I've got my town to load up and check that it's been set up and that my first couple is ready to arrive in town.I'll be starting with the 16th century period of colonization first before moving onto the 17th century.

@Tadolson I follow all of your post about your 17 century village and I don't know why you don't have shown barely any of your families in wooden cabin houses. and I've noticed that near all your photographs include a Pinball table, you said it's how your colonist make their money but Pinball didn't come out until the early 20th century in 1930 although Pinball is not exactly modern but I don't think it fits well with the whole 17th century theme

Let me offer some suggestions

In the 17th century most people lived in custom built log cabins with stone fireplaces in them, they would often cook on a wood burning stove some of the colonist would keep livestock too, also some slept on straw and even some of the richer colonists I think would even sleep on steel beds, colonists would often use candles and not electric lights at night to light the way in their homes, most of them actually made money from chopping down trees and selling wood to other colonists.

The reason why the colonist didn't sleep outside and spend their lives 100% of the time day or night is because if they did in real life they would die of pneumonia or of exposure to the elements, it's gets cold at night especially in the west, the only time the colonist would spend outside in real life was during the day or sometimes around a campfire at night mostly where they would hunt cook and go fishing in lakes, rivers and ponds for nearly all their food or when chopping wood for their stoves and fireplaces and pits

100% of the colonist food had to be grown by the colonist themselves there were no grocery stores in the 17th century unless maybe in European towns they might have been markets or general stores

for bladder they would use a wooden outhouse and sometimes an outdoor shower, sometimes the rich colonist actually had bathtubs but not showers inside of their homes they had wash basins in stead of sinks

Do your colonists live off the land? Do you have any in small cheap to build wooden cabins? do you have at least 1 cheap fireplace in those wooden cabins? in my opinion all of the above is essential for a colonist themed sims 2 game

if you want you could have your sims fish or grow food and chop wood and sell it for money instead of playing Pinball

I've just moved my sims into Pleasant Valley and also am limited by the game options and what CC I could find.I just restrict some things though like school in historical times.I also restirct getting jobs as most sims are likely to be farming and others are likely to be crafting or working a trade like in the old times.The colonists did sleep outside in the warmer seasons only until they had a house built like mine are doing and their colony wouldn't be already built when they arrived.They have to clear land to build and to add lots for new families and get their service center building built as well as theor own home.They arrived in the spring and have the warmer seasons to get that done before winter arrives.They're using buckets for tiolets and an outhouse or an old wooden bathtub and are having to fetch their water from their well and store it when their water storage empties.

I think I've never been so obsessed with a Sims 2 challenge as much as this one. I've played my Test of Time challenge called Total Valley for over a real life year now and my hood is now 93 Simdays ("years" in my game) old.
I have to say I absolutely adore big families and how crazy big their family trees get and the occasional tragedy mixed with the usual Sims 2 randomness. I think I was never so obsessed with this one game before.
For the very most part I play my hood based on pleasantsims rule set. However, I made some adjustments along the way.
- During the first stage every family gets a waterfall (I struggled greatly before I decided to do that)
- Female Sims can only move out if they get married.
- One Sim may be added if another generation ages up to adult (the oldest of that generation counts)
- Several Sims may be added when another stage is arrived (I created 5 households for the lowest class when the Roman age started)
- Heirs always remain in their social class during the Roman age (this is to keep a minimum of Sims in one class)
- All unmarried (adult and up) Servants have to serve another class if they are not the heir of their family
Most of the lots in my empire were built by LordCrumps before anyone wants to admire my building skills.

Hi everyone! I was a founding member of this thread and now I'm wanting to get back into this challenge. I've been playing my high-fantasy hunter-gatherer hood, Kulo Seeri, in some form or another for the best part of sixteen years, and I'm craving something different to do with it... spotting that link to pleasantsims' rule set inspired me to convert it into the first stage of a Test of Time challenge. I'll probably be posting about it on my (currently empty) Dreamwidth, but I'll link the posts here too if anyone cares to read my stuff.

