Hi all,
I'm not only new to this challenge, but the forum too. To introduce myself, I'm Yara and 24 years old, still love to play the sims 2. My old time favorite and have never played sims 3 or 4. Started this challenge a few days ago . Now I'm wondering with this challenge. How do you guys keep on track with their needs? Like feed, going to the toilet and such. Especially in the neanderthal stage? Any tips?
I already get quickly stressed (while trying to be calm and just have fun) when I'm behind on their needs. Especially when a woman is pregnant. I have started playing with the second family a few days ago and will have time to play it again tomorrow can't wait already!
Already started reading the whole topic, but before I'm finished with it, we're weeks further thus decided to just ask the question

Sorry for any huge grammar mistakes, English isn't my native language, Dutch is

Each of my prehistoric households has a shower, a toilet and a sink. For food, they had gardens and a fishing pond in my first attempt. In my second, they go hunt once a day and have berry bushes on their lots, that they can harvest. As for fun, that one might be a little tricky. Especially for pregnant sims who don't really have time for anything but filling up their vital needs. In my first attempt, the waterfall shower helped me quite a lot, because they also gain fun by using it. Generally, lots of playing with other sims helps. If their fun is really low, try to have them play redhands (I think that's how it's called in english? in german it's "Händeklatschen") which fills fun really fast.
If you have trouble with sims overheating, make sure they have a closed room to sleep in and maybe the cold shower mod. Drinking a glass of water reduces the body temperature, so that helps, too.
You might also want to look into getting a no social worker mod for this challenge. Otherwise it might get tricky to keep a lot of children.

And I think that's everything related to needs that comes to my mind right now.

On a related note: It might be a good idea to make a list with important/suggested mods for this challenge? Like the hot/cold shower or the no social worker mod. And/or some list with tips for beginners? That would make starting a lot easier.

Yes, I have done both of these things. I the Roman Age, I added new lines since my cousins were having trouble marrying. I considered them to be captured slaves and governors of new territories that had been discovered. Then in the Dark Ages, I add Vikings, and they became the catalyst for wars that occurred and I used the Besieged challenge as a sub-challenge in this game. I found it made the game a lot more interesting and helped me to keep moving along.

In the Medieval Age, (later Dark Ages), I added a sub-challenge to use OFB so my merchants had to try to reach certain goals. I find that without these extra things, the game began to become too routine. I think that the point of the challenge is to have fun with some history and to imagine how our Sims might behave in each age (and to have lots of fun while playing!). Make the challenge whatever you want, cause you'll be playing it for a long time.

The early years were stressful for me also. I made a little hut with a shower, sink, toilet, a bed and put a simple child's toy inside. I tried to have them sleep in tents but my first family all died of heat stroke and everyone complained constantly of being too smelly. Cooking on a grill also led to fires (a lot of fires) but I assumed that this was probably historically accurate so I let it happen. Go to my "Notes from a Game Player" to see what I wrote about my game play as neanderthals. Use the "A Sims Clan Test of Time" link below.

TheFlyingRaccoon, first of all, thank you for your reaction! And thank you for your tips too! I'm a person who try not to use any mods, but the tips about playing with other sims to fill fun actually is a really good one! Did not know this !
Having a list with tips for beginners would be a great help !

cespencer, glad I'm not the only who has the stress of filling their needs! Read your notes and am thankful for those tips as well! Using them now, in combination with the tips of TheFlyingRaccoon and that's actually working out pretty well Thanks to the both of you!
Started with the 3rd family today and so far it seems to go well. Funny to see what they can do on their own when you're not controlling them.

Another queastion I wanted to ask. How do you cook or grill fish? I can't seem to find the option.

I think the option appears at lunch and dinner.

It appears at lunch & dinner but if you're using a grill it will appear under Grill... not 'Serve Lunch' or 'Serve Dinner'. If you want to serve fish at breakfast time and you have OFB you can sellect Make -> Group Meal -> Bass with squash. You will have to serve the meal manually. You need to have the fish stocked in the fridge/in the active sim's inventory for any of theser options to show up.

Also: If you want to have your sims cook fish on their own, it has to be in the fridge. They will only take fish out of their inventory to cook, if you give the command to cook and the fridge has no more fish.

So... I had a visit from the ideal plantsim in one of my lots... That cannot be good.

Do all of you use the clean neighborhood templates?

I decided to play a bit of "Greece", but it won't really adhere that much to the written rules. I also will make different civilizations will probably each be a mix of different cultures. I think it will be fun for me that way.

I have no idea why I deleted my previous post instead of editing it. I need coffee.

I replaced the premade hoods with clean versions and disabled all templates to create my custom hoods.

And yeah, ideal plantsim on your lot doesn't sound very healthy. o.O

That's what i planned to do but forgot.

And it does very unhealthy. I've never seen that happen before.
http://i65.tinypic.com/1omvmg.png

If you have no other signs of corruption, it could have been just a one time thing and I wouldn't worry too much about it. The only thing that you could do that comes to my mind would be running Moothilda's Hood Checker over your hood.

Nope, no squiggly lines in thought/speech bubbles, no sims doing magic disappearing acts, no toddlers with aspirations other than the one they should have... you get the idea. lol

I also made sure none of the household members even looked at the ideal plantsim.. just in case. XD

I did run the Hoodchecker and let it "fix" stuff. I'll know when I play again if I have NPCs who should be forever hidden running around again. lol

I also have a question. It will, maybe, sound slightly depraved, but I just need to know... Can aunts/uncles get married to nieces/nephews through the hacked arch like cousins and not create super major problems? My family lines are getting a bit complicated because of ACR and my sims having absolutely no self control. So I need to know. I really have to sit down and make notes on every sim. XD

I'm not really familiar with the hacked arch, but if marrying cousins isn't a problem, marrying someone to his niece/nephew shouldn't be a problem either. It's not like in real life, where genetics could be a problem. The restriction is only there for moral reasons and as far as I know it's a simple check for the family flag which enables or disables all romantic interactions. This check is only suspended by the married flag. So, as soon as two sims are married, it doesn't matter anymore whether they were family before or not.

Okay thanks.

I hope your hood is okay! :/
About the arch, yes, it works perfectly to marry sims with their aunt and uncles. I think they can even marry their siblings and parents, but I never tried, haha.

I'm not consciously going to marry them, but since the family lines are so shady and I think everyone in the Fishing side might be related... I might accidentally do it if I'm not thorough, I might just move all G3 teens into one lot and see who's notrelated when they all meet each other. XD

PS: Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it.

