the Roman Era, I guess

abcbok, I am so jealous of you. I'm in my third iteration of this challenge, and my Gen 2's *should* start having babies this next round, but it all depends on when my soon-to-be-adults get pregnant. My oldest Gen 2 is two days from her age transition. So three or four rounds after that child is born, I get to start Roman times. Of course I might give that child a few days as an adult in Neander-times just to finish out the round. Or start Roman times a day or two before he/she hits adult, all depending on timing. So approximately three and half rounds after my first baby is born, my Roman Ages start (finally.) I was looking at what my cutoff for teen camp was and its two rounds/weeks to the day from birth to teen transition, as long as the child was born before 6pm, and 11 more days as a teen, so that 3 and half weeks/rounds. So depending on when in the week the first Gen 3 is born, my roma times will be starting a few days early or late. Just so that I don't have two eras in one round. Wow, I ramble...

On the plus side, I have three days off from work (it was four, but I spent today waiting in line to get my drivers license transferred between states), so hopefully i can get through quite a bit of Round Five, and hopefully have a Gen 3 child, and if I play long enough, maybe hit Roman Times for the first time. But considering it usually takes me a month of playtime to complete a round, and I'd have to do three, that last one might be a ways off. But we shall see. ~VP

I've read about people using genealogy sites a few times now, so let me share two possible alternate solutions: FreeMind and CMap.

Both are completely free programs used to map ideas, and I've found they're extremely practical to keep track of all sorts of information, from the plan of my newest school project to the genealogy and personal characteristics of my sims.
CMap is most flexible about linking what to what and putting stuff anywhere you want, but FreeMind is visually more structured and allows you to hide the branches of the tree you're not interested in at the moment.

I'm not including links because I'm not sure that's allowed, but you can easily Google them.
Have fun

I have to say, once my first generation 3 child was born I was surprised at how quickly she became a teenager. If you're completely sick of the Neanderthal Era, you could always get the teens pregnant if you have InTeen My oldest one is in the very first household, so even when I get her all grown up I'll have 7 more households to play -.- I'll try to enjoy it since it's the last, though

Round 10 is finished now and all my founders are dead... I guess it's a good thing ^^ And I'm also excited because this generation has at least one born with all the hair and eye colors So no genes has gone missing yet!
I did notice a small problem though, I decided I don't care about pairing them up after skin color in this era since I feel like they can't possibly know what's going to happen in the future, and plus they aren't going to be able to marry whoever in the coming eras so I'd let them do it now. But by doing this I only got one couple with skin 1 and 2 xD I'm solving this by letting all the males with skin 1 and 2 be eligable for emperor even if their wife happens to have skin 3, but the heir to the throne will be the first son with s1 or s2... But I think I already know which family will be emperors, honestly
Well, I'm off again! Updating in a couple of hours (big family now!)

EDIT: And oh, thank you Eldonyx I've been thinking about how I'm going to keep track of them all easily. Will check it out!

I'm using tribalpages for my family tree. I like it because it's quite intuitive to use and especially if you have most of your sims in there already, it's really easy to add new children. And you can have photos in the tree (although you can just upload around 100 or so without paying).

I nearly finished rebuilding my hood. The buildings are all done (except some furniture missing, which I'll add when I play the respective families), I 'copied' my sims over from the other hood and adjusted their characters/interests/etc. and am currently setting the relationships, which is by far the most tedious part. With around 50 sims and 50*49 possible relationships (as I have to set them from both sides). Thankfully my sims don't know all of their neighbours. XD

Right now I took a little break, though, from all that relationship setting and am updating my blog. ^-^

My Neandersim just got themselves two brand-spanking-new community lots. My phones keep randomly screwing up, so until I can figure out how to fix that, they can go to the new Hunting Grounds and Watering Hole. The Hunting Grounds is a 2x2 lot filled with lots of trees, a couple of benches, a grill, and an axe throwing station. Only Teen and Adult males are allowed there, unless a child goes with his father. The Watering Hole is also 2x2 and is open to everyone. There's a pond, a waterfall shower and a hot springs. To complete it are a few benches, a grill, a couple of pieces of wooden playground equipment (thank you Phaenoh), and a few toddler toys since I have a mod that allows toddlers to join their families at community lots.. Plus the requisite trees and bushes.

I'm half worried I'll have to migrate everyone to a new neighborhood to solve my phone issue because its the only neighborhood it occurs in.

