I think most of us let the slaves live on the Emperor's lot, to do the dishes and stuff.

Floor1304: thanks

Cespencer7: how do you keep them alive? My first Neanderthal family is almost starving, I think. Their motives are almost all yellow or red, especially comfort and hygiene; and they got a baby and a toddler... they don't have time for fishing or care for the plants. I didn't thought this would be so hard xD

Edit: I made family 2 and don't let them have a baby until the week as almost over. The toddler couldn't get a bath so she was two days long crying about that she needed hygiene. That was sad... I was happy when she became a child she washed her hands and washed her hands and washed her hands...
Pfff. This is way harder than normal play.
Another time I try it again.

Hi TychoH. Like Floor suggested I would think the slaves live on the lot with the emperor. lol guess it wont matter if you have given up already tho.

Thanks, YukiShine, I'll try fraps next time I play.

TychoH:
I think the slave location depends on the situation.

*"Upon reaching adulthood, they must move out of their parent's house and into their own house (Smallest lot) or master's house." You can choose where unmarried of-age slave MEN live (but they can't live in their parents' house).

*However, unmarried slave WOMEN "must take jobs working for any of the other classes until they are married". I assume that slave women must live on the master's lot by default. Slave women aren't allowed to live on their own lots, but men are allowed... which is why it's optional for men to work for a master.

*Unlike single slaves, married slaves of either gender "are required to move away from their master's house and into their own house (smallest lot)". This means that married slaves are no longer required to take jobs.

I guess that means that slaves can live on the Emperor's lot, especially the single slaves. Unfortunately, I still have a long way to go before I start the Roman Era, so I haven't tested that out yet.

TychoH:
I almost lost all of my first lot when I started, so I had to make a few modifications to the original list of things you could put on the lot. Even with these modifications I lost four of my fathers in the first round due to fires. This is a tough challenge, but I think I needed a good challenge. It does get better if you make these few changes.

I added a bathtub. Then you can bath everyone including the babies. (My justification was that in real life they could bath in the pond, but since Sims can't I added the tub). I found it almost impossible to succeed otherwise since the lack of good hygiene kept everyone so miserable that the social worker would come and take the kids.

I also built a small hut for the first generation so I could get them out of the sun. When I first started playing I only had tents, but then everyone started dying of heatstroke.

I added a crib, or cribs if I had twins, and a changing table. Before that, if I left them on the floor everyone got miserable. When added the crib I just reduced the number of hammocks or other beds by the number of cribs I had so I stayed under the five beds listed (that reminds me, I need to ask if in the Roman Age, we can have a bed for everyone). So, I would have a double bed (2) two cribs for infant and toddler (2) and a hammock for whomever else needed one. (total "beds" = 5).

I had one person just fish right away so I could cook that day's meal with fish. It helped to keep them from starving. With the bigger families, I had to cook two meals because there aren't enough servings if you only cook one meal.

The other thing I decided was that every generation would get smarter. The first group were of course Stone Age with limited knowledge and resources. But I made my second generation Bronze Age so I added "music" - drums for adults and the little kids xylophone, an art easel, and I added simple toy box. This helped to raise some of their moods and kept them out of the sun.

My third generation has added books with simple cave drawing and picture books and a custom content loom (I figure they are learning to make fabrics so I can get them out of those grass skirts.)

Hope this helps. I am enjoying it more now that I am thinking of my Sims as evolving.

Anna: I only gave up for yesterday

Thanks, Anna, Moonlight Frog, and especially Cespencer, this is helping me a lot. I give it another try.

Thats the spirit ! There is a lot of great information in this thread from everyone who has started with lots of great tips to help you succeed. You might want to check out the different blogs/sites we are all keeping as well which details how we are making it through. It is not easy but oh so worth it ! Good luck and let us know if you need any more help or encouragement

I'm gonna reed the whole thread when there is time

I've tried it again. And I had success. I added a bath and this hack that makes every bed has (have?) the same sleep-skills. And finally it worked! Eise and Fleur Wæd are still alive and happy. The only almost-crisis is determined. They got three children after 7 Simdays: Nijs (toddler), Jacob (toddler) and Jenny (baby).
I'm happy too :D

TychoH
That's the spirit. It won't be so bad now, but beware. Just when you think all is going well, everyone gets the flu or your least experienced cook decides to give it a try when you aren't looking and starts a fire,. One of the things I am excited about is the fact that every third or fourth generation you have a good excuse to go and build a new lot with a new theme. It is fun to think about how you want to make things look. I did read through a lot of the posts and clicked on people's website and blog links. It was fun to read their stories and it gave me ideas for my own little people. Looking forward to hearing more about Eise, Fleur, Nijs, Jacob, and Jenny.

This is such an interesting challenge. I've tried to play it before and I gave up somewhere in round 2, but I kept reading this thread and I've visited a lot of the websites, and I was inspired to try it again. I have to say, the second time around I'm enjoying it much more! (I think a lot of it has to do with having another hood to play when I get sick of heatstroke and fishing/gardening all day). I've made it through round 2 and its amazing how different the families can end up being, they seem to have so much personality.

