I would prefer novice monks and nuns not to be a marriage pool for the hood. I am allowing townie marriages for peasants particularly in this beginning stage. They have even less rank than normal peasants, so heirs can't marry townies at all. Also I am calling YA townies merchants, since they are obviously getting an education, and my merchant daughter is marrying one, as there is no male of a suitable rank otherwise.

I have had to artificially age the YA and award him a degree. He didn't age up or graduate when engaged to my girl, and there's no option to marry a YA - not sure if there's a better way to arrange all that. I suppose I could have moved him into the Guildhall dorm and played him through his degree, but how boring!

To marry a dormie: Have a playable in the main hood invite him to move in. He then becomes a playable and can be married.

I did move him in, but used Inge's teleporter so he wouldn't mess up the family finances. Obviously that also prevented him aging properly? Oh well. Thanks for the tip.

Just started this challenge today, it's rather fun and interesting. ^^ Has certainly livened up my game-play style which was extremely boring and uneventful.

But thanks to the dice, I now have too many boys and like a bajillion toddlers. Dx

Since you don't get the $20,000 handout unless you've gone through the family bin, he wouldn't have messed up your finances much in any case, and you could have fixed it with family funds. Apparently the teleporter's code wasn't written with the idea of teleporting dormies in mind and didn't have an appropriate subroutine for that.

This is one reason I don't use mods much, and keep to the simplest ones. It's easy to forget which functions are modded and which are base, and to ask a mod to do something it wasn't designed to do.

Just thought I'd share some pictures of one of my Peasant families, the Bainard's!

Beatrix is a keen cook, and often has trouble keeping up with everyone's needs, but does so rather well considering all the yelling that goes on in the house.


Rowan is laid back, he loves to garden and and play kicky-bag thing with his children.


Joseph (Beatrix's Father) is sort of the family maid, always cleaning up after everyone and doing dishes etc. His favourite things to do are hunt for treasure, take long hot baths and sleep.


The children, Thea and Henry are well behaved and are quite helpful in the daily chores.
Henry likes helping his Father in the garden, while Thea hunts for bugs and treasure with her Grandpa.


Since I only started yesterday, not much has happened, there's been very little money made and I'm slowly adjusting to playing large families in tiny houses. xD
Bt so far, I'm loving this challenge. ^^

Wow! Hi everyone! Wow, I take a chance to go away for an overnighter and come back to some awesome discussion -- fantastic!

Aeflaed I like your take on novices and townies -- some flexibility is important to fit everyone's play style, I think, whatever works! Since I tend to not play with university and YA's, I can't say much about that situation with your YA -- hope it is now sorted!

Peni Griffin -- Welcome! And thank you for your input -- great to hear some different advice and suggestions for tricky situations.

Welcome also to Saturnfly -- so glad you are trying the challenge and are enjoying it so far! LOVE your pictures! The Bainards are a heartwarming family! I also ended up with a surplus of males and toddlers after my random rolls, but I like using some problem-solving to sort it out -- far more interesting than starting out every family with the same-old, same-old standard newlywed couple, eh?

Great to hear from everyone, Cheers, Vllygrl

Definitely agree! way more interesting than your typical suburban family. I've grown to love elders as well, they're kind of peaceful and mine ALWAYS wake up in the middle of the night >.< so I send them off for a hike, or to do some gardening etc. P:

I've been looking around but haven't really found anything that straight-forward, but does anyone know if there's a way to get rid of all townies? (excluding service characters and such)

It's so annoying when someone turns up in plain clothes, striding across some poor medieval family's lawn, kind of makes for a 'The Village' moment rofl. I've just been manually deleting them as they come onto the property, but it's going to be a pain on community lots!

You can get rid of townies, but as soon as you go to community lots, they begin re-generating. You can only have a completely townie-free game if you remove them all and never visit a comm lot again. I find it better to grab each one and give them better clothes.

When I am playing a family, and see a badly-dressed townie going by, I make them selectable (with Inge's teleporter cat), then use Pescado's clothing pile to give them new outfits without cost to my playables. It's a slow process, and can't be done on comm lots (because you can't save the changes). Gradually, however, there are fewer and fewer modern townies in my game.

NPCs (paper delivery etc) are dealt with by using default replacements with medieval clothing - Sunni has made several excellent sets.

Saturnfly, I like the Bainards! Good name, too.

I too, wish there were a more straightforward method of getting rid of the townies. I have tried and tried to follow various tutorials to use an empty hood template to do it, but have quailed every time because they are extremely difficult to figure out and follow in a systematic manner.

Although the writers try, they take too much for granted and so things get left out in their explanations and therefore, I always get stalled partway through the process at a point where the step by step instructions become a little sketchy. Then I stop because I am afraid to go on and risk wrecking my game.