And I too, am a user of Tribal Pages, even if my current linked to family trees are on a weebly. I DO have a tribal pages for them that is mostly updated. It might be missing a few plantsims, and the newest births, but it is up to date otherwise. ~VP

Phew, I just spent a lot of time making a family tree... Was very surprised to see I've already had a total of 72 sims! Really wondering how

I am officially beginning my last round tomorrow! It's very exciting And everything is still up to date on the blog
I'm really thinking about changing my writing style somewhat for the Roman Era, we'll see what I come up with. I'm going to start using Fraps too to get better pictures.
I'm going to bed now so I can start playing soon, haha

@abcbok ah ok thanks with the pet killing thing. I think I migth be able to introduce a mortality to my pets soon. I'm loving your recessive haired sims, it's so great when things start popping back up isn't it? I think I shrieked when I saw the first 'where did your hair come from' babies. Regarding the skin colour thing I'm pretty sure pretty much no-one kept that rule in so if you're more comfortable having them fight it out with everyone none of us would hold it against you.

@VP your community lots sound beautiful and congrats on getting so close to the next era. Must be exciting.

I haven't had much time to play sims lately and despite having a week off this coming week I'll be focusing on writing, since I'm doing camp NaNoWriMo this month. I have been thinking about my dark ages and the future spouses for some of my sims (with class restrictions there still isn't much choice unfortunately) I think I'm going to be adopting a system of sieges, similar to what Cespencer has been doing but with my own twist. I'm probably going to roll to start a siege when the vikings walk past the first household played in a region. The odds will vary to do with the age of the sim walking by, whether they are accompanied by a large dog and on how late it is. If a siege is triggered it will start on the same day of the round for all households in the region but it cannot start after the first household has been played.

If sims are outside and don't have dogs to warn them whenever a Viking walks past they'll have a chance of being killed/injured. The siege has a chance of carrying over seasons but if things are going on too long the lord/monarch family will be able to try to make a deal with the vikings. They can try to bribe the vikings or form a diplomatic allegiance through marriages. If that fails they can always attack the vikings with teen and older sims. These things won't necessarily be successful and could end badly. While a siege is on sims cannot have their soup each round, will not be able to visit other lots (I'll be using the prisoner tokens to do this) and will not be able to bring in food from the outside. I'll also be limiting how many crops they can grow. Should be buckets of fun.

lbsgirl, i completely forgot about Inge's Prison stuff (though I was going to use them in later eras). Now I have a better way to keep my hermit sim (whose only purpose is to be a placeholder on a lot so I can change the last name of a household without much trouble) off lots than by making sure there's a visitor controller on every lot and banning her when she pops up. If she has a prison token in her inventory, the VC will automatically ban her. Which reminds me, I need to put the VC on my new community lots. ~VP

@lbsgirl24 oh yes, I was super happy too haha. And now I love seeing my only blonde's hair amongst all her dark haired siblings ^^ I've noticed that everyone seems to have their own version of the rules and I think it's great. As long as we enjoy our playing like we're supposed to anything is fine And I am very excited to read about your Dark Ages!

I just finished my last Stone Age (since they aren't Neanderthals I don't call it this ^^) round and I'm going to start preparing for the Roman Era now. I have some buildings done, like a palace that I may have gone a little crazy with considering how it costs 400k But I have some more buildning to do, downloads to make and I haven't even calculated who's my Emperor yet. But I'm super happy and excited!

Wow you did all that fast im impresed what's your secret

I started playing the roman era! I made it! \o/ Well, I have not even finished the first day in the first household, yet, but psst. :P

Hopefully you get your building done faster than me, @abcbok My palace is 'just' a bit over 100k, I think. ^-^

@jckgwk Haha, honestly I just play too much Sims How far have you come?

@TheFlyingRaccoon How fun that we're entering the Roman Era at the same time ^^ I seriously spent the whole day building, furnishing, decorating and giving make-overs... Phew! And I'm not done yet, still have to build the bathing house. But I'm really pleased with how everything looks and turned out How's it going for you?

I haven't started with the sims yet because I'm on vacation right now and today is the last day I can access internet so I will have a lot to update next week.

Just finished my first Roman round, Colosseum and all... One round is already taking a lot longer than it used to. This one took several days of playing every day :P
There is a cold running in the neighborhood that I can't seem to get rid of. I was very surprised to see sims dying from it (well only the slaves seems to die) when I don't even have realistic sickness. It's probably their lack of hygiene and energy from not having any showers and everyone sharing a room.
Well, I guess I'm off to start Round 2 *still no life* See you!