Anyway, I've really enjoyed reading everyone's entries about their families and how they are making it through the neanderthal stage. I can't wait until the Roman age, I have so many ideas for it, but I have a while to go. :-)

Tychoh sounds like you are coming along nicely. Before you know it you will think this is easy !

Welcome back Kpcca ! Glad to hear you are giving it another go. When I first started the Roman era seemed just right there and now over a year later Im still not to it LOL course that probably has to do with my not playing regularly. I am halfway thru round 8 now which is exciting. When I get to the teenagers lots this time round they will be adults so I can start having the gen 3 kids !! Woohooo now that will be something to celebrate

CAS in Roman Era
 

I am in week 8 and my Gen 3 are still school age kids, so I know that there are at least two more weeks (rounds) to go before anyone becomes an adult, but I was curious about the CAS that we add in the Roman stages. I am assuming that we make single people who we put in apartments and then we wait to see who dates and marries them.

I was going to make anyone who marries one of the CAS the plebians, since historically any pure race person who married someone who wasn't from one of the founding families was a pleb.

What have the rest of you who are in the Roman stage done with your new CAS?

Woooohoooo Not long left to go now cespencer. You must be so excited ! Im not there yet but I plan on taking a good look at what class of people could use an infusion of new blood and add to that. I do remember talinah or one of the other simmers mentioning long ago that they wouldnt have many sims for skin 3 which could equal the natives later on in the challenge so that might be something to consider.

familyFunds problems
 

Thanks Anna. I am excited. I want to add community lots and do more to have folks socialize, shop, etc. Never knew how much I would miss those parts of the game.

I have another question about the Roman Age. I have no idea how to reduce the familyFunds without affecting everyone who has the same surname. I tried once when I first moved folks out and it sent one of my sons into negative numbers. I rebuilt the funds using the "ctrl-shift-c" and then typing "kaching" to add $1,000 at a time. Since most of my families ancestoral homes are over $20,000, when the spare sons move out I just add the extra couple of thousand to their start up cash by moving them into an empty lot, add the cash, and then move them into their own pre-built starter home that I put in my lots bin.

But in the Roman Age, the emperor is supposed to reduce their funds to help out poor relatives. How do we do that? Is there some other cheat we need to know?

Anyone who is ahead of me in this challenge, please help. Thanks. Take your time, with 8 homes averaging about one hour per family to complete a week round it will be about a real week or two before I get anyone old enough to be emperor.

Well when I tried to adjust familyfunds I couldnt because I had named several lots the same name ( ie 2 lots named Gallant ). After all my research I found out you can only adjust funds for individual family named lots ! I figure at the end of this round we will have to move the sims to the sim bin so we can move them to their new Roman digs so I will make sure everyone has a different lot name so I can use the familyfunds cheat then. Now refresh my memory please - it is ok to move sims to the sim bin but you cant move a sim in a house to the lot bin without killing your game? Right now the way I am adjusting the money is to go into buy mode and buy things until my cash is at a close enough amount to match what they should have and just leave them in the backpack.

Yeah you can't move an occupied house to the lot bin because from what I understand, it severes all ties to the current neighborhood and can corrupt memories of the residents still in the hood.

You can use the family funds cheat when you're on the lot with the family. I've used it before to change the amount of money available to the family I was playing when there are other families with the same last name. All you have to do is enter the lot and open the cheat window, then type in familyfund *familyname* *the amount you want to family to have* and that should change the available funds of the family you are playing. I hope this helps :-)

familyfunds is an on/off thing for me... Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If there are several families with the same name in the NH, it goes with the "newest" family. So, when a child moves into a new lot, I usually can use familyfunds without problems. However, it's difficult to adjust funds for every other household with that name then.
Nevertheless, even when there was only one household with a certain name (simple name, one part, nothing special), it sometimes just wouldn't work. I tried to use it in NH view, in NH view with the family selected, on the lot... It's weird.

Now, if it doesn''t work I'll use either another cheat to add money, or MATY's money order to reduce funds by sending it to some random townie.

Thanks everyone. I can see that you all have found ways to deal with this. I like the idea of buying things that equal the value of the amount you need to give to your close friends and relatives and then giving them the items as gifts. That will reduce the emperor's funds and increase the relative's if they sell the item when they get back to their own lot. I think I will keep using the "kaching" and "motherlode" cheats to add funds.

Gosh, I am so jealous of you Roman peeps. DX

When I do get there, I'm just going to rank according to $$$; I won't implement racial boundaries in the Roman time period, since I don't want to over-complicate the challenge.

I never really liked family funds, anyway.

What solved ALL my familyfunds problems - for EVERY new lot you start, BEFORE moving in a new family create a single sim in CAS with a different name, put them on the new lot, move the family in that you wish to live there, then move the CAS sim out. For example: My Faulkner family are up to 7 individual lots now. The original are "Faulkner" the second family are actually called "Faulkner2" so I created a new sim called "Jane Faulkner2", put her on the lot, moved the family in, had Jane move out, left the Faulkner family there BUT their lot name is now officially "Faulkner2" so when I input the familyfunds cheat I type in "Faulkner2". Easiest solution without getting all technical with hacks and stuff =/

I was creating the cas sim but naming her a different name lol this tip would have come in mighty handy a few months ago :p

Oh, so that's how you differentiated the lots. Clever.