Therefore I have decided to learn to live with Townies , and have realized that there are some benefits: they do help my playables' businesses become more profitable, and they are marriageable if I am desperate to find a mate for one of my sims, though I am going to resist that since they are basically "non-citizens". It is possible that at some point in my story they may become bit players as well, who knows?

In the meantime, in my game they are considered to be vagrants since they are homeless, and I am going to officially dub them Gypsies -- a band that lives on the fringes of my settlement/hamlet/village/town/city. Like aelflaed, I do change their clothing to make them fit in better, and they all must wear peasant clothing. I have created a Charity Hospice lot in my hood, and the Almoner sees to them as they come by or she summons them, giving them a meal and a change of clothing. Gradually, they are all getting done, but it does take time. Worth it!
Anyway, glad you are enjoying the challenge, looking forward to hearing more about the Bainards and your other families!!!
Cheers, Vllygrl

I downloaded that cat teleporter thingamebob, tested it on Forrest who is a lot regular in my Medieval town *shakes fist*, then he started coming 'home' from work and giving my Peasants all his hard earned money. Dx
So he pretty much got zapped and I think I need to do some more experiments with this tool. xD

I haven't been able to find Pescado's clothing pile, do either of you have a link for that?

I've also had my first death, on the second day of playing my third Peasant family due to 'experimenting' with the bee hive lmao.

Using Inge's teleporter cat - make the townie selectable, do what you need to with them, then use the cat again to make them unselectable. Otherwise they become boarders on your lot until you exit it.

Pescado's clothing tool will be found on More Awesome Than You (MATY)...

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s.../topic,7.0.html

You need to look in the Armory (should be that link above), choose your highest expansion from the Official Stuff list, and look for the right hack by title - clothingtool.zip.

Vllygrl, I do use empty templates, but townies still generate once you start visiting comm lots - just means you don't have the same townies in every hood, and they generate gradually rather than all at once when you start the hood. Apparently EA thinks every hood really needs 30 townies, no matter what.

Hmmm . . . why we would need so many townies is beyond me, but anyway, I'm resigned to not using the empty templates and just dealing with my "Gypsies". But no worries, I had another brillilant idea for dealing with townies!

This was sparked by Morganna's description of how she has food production under the control of the nobles on the Integrated Economy and Tax System thread over at the Keep!

I am using them as serfs to grow food for their lords. Once they sell the crop, they send all of the money to their particular lord using Christianlov's Wallet Controller. Bingo! Extra income for the lords, and a way to use townies in one fell swoop! Just experimenting with one lot for now to see how it works.

Cheers, Vllygrl

NoTownieRegen is THE answer to controlling townie spawn in any hood. Available at MATY. Finally, with my last revision of Warwick I have a nh that is completely townie free! **stops to perform happy dance** With the other unfortunate spawn--garden clubbers, hobby clubbers and the like you can use the neighbor makeover clothes rack available here at MTS by Christianlov which allows you to perform complete makeovers, including facial structure and clothing on any sim in the nh, even townies and npcs. (Yay!) If you can't get rid of them, they might as well get with the program!!

Yes, I do use notownieregen and christianlov's clothing rack, thank heaven for small mercies, eh?!

But yes, I am resigned to working those %$#@*&# townies into my game in a way I can live with, so I am beginning to like my idea of the Gypsy band, since vagrants were an actual problem in certain periods in the middle ages, so it fits; and also, using them as indentured labouring serfs will really boost my economy and the tax "rakings".

Barton Buckle indentured the first Gypsy in my hood, and from the first crop of eggplants on his Gypsy serf lot, his serf made over $33,000 -- I couldn't believe it! Even after paying taxes he was still miles ahead, and the tax money was the biggest one-time boost to the Treasury so far! So potentially this could really help me progress to the next level by increasing tax revenues.
Cheers, Vllygrl

So you are using townies as employees on food-growing lots? I do that a bit too, although not with any exact policy - more because the labour was needed, and there was only one peasant available to provide it.

Yes, thought I'd try it. Morganna uses a community lot and Simwardrobe's employee gardening hack, but I tried it on a residential lot to see how it would work. I used a 1 x 2 lot, built a small hovel at the back with the barebones basics, then lined up 3 double rows of 22 garden plots for a total of 66 plots.

Then I moved in Michael Smith (he already has a gold gardening badge!) to my gentry family's house, moved him out to the sim bin, then moved him onto the new little farm lot. I made him farm like mad and because it was an experiment, I kept his needs maxed through the whole eggplant season.

Once he'd picked the crop, all mouth-watering, I had him pack all the eggplant into crates using Simwardrobe's produce packing station, then sold the crates. Last of all, I used Christianlov's Wallet Controller and had Michael send his master the cash. Ultimately, even without getting the garden club discount for seeds, the crop produced over $33,000 -- I was amazed!!!