A few things I'll mention now:
- There will be a lot of worldbuilder rambling, since I've been creating fantasy worlds since toddlerhood.
- My sim world is not Earth and its history is not ours. The eras will not represent "medieval" or "Roman" times etc. but will be their own things. I might create the rules for each era as I go.
- My game is universally matriarchal. Only female sims can be heirs, and most other gender-based rules in the Test of Time will be flipped (or ignored, as with the concept of legitimacy) in my version.

I'm currently in the setup/building stage, but if I haven't put you off with all this, I'll keep you guys posted.

You're not alone in playing a modified version as mine is starting out historically in the 16th century as an early colonization of the new world in Arbor Valley which is based off the Arbordale terrain from the game and is located in what is now the state of Maine back in the 1520's.

@TadOlson I enjoy lurking on the challenges forum and I've seen you around multiple threads, thanks for sharing your challenge adaptations! I love reading about the ways each simmer makes the game their own.

I've finished recreating my sims and am about to start playing, using multiple copies of pleasantsims' starter lot because me and building are not friends. I'm starting with sims already in my game instead of CAS couples. The main hood is populated by the seven clans of Kulo Seeri, and I have a subhood with sims from Credence, the mining town that was recently set up in the same region. There are eight households total in each of the hoods.

Engaging ramble mode...
The basic concept of my ToT adaptation: the inhabitants of both villages have been cast back in time by a vengeful god, the Beguiler. They arrived not long before the first and only great empire of their world (now known as the Empire of Chains) was founded. This empire was renowned for its advanced knowledge of spiritbinding magic, but its mages abused that knowledge to create unquestioning servants and take over most of the continent. The gods objected to this misuse of their gift, so the imperial mages attempted to bind them too, and failed. All knowledge of their spiritbinding techniques was destroyed, and the empire's actual name erased from history; the Beguiler, the only god to side with the mages, was imprisoned in the Void, and eventually escaped to seek revenge.

But technically, none of that's happened yet. Why does it matter?

Well. When they arrived in this earlier era, the Beguiler told my sims that the Empire of Chains would be their creation... a disturbing idea to the people of Kulo Seeri, whose tribal name (Nuidya) literally means "free people". Now, this particular god is one you can't trust as far as you can throw vir* - so no one's sure whether it's true or not, if it's a double bluff, if it's intended to become a self-fulfilling prophecy... and as if it wasn't going to be hard enough finding their feet in another time period, they can't even call on their guiding ancestors for aid, since those ancestors haven't even been born yet.

I'm still working out my ruleset, and I'll probably adapt it as I play, but I haven't been this excited about a rebuild in ages!

*The gods of the Seeriverse predate the concept of gender and use ve/vir pronouns. I also use ve/vir pronouns and have a simself in the pantheon. That wasn't originally part of the plan.

I've mistakenly loaded Pleasantview though it's theme fits in with this challenge as it's historical from the turn of the 17th century and the town map view even show that most accurately as shown in other threads here.I'll load Alpine Valley later on today for a quick visit to check on the town.

I too have been obsessed with this challenge! (And ignoring my two games/stories in Sims 3 in the process...)
After the Founders and Gen 1 lived through their entire lives in the heat of summer, battling heatstroke, even with a 'small' shack, I'm currently playing Gen 2 as they go into an Ice Age.

And setting up my sub-hoods for the upcoming Greek Era.
I've read over the rules multiple times, but I'm a little stuck on how you are supposed to play a couple of the "explorer" lots.
Specifically, the Island of the Goddess and The Underworld as they are supposed to be inhabited. So are they played like the Island of the King's family and you just 'invite over' the explorer group? But then that really goes against the king/prince befriending the 'dead' prophet as you'd be playing the prophet not the king/prince.
And how would they even know anyone in the explorer group?

I know it's been awhile since anyone's posted here, but any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, and I'll check back to see if anyone has popped in.

My Pleasantview paythough is still in spring and my couple still has to survive summer,fall and the upcoming winter before another family arrives.Arbor Valley is waiting for it's first settlers to arrive and getting set up for that big day in early spring.Arbor Valley is being established as a 16th century colonial settlement in the new world later to become Early America in the 17th century.

You made it to Greek/ Roman Times!

I haven't looked at this thread for a while. It's making me want totake up the challenge again.