What did you do with "Jane" afterwards? Did you delete her? Kill her? Leave her in the sim bin for all eternity?

Maybe just leave her in the bin for the next time that family is moving.
Really clever.

Poor "Jane" and all her descending clones get deleted from the sim bin straight away, otherwise it interferes with the familyfund cheat. It must be a new sim with the required last name every time. ^_^

You might want to rethink the deleting from sim bin part of that. she most likely has a relationship with the family b/c of the move in and that could possibly make a BFBVFS later on. We do want this neighborhood to last through a lot of generations after all. Throwing her on an unused lot and killing her sounds like a plan to me... ~VP

Or even killing her on the familie's lot via tombstone of L/D. That'd save some time.

As I understand it, deleting sims from the sim bin will always shorten the neighborhood's shelf life.

However, if you have SimPE, you can edit the the household name using the FAMI data - it's merely a matter of typing the desired name into the field. This should have exactly the same effect. It's a little cumbersome, since you don't want SimPE open at the same time as the game, but with some planning it should be fine. Other editing tools may allow you to change the household name from within the game, but I don't know how.

new lot names for familyfunds to work
 

Thank you! What a nice simple solution. I love reading everyone's responses. What a gruesome group we are, plotting how to kill off the poor unwanted Sims... I vote for deleting on the lot if necessary to prevent problems in the neighborhood bin.

Deleting on lot works, i just suggest using an unused lot so that her tombstone has a place to sit that won't bother the family. Does anyone know if deleting tombstones will cause corruption? I heard it did.

Will the sky fall if I put the sim back in the bin and leave it there?

@ anna: Nope. But you'll have two "households" with the same name again if you do that.
@ VP: It does, unfortunately. MATY has a No Unlink on Urnstone Delete mod, though, which should fix that. I'd still rather build a special little graveyard lot for those sims, to be on the safe side. It's a 20 generation challenge, I want as little corruption potential as possible. ^^;

This is what I do when I need to differentiate between Family units. Makes things much simplier for me.

I don't understand how deleting a sim from the sim bin will cause corruption =/ nor am I going to worry about it, as I have so many incestious relationships going on in my roman era right now if the game is gonna puke its guts up on me it's gonna do it before I reach the Dark Ages ^_^ And what about all those kids taken away by the social worker? >_> Behind the scenes of the game - not really my thing. Generation 20 is too far away for me to stress about "what ifs" or "maybes". I'm having fun right now, and IF the game should implode on me, well....^_^ stuff happens. I'll just pretend it's the black plague or something and recreate sims to continue on with whatever era it happens in. The object of the challenge is to have FUN, don't take it so seriously; sims were created for our entertainment, not to do our brains in Im sure >_> pretty sure anyway... ^_^

It has to do with the way the game makes connections. There are now bits and pieces of those deleted sims floating around waiting to attach themselves willy-nilly to other sims, creating toddlers with LTWs and other untenable situations. How fast or slowly the game implodes depends on a lot of random factors. Although you may not care, most people starting a long-haul challenge like this will be fairly upset if they can't finish due to game corruption as opposed to burning out. You can have fun with the game without breaking it, and maintaining one's toys properly is not being too serious, but simple common sense. You wouldn't poke a hole in a football so you could hang it on a hook, would you?

The kids taken by the social worker are forming your adoption pool, with the last taken being the first up for adoption. There's no game problem with those.

No need to frighten us, lol. When the time comes, I guess it comes... (but hopefully that'll never come)

In which case, I must say that I absolutely loathe familyfunds...
I think that I'll just use the SimBlender to change last names; I like how you have so many branching families, taliahneth, with so many Faulkners XD.
I'll most likely make up some "extended names"- for instance, when one of my non-heirs moves out from the Ash family, I will rename his last name to be something like Ash Alpha or Asha, or something dumb like that. I plan for only my original lot to have its name intact, but who knows?

taliahneth, did your emperor marry his 2nd cousin?

Also, I want to start working on a family tree, but it takes so long...

@Yuki: I thought so and I'm pretty sure I have the MATY mod, especially if it was in the director's cut. I'll investigate that in a minute. Not all that important at the moment as a tiny graveyard for "lot name people" has it's appeal.
@Moonlight frog (who has an awesome avatar): We're not trying to scare you, we're trying to pass on tips so that this neighborhood will last all 20 generations. And I agree on familyfunds. it is evil. ~VP

Enjoying this!
 

I've tried the challenge twice before, and failed within the first 5 rounds everytime due to varying reasons, such as stupid old laptop (3 years old? More like dead I say), hack conflicts (ugh) and constantly changing how my founders look (I'm going to be with their offspring quite a while, is it a crime to want to make them as perfect as possible?)