Hello again everyone! Finally got some time to catch up on all of this!
I love the Greek, Egyptian, and silk road ideas! im prob gonna include that now since im just about to enter the roman age (i swear i started this like 2 years ago and ive barely had time to continue it!)

I saw someone post about using spread sheets... that sounds like an awesome idea, but what would you include/how would u organize it? i feel like it would end up being a mess from all of the huge populatoin!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone (in the US) ( ᐛ )و

Do you have a blog?

First off, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it. I hope y'all all got to spend time with your families.

Second, to Melibee1323, I use spreadsheets to track my sims, and it can get complimented, but its more picking and choosing how you want to track. I generally have three sheets open when i play, one is just my name database. I copied a bunch of weird names from a name generator and tossed them into a spreadsheet and sorted alphabetically. Once I use a name I move it over to a column designated for each Gen, just to keep track of how many sims use a letter in a generation, so that I spread the names out a bit. Still haven's used the one "Z" name yet, but I'm looking for a set of parents who might name their child "Zonohoper". My second spreadsheet tracks who is in each generation, how they scored at Teen Camp and who is paired with who (and from Gen 3 on, who they can't marry based on maternal bloodlines) I'd rather not marry cousins to each other yet if I have any chance of avoiding it. And the third sheet, oh the third sheet. That one tracks everything else I feel like tracking. On page one, is my rankings, determined from info I input and ranked with formulas. There's a picture of it somewhere in this thread in the last few pages. Page two tracks family friends and is generally updated in real-time since i play in windowed mode. One of the columns on page one takes info from this page. Page three pulls info from page one and four to determine the last name rankings, and Page four is simply me copy/pasting stuff from page three and deleting duplicates that appear in each last name's list. Page five is list of who lives where, mostly for ease of updating page two since I never remember just where each person lives. Page six tracks every sim, including age, gender and parents. Page seven just counts data on page six to help me get the round statistics you see on each round page. It takes a while to set up, especially when I decide i want to track something new, but the upkeep doesn't take much time at all. ~VP

Hey everyone and happy late thanksgiving to those in the US (it's about 27 minutes from midnight here by the west coast. i'm an hour earlier than i'm used to from the time zone switch for break...) I'm especially thankful that during this week-long break i've finally made enough progress that the end of my current round will be the end of the neanderthal era. also using simPE to make the teen stage only 10 days instead of 15 really sped it up.

Does anyone who has already played the roman era have any suggestions of ways to make it interesting? I've already decided on making families in which the head male's skin color is 1 or 2 to be roman, and skin 3 or 4 to be Egyptian (to keep race out of it, but using same social classes and everything but using a pharaoh instead of an emperor for egypt). also any links to designs for the new community buildings?

I use a mod which makes the teen stage last 8 days.

You could try checking here .for buildings.

@Lisrouge I dont for TOT yet, but im thinkin about making one over winter break when I have time

@VioletPadfoot that is suuper useful! I used to write things down on a few pieces of paper, but they hav been long lost now.

I think im actually gonna start over since my maps a bit too small for the population boom that just happened and im starting to lose track of who is who and all that stuff since i havent played in a while
So ill definitely do a blog of sorts and the spreadsheet method for when I start over! (*^-^*)

.


I'd love to read it when you do.

[QUOTE=Melibee1323]@Lisrouge I dont for TOT yet, but im thinkin about making one over winter break when I have time
I think im actually gonna start over since my maps a bit too small for the population boom that just happened and im starting to lose track of who is who and all that stuff since i havent played in a while

What i'm planning on doing for the roman and later eras is use the little "sim bio" thing found on the tab where it shows their personalities. i'm gonna put class rank, skin/hair colors, religions, and profession/craft specialty when applicable, and also any story-line plans i have for them. just so i don't have to keep it all on a whole different document.

(sorry for the deleted post. i accidentally deleted the part where it made the quote for melibee)

Ah thats kinda like what i wanna do! I wanna have little stories for each generation (not necessarily with every person, but maybe focusing on a few each generation with their own stories) and then also have the regular pages with all of the information on the sims in each gen. Not sure if im gonna do religions yet, but i still have a long way to go since i just restarted~

For everyone who doesn't want to do a lot of setup or has never worked with excel, you could try using the sim tracker http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=464379 It's great for tracking things like genetics, personality, age, households (members, current season/day, money), skill points, friends and such. There's also the sims2db http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=107994 which I liked using, but the problem is that it's only updated up to OFB. Which means you can't track things from newer expansion packs, you don't have the newer turn on/offs and so on.

I also finished writing the post for the first round of my newest attempt on my wordpress. The posts will be published during the next week.

I read your entries. They were fun. :D

I was using the Sim Tracker (and still use it to see who ages up on a particular day. Especially helpful when you haven't played in a while and want to know when the infant will age) But with so may sims, its getting laggier and laggier to load a page of the tracker, so I'm using excel to keep track of stuff instead. Especially since I usually just want to check a tiny thing, or compare it to another sim. ~VP

I use notebooks, but sometimes I forget to write stuff. Same thing with the tracker, I just forget to update the thing. XD

Sometimes my best reference source are the rounds I blogged.

A few posts should be up in about 20 minutes. I schedule them sometimes so too much time doesn't pass between posts even if I haven't played in a couple of days.

I always have the sim tracker open when playing and add some information (mostly adding new sims) while playing.
Then at the end of each round, I make a 'complete' update of the sim tracker and my excel sheets.

ugh so my game isnt starting :c
i think its prob some cc i recently downloaded so now i have to go thru *everything* (눈-눈

so far for TOT tho ive gotten thru the first round of 4 of the families~!

Edit:: got it to workk~
So just a little run down of the families: All their family names have something to do with an element bc i figured that would be a cool way to separate them so, so far i have--
Aeris (Air): Hava and Beval, children: Ellil and Tuuli
Onatah (earth): Nuna and Damek, children: Mitja and Yegor
Neci (Fire): Shula and Virochan, cildren: Azar and Tzila
Salila (water): Ambu and Ato, no children yet <-- im on this fam for first round right now
Jana (plant): Zuza and Rimon; also no children yet

I wil prob make a blog next week or the week after since thats the last week b4 finals so you all can see pics~ i love how some of them came out!

Hey all! I don't know if anyone has noticed it, but I've stopped uploading things on my blog. This doesn't mean that I don't play... I do. I just lost the motivation to blog about it, since there's a lot going on in my real life. Not bad stuff though!