I'm sure bumping this thread is bad etiquette but I love this challenge! My OG Neanderthal sims children are all about to age up to teens

Hey everyone!
I have actually not really played the sims for nearly two years as my simming computer is not where I am. ^^" But I had already edited all the pictures for Round 16 and uploaded them to my blog before then. So, I took the time and wrote all the missing blog posts the past couple of days. It was so much fun. Since it has been so long since I played these households, going through the pictures was like playing it all over again. =P I still need access to my simming computer to finalise the posts, though, before I can post them. :<

Anyway, it's really great to see that there are still other people around enjoying this challenge.

@meginmd I don't think it counts as bumping if you actually have something to share. Starting a new generation in your hood is always very exciting and having sims age up to teens is the first important step in that process. :D

@deedee_828 I know it's been a while since your post, so not sure if you'll even see this. But I am quite intrigued by the rules you mentioned and would love to know which rule set you are using? I scanned over the last few pages, but couldn't find anything matching your description. I even quickly checked the original rules just to make sure I hadn't forgotten that a Greek era and explorer lots existed over all my years of basically playing with my own rules. XD

I just moved to the greek/roman stage! Im using pleasant view rules (mostly) with a few tweaks of my own (like any one who gets a genie lamp under teenage is an witch) After a couple of rounds i added in random occurence scenarios. Between random fist fights, a childbirth chance of death mod, and a random occurrence pitting the plant sims and witches against the non-supernatural sims, i think i had more dead sims than live sims going into the roman era.

Ive added a psuedo class between patricians and plebeians specifically for the witch academy. The current headmistress is plebeian if she ever marries and leaves the school ( She wont she is having a fine affair with the plantsim sister of the emperor) but the school itself is allowed a bigger lot and more expensive things as they can afford them. It also acts like the school, and any witch or any class must be trained there for twelve sim days (3 round of 4 day seasons) anyone who was in the servant class before training becomes a pleb. Any who have at least a 4 magic skill and 20 of each reagent receive a ‘college degree’ in the roman era they are considered a religious order.

My emperors family, the Woads, included two brothers and a sister, (Xin Woadou, Echium Woadtree, Scilla Woadflower) two of which were plant sims, but born after him. So Echium has a wife, and Scilla has two grandchildren.

The emperor (Orv) also had an older brother (Harrt) that relinquished any inheritance claim when he became a witch, and is a patrician.They are the Woadwits. His wife, Caidu was the founder of Sharpewitch Academy and was the first to spread literacy through the tribe.

The other Patrician family is the Hops family including Viky, his aunts Mina and Ulla, and another older brother who is a witch, Quen Hopswit. Mina is engaged to Xin Woadua, Ulla is looking to marry emperor Orv. Quen is engaged to a plebeian witch, Zelenskyy Sharpewitch.

The plebian families are the Brookes (4 people), the Cookwits (9 people, four of them newborns), the Sharpewitches (the witches currently at the academy) and the Woadweeds (plantsim couple with 2 children).


The Servant families are the Sharpes (1 plantsim and 2 kids), Hopsweed (plantsim couple with 2 kids), Friedrich Cook, a teenager and lone survivor of his family, and Neal Bigfoot. I’m a bit low on servants , since the poorest families were mostly the one just starting out.

I’ve also got a really bad sex ratio. Within the plebeians there are 9 females to 2 males under adult age. So that’s gonna be fun.

I've started this challenge (again!) and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Currently my Gen 2 are becoming children and I'm about to start round 8, I think? My founders, Gen 0, are Elders and are very close to death. I'll be sad to see them go but I'm excited for them to make room in the household so I can have more babies For this generation I'm focusing on getting a werewolf. I think I've had a natural werewolf happen in my game once, in all the years I've been playing this game.

Side note, does anyone find that they play neighbourhoods longer with less CC in them? I find with more CC I try to make everything "perfect" which results in me giving up after while. But this new neighbourhood I started in a basically vanilla game and have been slowly adding mods/custom content to it. I've actually had several Sims autonomously potty train their toddlers. I didn't know that could happen without mods.

EDIT: I've finished the Neanderthal era and have set up my neighbourhood for the Roman era! I'm very excited for the change because the last couple rounds were really starting to drag on.

