Welp, save got wiped, and the back-up mysteriously disappeared (I don't think I've used the name Gold Tracer as a save before) :/ So i'm going to start again except in the Simlua Isles Lite world. And this time I'm going to have all seasons enabled just because I haven't experienced winter, fall, or spring before xD We'll see what'll happen when the crop supply dwindles >:D

I really don't recommend playing a farming family with all seasons enabled if your game is anything like mine. The plants will sort-of survive the winter, but there's a good chance that they'll be bugged. After they go dormant, they will be permanently stuck in the "harvest" stage (even if they're still sprouts) even though there's nothing to harvest, so you'll have to throw them all away. Worse, they still get bugged even if you don't have winter enabled. They go dormant in spring and fall. So you really have no way of knowing if that Perfect Lifeplant will go dormant one day into spring (this has happened to me before) before it even gives you a single harvest.

/end rant.

Anyway, I got my Colosseum up.



And have already christened it with the blood of a slave.



Sharonda Aero. She mocked the Empress and was sentenced to death by starvation.

Really? Well, that's a risk I'll have to take... Once. When/if a problem with my harvests occur I'll change it back to pure Summer.

I love your colliseum by the way. I get really overwhelmed with building community lots so I'll probably have to build them (in another save) while I play this age as well.

Darn slaves, they need to learn their place! > : ( Some of them are just so... Colliseum ready it irks me!
Have fun! :D

Next death in the Colosseum!



Lea.Sikora's cats are awesome.

So, I made it through an entire sim year with my rotations. God, Winter is boring in this community (I didn't realize how much time they spent gardening) -_-' I have turned it all summer round, need harvests for my vegetarian! >.<

Anyways These are my founding families :D

I found a slight problem: if I put a child or teen in boarding school and then switch to another household, they will randomly come back even if they haven't aged up. Plus, if they don't get into the car before I switch, they end up not going.

Also, one sim somehow got pregnant in boarding school. The father wasn't in that school.

Quite the conundrum right there. Hmm... if there isn't an option for NRAAS Storyprogression to change that, than I have no idea. Maybe Awesome Mod keeps them in boarding school? I mean it freezes pregnancies if you play ts2 style aging and you're not in that household. But, I have no idea, first time I ever heard of this, sorry.

Well, I'm now on the second(?) generation of the Roman Empire.

The first empress - Rhonda - has died. The second one - Cera (third generation total, first generation of Rome) - has a daughter - Livia - who has just reached Young Adult.

No pictures, sadly.

Okay, got a problem.

The Terra family bloodline - and the plebian class - is almost gone. I'm playing so that the men take the womens' last name, and the founders only had one daughter. That daughter only had one as well, and that one is now an elder with no daughters.

So, I figure that I have a few options.
1. Let them die out and shift the Pyros down to plebians.
2. Cheat and give the current heir a daughter.
3. Use the sons to reforge the bloodline.

Any thoughts?

I would choose magic number 3. Just because the entire life span can be used for child bearing :p. But I highly reccomend you add that extra simmie into the town and call him/her a plebian. And hopefully the entire class won't poof out of existence.

This seems unbelievably epic. It's really fun seeing all your updates. I love long challenges but I'm not sure I have the sim guts to try this. You all have done so great!

Wow, this is a great idea. I'm going to start this later today, already downloaded a cave starter house to use. I'll just delete the items from the house that aren't allowed. I have a question though...how do you prevent the other four families from breaking the rules? I allow my neighborhood to progress/age up on its own. Is it possible to do that with this challenge or is it better to just play it the way you would in the Sims 2?

ETA: Started my first family today: Darius and Mila Rock! They had a beautiful baby boy that they named Keiv. Here are a few pictures:





After Keiv reaches childhood, I'll play with the Sky family until their first born becomes a child then move onto another family. I think it might be easier to do it that way until the children start to move out of the families then I'll enable progression again. Hopefully it works out okay.

One more question: are we allowed to have a marketplace in the Neanderthal stage? Mila was collecting gems for money but then I just saw in the rules that she can't do that at this stage in the game.

For the first question, I play TS2 style so I'm not sure. I know NRAAS Story Progression has some options that prevent households from doing certain things but I am not sure at what extent you have control over. If you play TS3 style you need NRAAS Story Progression for sure, but if you end up playing TS2 style you need Awesome Mod. NRAAS Story Progression I would recommend as well.

For question #2 I would recommend not having a marketplace during this beginning stage, and I would try to prevent gem collection. However, if you can't stop a household from collecting gems (gosh my problem right there), you could make a marketplace if you need to. Those pesky gem collectors! >.<

I see no problem in having a marketplace so long as your families don't work there autonomously.

I don't mind playing the TS2 style to start up the families but I'll definitely look up NRAAS Story Progression for later on. I don't want to get bored of the challenge before I get to the Roman stage.



