For a while (or a couple of weeks), I have been constantly re-doing a hood because Im never get happy with the inhabitants and tryied multiple challenges such as prosperity, BACC, TOT, one of each zodiac/aspiration, plopped down single cas and let them do the work, or adding couples only, but whatever I did I got bored.

But I do know its always the founders the main issue where I dont get happy it and also Im VERY picky (and a bit of a perfectionist) when creating sims in cas when creating a several generation families but missing a few of the relative, such as one of the parents, which you get a mystery sim unless using a mod that remove it which I do use. Because without the parent/spouse, it feels like that missing "Mystery" sim never really existed, so when creating families I always try to make them "complete" as possible, but problem with larger cas families is that you are limited with the amount of cas you create and I like large families that I split up into several households, while creating single sim and couples only, i can't really "connect" with their indenties and ended up getting bored when "waiting" on the progress. (One reason, challenges are big non-no to me, Im impatient with my simmies. Downloaded and Premades are worse though as I like to create my on).

SO, as far as this thread goes - How do you go about when creating your families and stick with them? Also, Does anybody has the dilemma of getting bored when playing CAS sims? How do you deal with it?

You can make much bigger connected families by creating family ties in SimPE or some other editing tool (though I think SimPE is the only one that lets you change the relationship and the family tree both). If you create certain key sims in Bodyshop, you can use them to create plausible-looking relatives, either by editing the sim into someone who's supposed to be a sibling or offspring, or by temporarily creating the sims necessary to roll the pacifier, and then delete them and age up the offspring before finalizing the family. Then exit the game, set all the family ties you need, get back in, and carry on.

I heard about the option about creating ties in SimPE, but always hesitated because I heard you have to give and remove memories or you "mess" them up, so I ended up being a scarey cat and avoided that solution with CAS.

I am totally different, my founders are nearly always a married CAS couple because I enjoy seeing the family develop from them. If I created them already with children I would be bored as part of the excitement for me is, what will their children look like? I would rather not know and be surprised when they arrive.

JoandSarah. Although, the type of hood we play might be a bit similare (intergrated ones), thats definitly true. I hate the "bearing children" period and prefer what happen when they grow up instead, but I do prefer seeing genetics turn off when playing the families, not creating them cas.

I like my founders to have some realtives uncles/aunts, cousins and such, but the CAS is so limited and make it a bit difficult. Usually I use mods to quickly create family connections by speeding up the CAS families, but an habit I recently noticed is that I tends to overDO it and give them too many. I recently as inspired to play something similare to the Test of Time Challenge because I like the concept of creating everything from scratch and work my way up to new time periods, but I ended up giving 5 founder families 50 bloody cousins each after aging them up to 3rd generation (including cas)...I do like large families, but not THAT large. Overkilled the idea, while in another hood I created 50 couples instead, but got bored of going through them all beause they were too simple and no family connections.

and now trying to find a happy medium by looking for ideas how other simmers deal with their starting families.

While I love the having children phase. I have to make myself move on when there is a pregnant sim or baby because I really want to keep playing and see them as a toddler. I couldn't deal with 50 couples, I made 12. I am so excited to see the children of my founders finally grown and having children. My hood is two years old this October.

I wish I could handle MORE than 50 couples, but after a couple of real life week playing, I feel a bit exhausted and try to rush things up. One reason I often speed up their ages, Ive no patience for my gameplay preferences.

A ideal hood for me is one that represent an entire country, with all kind of sims living in a pre-historical time period with feudal structure but actually enjoying the process is where I keep end up re-doing it all the time. Im not happy with the actual sims Im playing. The longest Ive been playing a hood lasted for 1 year, now they just last for a few weeks. Guess Im too perfectionist when it comes to the game. I want the hood to be perfect.

I usually start with a couple or a single sim, depending on my goals. I too find it hard to connect to CAS sims, but I just don't let that stop me and I try different things to prevent being bored. One thing I'll do when I'm bored of a family/couple/sim is just free-range them and see what they gravitate towards. Usually something happens that makes them interesting again. Otherwise I just play to the wants panel and hope something fun turns up. :lol;

You don't have to do a thing to the memories in order to make the family ties work right. You can, if you want to - if you find it aesthetically pleasing, or not having certain memories bugs you - but they'll function just fine as parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, nieces, and nephews with no contingent memories at all. Adding memories is tedious, but it's not difficult.

If CAS doesn't give you enough Sims, you can create new family members with the Create Baby With X mod: http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=62111
Install the mod, click (in-game) on the crib and choose Create Baby With X. Choose the parent and a baby will appear in the crib. Grow the baby up with another mod and there's your new family member.

You don't need mods for that! The testingcheats'll do it.

Well I woohoo my sims and insim to speed up the process, so family members such as children/ teen sibling are no issue. I was more thinking older family members such as uncles and aunts, because in cas you can only 4 couples at the time and if you want several uncle/aunts to the future kids, its a bit tricky through CAS as adults cant have siblings unless create elder parents and age them down (and take up more cas space).

Couple A & B, A has a brother C+D + in-law, and B has a sister (E+F) = 6 sims. Either D or F also an brother or sister plus in-law (G + H) = 8 Sims OR Either of the A or B has three siblings. Err.... a bit hard to explain and sure I can plop down single sims and cheat their relationships with one of the siblings of the main family.

If you want to play around with memories:
http://simmanipulator.forumotion.co...ory-manipulator

Pretty straightforward to use. backup first, but I've never run into any hood-corrupting issues using it.