Anyway, I'm almost ready to go to the Roman era on my 3rd attempt now (2 more rounds), so I can more or less say that I have joined the challenge as it seems to be sticking this time! Due to various constraints mentioned above, I have adapted my gameplay somewhat, but it still boils down to the same. Aside from a minor glitch with my skintones ( ), which hopefully I can sort out tonight as I think I now know what the problem is, my play has progressed nicely.

I've been keeping detailed records and family trees, and even incorporated some learning time into it by practising writing macros in my spreadsheet for tracking who's coming up for marriage, ranking in terms of money, deciding who will be killed in Roman era (learning can be fun!).

Although now when I have it open, and my sister asks me why am I doing work at home, and I'm like, it's for my game, she just looks at me funny and backs out of the room slowly....

Welcome Princess and congrats on third time being the charm lol Do you have any pics to share?

Hey Moonlight Frog *pat on the back* "Venimus, vidimus, vicimus..." LoL, moving on now

I have a very vivid imagination when it comes to dealing with the "restrictions" in the sims *tongue in cheek* so as to what you see on my website, and what "actually" happens in game, is sometimes not entirely....accurate and I don't want to spoil the fun. In answer to your question, no, the Emperor did not marry his 2nd cousin ^_^ (legitimately she's his first cousin) his mother, Ziska, is Gisela's Aunt. And if that blows your mind, wait until you see what happens next round O.O my storytelling is not for the faint of heart =/ or narrow minded. I do have ACR with inteenimater (?) that thing, that makes certain things possible.

And thank you ^_^ I'm glad you're getting enjoyment out of my disobedient sims.

As for the family tree - I highly recommend tribalpages - and the earlier you start the better, right? I'd really like to do a bigger version of the one in game, with pics and stuff, which I attempted recently and oh my goodness ~_~ there are too few hours in the day for trying that, I might just make do.

Congrats to Princess Arabella! Third time IS the charm, this is actually my third attempt too and so far so good, the Roman era is cooking with gas now!

taliah~

I actually have my own family tree maker program but this tribal pages looks pretty awesome! I might have to give that a go. I love the different ways to can display information. Oooooh even better ! I can actually export the data I already have in my own program to the tribal pages. Fingers crossed it works !

Cool! Thanks for the TribalPages tip; I must try that sometime soon...

Lol, I can't keep up with your family tree; so... is Gisela his actual blood relative? Did you use a mod for that?

I'll hopefully be putting the family pictures and trees on my blog this weekend. I use Family Tree Maker to keep my info nice and neat, in addition to Excel, and I use OneNote to make general notes on each lot and to take screenshots easily.

What is this Tribal Pages thing? Did I miss something?

How many households do you have by the time you transition to the Roman Age?
I just finished round 8, still Stone Age, with 14 households and it took quite some time. ^^; Fortunately it's still not boring.

I'm not going to blog about my sims, but here are a few highlights.
My founder couples have been extremely faithful. I wanted a smooth start with no half-siblings and enemies so early in the challenge and it mostly worked fine. With their children, however, there is a little more drama going on. ^^ It wasn't all intended, too, as I sometimes just forgot that I actually wanted to marry that girl to boy A, not boy B... Well... Once I broke up a dream pair - those too were perfect for each other, what a shame - because the girl accidentally got pregnant from her childhood friend who she didn't even have a crush on. Thanks, InTeen and RiskySneakout. But this couple now works fine, too. It's just less... perfect. ^^
Right at the moment I have a pretty interesting setup. I can't wait to see if it'll work out as planned. ^^ See, there's the only surviving daughter of the Gold family. She married the youngest son of the Rock family that is by far the richest clan around. Note that Squirrel Gold didn't bring any money into the marriage. Only a few days after the marriage she thought she caught her husband, Starfish Rock, cheating. I'm really not quite sure what was going on there as he was actually arguing with that other woman. (Not very romantic, is it.) Whatever it was, Squirrel was angry and went so far as to attack and therefore kill him. So now she has all his money and could bring it into another marriage. The Wood family, currently ranked 3rd, has a son she could marry. With "her" money the Wood family could possibly even rise to 1st place.
That is, of course, only if Squirrel doesn't get killed in the meantime - she has made an enemy, too.

Really, I love this challenge and everything that's going on. There are households that are indeed a little boring sometimes, but I still usually like to play them. They are a nice break from the hectic and chaotic families.

Hello everyone, I've been lurking here for a few days and thought I'd say hi. :D

I'm loving this challenge too - I've just started it and I'm currently on round four. My 2nd generation sims are starting to transition into childhood and I'm all eager for them to grow up and form families of their own!

I started a blog for my challenge, it's at http://minervatestoftime.wordpress.com/ if anyone wants to take a look. It's really just to help me remember what went on when I played each lot. :P

Yuki I have 10 households so far but at the end of this next round I will be adding at least 3 more to the mix so it sounds like we are pretty close. Dont sims drive you batty with screwing up your perfectly thought out plans?!!