I've decided to play 2 generations per era. I managed to get a werewolf!

Here's a few stats:
Gen 0 - 10 Sims - 10 dead
Gen 1 - 32 Sims - 6 dead - 8 in adoption pool
Gen 2 - 38 Sims - 1 dead - 10 in adoption pool

Now that it's Roman times I will allow my Sims to adopt and I will slowly start clearing out the adoption pool. Which is great because one of the founders doesn't have any living descendants in the hood, but has 1 child in the adoption pool.

I have 7 households to start the Roman era. 1 Emperor, 2 Patricians, 2 Plebeians and 2 Servants. My personal rule change is that when a spare moves out into their own household, they get demoted to the next lower class. This will hopefully ensure that I have a "pyramid" structure of classes.

I have put together Time Travel Rules to use within the confines of the game. Only mods required are Sim Blender and Visitor Controller.
This was written to be a part of the Test of Time.
See the website below.

Okay all it's been forever since I post in this thread but my Sims 3 game finally crashed when my computer broke (although I can revive it may take some time), So here I am playing Sims 2 on an old laptop after nearly two decades lol.
Really been enjoying this challenge, especially with items from Sun and Moon over at plumbob keep (fruit vines, trees you can chop down to make wood and reeds that can be woven into various furniture items, etc. Highly recommended). Anyone who remembers me knows that I love mods.

But I do have a question for the long time sims2ers of this challenge, how do you handle overheating for toddlers and babies? Because the only way I've found is to put a fan right on the ceiling. Even though it's an electronic, I figure there's not a mod or anything to allow them to cool off in a puddle or bath. I think a Neanderthal stage there should have been a way to cool off the children. I know it's a way people have let the social worker take their kids before but I haven't wanted to allow that because it seems like a really stupid reason to lose the kids.
I would love to know everyone's opinion on this or what they did in their game.

Bring them inside before the get fully in the red or blue. That way they have time to cool down, or warm up if it's winter. A home with walls, roof, and door is allowed.

For the first time in many years, I have internet access on my computer. My old XP died. But the bright side is getting to write a story again. Here's a link to chapter 1:
Chicklet's Test of Time Story

And for those wanting fantastic custom content, here's a link to my WCIF page: WCIF Neanderthal/Africa

If you let your mouse hover over Where Can I Find? at the top of the page, there's a dropbox with lots of different eras. When I find something I love, I link it on my website.

After many years, I have been reattempting this challenge on a different computer after installing the Sims 2 to a new computer. This time I'm playing a post-apocalyptic version (so I don't have to download a lot of CC to feel like the actual time period) and mainly sticking with the original rules, but it seems a lot more difficult than the first time I tried. Maybe because I am adhering much more closely and without mods that makes things easier. It's very hard for them to survive the heat in the beginning with the finances lopped down to 3000 simoleons (assuming you can't flatten the lot or build until after you lop it off; it would definitely be easier if you build the shelter first before lopping them down). Only on gen 2 so far after like a month or so. I've reset the lots multiple times since the kids and toddlers get taken away so easily when they overheat, and I'm not that keen about adopting them to a different named family- would prefer them to first raise one generation to adulthood and then potentially allow the SW adoption cycle to take place so at least they can get adopted by relatives. With just the sink, the kids especially get so upset all the time because washing their hands barely cuts it at that age for some reason compared to teen or adulthood. Considering if I should download some mods like no social worker or do one of the modified challenge versions like the one where you can have a community bathing lot.

@TheFlyingRaccoon It has been a while, but I was thrilled to see new activity on this thread! The rules I mentioned I found at this site https://atotsims.weebly.com/greek-stage.html

Quite extensive information but I'm not quite sure how to implement some of the explorer locations.

I've recently joined Tumblr and have asked for insight on the Sims 2 Community page there.

I've gotten a few responses on different posts and am hoping to get back to my ATOT game soon.
It's been on hold since the youngest son of the King of Troy died at his engagement dinner to the King of Athen's daughter at their palace!

I was so stunned. I put the game on hold to try and figure out how to handle it.
Would the King of Troy wallow in grief at his son's accidental death?
Or would he declare war on Athens for the poisoning of his son?