Okay, thanks! I just wasn't sure how they were supposed to earn money if they can't have normal jobs or sell fish at the marketplace. Maybe there's another way I'm not aware of (my sims usually have jobs/professions off the lot).

Ooh, forgot about that. Thanks. :D



I'm currently playing the same way. NRaas Story Progression really helps. I'm also testing out the new caste system; seems to be working well so far.


So, updates:

The final empress has been born! Livia had a daughter named Pompira, and now Pompira has had a daughter named Cera after the first one. And for some reason, my game is imposing the last Cera's adult image as the thumbnail. Younger Cera is still a toddler.

I should be moving into the Medieval times pretty soon.

I decided to began play in that challenge too. I would create a new blog about this challenge!!!

Mila and Darius Rock have entered into their golden years with five children to show for it (3 girls and 2 boys). Kiev spent his young adulthood working on the farm and gathering fish for his family. Now he's ready to settle down with Annia River, a much younger woman that lives a few miles from his family's home.

She spent the night at the cave...


And he proposed the next morning:




They're eager to spend the rest of their lives together. But will their lives be as peaceful as the lives of their parents?

---

My sims are no longer hunter-gather's, they're starting to farm and establish homes (my sims were living in open air caves but they're now starting to build homes with four walls). So there's bound to be more war and disease since there's been more interaction between tribes and the younger sims aren't as peaceful as the founders were.

We have just entered the Dark Ages!



Oi. With the un-restricted babymaking, my population is going to skyrocket. It's already at 200, and this is a small world!

Note to self: large worlds will prevent at least 500 messages about sims who can't move in together for some reason.

So, I'm cutting down the lifespan to simulate worse medical conditions. It's at about 70 days at the moment, when it started at 90 (normal settings).

Woah... 200 sims? Imagine if you were doing TS2 style. You wouldn't even remember who you've played yet! Or even remember who are in houeholds. Maybe discover a new household somewhere. Lol that's a good idea dropping the lifespan a bit.

I've already played that scenario back in TS2. Not fun. I started out with an empty town and put a single family in. Between the founders being Family sims, five children and twenty grandchildren who became Family sims, and a weirdly high rate of rolling baby wants for the others, I hit 200 by the third/fourth generation. In hindsight, that wasn't my most brilliant move.

Also, I got the plebian population up. I added a clone of Elena Terra (female founder of the line) and changed one of the Aero-Terra lines into another group (changing their last name to Terra to keep things straight). But there's still nowhere near enough to split into two groups, so I'm changing the Aero family to Vikings instead. Fits their founders perfectly. Now I just need to figure out where to put them, since I've had to move all the slaves in with the higher-ranking castes because of lack of houses.

I just started this challenge!
At first, I created the Hansen family, who's Scandinavian, with very bright skin and hair. The live in a octagon-shaped one room hut. They live primarily of fishing, with a bit of farming on the side. For now they're just the original couple.

Then, I created the Li family, who's Oriental, although they look more like Italian/British/Russian (I've never created asians before). The couple lives mostly of gardening, with a bit of fishing to get some proteins in their diet. They live in a two-room L-shaped house, with one room for the parents and one for the kids.

First they got a boy, and it was great! Then I decided to give the parents the 'fertility' bonus; which is something I've now regretted. Right after the boy was born, the mother got pregnant with triplets, who were all girls. It created chaos. The parents were starving, because they couldn't gather food, becuase they had to take care of 4 stupid, annoying, crying kids.

After the kids grew up (not babies, not kids, the thing in the middle (I play in Danish, so I don't what all of those stages are called)), the parents began to have time to farm again, but half of their plants were dead. It's fine, beccause they still needed some time to look after the kids.

I decided to check back on the Hansens, to find out that turning "living town-thingy" off doesn't work on my computer, so they had aged, something like 12 days (and the man even got a book and a car!), without working, earning money nor making babies!

I did also set adult life to normal, but halfed the life time for teenagers and younger, since taking care of kids can easily get repetive.

Tomorrow I'm going to add the other 3 tribes (I think I'm going to make African, Latin/Italian and Alien).

OMG SO COOL *Bookmarking*

I. Must. Try. This.

If you are using Nraas storyprogression you can effectively ban them from buying cars by setting the required money to an absurd amount, it's under the Money menu in general options. Pet adoption is handled under the adoption submenu of the pregnancy menu, you can ban it there, or later in the game if you want to make pets a luxury item you can require the presence of pet beds and only place the beds in houses that are allowed to adopt. Horses always require a stall for inactive families to adopt them, so that's not a problem.

Unfortunately there does not appear to be an option to only allow dogs.

How do you guys keep track of all the sims in this challenge? Also, if I play with aging off (without awesome mod), will my elderly sims die on their own or do I have to kill them off? And lastly, am I supposed to play just the founding lots throughout all the eras or do I play every lot? It seems like by the time the second generation grows up I will have about 15 lots to play at least.