@abcbok how are your slaves making money if they don't have jobs at all? I felt bad giving kids a high chance of dying in the Colosseum so I weighted my odds so it wouldn't happen as often. I see you're continuing to blitz through the rounds. I'm in awe of your progress.

@lbsgirl24 If I find a job in Criminal, the adult male takes it (or female if there is no male). So far it hasn't been available... But I did give them quite a big starting capital, that's going to last them about 5-6 rounds if they are a family of 8 and no one has a job, so they're fine ^^ It really didn't feel good having the kids fight, I'm not going to have two in a row. If I grab a child's name, I'm just putting it away
I have to admit, I think I'm slowering my tempo soon. One household is becoming a lot more than it used to be...

I'm thinking about putting a rule about risks of being in the Criminal career, like I roll every time it's Colosseum-time and see if anyone of them has been caught. If they are, they have to fight. This would probably make the risk of children fighting smaller too

The way I handle children is I pull two names of child and up slaves. Depending on what I draw I proceed as follows.

• 2 children: proceed to the fighting
• 1 child, 1 teen: roll another teen and proceed to the fighting
• 1 child, 1 adult: roll another adult and proceed to the fighting
• 2 teens: proceed to the fighting
• 1 teen, 1 adult: roll another teen and up sim, proceed to the fighting with the sim of the same age group as the third sim
• 2 adults: proceed to the fighting

I like that system. I'll definitely keep it in mind

Just a question to all who's playing or has played the Roman Era; which class do/did you like to play the most?
Personally I'm finding my plebeian families the most fun, I think because their lives are simple but managable and usually happy anyway. They spend a lot of time with their kids and each other for fun and get fond of their family members. It's nice. ^^

That's a great question- I love playing the Emporers, because they have servants in the house and can get into a lot more mischief because they have free time. I also like the slaves as they tend to have bugger families and more happens when I get back around to them. I guess that makes me an extremist?

I have my favorite families but I don't have a specific class I like playing. I tend to find the emperor's family alright to play (because it's a change from the slaves), as with the first plebian and the first slave family. Other than that I find my small families to be a nice change (well until a bloodline is hanging by a thread at which point they become terrifying). The only families I don't really like playing are plebians and patricians when they have too many kids because that messes up my pyramid.

If I had to had to pick I'd probably say plebians because I love home bussinesses and at the moment most of the families are pretty chill.

Bah, I've run into some trouble...
I built a new graveyard for my roman sims, however, when I was nearly finished with all the mausoleums and the terrain-changes and all that, I noticed I accidentally made it a residential lot. So I used the changelotzoning cheat to change it.
However, when I tried to move Empress Monifa's grave to the graveyard, and entered the community lot to move the grave to the correct spot, the grave wasn't there... Oh ok I thought, respawned her grave with the batbox and tried to make her son walk to the graveyard with her grave in the inventory to place it that way. I placed it, but not exactly where I wanted it, so I entered the graveyard again to move it, and it was gone again
Is there any way to make the grave stay or do I have to rebuild the whole thing? I'm guessing this is because I had to use the cheat to make it a community lot. Does anyone know anything about how to solve this?

I know this is a little off-topic, but I hope that's ok >.<

wow I haven't been on in a LONG time~
Im just about to start the Roman era now! (the generation has been born! Now to wait until they are adults!)
Ive really missed this challenge - even if I haven't been on in idk a year or two? haha~

Has anyone found some good family tree sites? Im using Family Echo right now, but I have no idea how to let others see it~!

I find I really like playing the badly behaved families. There is always so much drama going on in those homes. Sibling rivalry, family feuds, unwed pregnancies, divorces, crying babies, mad dogs, kitchen fires, you name it and it is happening. I find it entertaining to see what is going to happen next. (Kind of like reality TV). My well-behaved families are all loving and caring. They are content and happy, but somehow I don't think they are as much fun to play and watch. (I fear that deep down inside I want to be bad)