Welcome eorienna ! Love your sims and their totems ! What a cute idea. Thats a neat stove. I havent seen that one around before but then again I dont get out much lol That pic of the wereolf is a great angle. Hubba hubba @ Wolf and his loincloth. Your babies have such cute little booties - early baby gap? All your decor is making me wish I had of paid more attention to that when I started to play. :-O poor Flint. So early for deaths. Thats a great update ! I really think the look of your game is wonderful. Keep at it !

I must have extremely even tempered Sims, I've never had a fight break out!

Anna220, haha yes poor Flint - Arrow hated him from the first moment he laid eyes on him. I tried to keep them from being on the same lot together because I didn't want them to fight, but Arrow snuck up on Flint and started an arguement when I wasn't paying attention.
And what annoys me the most is that I have so few blondes! I was totally hoping for Flint to have many many blonde babies, lol. Now there's only one blonde in my hood. Bah.

I think I'll add to the gene pool a little later on, by letting one of the families move in a teenage townie girl to be a wife to one of their sons (when she is of the right age)... I'm not sure. I'm thinking about how to use the ranks - it doesn't make sense that one of the sons from the lowest ranked clan would be able to find wives among the higher ranked clans. So what I'm thinking is, maybe they arranged a marriage with a girl from a tribe living far away... I'll have to think about it a little.

What I love most about this challenge right now is that for every round, I am sort of finding my own gaming style and adding to the rules for my hood.

@Moonlight Frog - yes they are blood relatives ^_^ their parents are brother and sister.

@YukiShine - the more the merrier right! DX the horror... LoL I can't remember how many families I had when I first moved ;_; maybe 16? I have 20 now just 2 rounds in haha

The biggest problem I have right now is that everyone is related somehow so it's difficult setting couples up; the rules say to add a new CAS sim every era or something but that didn't work for me as some heirs to direct lines were without a mate in my 3rd generation, so they've had a CAS sim created for them, and I'm also adding a new family each generation (at least) now. Maybe it'll fix itself a few generations in, or just get worse >_< I'll find out eventually! ^_^

taliah~

It's so much fun to read other people's stories, particularly in seeing the choices they make in translating the different historical eras into sims gameplay. I think one of my favourite parts of this is the historical dimension. I'm finding myself researching clothing styles, houseplans, decoration, and other relevant historical information for each time period as I get to it. (I've only made it to the Roman Era so far, but I've looked ahead!)

I've decided to join this challenge. It'll be my first one. I'm a history major, so when I saw this challenge I was all Yay! Perfect Challenge for me! I've set myself up a blog to keep track of it because I've enjoyed reading all the blogs y'all have written. Once I get a week's worth of events (sim time) I'll post the link to it here.

Welcome Anaticula and good luck to you ! Of course if you need any help be sure to let us know.

households going into roman age
 

I have ten families. It was a very rough Generation One for my little group of clans. Four had twins and the fathers in each of the first four clans died early. This limited the number of boys to a total of ten. This may have been a good thing, since each round of one week takes an hour per household and each generation takes six weeks to get to an adult ready to lead the next generation. So that means 60 rounds of fishing, farming and baby making for my Second Generation before I can move to the Roman Age.

I'm starting my challenge again! Again I got my website going! the link's in my Signature. I'll update as often as I can/play. There's not much about what I've done play-wise since I've only made the sims, moved them in and played the first family for about five minutes. But I did drone on and on about some other stuff, some relating to the challenge. I'm going to go recolor some space suits now and get some sleep then go to work. Then maybe I'll be able to play some more. If not I have Sunday night off and I'll play then. Hopefully next time I'm back here I'll be able to update on the antics of my founders and their children! ~VP

Eorienna - Great Blog
 

I stopped by your blog site. Awesome! I love the photos and the storyline. I really feel as if your sims are primitive clans and that their focus is on things that would have been important to them. Wish I could tell stories the way you do. I also loved the shorter rounds. I tried it with my clans (3 days instead of the full 7) and found it more fun to move from clan to clan quickly. It added interest in the relationships side of things. Thanks.

@cespencer7: Thank you!! I wanted to make more of the "totem animal" thing - for now it's just the clothes and some of the furniture that's themed... But I'm not sure how to do it. And yeah, I've tried longer rounds before and I find that I just get bored. Also, I'm cheating a little since I built huts for my sims... It was too frustrating when they kept fainting from overheating, it felt like that was all they did!

When my generation 2 sims reach adulthood, I think my sims will learn how to tame wild animals... I haven't decided just yet. I found a bunch of animated animals for download, I think being able to get milk and eggs and stuff will make life a bit easier for my stone age sims. You can find the animals here: http://www.affinitysims.com/forum/i...board,25.0.html

What I really would love right now is to find a custom career (a hunter, or something similar) for my family providers... Just something that would take them away from the dwelling for a bit and still not earn a lot of simoleans. Does anyone know of a career like that? :S

Thats an awesome link for the animations. Thank you !! Wish I had seen that pee bush before LOL When I started this challenge I didnt even realize you weren't supposed to built huts and I did. I think if you read back you will see most of us suggested you really need a hut of some sort to carry on. Since the challenge is not mine tho I am not changing the official rules. Maybe we should list some tips and tricks and I could add them to the main page. What do you think?

