The Polygamy Challenge (In two flavors!)
This is the Polygamy challenge. It isn't an open marriage or swingers challenge though, sorry! The polygamy is based on religious practices, so some religious rules will have to be obeyed by your sims as well. There are a number of faiths and cultures in the real world that have plural marriages so you can either base your sims on one of them, a mixture of them, or come up with something yourself. There are guidelines, however.
To complete this challenge you'll have to either use a no jealousy and/or multiple marriages mod (there are several out there, only one marriage needs to be "recognized" though so it's not required that the other spouses be listed as wives, romantic interest will do), or if you have the World Adventures mod, you can use a cheat to give each spouse enough lifetime happiness points to purchase the No Jealousy reward (or you can just wait until you can purchase it normally but the challenge will be next to impossible to complete before you can get rid of the jealousy).
You may use cheats (such as freerealestate/motherlode/etc) to give yourself the home that you'll use for the rest of the challenge (you can renovate as needed but no moving after the challenge begins so don't start with a dinky little home that you can't expand unless you're a masochist). You may also use cheats at the beginning of the challenge to make sure your patriarch's relationship is high enough with all starting wives so that you don't have to spend 3 days wooing them to begin having him performing his husbandly duties.
Once all that is taken care of, use the familyfunds cheat to reduce the available money down to 500 simoleons. If the game starts on your chosen Holy Day, start with 450 simoleons. If you're using a mod to only have to pay bills once a week and it'll be at least 3 days before your first bill arrives, start with 250 simoleons (or 225 if starting on your holy day) instead as the extra money is just to ensure that you can pay your first set of bills.
For neither of these challenges can you intentionally kill off or prematurely age any sim. "Man, that old wife just keeps hanging on! What is she, immortal?!" Sorry, you can't just kill her off. haha
On with the flavors:
Flavor 1: Polygyny (Plural wives)
The Requirements:- You must have a patriarch. This is the guy that will be the head of household. You can start him off as either a young adult or an adult, that's up to you.
- You must have at minimum two wives. You may have as many wives as you can support financially, but unless you have some way of circumventing the 8 persons limit on the household. you probably won't want more than three wives as that would make the next rule rather difficult.
- You must have at least one child with every spouse. It does not have to be all at once, but eventually you must have at minimum one child with every spouse. So with a household limit of 8, a husband could have three wives and three children and hit 7 household members, which means he can have one more child but not one more wife. If you have a means of going beyond the household limit of 8, have as many wives as you can handle and support.
- Whether each wife has a separate bedroom or they all share a bedroom when not in the patriarch's bed is up to you. You must have a nursery though and at least one wife must sleep in the nursery with the baby(ies). Children can either share a large bedroom, or you can separate them by gender, or give each their own bedroom, that choice is yours as well.
- The patriarch must divide his time amongst his wives equally, showing no favoritism. This means make a schedule and stick to it. Assuming your patriarch has three wives, Wife 1 would sleep with the patriarch one night, Wife 2 the following night, Wife 3 the night after that, and then Wife 1 once again the night after that. The patriarch must woohoo/try for baby with the wife whose day it is at least once, but if he has the energy and time, multiple times is fine too. He may not woohoo/try for baby with any wife who is not scheduled for that day, however. If it's Wife 1's turn that day, Patriarch cannot woohoo with Wife 2. Kissing/hugging/etc is fine, however.
- If the patriarch is unable to perform his husbandly duties that night due to mood/etc, he must either do whatever it takes to get in the mood (take a nap/do something to relieve the stress, etc) or make up for it in the morning, or he's in for some major nagging. Force the wife to argue/complain/whatever, as many times as you think is appropriate, until it's that wife's day again.
- If the wife whose day it is is not in the mood, however, perhaps because of a bad mood, stress, just had a baby, whatever, she may swap days with one of the other wives. It is your responsibility to maintain this schedule and make up for any day swapping (If Wife 1 swaps days with Wife 3, then when it would have been Wife 3's day, Wife 1 gets the patriarch, even if this means Wife 1 gets two days in a row).
- The patriarch may have any career, or any other means of supporting his family (farming, writing, adventuring, etc). He must make at least enough money to pay the bills, though.
- The wives may not have any careers. They can, however, earn money in other ways. Playing guitar for tips, writing, painting, photography, mooching, whatever. If the wife is past her childbearing years, she may take a part time job at your discretion.