For reasons unknown, I just put a Roman Page on my website. Its still hidden, so don't bother going to look for it, but its there once I do hit the roman era. Which will probably be sometime next year. I have unhidden the Gen 3 page, but not yet published it. That one is because Gen Three has officially been conceived. Two of my gen 2 couples are now expecting. And once I manage to finish round five, you guys will have three pages of Generations to look at. I have manged to get through two days of Round five, so progress has been made. The eldest eight of gen 2 have become adults and gotten married, there are now six lots instead of five since the Rivnays had two boys. My current batch of teens are all on the Teen Lot and all 16 of them participated in the gardening challenge. These guys seem to like frustrating the hell out of me, by doing things like all trying to hang out in the teeny tiny toilet part of the hut. And try to shoo each other away to use the toilets and get blocked by like four people and then give up and get shooed again. Repeat to infinity until I get tired and tell the lot of them to "go here" anywhere that's not the bathroom. Other than that, they do what they want. So far none of them have gotten in fights. On the main lots however, on of my plantsims picked a fight with one of the sims just off the teen lot. And due to all the swimming those guys choose to do, he had a few body skill points while she had none. So now there's one less plantsim and one more gravestone in the neighborhood. Speaking of gravestones, little Enb Boretti has not come out to haunt yet. Maybe someone should go "nudge" his gravestone... ~VP

I enjoy reading the ideas you are all giving.

I finally updated mine. Click here



In the right upper corner of the page there is a button which says "share". Click it. Then on the sidebar where you add/edit tree info it will say something about sending an email. Scroll on that side until it gives you the send link yourself option. You copy the link and post it. That should work.

Bream family

so ive just started this and i wondered if when the teens grown up can they marry a townie or do they have to marry a sim you made? Or can they even get married at all?

If you are in the neanderthal age, you can't greet townies. We marry the offspring of the five starting couples among each other. You can add a bit of "new blood" in the Roman times. You can make a teen camp of sorts if you want to see who will marry who. It definitely makes things easier.

thankyou so much! I have been waiting so that i can move them out and marry them

I am trying to download realistic illness, but I'm not sure if it's working. It has loaded Sims PE when I try to download it and moving it to the Download folder doesn't appear to work either. Then again I'm not sure if it's working or not. Any advice?

I decided to start over. I cannot remember most of the names of the sims and feel lost every time I enter a household. Lol This will be my third(?) attempt. I'll try to better document things this time. :D

I need some advice. My neighborhood has two patrician families that I decided are more powerful than the rest, and now some big time drama happened. The Head of one of the families has always been mean to the wife of the other, poking her and such. Today, they had a fight and he killed her. What do I do? I feel like I can't execute him because of his status, but the victim's status was also very high so... Some kind of huge fine? Or what. Help, please! I can't pretend he got away with it since it was a party and everyone gathered in a circle to watch it, even the Emperor...

If I were the Emperor at that party, I would have ordered the noble stripped of his title, just because it is such a scandalous event. Maybe I would have had him executed. Or, if there is a system in place, I would put him on a certain trial, skewed a little bit in nobility's favor of course because that was the way, and given him a trial. Then, with witnesses and such, and keeping in mind popular opinion... if he was a well-liked noble, definitely that would lessen the harshness of the penalty. If he was a dirtbag to everyone, death. If he was somewhere in between, perhaps a more harsh stripping of titles and land.

Then, whatever the punishment (there MUST be punishment, or there would be unrest in the system, probably uprisings and usurpation) it must be SOLD to everyone as a punishment, advertised as a punishment... mainly in order to satisfy the commoners, who know that traditional penalty is death. Make sure that it seems harsh for someone of their status, even if it is not, so that everyone is at least somewhat satisfied.

I agree, there has to be some sort of punishment. Is the male close to the emperor? You could also take that into consideration when deciding the punishment. I see a coup d'.etat happening in your game. Lol

He's married to the Emperor's sister, and also cousin to the Emperor, but, he's a very mean sim and has several enemies among the slaves and no friends among the patricians either (except his brothers). He was even enemies with his wife when they got married and hit her in the beginning, but they have come to love each other after all these years... Haha, sounds super dramatic

Since nobody really likes him except for his close family, I'm thinking it might please the population he's been harassing if I send him to fight at the Colosseum instead of a slave this round. He'll get to fight one of the gladiators (one of them is his enemy already, haha) and if he survives... He'll definitely lose his status as Head of one of the most powerful families, maybe more, we'll see. Probably giving that title to his younger brother, who doesn't behave like this at all.

Now I'm super excited to play, haha! Thanks and see you :D

Is that Caecilius you are talking about by any chance? Lol

Haha yep, the one and only Karma is finally catching up with him

Jajaja... Seems like it finally did.

An update with the event comes soon, can't steal all the internet to upload the pictures when my boyfriend is playing
Are you going to blog about your new neighborhood too?