I started a new ToT (again, yeah) with my progressive Neanderthal rules that I uploaded earlier, now a bit modified to be a little easier since I noticed they could be stuck on some steps for generations if they are unlucky. This time it's the traditional five starting families in a single village, and I let them all have their personal progress, meaning that just because one family discovered gathering, it doesn't mean that they all get access to it.

Two of the families have already reached fishing and the other three are still at gathering, which are steps three and two, so it's still very even. The family who reaches the Roman Era first will be Emperors and patricians, so it's a bit of a race

I just had my very first quads, and with the twin toddlers they had from before it was a round from hell... It didn't get better from the mother dying by childbirth (I'm trying out playing with healthscores this time) and the father always having the fear of changing diapers either. Poor daddy Blaze had too many breakdowns to count

I love that some of you have started blogging, I'm reading everything I find!

I definitely noticed! Lol I've been waiting for a week for the next update! Lol

I started a ToT to compliment my other challenge hood, the Legacity... So far the founding families... Or clans, have been made and moved into the hood. I might document it online. I'm not sure yet though. I'm planning on taking a lot of pics of the development of Ralibabai in case though.

Is there any learning from each other with your rules? Like, one family discovers gathering and one member of another family marries into them or befriends them, would that other family then 'learn' how to gather from the first family?

While that makes a lot of sense, I personally don't play it that way because I want to keep it a "race". I just let the knowledge of one family spread to the other branches of the same family. If anyone wants to play with the rules I posted, it's completely up to them on that part

By the way, if anyone wants to see the modifications I made to the rules after trying the first steps out, just tell me here or in a message and I'll update you! I noticed that the original version could take much too long time for the amount of steps there are. Personally, I don't feel like being in the Neanderthal Era 5+ generations, so

I'm interested in seeing the changes if you don't mind. :D

I second that.

Of course I don't mind
I've only reached farming so far, but it was the first two steps that I noticed were too long, so to not repeat the whole thing, I'll just post the new hunting and gathering rules. You can find the rest on page 108!

Hunting:
1 daily hike, men & teenage boys (each alone. Not everyone has to go hunting if the first sim is successful, unless you want them to)
Successful: Filled hunger for all sims
Unsuccessful: Half filled hunger for all sims (if two sims hunt and are unsuccessful, the family hunger gets filled half + other half = completely filled anyway)
10 successful hikes

The difference here is that the successful hunts no longer have to be "in a row". The very first time I played this I got lucky and someone actually managed to get 10 successful in a row immediately, but I also noticed that some families reached generation 3 without being close to the next step, which was very frustrating (especially when they reached 9 and then failed!).

Gathering:
Allows 1 fruit tree, 1 daily dig for treasure
Water discovered from digging (allows sinks), 1 harvest

Here I changed the number of harvests. To get only one can take up to 4 rounds, which means that it could potentially take 12 rounds to pass this step (originally they needed 3), which is just too long in my opinion.

Fishing and farming are working fine so far, and looking at the rules I think the next steps will work out too. If they don't and I change anything, I'll tell you!

I tried the older hunting rules with the 10 successful ones in a row and none of my households had it in 5 rounds. So I agree that 10, but not in a row would work better in we want to leave the Neanderthal era before we become old and gray ourselves. lol

I've been using the CC tress for the harvests , I forgot it took that long with the original trees.

I agree that it will be faster with these changes. Thanks for sharing.

What i've done is figure out which families have best friends in other families (that aren't considered family) and they then have an alliance. They can trade, pass along knowledge in your case, and form most of their friendships/marriages with those they have alliances with.

So.... I think now I really should prepare for the Simcalypse. :/

I decided to rub the lamp Awhida has had since forever in her inventory and this happened.

The Genie is not there, but the message appears. *sigh*

Edit: Another household before the Fiskmans also got a genie lamp, so I went and rubbed it. The genie appeared. I thought it had to do with the "repair game" option, but when I went back to the Fiskman's and rubbed it again, no genie appeared. So I... moved out the sims into another lot and...

@Lisrouge, glad everything worked out!

I just finished a household where I had my second quads. Once again, the mother died from it and it was a complete mess She had 7 children before the quads, one of whom died, so when the babies came they had 10 children in the household. Two teenagers, but anyway. It was awful and I really feel the need to vent a little... I'm starting to have second thought about this triplets and quads mod :P
I'm starting to get worried about the amount of households too, I know I said that I wanted many but now I have to eat my own words. Generation 1 was 5 households, generation 2 twelve. I don't even want to know how many there will be for generation 3, I'm just hoping it won't double again... But it probably will. This sucks, because I don't want to start over again, but I also don't want to kill sims on purpose and I don't know how to solve this Does anyone have some advice?

sweetie, you've got quads (and possibly triplets. I'll freely admit that I haven't been keeping up with everyone else's games) being born. Your generations aren't going to be small. My current Gen 2 is still pairing itself off and thus creating new households for me, and I'm already at 15. I expect to be in the 20s before Gen 2 finishes, then Gen 3 will start and everything will explode again. Thankfully at that point I switch eras, but still there will be a lot of households to play when I start the Grecian Era. But at least then I'll have different classes to play and every single household won't be the same thing, just with different sims.

But if you want less households, nothing says you have to have just one family on a lot. If you wanted to keep a set of siblings together on a lot and add their spouses, go right ahead. It would cut down on amount of households, and without a hack to allow more than 8 sims, would also slow your population growth. ~VP

@abcbok, Thanks!

I feel your pain. lol You could do what VioletPadfoot suggested. But make sure they are brother-sister siblings, and that they are straight, because if not then.... this and this could happen. lol

Also remember there will be coliseum fights and then when the dark ages come the vikings and the plague will also come. This are the thoughts that keep me going. XD Although, right now I don't care if they keep giving me triplets since , for now I hope, I don't have to start over.

Thanks guys. I'm gonna take a small break from playing ToT until I know how to continue

It's between so long since I've had the time to play Sims! I guess I read this to get my fix, lol. Good luck and happy holidays to everyone.

@abcbok I don't know how you currently handle these things, but here a few ideas:
You could roll for death by childbirth every time a woman gives birth. Either for every birth (once if it's a single birth, twice for twins, ...) or just for the last baby from each pregnancy (woman with no other children gives birth to triplets, you roll with the odds for the 3rd birth). If you set lower death rates for the first births and then higher ones, you can more or less control how many children your sims have. For example just giving them no chance to survive the 6th baby born. (Which still could allow them to get 5 + 4 = 9 children though. XD )

You could take T&Q out of your game until you feel you've got your population under control. (Or lower the odds.)