- Pick a holy day. A weekend day is usually best. On the holy day, no one in the household is allowed to work. (Daily gardening and homework are the exceptions, though if it's a weekend day you should have the kids do the homework on another day). This means if you pick, for example, Saturday as your holy day, and your patriarch has a job that has him working on Saturday, you must force him to stay at home. Even if it results in a loss of job. If it's a career that only has weekend hours for one or two job levels, hope that you get through those levels quickly. Also on the holy day you must have a family dinner (have a sim cook dinner and call the household to the meal) and afterwards, the Patriarch must lead religious instruction for his wives for at least two sim hours. Figure out some way to handle it, either have him talk to all his wives and include them all in the conversation, or have them all sit down and read together and say it's their holy book (even if it's the Adventures of Raymundo that they're actually reading. haha) or figure out some other method.
- On the holy day, you must tithe. You can call it whatever you want, either you're supporting the local temple (or whatever you wish to call it), or you can think of it as sending money to relatives, or the holy land, or you're just sending a lot of money to charities. But on the holy day you must reduce your available funds by at LEAST 10%, more if you like. This means you'll have to use the familyfunds cheat. Testingcheats must be enabled to use the familyfunds cheat. You can testingcheats on, reduce the familyfunds accordingly, and then turn the cheats back off if you like if you want to avoid the temptation of using the testingcheats for something else.
- All sons must be kicked out of the house as soon as you are able to do so. I believe you have to wait until they turn into young adults, but it's possible (either normally or with whatever mod(s) you're using) that you could do so when they're teens.
- All daughters must stay members of the household. If some guy comes along and wants to marry one of the patriarch's daughters, that guy would have to pay a dowry of some kind (daughters help with household chores and can, along with the wives, use some means to earn money like writing/earn tips, etc). You'll probably want to keep the daughters at home though, for the next generation.
- When the patriarch dies, you have two options. If your patriarch has a son that's about to age up into a young adult, or if amazingly enough one ages up on the day your patriarch croaks, you can have the son become the new patriarch, but this would entail finding at least two wives for the son and he would have to kick all his sisters out (or send them to a particular husband). He would have to keep caring for all his father's wives until they died, however. Option 2: Either find or create a new patriarch and have them move in. The new patriarch is married to all of the former patriarch's daughters (he must still care for the old patriarch's wives though, he cannot kick them out). Option 2 is a lot easier and more realistic. The households were usually passed to someone the patriarch considered worthy of taking over for him and the wives and daughters were considered part of the household.
- You can go on vacations/adventures, but you should probably take at least one wife with you (unless you plan to always leave them at home). And every time you go on vacation after that, take a different wife so they all are treated equally.
- As family is the most important thing to these sims, they should all have the Family-Oriented trait. All other traits are optional.
- The patriarch is in charge of the religious instruction and making sure his family behaves appropriately in public, along with supporting the either household. You can give him additional responsibilities (such as being the one to repair broken appliances and such) if you like but these responsibilities can either go to the wives or you can call in repairmen.
- The wives are responsible for maintaining the home (cooking, cleaning, gardening if you have a small garden, if your patriarch is a farmer though and you have a large farm with lots of crops, he should do the majority of the gardening, but the wives can help.) The wives are also in charge of caring for the children, a responsibility they share (it doesn't matter if it's Wife 2's child, Wife 1 is equally responsible for taking care of the child and teaching it skills).
- No aging up early. You can use birthday cakes if you like, but only if the child is at 0 days until aging up. Preferably, just let them age up naturally.
- Wives must stay away from apples and watermelons when they might be pregnant. Let the gender of the children remain random.
- The second patriarch, if joining the house with a number of the old patriarchs daughters in it, is considered to be married to all of the former wives as well as all of the daughters. If there was a baby girl born to the former patriarch just before he passed, that baby is also one of the new patriarchs wives. She doesn't have to fulfill any marital duties until she reaches adulthood though (or teens if you're opting to use a adult-teen relations mod). But she must still bare a child for the new patriarch before he dies of old age or it counts against you in the points below.
Optional rules/touches- Come up with rules for your sims' faith. Some common ones are bans on particular foods (vegetarian trait for all of them, perhaps?) or perhaps they consider certain things evil/sinful (make them all technophobes and don't use tvs/etc?). Be creative, this is here just for your story making purposes.
- Other suggestions might be wardrobe. World Adventures adds lots of nice robes and head scarves if you want to go that route. It is suggested that no matter what they wear you go for modest/conservative choices. Many of the faiths that have or had plural marriage have rules about keeping hair covered for modesty and humility, for example. These rules tend to be relaxed inside the homes though, so you could have them dress a bit less modestly at home as long as they change before going somewhere.
- You can, if you like, use a mod to enable adult-teen woohoo relationships and have younger starting wive(s), but teen wives must still attend school on days they don't have maternity leave. Also remember that they still have homework to keep up with, along with the wifely duties they must now perform.
- You can also, if using the No Jealousy lifetime reward from World Adventures, only give the reward to your patriarch. The wives won't fight with the patriarch but they will start to despise one another. Use this if your storyline has it so the wives aren't accustomed to plural marriage. If you'd rather they just have minor squabbles over it, you can give them the no jealousy rewards and just force them to argue occasionally if you like (if they don't do it naturally).