Well, even SwallowTail changed the rules after developing the version we have here. (If I recall correctly, that is.) It seems like every player more or less builds their own ruleset which is inspired by the "official" ToT rules to different degrees.
That relative openness of the rules is really one of the challenge's appeals in my eyes. In many other challenges the way the story is going seems to be more set in stone. Sorry, maybe that's just my personal impression. I do notice we also have restrictions and also follow a given route, but still. ^^;

By the way, the main family of my River clan just died. The whole household (Gen 2 head + wife + teenage daughter) fell victim to a fire. The younger children then were caught by the infamous SW bear. :/ It's a shame, the kids were quite pretty - that's uncommon in the River family. Now I only have one household of the name left. I hope they'll survive.

Get the remaining Rivers to adopt them. The adoption pool is last in, first out.

Depending on the age.

Yuki yes everyone has adapted to their own style which I really like as well ! The stories coming out from everyone are great. My condolences to the River clan. Isnt it so very hard to play the game as it goes and not the way you want it to play out? Hitting save sometimes is the best thing tho lol Ive posted my recent update on my blog. Im really ahead in play right now which is kinda nice. I started round 9 (!) today even tho Im still updating round 8 - I dont want to put up all the updates at one time and then be weeks or months when I lose interest again lol. I also tried out the tribalpages for the family tree. It was so neat ! I already had a family tree maker with everyone in it so I was able to export the data and had it done in no time. For anyone looking for an option for family trees I would recommend it.

I guess I'll try that.
Aunt Jellyfish River does have some body skills, maybe she could save her nephews from the bear cave. Also, she and her husband are both very nice and family aspiration sims, so yeah... It fits.

Thanks, everyone.

@ eorienna, I know there is a custom career set for the stoneage somewhere because I downloaded it. If I can remember what it was called I'll post a link here.

I've been working on my neighborhood and started playing the first round in each of them. I've still got one family to finish, but I've posted a few sets of photos so far. I'm not much of a creative writer, but I tried to make a story to go with the pics, lol. Here's the link to my blog. http://my-simtopia.blogspot.com/ I've enjoyed reading everyone else's blogs as they give me an idea for things I can do with my own game so keep posting people! Although I will admit there are two of my sims who really seem to have minds of their own. Rowena keeps going to everyone else's house and eyeing up the men even though she's a family sim, not a romance one, and when Lili found out she was pregnant she panicked because she thought she was getting fat and kept jump-roping no matter what else I tried to get her to do, so I'm going to have to work their personalities into my plans for them, lol.

Wow! This thread suddenly got really busy. It's so great to see everyone's stories.


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My Test of Time neighbourhood: Culture Cove

Adapting the first generation
 

I think that everyone who made it out of the first generation added some kind of hut and baby gear like cribs and changing tables, oh and a tub. I didn't figure that out until my first four clans had their fathers die in fires after the birth of their first set of twins (twins without any cheats too). The combination of sleeping in hammocks and tents and caring for twins was too much especially since everytime a tree caught on fire they all ran into the flames since they weren't inside they couldn't ignore it.

Photo headshots in your Culture Cover
 

I was curious what you use to get the awesome headshots in your family trees on your blog? I love the kind of artistic quality they have. :lovestruc

It looks like she used SimPE to extract the picture from the game and then changed the color of the background. I love that she actually took the time to set up the family tree!

I did pull the pictures out of simpe! I wasn't inspired to blog until I was just about ready to begin the Roman Era, so I did my best to give background, and that was the only way I could think to find photos of dead sims.

Thank you

OK, yes, VT really is back this time (you know how it is when things keep popping up and cutting into your Sim time...) and getting ready to start on this again.

Some of you might remember my post-apocalyptic mutant ToT hood from way back at the beginning of this thread. Most of you probably won't. Either way, my new ToT is going to be a sort of sequel to that hood, because I loved those Sims to pieces. They just made struggling to survive so much fun! First, though, I have to geneticise and townify my HUGE custom skintone collection, get all my CC clothes townified too, and re-organise my Downloads folder so I can actually, y'know, find stuff in there. I won't say anything like "it'll be done in two weeks" because that invariably means it will be at least two months, so... watch this space.

- VT

VT, I remember your tribe of mutants. Mostly b/c you and I are the only ones who altered the beginning set from neanderthals. Glad to hear you'll be back soon. And may I recommend Delpy's Download Organizer to help with the organization? It helped my beyond help downloads folder regain a semblance of organization. At least to the point where I can find things now.

ETA: I just played Round one of my first two families and updated my site with the pics. I should be sleeping now, but Sims, obviously takes precedence over that. ~VP

I was playing one of my families today, their stove caught fire and one of their children died from it. The wife then gave birth to twins which caused the father to go into aspiration failure. He was then forced to change a diaper because the wife was feeding the other baby and he went into aspiration failure again. He then went outside to teach the older son to talk and was stuck by lighting, wet himself, was stuck by lightning again, tried to take a shower, but his meeters had dropped so low he spun back into his clothing and died. The house then caught fire a second time, but the wife was able to put it out. By now it was day time and she passed out from heat storke, but luckily a neighbor was walking by and I cheated to have the neighbor wake her up (so not to lose the babies). When the wife woke up a pop up apeared saying "What a great week, I hope next week is this good." I nearly choked from laughing.