You could add monastries/convents to your game, where only adults of one gender are allowed. That way you can cut down on households and the amount of sims in your next generation. If you have for example one lot for each gender with around 5 sims, you have 4 lots less to play.

I've been trying to build pools on my lots for the Emperor/Pharaoh family (apartment base lots) and every time i try to add onto an existing pool or try to save with pools built on the lot, my game crashes. i tried before and after moving my families onto the lot. Anything you guys may be able to suggest??

I've never had anything like this before and the only thing I found online is that there's apparently a bug that can crash the game when you try to load an apartment lot with a pool with lights. But I can't quite imagine you put the pool lights on a lot in this challenge?

One thing you could try though would be running the HCDU from the simwardrobe (under Sims 2, Programs) and even if it shows no conflicts, take out all your downloads and try to load the lot.

Hello all! After a year (I rarely have time to play sims so it is slow going for me) I finally FINALLY updated my ToT challenge for gen 1 round 5. You can read it here: http://cjar4u.wix.com/bubblesandsims

I've had so much fun with this challenge even though I don't have a lot of time to devote to it. Right now I'm working on making an ROS to fit the ToT Neanderthal era so I can implement it in gen 2 and add something extra to it.

Love reading everybody's updates when I get the chance; you all have such interesting ways of interpreting and attempting the challenge.

Wow its been a long time since i've been on this thread. At the end of July I was moving onto the Roman Era(I was so excited) and then my laptop failed I lost everything. To be honest I lost a lot of hope since I had so much CC and pretty much did not want to start this again. Although I had my mind made up I missed the Sims 2 so much and my TOT game. So now I am in the process of reinstalling everything(after i go through this whole thread) and starting from the beginning.

Also Happy New Years to you all

Happy new year to you too. And everyone else. I haven't played in weeks, but I'm already done with the Neanderthals. The posts are all scheduled, so there's a few more days before I run out of posts.

It's been forever since I've played TS2, but can you move the families out, save their home lots to the bin and then start a new game where you can just load the homes, add the pools in the new game, then resave them to the bin or play test them there?

...I'm not sure exactly, but if there is an error with just the home itself you try it with a brand new family this way, or do the opposite- save the families to bin, open new game, put them in a default or pre-made lot that you add a pool to, etc etc.

I feel like everyone else- I haven't been able to play my TOT for so long! (Probably three months at least? I'm never this busy in winter, what gives? T_T

Oh well, SOON, perhaps... >_>

Putting an existing family in another hood is big no-no and I think putting a formerly occupied lot in the bin and then in another hood isn't doing any good either. So, if anyone tries something like this: Do it in a test hood that you can delete afterwards.

Well I finally got some play-time in this week (and took some time off work to do it maybe).
The neighborhood is back in action and all I can say is- I probably shouldn't have downloaded items from the Sims 3 site. So many items had conflicts, I had game crash errors etc (I THINK I fixed it by updating my downloads folder by creating a dummy game without any CC...

Anyways then I spent half a day reassigning all my sims in their castes so story progression would stop trying to marry slaves to emperor (can't have any of that lol).

But I have to ask you all... what do you do when two people who aren't of the same class really seem to like one another? Do you make any sort of provision for that?

Also the game forgot that a brother and sister were related and married them when I wasn't playing either, resulting in triplets... :/

I'm curious, how are you going to deal with that?

The last time I played my ToT challenge was about a month ago. I'm currently playing my other neighborhood, WIldehollow, until the end of the first chapter there (6 more simdays on each of the three lots) and then I'll return to ToT. I'm still on the first generation in the Neanderthal era. My sims are still just hunters and gatherers. I think I have about 2 full seasons to go before I hit generation two, and right now it's in that intermittent state with not a whole lot happening. But after 1 season the first of my teens will start to hit independent teen stage which means they'll get married off to pre-arranged mates according to the clans' rules. That'll shake things up for sure!

I was finally able to start the Roman/Egyptian era! my first gen 3 baby grew up into an adult over Thanksgiving, and since then i've been putting everyone into ranks, getting all the households organized with who's-gonna-marry-whom, and making all the lots for the new era. Making the home lots took about twice as long as expected because I started with apartment-base lots so i could have the emperor's slaves living on the same lot, but because i made my own lots things were kinda glitchy so i just made them all residential lots (one family on each lot) and am going to have slaves work for the higher-ups in sim-run businesses (my first time really using the features of OfB, i'm liking it so far). Though it's going to be hard for my sims not to interact with sims from different locations (Roman sims vs. Egyptian sims), i think i'll have it down by the time gen 6 rolls around. i have stuff up on my blog! www.westeriatestoftime.wordpress.com

Hello all. Just starting this challenge, and was wondering where pets fit in? Posting from my cell so it won't let me search the thread very well, so I'm sorry if this has already beentered covered!
Thanks!
Lili

@princesslilian most of us figure our own rules for pets. it all depends on how you play really. Two of my families adopted a few stray dogs, and one a stray cat. The dogs have bred with one another and I send some of the offspring off lot when some of the kids move off lot. Whether the kids adopt a few more strays to breed with, is yet to be decided, and I'm not (yet) giving an advantage to the families with pets vs the non pet owners. I also don't have any player made rules concerning pets, aside from they're exempt from the "loser dies in a fight" rule. But I think some of the others have rules concerning when a family can adopt, or if a per adoption advances the family/hood in society. ~VP

So i went back to my old test of time challenge bc im still attached to all of those sims and theyr just entering the roman era (the new ones only in gen 2 and i really wanna get to roman!)
anyway, there is such a HUGE population boom that its hard to keep track of whos who! One of the main reasons i started a new one was to be able to keep track of everything compared to this mess, but i really like this one better lol
Any advice for pairing people in this huge mess of a population boom?

What i've done is make a grid with the girls as the columns and boys as rows, and then go through and figure out who is related to each other (only cousins count as "family") and then just go from there.
(let's say that the numbers are last names
........Girl 1.......Girl 2........Girl 3
boy1....X...................................
Boy2...................X....................
Boy3...................................X.....

so based on this, Girl1 can be paired with boy2 or boy3.
But when getting into the game, it's a lot more complicated than this because of family alliances, feuds, class ranks, etc.

sims2testoftime.weebly.com
I have begun a rewrite of the Test of Time Rules. This is a revamp. Most eras are shorter, and additional eras are added. I will try to explain major changes as I go along. As I write if you have any interest whatsoever, please say so. If I feel like no one wants to read it I might not be motivated to finish publishing it.