Points
The challenge ends when the second patriarch dies and a third is chosen.
+10 points for each child born and raised to young adulthood.
+5 points for each skill that children raise to at least 3 before young adulthood. If the skill was 0.1% from hitting 3 when they age up, it doesn't count.
+2 points for each point beyond 3 a child earns beyond 3 before reaching young adulthood. (So if a child raised logic to 5 before they aged up to young adult, it would be worth 9 points. 5 for the first 3 points and 4 more for the two points after that).
+2 points for every child that ages up to teen on the honor roll and another +2 points for every teen that ages up to young adult on the honor roll. Just having an A isn't enough, it has to be honor roll.
+5 points for every 10,000 simoleons you have at the end of the challenge.
+5 points for every career level the patriarchs earn over 4. (So starting at level 5... a maximum of 30 points for reaching level 10). If your sim changes jobs (either willingly or not), count only the career they earned the highest job level in.
-10 points for any day the patriarch fails to fulfill his husbandly duties (woohoo). This does not include the day they die. This does include if the patriarch is unable to convince the wife to woohoo with him that day.
-10 points for every grade level below C children are at upon aging up to teens, and the same when they age up to young adults. So if a particular child drops to failing both as child and teen, it's a cumulative -40 points. (Unless the sims skips the D grade... I've never actually had a sim drop below a C before so I can't be sure. haha If it goes straight from C to failing then it's only -20 cumulative).
-50 points for each and every child taken by social services.
-10 points if the repo man comes to take your stuff
-10 points if any of the patriarch's wives misbehave in public (getting into fights, flirting with other men, stuff like that). Drop to penalty to -5 if the patriarch catches them doing it and scolds them and they don't do it again.
-20 points for every wife that does not have a child the current patriarch. This does not apply if the wife is past her childbearing years when a new patriarch is chosen. If any of the former patriarchs wives are still able to bear children, though, the negative counts if the new patriarch fails to have a child with them for whatever reason before they are unable to have children. (Yes, it still counts even if the household is full when the new patriarch is added). The new patriarch just has to wait until there's room in the household (either from an aging up son of the former patriarch, or one of the older wives dying of old age) before he can start trying for babies.
Flavor 2: Polyandry (plural husbands)
Typically polyandry occurs in societies where resources (such as food) are scarce, so large populations are bad. Normally one wife will marry a man and all of his brothers, but they don't have to be brothers, especially for the challenge.
As with the polygyny flavor, use any cheats required to give your sim family the home and relationship status required to start the challenge (along with either a no jealousy mod or adding enough lifetime points for the no jealousy rewards) . After everything is ready to start, use the familyfunds cheat to reduce your household money to 500 simoleons to start (or 250 if using a mod where the first bill won't arrive for at least 3 days).
The requirements- You must have a matriarch. She, and only she, will have all children in the household, until she is no longer able to bare children. After that, she moves up to "respected grandmother" status and a new matriarch is chosen.
- If the matriarch has lots of sons and very few daughters, kick the daughters out and move in (from the town or a created sim) a new matriarch and she becomes the wive of all the former matriarch's sons. If, however, the matriarch ends up having lots of daughter and no sons or only one son before she can't bare children anymore, then pick one daughter to be the new matriarch and kick out all the other children and move in at least two husbands for her.
- If the matriarch has at least two sons, she can kick out the daughters as soon as she is able to do so. Otherwise, only kick them out if you're sure you won't be making that daughter the new matriarch if not enough sons are born.
- The matriarch must, while she is still able to have children, bare a child for each of her husbands. This means that unless you can circumvent the household limit of 8, you can't have more then 3 husbands. The likelihood that the matriarch could kick out a child to make room to bear a fourth husband a child before her childbearing years are over are pretty low... without circumventing the household limit anyway.
- The matriarch is vital to the household and she must be protected at all costs. If she goes anywhere, at least one of her husbands must accompany her for protection. If she sets the kitchen on fire and dies and she doesn't have at least two sons or at least one daughter to carry on the household, it's game over.
- When a new matriarch joins the family, she may kick out one of the old matriarchs husbands if A) he never managed to have a child with the old matriarch (he still counts against your score though) or B) he's the oldest and you need to open a spot to have your first child. In the first case, you can also have him become one of the new matriarchs husbands and in the second, in storyline consideration he's going to join the new matriarchs household, but you're still responsible for him, so as long as he's still alive, take an extra 15% from the household funds on Holy Day to "compensate them" for caring for the old guy. Once he passes, though, you can go back to 10%. For the former case, you don't have to compensate the family taking him in because he's young enough to be a husband to that family (the only reason you're kicking him is because of the household limit).