I have been lurking around this thread for a while, daring myself to take the challenge, however daunting it seems. so what they hang...I have accepted the challenge!
Like some, I have had to *tweak* the rules for the sake of gameplay. I hope thats okay.

I'm still pondering the social structure from the Roman Era up. Maybe some of you remember how I proposed a somewhat complicated and half-baked Senator system some time ago. I suppose I really will try something like that in my game to make changing social classes possible.
However, I also have another "brilliant" (*cough*) idea: I'm going to introduce a tax system for all eras, starting with the Romans. The details will be flexible and depend on the stage and the ruler's personality and funds. For example: In the Roman Era only the Emperor will receive taxes. Everyone else pays taxes, except maybe for slaves. Later, in feudal systems, nobles will receive taxes from the peasants, but will have to pay taxes to the court themselves. They will most likely see that their income from the peasants taxes is higher than what the nobles themselves have to pay the king. Like that, the height of the taxes can always be adjusted.
If anyone is unable to pay, there will be punishments that could also differ between eras and rulers: In general I see 3 options: a) demotion to a lower social class, b) prison, c) death penalty.

So I finally have a solution for how plebians could be demoted to slaves. It even corresponds with the historical act of selling themselves into slavery in a way.

Taxes could be paid and received either with familyfunds, or with MATY's moneyorder.

That actually sounds like a really great idea! I'm finding that some of my slaves and plebeians are earning money much too fast, since they can't really spend it on anything. Perhaps some sort of tax implementation would solve the problem. I'd just need to figure out what sort of tax would work best - income bracket, percentage, etc....

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My Test of Time neighbourhood: Culture Cove

LOL LOL LOL What a good week
 

Don't you just love some of the crazy things that happen? Your post made me laugh out loud and I think my roommate was worried I had lost my mind.

lol Anaticula. That is sims all over for you ! What a crazy time you must have had.

Welcome Tga Kiwi ! Good luck and be sure to let us know how you get on.

Yuki you are full of great ideas ! Is there another challenge that does something like that or have you mentioned the tax thing before? It sounds a little familiar lol of course maybe I am just tried of being taxed to death in real life! I cant remember but does money play a big part in teh game after the roman era and determining who is what class?

Glad to be here. This is my second attempt at this challenge. I failed the first time and decided that I had to try again seeing as though I was always lurking in this thread. hehehe. If you wish you can follow my progress by clicking Here :D

@ anna: I got the general idea of paying taxes from the Build a City Challenge(s). However, I'd like to adjust the details (e.g. who pays, how much is paid, time intervalls, punishments etc.) while playing.
As far as I remember, the only time families are sorted into classes based on money is indeed the transition between stone age and Romans. Afterwards they can change classes by marriage. Otherwise they more or less just stay in the classes during the challenge.

Im going to have a look thru at your progress Tga. Thanks for the link. Thats it Yuki ! I was sure I read something else did taxes and I was thinking wow thats so neat. Are you posting your progress so far? If so I think you should definitely include the taxes as part of your version of the challenge.

Roman Age to begin
 

I just finished my 11th week (round) and have an adult in each of the ten families. Based on the total incomes the Scalyn was richest Race 1-2 and that means Beaumont will be heir. I have decided to break from playing the clans so I can build a roman city, university, and shopping area. I really enjoy building since it gives me a break from the routine of fishing, farming, and other household duties.

@cespencer7 I love how you've set up your blog! Where did you find the book template at? It's awesome!

Hello all my fellow ToT'ers ! ST has sent me an updated version of the rules which I have now edited on the first page. The small hut at the beginning has been added and most of the other changes she said were grammatical and to tweak some small steps that she felt had errors ( ie changing job restrictions ). I hope you are all enjoying your game and getting lots of play time in

Oh, I was expecting more changes. :/ I've just went through the general rules and stone age and I found these:


Whoa, really? Does that work? Don't we need more CAS sims? Before the change the passage read "Starting with the Roman Stage [...] one single adult CAS sim per family". I... guess it still is one CAS sim per family? You don't mean 1 CAS sim per world, do you?
Honestly, I was expecting a changed rule here. But I was hoping we were allowed more CAS sims, not less. ^^;


Allright, no more restrictions on ponds and plots / trees. Not that they'd mattered much in the past, though. And the hut is now official.


Most important change until now. Before, the funds were "set to their entire family's funds" which made my children ridiculously rich - especially the younger siblings. However, I won't try to retroactively change that for my sims now. It's already part of my system. Also, the Roman Stage is not that far away for me. I'll re-organize funds in the transition.