I'm going to try to make this a playing through history thing. I've been thinking about what I want to bring to each era. I want them to be different from each other, be able to use cc available from the era, make it fun and interesting, while still making it a little challenging.

Something has really bothered me about no bathing for the neanderthals. It isn't the complaining or the challenge. It isn't even the sink breaking and the kids not being able to take sponge baths. It's that really awesome simstone mammoth shower I don't get to play with.

And no npc? It's not that I don't want my founding families to populate the world. It's that I want to play witches and werewolves. I want the possibility of my sims joining a secret society. And I want my sims to be able to take long journeys. (Vacations) Ok, maybe not all eras... I've thought that out too.

I want to explore eras the ToT doesn't touch. I have great ideas for challenges that have not been published, and they would be perfect for later eras.

I want to eventually have separate kingdoms, but not have an outrageous number of households. I notice that there are certain rules that are designed to kill of sims. I've considered this for later eras. Also one must have excess sims to kill off, so I've considered that too. And I want to have some recourse if total disaster strikes. First time I played all my sims died off by the end of the last generation of Neanderthals. Fires and ghosts....

I hope people will take a look, give their opinions. Either here or at my site.

I am not trying to take from SwallowTail who made this great challenge. I am enhancing it. It's really a separate challenge. But I have to give credit. SwallowTail is the original writer of the challenge, right?

My signature line has a link to my site with the rules I am writing. It also has a phenomenal "Where can I find?" list for various eras. I've since found lots more but have not been updating it regularly. Please ask if there is anything you are looking for. Chances are good I've seen it around.

UPDATE: Posted General Rules and Neanderthal Rules

I like what you've come up with so far - are you planning on sharing more soon?

I used to have a word document.

The main part of it was a table like the one above. Each time a child turned into a teen I would add them to a table in the correct box. Next to the child's name I would make a note of which family they came from. For example putting Fern (HW2) would mean that Fern is the child of the original Harmon family and the second Wynn family and from this I could work out who she is related to. When looking for spouses I used to work my way down the table and look for two sims who can marry. Once I paired two sims up I would leave them in the table but highlight them the same colour. Once they were married in game I removed them from the table.

I had a list of all the married couples in each generation below the table so I could be conscious of doing things like marrying all the children of one family to children from the same different family each time. This way I could also make sure to marry off a few kids from each family and realize if I was having trouble finding a spouse for the one and only surviving Moran because I was trying to marry off all seven Harmon children.

I used to also list which round couples would be married in and when I had to make new houses, how the different households of the same name were related etc.

As for my tot I haven't done much I'm still trying to build it up and start again.

I have (surprise, surprise) a spreadsheet to track my couples. Gen One isn't on it, but since there's only the founders there, that doesn't matter. Gen two has a sheet that lists the boys in one set of coulmns and the girls in another. When I pair off a couple, the girl's name moves over next to the boy's. Gen Three's sheet uses the same format as the Gen Two sheet, but also lists the maiden name of the child's mother. Since the bloodlines aren't too diluted yet, a child can't marry anyone with the same last name as themselves (as it would be a cousin) nor can they marry anyone with their mother's maiden name (also a cousin), nor can they marry anyone who's mother's maiden name is the same as their own mother's maiden name (again, a cousin) It seems way more confusing when laid out like that... Essentially I take a couple, say Ashess Boretti and Tonnalu Giampa. Essentially their child cannot marry any Giampa's, because he is one, any Boretti's, because they would be his first cousins (children of Ashess's brothers), or anyone who's mother was also a Boretti, as that mother would have been Ashess's sister, making that sim the cousin of the child in question. He also couldn't marry anyone who's mother was a Giampa, since that mother would be one of Tonnalu's sisters. So on the sheet, he'd have Giampa marked, because that'd be his last name, but I'd also have Boretti marked next to him, and would reference the list of girls for anyone that didn't have either of those two names next to her. I have absolutely no clue how I'm going to deal with pairings in the future, but I'm fairly certain I'll be making full use of being able to add some CAS sims in. While it make make my population explode, that might be a good thing considering I'm going the route of making separate kingdoms, and I'd prefer my kingdoms not have just a few sims in each.

And yeah, I haven't played ToT in AGES. I got distracted by doing an ISBI, then by trying Sims 3 out again. Mostly because one of my friends doesn't want her copies anymore, and is selling them to me ultra cheap. ~VP

Thank you! Because you asked, I'll work on it tomorrow.

Questions...am I making it too wordy? Am I not leaving enough to be interpreted by individual players? Is anything confusing or unclear?

After play testing I'm going to make a few changes for the Neanderthals. Mainly careers and community lots.

At first glance the Neanderthals look easy - showers, recreational stuff, where's the challenge? Ice age is hard! They get cold easily and it's incredibly hard to grow crops. After the pond freezes over it might not thaw before the end of the ice age. Thus the minor changes...

Edit: My apologies, I didn't edit the challenge today. I shall do so Monday at the latest. In the meantime I have no problem answering questions about it here. Happy simming everyone!

Update Feb 15: Updated general rules and Neanderthal rules. I plan to work on it more tomorrow.
Update Feb 18: Completed General, Neanderthal, Roman and (drum roll please) Egyptian rules!
Update Feb 19: Added a few things here and there. Added Rules for Neanderthals during Roman era.

@Chicklet I don't think being too precise is going to be a problem for anyone. I'm pretty sure that for most people it's easier to just leave something out they don't like than invent something new.

I actually couldn't play sims the last few months and was therefore not really motivated to do any writing. But I'm getting a new computer next week and if that's not motivating to finally bring my blog up to date, I don't know either. :P

So, for the near future regular updates on sundays, again. Might up that later, if I finally get some playing done. Plus the family pages and trees are finally up to date, too.

i feel like im only able to play my test of time challenge around once a month now!

ive found a way to keep track of families and heirs and status thru spreadsheets, pairings are still a work in progress ofc lol
But what i do rn is have each family/clan have their own page of the spread sheet and keep track of who their married to and their children etc. They stay in the family page depending on last name (so if person A takes person Bs last name, their line is continued in person Bs family page) -i attached a pic to show what i mean if that didnt make sense xD somehow organizing stuff like that makes sense in my mind, plus it shows all the names so i can avoid reusing names or using a particular name too many times.