Decisions, decisions!

Would appreciate suggestions, ideas, feedback on that as well as how to handle the explorer locations from anyone!

I chose both! No social worker and a community bathing lot.
But having to go to a lot constantly lost its appeal fast so I opted for the cold/hot showers mod where cold showers actually cool down sims instead of making them warmer.
Once my sims could afford them.
Also, the bathing bucket for toddlers is great because they gain hygiene as they play in it.
May be a little bit cheaty but if toddlers in modern day can play in toilets, I figured they'd be able to play in a bucket of water back then.
And I can't stand to see the little buggers crying all the time, so I used bathtubs too.

I decided to bite the bullet and installed a bunch of mods including but not limited to no SW, simlogical flexi school, manual sponge bath for children and up, and inteen because playing this challenge vanilla was brutal and not that fun. It's a lot smoother and easier now that I don't have to deal with the pressures of modern society/ limitations of vanilla and also quicker in terms of generation turnaround with teen marriage and pregnancy. Also downloaded Chris Hatch's relationship adjuster for teens/ cheaters, closer family for possible consanguinity especially for later upper classes (but that's borked due to it not being fully compatible with Ultimate Collection- would need a separate woohoo/ pregnancy making mod- simblender can make the pregnancies most likely, and I could use a random number generator to determine if they are successful or not), marriage of convenience for arranged marriages, simblender, sleep on comm lot, sim wallet, farm related mods, and a bunch of creature mods for the future. I already have a plant sim and a zombie due to respectively spraying plants and using the genie lamp to make wishes including resurrecting a pregnant spouse. There has been a whole host of automated cheating but so far no one's gotten into a fight and no one has been born out of wedlock or through cross couples. Was considering choose the father mod but so far I prefer knowing who the actual father is. Gen 1 is mostly elders now. Gen 3 has 2 babies and 1 toddler from the teen parents, and I finally grew up an adult for gen 2. I have a disproportionate boys to girls ratio, so that's also going to slow down the birth rate. I might delete the SW mod later, maybe during Roman era, so I can start implementing adoptions, and then consider Monique's child support mod later too (would turn it off for lower class dads, though).

I use a ton of mods too and even found a polyamorous one so that my extra girls had husbands. One of my younger male sims has 3 or 4 wives and a ton of children. I wanted to make sure I had a big enough population from my Castaway and Ice Age Eras so there would be plenty of families to split between Athens and Troy going into my Ancient Greece Era. I even went so far as to add a few traits and mods for proper greetings between my classes which I broke down as: Gods and Goddesses(majority live on Mount Olympus), and for each city: Royal Families(That I made in CAS), Aristoi(Noble families), Middle Classes -- Business owners with 3 levels: Yeoman, Bourgeoisie, and Merchants, and Lower class (Peasants who live in rented 'apartment' buildings as they are not allowed to own land, but must work for the Kings and/or Aristoi). I'm still in the process of getting my Greek Era set up with only the two Kings families and two of my original founding families placed in their new homes, one in Athens and one in Troy. I'm still trying to get eligible males/females paired up to determine who will live in each city. My PlantSim family is so large that I'm planning on splitting them, one for each city as they will be commercial farmers and fisherman. Unfortunately for them, the Royal families are suspicious of such 'foreign' looking sims and will only allow them to live in their land under strict rules. PlantSim children with a human parent must either join the military and live in the barracks (males) or become servants (males and females) when they age to adult, unless they transform into a PlantSim themselves. PlantSims must live in their compounds only and intermarry only other PlantSims. I've been 'planning' this Era way longer than actually playing so far, which includes building the cities, with walls surrounding them, Mount Olympus, Poseidon's Castle by the Sea, Aphrodite's Palace, The Underworld, and the Mediterranean Sea with the 5 explorer locations, along with residential lots for rich, middle class, and poor families, and numerous community lots with Markets and Bathe Houses, Libraries, and Symposiums, I downloaded quite a few of the lots I'm using but ended up renovating them, some just a bit, others, extensively. It's certainly been an undertaking!

Can't wait to hear more about how you're setting up and playing your game! :D