[QUOTE=YukiShine]Whoa, really? Does that work? Don't we need more CAS sims? Before the change the passage read "Starting with the Roman Stage [...] one single adult CAS sim per family". I... guess it still is one CAS sim per family? You don't mean 1 CAS sim per world, do you?
Honestly, I was expecting a changed rule here. But I was hoping we were allowed more CAS sims, not less. ^^;QUOTE]
Yuki, I meant for the rule to be interpreted as, if you need additional CAS sims, you may add them freely during the Roman Stage. There is no longer a limit to adding one Sim per family, because I ran into difficulties with the exact same thing. Hope this helps!

It does, thank you for the explanation. English isn't my native language, I guess I do misunderstand things every now and then...
So it seems like now the rule is pretty much what I would have done anyway. Awesome. :D

blog template Google sites
 

Thanks. The book template was one of the Google Site pre-made templates. I just fill in the information and upload a couple of photos. I like this challenge. It is hard, but the history part makes it interesting and changes things up every once in a while. :google:

I just finished Round One! And uploaded all my pics onto my website. Follow the link in my signature if you want to see my crash landed aliens. I'm off to bed, and when i wake up, I'll start Round Two.

Question: The killing of fight losers, does that apply to pets as well? I had a couple of strays fight on one of my lots and wondered if I had to go kill the furry loser. ~VP

Great start VP! Those outfits dont leave much to the imagination on the men do they? lol Since pets are not included in the original rules you can really do as you like. When it comes to the animal kingdom they are always fighting to show who is Alpha male so I would think the losers stay with the pack and learn their place in the pecking order.

Roman Age Begins
 

I just finished setting up all of my heads of households (adult males) and determining everyone's rank. I have 20 males (6 patriarch, 5 plebian, and 9 slave) and I have 36 females, only 3 married so far, who are entering the Roman Age. Anyone else run into this problem as they move forward into the next age?

My unwed slave women are living in patriarch or plebian homes. My unwed upper and middle class ladies are living in insulae in the city and are looking for suitable husbands. What have folks done with their unwed upper class females? Vestal Virgins at a Temple?

Historically, unequal male/female ratios were addressed by polygamy. So there's your solution, right there.

@anna: thank you! and yeah, the whole point of the outfits was really to show off the skintones, b/c I love them alot. And glad to know I don't have to kill the furry pixels. That's just bad.

@cespencer7: ooo I actually like the idea of vestal virgins - some of the girls being sent to live on the temple grounds... I might have to borrow that idea if I may, when I get to the roman age. Of course first my sims will have to survive the stone age.

With my stone age sims, the girls of one of the families are all family sims and able to make the grandma's comfort soup - they are 'shamanesses' and attuned to the spirit world. Nobody but shamanesses are allowed to learn to make the comfort soup in my hood. It's a lot of fun working out culture and religion for each era, I think.

historical fun
 

I know what you mean about the historical and cultural story lines. I like trying to come up with things that might make sense in that time period. I have really enjoyed your blog. I like seeing how your story is developing and the tribal element.

FIRE is a curse
 

Just when you think it is safe to let your little people go freely about and make their own decisions, some knucklehead with no cooking skills decides to go make dinner on the grill. I just lost one of my entire households, my Krapina3 group. Agim was cooking and I wasn't watching and next thing I knew he was standing in the middle of the flames. Suddenly the whole household was running about on fire and all five of them burned up.
Grimmie was having fun.

Bummer, isn't it? Question for all you folks who, like me, are nearing the Roman age. Are you going to leave your teen in the family home until they age, or move them out? I've got one more round after this one before the oldest age to adults.

@ Sandy: I move them out. Otherwise the households get too crowded for my taste. Also, I have InTeen, so some of the teens might even start their own families before the transition.

@ cespencer: Recently I had a pretty similar case where one of my main households was erased by a forgotten meal... ^^;

I don't tend to get households lost to fire very often, but then i tend to be a very involved Sim-God, especially when babies are on the lot since my little idiots, ahem i mean sims, think the baby needs to be fed every sim hour. By every sim. So unless i keep a close watch on adult/teen sims, they do nothing but haunt the crib waiting their turn to feed the baby. Or they're swamping the fridge when someone's already served the one meal a day, or is preparing it. Sigh, my sims annoy me. But I'm about to go play the Farrars in round two anyway.

Annoying Sims
 

LOL. I know what you mean about their annoying habits. I had one family that just kept wanting to jump into the tub all day. When they weren't in the tub, they were waiting impatiently outside the door for their turn. Another family would go stuff their faces at the fridge, until I pulled them away to go fish or farm.

My problem was a set of parents that kept jumping in bed all day, the babies would be screaming for food and the parents were to preocupied with tryin to make more to take care of them properly, lol.

I had a bit of a scare when I thought I might lose my whole neighborhood. My computer crashed horribly, but luckily I had a backup file that wasn't too old saved on a flashdrive. Yay! And for the neighborhoods that I did lose I downloaded some pretty cool prebuilt neighborhoods here that I can replace them with.

lost neighborhood
 

Sorry to hear about the crash. You were smart to have a back up. I keep saying I will do it, but I haven't. Now I think I will since your story reminds me of the benefits of taking the time to do it.

<---- backing up now