So I think I will continue using this method of serf farming to add a source of income to my higher ranking families who would naturally own farmland. Once I've got enough surplus peasants, I will use playables, but in the meantime, it's a great use for townies!
Vllygrl

Of course, you've made him playable in the process...

I think I'll keep employing them as townies.

Hi, I have all my families created now, and I think I'm pretty much ready to start playing A few questions though.

The first family I am starting with has two parents and three children. Because they are a peasant family they already have the max number of children allowed. Does this mean the parents don't have to try for baby?

How much money does the Royal Steward start with in household funds? I couldn't set it to $0 so for now I set it to $5.

I'm not sure I understand the charts for Science and Medicine & Society, Culture and the Arts. In order to advance to Hamlet do I need to have a sim in the athletic career, the natural scientist career, and the slacker, artist and culinary career tracks plus 1 healer and 1 painter or do all these careers become unlocked when I advance to hamlet? Can you also provide definitions of what you mean by healer, barber-surgeon, etc?

In regards to taxes and tithes, is this 40% and 10% of their total household income each quarter day and are the percentages applied after or before rent is taken out?

And finally, one more question, what lots are people using for homes and community lots? Any maxis lots or any lots downloaded from this site or another? I hate building, but I don't mind renovating so I am trying to find acceptable lots for this challenge.

Ok, those are all of my questions for now

Happy Simming

-Tricia

I generally build all my own lots - if I download any, I am mostly doing so to see how someone else did the building, or to get a particular piece of CC. If I try to use a lot built by someone else, it never quite works the way I want, so I have to change it extensively anyway.

Another question. LOL. Does the 10% tithe go to the royal steward or the church?

Traditionally, taxes go to the Crown and tithes go to the Church.

Hi Tricia,
Glad you have all of your families sorted! I will try to answer your questions:

1) Yes, it means they do not have to try for baby. Also, and of the founding families that you get in the intial random rolls may have a number of children over the limit, so you may decide to keep those children just for these rolls, or alternatively, you could start your foundling home early.

2) The Royal Steward does not need any household funds because you will not be playing him in rotation. He is just a placeholder sim in the castle simply for the purpose of collecting the funds. If you play that household, then it messes up the amount of money in the Royal Treasury and makes it more complicated to figure out how much money you've got to spend on community lots. $5 is fine and nothing to worry about.

3) You got it right with the charts -- those careers simply become unlocked and available for sims in the various stations. You do need a healer and a painter though to advance to Hamlet. Those are artisan type occupations in which the sim should be able to make a little money, maybe not enough to live on so you might want that sim to be part of a family and not living on their own; not maxis type careers, that is why they are different. The Healer can be used and paid similarly to the Midwife -- summoned to a sick sim's home to give backrubs, massages and make comfort soup. The Apothecary can run a business like a pharmacy and sell healing potions, comfort soup and such; the Physician can either have the medical career, or can have a "clinic" in his or her home where sims can visit and pay high fees to be examined and "cured"'. The Barber-Surgeon can do surgery (with the sim blender or the maxis job reward surgery thingy) and makeovers.

4)Yes again you got it, Tricia! For Peasants, the taxes (40%) & tithes (10%) are on their INCOME alone for that quarter -- not total lot value; rent is taken out last; and tithes go to the Treasury until you open up a monastery/cloister, at which time you can start sending the tithes to those institutions directly or administer what the Crown thinks they should get directly from the Treasury by the Steward.

5) I do exactly what aelflaed described when it comes to lots, however, there are a lot of nice lots out there! There are some nice ones by Stephsim on MTS, some really nice ones on The Medieval Smithy and also on Sirona Sims, just for starters. Edited to add: Bethgael over at Plumbbob Keep said she may upload some lots to fit the challenge soon!
http://www.medievalsims.com/forums/index.php

Let me know how it goes!
Cheers, Vllygrl

Breaking news! Here is a beautifully crafted Peasant Lot created by Bethgael especially for the Medieval Charter Challenge over at the Plumbbob Keep:

http://www.medievalsims.com/forums/....php?f=53&t=710

Thanks Bethgael, really looking forward to your next lots in the series!!!
Cheers, Vllygrl

Yay! I have reached the second level in the challenge -- my Settlement has now qualified as Hamlet!

I am looking forward to working on the second level and have almost enough money in the Royal Treasury to pay for a church -- this will be a huge event for everyone, and will call for a special celebration!

In honour of reaching Hamlet status, the Squire gave the Hamlet a "proper" name to replace the old settlement name of Criss Cross, which was really just a sly joke which the elders had cooked up back in the day when it was just a muddy crossroads in a sheep pasture. Known as Spiceburne from this day forward, the Hamlet is growing in population and economic and cultural status as well!

Also:

I have attached to this post a new document (PDF) which I have created which is a Moving Up! Checklist to make it easier for challenge players to track progress in the challenge:

Happy Playing, Vllygrl