Me, too!
 

I love that you all are talking about tracking simmies as it's so difficult overall. I have a tab for each original family name (five tabs) then a sixth for the gladiator lottery. I use color-coded names to indicate sex or death. Boys are black, girls are red, and the dead are in strikethrough formatting. The heir to a family is in bold, so it's been easier to glance over the records instead of having to re-read everything.

Also with the gladiator selection sheet I just assign a number to each slave name and pull the selected sims with a random number generator- I made a quick vide about it but it's not up yet. ^_^

Hi, everyone.

I haven't played my ToT since last year. I'm gonna be retaking it soon. I won't start over this time since I feel I documented better than other times.

I haven't played mine in a long time now. I blame Sims 3. One of my friends offered to sell me the eps she had for real cheap, so I decided to reinstall the ones I had. And then my sister got into it and we ended up buying all the eps. And I got sucked into there for a while. I also blame my job. Getting promoted takes a bit extra time, and leaves less time for computer playing. And then Sims 3 calls my name and my poor ToT simmies are left sitting in limbo until I decide to go back there... But maybe I'll go play with them later. I really do miss them. And I'm getting closer to getting out of Neandertimes... ~VP

Finally started mine back up. Trying to find something to make the day-to-day a little more interesting. I have tech progression, religions, and I'm planning an ice age and diaspora, but I'm having trouble getting there. Any suggestions to spice things up?

Cheers!

Take a look at my rules. It's bound to give you some ideas.
sims2testoftime.weebly.com

@oboesapien You could try integrating ROS (Random Occurrence Scenarios). We have already talked about those here in the thread a while back, but I don't know whether you've been around. Basically you're having a list with scenarios and you randomly roll one for each family each round. Here is an example: http://crystalcreeksims.blogspot.de...-scenarios.html

If it's between not playing at all because of the grind of it, why not add a new type of sim or add an 'exploration arc where sims can only trade goods a certain way or you can introduce a few new CAS sims with different 'ethnic' backgrounds?

I'm in the Roman/Egyptian era right now so i have 3 main, primitive religions going (one still around from the Neanderthal era, plus two new ones). Whenever the symbol of that religion appears on a family's home or business lot (a skunk, rain/lightning, or fire), i roll two dice to determine which disaster/miracle should occur. (i got the idea for disasters/miracles from someone on this site a few pages back.. i don't remember who. here's the URL to her page: http://atotsims.weebly.com/disasters-and-miracles.html ) I've used some of her's and added/edited some so they make sense for my particular game.
Also once they reach the roman era (or later, with class ranks) if lower-class families are caught practicing a different religion, or not practicing the religion of the emperor, they get thrown into the sacrifice lotto (which can add some drama itself).

I also try to see where i can spice up drama between sims whenever i can. I've had some remarry when their spouses have died, have brothers come in and impregnate siblings' wives, have fathers take advantage of daughter-in-laws, i have an isolated werewolf in the mix two who will start fighting/impregnating random walk-by's who are part of the TOT civilization.
I also have plans for wars, certain families founding universities
Also adding businesses can help with building skills and other talent badges (but once you've made it to the Roman era, for historical accuracy).

You guys rock! Unfortunately I wasn't able to download the ROS file at Crystal Creek; I was starting to make my own but am somewhat short on ideas. I'm planning to introduce the Fey to make things a little more interesting (though I need to give the skin I love for them a new code, because .4 means I get random fey being born). I wish I could get the geneticised skins from Genensims as a single download instead of individual, but such is life. Trying to figure out how to work in some expansion - maybe another tribe splitting off, now that my neandersims are becoming quite numerous.

<3 <3 <3
Happy simming!

Personally, I love playing with occults, so every time a sim is born I roll a dice (current odds are 1/10) to see if they will turn out to be an occult, then I roll again to know what type of occult (chances for one type are higher if a sim already has ancestors of that occult type). In addition to that, I roll a dice each night for every teen/adult sim on the lot to see if they get abducted by aliens (1/50; I started out with 1/20, but it turned out to be too much: for some reason, my alien pregnancies result in twins or quads more often than anything else).
I'm currently still in Prehistory (just finished Gen01 after over two years of play, actually), so at the moment occults are being treated the same as anyone else, but in later eras there will be trouble if they are discovered as such.

Aside from that, I use the health system from the Warwickshire Challenge (but only to see who lives or dies, because I'm already keeping track of way too much stuff to bother with interaction restrictions based on their health) as well as the flooding system from post 1204 of this thread.

Gen02 is going to experience an Ice Age.
With Gen03, I'm going to introduce the Cult of the Cowplant - every household will have its own cowplant, and woe to any who doesn't feed it properly...

I was having difficulties killing off children at first, so I came up with the magical world of Faerie - children and younger who are supposed to die (except for those who loose a fight - those the fairies have no pity for) are taken by the fairies and brought there, never to be seen again by their family. Faerie is a matriarcal society where occults have a better status than normals (reverse from the normal world), and is also divided into clans: Aliens, Fairies (Nagas with wings), Lycans, Satyrs, Mermaids and Changelings (i. e. humans).
Each clan has its own characteristics, such an associated occult type and primary aspiration.
I'm planning to let Faerie develop independently (aside from the clans adopting new arrivals), see where it's gonna go.

On that note, perhaps I should specify that I'm using a different system for technological discoveries than what has been presented above:

-If a sim survives getting struck by lightning twice in one season, or if an alien child reaches adulthood, fire is discovered, and the family can use skill-building objects for cooking and logic in addition to lights, campfires, grills and the like;

-If a sim befriends and adopts a wolf, then hunting is discovered (I use the hunting objects from Plumbob Keep, but digging for treasure works too) and the family may befriend other strays as well as use skill-buiding objects for charisma and logic. They also get to own a sewing machine;

-If a sim gets a gold gardening badge or becomes a plantsim (every family owns one fruit tree for that purpose), then agriculture is discovered, and the family can use skill-building objects for cleaning and body in addition to owning a sewing machine and getting the right to have a garden;

-if a sim gets a gold fishing badge or becomes a werewolf, fishing is discovered, and the family may now be directed to fish and have their own pond and pool (without that discovery, they may only fish autonomously at a community lot they can access once a round or as visitors on other lots, and not knowing how to swim means less chances of surviving a flood). They also get the right to use skill-building objects for cleaning and cooking;

-If a sim survives being swept away by a flood (and then rolls 1/20, meaning that sim survived because they found some shelter) or if a sim becomes a vampire, then shelter is discovered, and the family may start to live in caves or even build houses in addition to having skill-building objects for mechanical and body;

-If a sim accomplishes their LTW or becomes a witch, then aspiration and career rewards may be used, and aspiration perks? boni? (not too sure what they're called, sorry) may be used (except the secondary aspiration, which is chosen when a sim reaches their teens regardless of discoveries made). In addition, the family may use skill-building objects for creativity and charisma.