- The matriarch is in charge of taking care of the children and teaching them any skills (like walking and talking) they need to know. She does not have to do the household work unless you want her to though. If she has the extra time, have her do the cleaning and cooking (in that order of preference) but only if her primary responsibilities are taken care of.
- The husbands cannot have careers. In fact, in the polyandry challenge, no one will have a career. Your primary source of income will be from farming. The husbands (and the matriarch if she has the extra time to kill) can earn money in other ways. Writing, painting, photography, playing guitar or snake charming for tips, mooching, etc. The matriarch could potentially do the latter ones as well, but remember she must be escorted by one of her hushands. Husbands may have part-time jobs, if and only if they finish work on all the crops, take care of all the household duties that still need to be taken care of, and still have time to burn.
- You must not use any foods you haven't grown yourself. (The default food in the fridge is ok until your first crops reach harvest, then anything in the fridge should be thrown away. Any meals you can't make out of those ingredients you grow, you don't eat.) If you complete the challenges for eggs/cheese/etc plants, you may use them as well when you grow them. In places where polyandry exists, ariable land tends to be scarce and livestock is even more rare, so living off the land is the best way to simulate that.
- The first matriarch remains in charge of the religious education until her death (at which point the new matriarch takes over). So as with the polygyny challenge, set aside two sim hours after the family meal on the Holy Day you picked to discuss/read/whatever the faith. The notable exception for the Polyandry Holy Day, however, is that crops can't go a day without tending. You may not, however, sell crops on the Holy Day, wait until the next day.
- One husband must be at the home at all times. Working in the fields is fine, but if the other husbands are out on the town, whether from earning extra money, selling crops, or escorting the matriarch, one of them must remain at home to protect it. Even if all the kids are out or at school, and the matriarch is out with another husband, one of the husbands must be there to safeguard the home.
- As with the polygyny challenge, the matriarch must fulfill her duties to her husbands. She must give them equal time (so schedule their time with her) and she must woohoo or try for baby at least once on that husband's scheduled day. The one exception is that the matriarch can skip a day when she gives birth.
- No matter how you have the bedrooms set up, one of the husbands must sleep in the room with the babies/toddlers. All other considerations (how the husbands and children divide up bedrooms) is up to you.
Optional rules/touches- As with the polygyny flavor, feel free to clothe your sims in an appropriate way. Clothes that look appropriate for poor people that live up in the mountains are a good choice. Or you can do something more along the lines of the egyptian clothing, or some other theme. It's your story, find something appropriate. Polyandrous people in the real world tend to wear clothing made from llama wool, for example. So simple cloth that could be worn in harsh weather conditions are a favored choice.
- If you want to stick to an authentic feel, use building materials that would look appropriate in arid environments with very little wood. Building materials of dry-stone are most common. Furniture can have a dry-stone/pottery look, some metal, wood only if you have no other choice.
Points
The challenge ends when the third matriarch dies and a fourth is chosen. (This should allow for approximately the same amount of time as the polygyny challenge since the patriarch can still make babies until the day he dies but the matriarch is limited to her young adult and adult years)
+10 points for each child born and raised to young adulthood.
+5 points for each skill that children raise to at least 3 before young adulthood. If the skill was 0.1% from hitting 3 when they age up, it doesn't count.
+2 points for each point beyond 3 a child earns beyond 3 before reaching young adulthood. (So if a child raised logic to 5 before they aged up to young adult, it would be worth 9 points. 5 for the first 3 points and 4 more for the two points after that).
+2 points for every child that ages up to teen on the honor roll and another +2 points for every teen that ages up to young adult on the honor roll. Just having an A isn't enough, it has to be honor roll.
+5 points for every 5,000 simoleons you have at the end of the challenge.
-10 points for any day the matriarch fails to fulfill her wifely duties (woohoo). This does not include the day she gives birth. Continuing to perform her duties (perhaps at a reduced rate) with her husbands after a new matriarch takes over is fine, but has no impact on the score.
-10 points for every grade level below C children are at upon aging up to teens, and the same when they age up to young adults. So if a particular child drops to failing both as child and teen, it's a cumulative -40 points. (Unless the sims skips the D grade... I've never actually had a sim drop below a C before so I can't be sure. haha If it goes straight from C to failing then it's only -20 cumulative).
-50 points for each and every child taken by social services.
-10 points if the repo man comes to take your stuff
-20 points each time the matriarch goes somewhere unescorted
-20 points for every husband that does not have a child. This includes husbands that didn't get a child from the former matriarch and the new one kicks him out rather than taking him as one of her husbands. This also includes any husband that dies to accident without an offspring of their own.
That's all I can think of, if someone has suggestions for something that should be counted, mention it.
Feel free to post screenshots and story details.