-If a sim gets a gold sewing badge (yes, that means either agriculture or hunting must have been discovered first: can't have clothes without materials to make them, can we?), then clothes get discovered (before that, all my sims are going around in fig leaves to represent nudity without scarring any observer - or myself, and loose health points for every season spent without clothes). Using the sewing machine, sims can then make clothes for themselves and their family, and they can have skill-building objects for creativity and mechanical;

-If a single sim gets both cleaning and mechanical maxed out (and fire has been discovered), the family gets the right to own a pottery wheel. Once a sim (doesn't have to be the one who earned the family its pottery wheel) gets a gold pottery badge, then storage is discovered, and that family may now store their home-produced food in the fridge and other such goods in storage rooms or on shelves rather than selling it all immediately. Half the edible stuff stored outside the fridge must still be deleted at the end of every season unless the household has a cat to take care of the pests (which may only happen if hunting has been discovered since sims can't interact with any strays but wolves before that);

-If a sim gets both charisma and cooking maxed out, parties, dates, and influence get discovered, and sims from that family may now use these features (including on other sims who haven't made the discovery yet). That would be the dawn of organized society.

-If a sim maxes out both creativity and logic, then writing gets discovered, which allows the family access to books and school. Goodbye Prehistory, say hi to History (otherwise known as the trigger to switch over to the Roman era/Antiquity, regardless of what other discoveries may or may not have been made).

*Notes:
-A single sim may only make one discovery in their lifetime. If they reach the conditions needed for another, too bad.
-To unlock something, a sim must actually reach adulthood, or they won't be taken seriously by the rest of the family. If someone younger meets the conditions for something, wait until they reach adulthood and hope they don't die before that point.
-The way I play, a discovery is made only for that sim's household and marrying out won't give the new family anything but the discoveries that head of family already knew about (an outsider's weird knowledge won't be trusted).
-There is no set order in which discoveries must be made, especially the first ones. Some have requirements, such as Writing needing both creativity (i. e. either Rewards or Clothes (which itself needs either Hunting or Agriculture)) and logic (i. e. either Hunting or Fire), but they're built so that different paths may lead to the same discovery.

The whole point to the Test of Time is to go through history, but who said Simmish history had to be the same as ours?
Having studied History myself, I find it far more interesting to watch my sims build their own civilisation rather than to lead them through a parody of ours, and that's my goal with these rules. I have no idea what the different families will know or be like when someone eventually discovers writing and triggers the passage to Antiquity: I might end up with a nudist Roman Empire, or Egyptians who don't know a thing about agriculture. Greeks living in tents? Mayas without fire?
And how about later?
I'm leaving as much of it as possible to chance and my sims, and that's what makes it fun.

(Sorry for that brick of a novel; I hope it gave you ideas)

Oh - and beware the Zombie Apocalypse, too. Remember what I said about rolling for occult types? Well, someone who rolls zombie doesn't exactly stay dead after their death, and how are the sims supposed to know zombies are dangerous if they've never seen what one is capable of before?
And I have the zombieapoc mod installed...

@oboesapien The Crystal Creek ROS is actually the first one to come up when you google and was mostly meant to give you an idea of how it generally works. If you need some inspiration, there are a few medieval ROS at the Plumb Bob Keep in the challenge section: http://www.medievalsims.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=96 But you might need an account to be able to see those posts. I could also dig out the ROS file I used in my old ToT if you need even more ideas.

@Eldonyx That's an interesting system. I like how you tied them all together into a tech tree. I have a lot of the same advancements (food storage, writing, etc.), but I used a generic research point system. Sims gain their household a research point when a) aging up platinum, b) becoming an adult, c) making a lot of money (starts out at each 10k but goes up as they become wealthier). I also really enjoy my sims having different technologies, and it will be interesting to see how it affects them going into the ice age. I've broken it down by pretty much everything I thought was useful, including resource-gathering CC, concepts (like quarantine or trade), and civil advances like exterior walls and hard floors to expand/improve their cave. When two sims marry, they get the advances from both houses.

@TheFlyingRaccoon I found the site from her link, but for some reason the download link isn't working (might just be for me). Tried to make a Plumb Bob account (I spend enough time there) but haven't gotten it approved by the admin yet. I'm making good progress on mine, though, I'll post it here when I'm done (I'm only going to 18 - 6 calamities, 6 weird/random, and 6 boons, done on a random roll). There's an ROS floating around the challenges thread (I forget if one of you posted it?) that I've taken some inspiration from.

Happy simming.

@oboesapien I'm not sure I understand your system. Are the points you speak about separated into different categories depending on what they will unlock, or is it just one big ladder where the innovations get unlocked in a specific order? Or is it like aspiration rewards and your sims can "buy" a discovery of their (your) choice once they get enough points?
If it's the first, what criteria do you use to unlock stuff like the concepts/civil advances mentioned? I was thinking about coming up with more discoveries for my sims to make, but I'm a bit out of ideas as to how to get them there.

It's just one big research pool. There's no enforced order/prerequisites, though the more "advanced" items cost so many points that it's more advantageous to start at the bottom, which are cheap and help bootstrap the family's economy. There's also some that simply don't help you without other techs (notably, it doesn't help to be a priestess when you haven't invented a religion), so those are soft prerequisites. I included a screenshot of my tech "tree". It's posted somewhere earlier, but I can't remember how much earlier. Hope this helps!

I decided the other day to ignore all the other games that have been distracting me as of late, and fired up Sims 2 (after making sure my default replacements for ToT were in my downloads folder) and realized just how much I missed my ToT simmies. I was also shocked when I could remember most of their names without consulting the hover-tip. I'm also a bit sad because as I play through the current day, I keep getting the pop up that my Founders all have only one day left as adults. I realize it's not the end of playing them, but it also signifies that they're that much closer to dying, and then they'll be gone, only appearing on occasion to haunt their descendants. So that pop-up every sim day makes me sad. And now I'm off to go play some more. ~VP

I'm currently playing round 5 in my ToT hood and my founders will get old next round, as well. On one hand, it's nice because I advance. But on the other hand, it is sad to know they'll be gone soon.

Also: I finished playing the Earth household yesterday and two days into playing, I realised Fraps wasn't set up to take screenshots and now I don't have any photos for those two days. >_>

That sucks about your photos or lack thereof. My photos are slowly becoming only aging and Gold badges, simply because I'd rather play than frame out a photo. I take note of the interesting occurrences but rarely take a photo. Maybe I should think about changing my ToT pages to be more journal like than pictures... A thought to ponder. Mostly because if I go with it, it's gonna take me days to implement simply because I will have to go back and redo all my pages for consistencies sake. But for now, I'm going to see if I can handle doing two of my large houses in a play session instead of just one. ~VP

Edit 4/18 to avoid double posting: So I did indeed get through my large households and then several of the smaller ones, so I'm getting closer to the end of Round Six. As a side note, I should transition to the next Era starting with Round Nine, as (if my calculations are correct) Tiadsay and Tiane Rivnay, the eldest of Gen 3, will become teens in Round Seven, and go to Camp in Round Eight, making them adults in Round Nine. So close and yet it seems so very far away.

But the reason for the post! I know I said I shouldn't change the layout of my Rounds Pages, and I tried not to, but the idea just kept bugging me! So I've started doing that. I'm stuck inside due to the flood anyway (yay for being in Houston right now), so this is my project for the day. Rounds One and Two are up in edited form, and I'll take down the old pages just as soon as I finish up in changing all of the current five pages over. I'd love to hear from you guys on if you like the new layout better. Either here or on the chat box on my "Feedback" page.~VP

*Waves to Everyone*

Yes, I'm back. I have been away from the challenge for three years!
I went to revisit my old TOT hood and just couldn't relate to my Simmies anymore.
Therefore, I decided to start the Challenge over again.
The saddest part was removing all the old TOT hood updates off my website.
However, it is nice to start with clean fresh updates on a new TOT hood.
I'm halfway done with my first round. Things are going good, all the basic stuff: Farming, Fishing, and Woohoo.
This is my second attempt at the challenge. My first time farming! I most certainly placed too many garden plots. After my first harvest, each Founder will change the garden area to suit their needs.
I'll keep everyone posted.

For Swallowtail
Awesome'sauce to have an official website up! Thank you for the challenge updates and additions.
I will be including a Greek/Egyptian Ancient Era! First I have to get out of Neanderthal.

Comments on the Neanderthal Era Disasters and Miracles:
{You asked for input.}

Advance Architecture.
One small shack is in the challenge rules. Many of us have done no structures to 10x30 maxis standard small homes. I use 10x10 squares.
Yet under this section it says 6x6 squares. Therefore, this does not fit many of our TOT hoods.

Improved Living Quarters
Did not know there was a build restriction on the challenge. Many of us expand or change things on our Founder lot as needed. Is the $20,000 meant for building additions only?

Famine and Food Surplus
Did not know there was restrictions on the amount of fish or crops a Sim can carry. The Family meal once a day I have seen before and stick to that rule.

Ice Age and Drought
Many of us already include an Ice Age in our rotations to break up the generations of Neanderthal and heat stroke. Hehehe.

Overall I love this idea but it needs some tweaking. Also the time frame of weeks is too long. Many of us have had to shorten lifespans and already include illness to speed up the neighborhood rotations.
I think Rounds would be better than a Generation.

Sim Math:
30 Sim Days on average to get to Adult, then another approximate 30 Sim Days to Elder.
24 Real Life Minutes to play one Sim Day without pausing.
That comes to approximately 300 Real Life hours without pausing per founder household to get to 20 Generations. Then add 300 extra unpaused hours per household.
My base is 1800 of Real Life hours. Scary when it starts to add up. I really want to finish this challenge.

Since I'm starting over a'fresh. I would like to include the Disasters and Miracles idea in my game. I will work on some ideas, play test, and post.

Hope that helps Swallowtail. Hugs.
Anyone else that has checked out Disasters and Miracles http://atotsims.weebly.com/disasters-and-miracles.html

Who has been using a table for ROS: Random Occurring Scenarios? Can someone share their Neanderthal one or ideas for one?

Thank you everyone. Hugs to all.

With this challenge it's definitely better to not think too much about how long it's going to take you to finish it. XD

I did put a ROS together for my old ToT hood. I'll put the ideas underneath a spoiler. :P



And I'm not quite sure why I haven't done that already some time ago when the topic came up last?

About a month ago I was closing my antivirus software before loading game and opening Sims 2 folder. Horrible glitch and closing the antivirus deleted my Sims 2 folder - and nothing in recycle bin.
My game still installed, but every download and every neighborhood gone. I was in the Roman stage with Egyptian and tribal subhoods.
I figure people in this thread know that pain more than anyone.
I've restarted my test of time, again. I'm in my 1st round of Neanderthals, on 4th family. It's a long round, about 3 seasons. I wanted to play until just before 1st kids become teens.

I feel you Chicklet, I've had to start over as well. I hope with our new journey we will make it farther then we were before

I am now on Year 2 and cant wait until my third generation. I have so many plans awaiting for my roman sims.

I have a question. How do you guys transition into the Roman stage? Do you delete the lots that the neanderthals lived in and then move them into their new homes?

Ooh so cool with this challenge and how I see people have alternatives, I personally am seeing how to approach this. Since I usually avoid these challenges because of my cautious approach toward CC, but I think this one makes my Anthropology/history nerd head heavily intrigued!

@MoonTide You don't have to use CC with the challenge, it can be played without. Most of us use CC for looks or to add gameplay (a lot of objects found at plumbob keep are great for that) but none of it is really necessary. ~VP

Yup, yup. I guess for me it is hard to enjoy when you have ikea stuff everywhere... Finding a lot of areas on the internet to make it interesting. Though I just find this to be fun while I write up my BACC/Legacy chapters.

I haven't got to that stage yet, but my plan is to leave the Paleolithic caves in case they become useful for play reasons and just move everyone into houses (that hasn't already got a house, because I'm running a tech tree alongside my game).

I too am planning on leaving at least a few of my Neandersim lots, and moving everyone into new houses when I eventually get to the next era. I might convert one or two into community lots as "Historical Sites" later on in the challenge, I'm not quite sure right now. And if I delete a few too many, I have the lot saved into my lots bin so I can easily plop a new one down when needed. ~VP