Wow, I applaud you for playing like that, iCad; I like my sims too much to intentionally kill any of them. I do like the idea of rolling for supernaturals, although I'd probably limit myself to what a sim could become in a non-cheaty way (i.e. no vampires until I had a downtown). With witches, I've seen people decide on whether they become good, evil or neutral through their nice points -- 0-3 Nice becomes an evil witch, 4-6 becomes neutral, and 7-10 becomes good.

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I had a month off playing my BACC, but it's slowly started growing. I'm now adding families instead of single sims when I create a new household (as I've got the CAS points to do so). Currently it's got 42 sims, 10 households, 13 Owned lots (plus Military and Athletic), 1 Business District, an SM of 9 and a population of 336. I've been using my scaling tax funds to gather money for a university, and so far I've gotten $355,371 -- the current batch of children won't be going to university unless I implement a community college for a fraction of the price.

For the community college, I am debating whether or not to add a dorm to the main 'hood to send some of my teens to. I'm imagining it'll cost $250,000 (gotta have enough to pay the teachers) with a heavy focus on the badge skills (so I'd have to create a sim who was gold in everything to teach the students). Sims would also only attend for two years, so there'd be quite a few bad memories (and an extra fear slot), but I'm debating whether the extra time (as one year of college would be one day in the main households) is worth the bad memories and potentially the college fees (I'm thinking $2,000 a semester). Ideas, anyone?

Hi!

For those who might be interested, I have FINALLY begun the documenting process for Redmond Flats, my new BACC, which incorporates all of the rule modifications that I had posted a link to above. In this initial outing, you get to Meet the Founders. All 7(!) of them, 5 of them supernatural. Funny how that worked out. I call them my Magnificent Seven...although y'all are probably too young to get that reference. *laughs*

Anyway! There's a link to the site in general in my sig, but the relevant specific page is here: http://redmond-flats.weebly.com/rafaels-ramblings.html

Now here's hoping I can keep up with this. At least the supernaturals tend to give me built-in storylines, so that makes it a little easier for me...

Also, while I'm here...Might anyone else be interested in having a copy of the Excel spreadsheet I use to track my BACC? I actually have two blank templates, one based on the original rules and one that takes my modified rules into account. They're both multi-worksheet, so you can track various aspects of your 'hood separately. I'm not the best spreadsheet builder in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but I've found them useful. If anyone wants to give them a look, I'll upload them to the Redmond Flats site. I also have MS Access databases that I use to track individual Sims in more depth than on the spreadsheet, but those aren't really templates...

@katya_stevens: Yeah, I admit that it is sometimes really hard to stick to the population controls, if I have to kill someone I really like! (Like, in the new BACC, if I have to kill my wee Robin, I don't know what I'll do! *sobs*) But I look at this way: If I have a population explosion, I'll get overwhelmed and stop playing the 'hood, anyway. So for me, either way, I'd end up "losing" my favorites if I didn't cull the herd somehow.

I like the idea of a community college. I'm kind of planning to eventually have a "vocational school" in Redmond Flats to teach badge skills to teens/adults who don't go to college, but I haven't figured out how I'm going to handle it. I'm going to just use Paladin's vocational school stuff to create/run it, though. I'm not going to make it an actual Uni. But it's pretty far in the future for me, since I'm just starting out. However it's run, it SHOULD cost less than college, I agree with you there, and your prices to build and attend seem reasonable to me.

@dragonleopard88: I, too, hope that you get OFB for your birthday, because this challenge/play style IS really fun. I have heard of people modifying the rules to play it without OFB, but I can't imagine that it would be as fun. But maybe it would be!

I'd love a copy of the spreadsheets, iCad. At the moment I'm keeping track in a Word document, which isn't too bad with four households (almost 5!) but is going to get complicated..... Ooh, and yay that you've started! :-) I had a read already, looking forward to seeing what happens!

I like your ideas for a community college, katya_stevens. I can imagine that sims that go there could get some pretty negative memories from "dropping out" after 2 years, but I reckon it'd be worth it because of the badge skilling they'd be able to do! How are you planning on teaching badge skills? Can people pass them on, or would they have to spend lots of time making flower arrangements and fishing and stuff? Or would you use something like Monique's computer and Numenor's hacked cash register?

I'm hoping to have a university donated by my founder's household before too long - his two servos run an electronics/car store and are making money pretty quickly now :-) Should be able to get 1,000,000 to donate for a uni before too long!

@iCad, that set-up does look very interesting, although I had Robin pegged as a werewolf rather than a vampire (the golden eyes threw me a little). I'll be looking forward to seeing how it develops

As for how I'm developing the community college, I'm going to be using Squinge's College from Home mod to move them in to a small dorm in the main 'hood (I think you can make a dorm, anyway; if not it'll be apartments). And thanks for stating that you thought the prices were reasonable -- most of my sims should be able to use scholarships to pay for part of their education, especially with a mod which allows them to get scholarships for silver talent badges.

@lauratje86 Yes, I think that a sim will get a negative "dropped out of college" memory, as well as an extra fear slot (although they will get an extra want slot to make up for it). For the badges, Simwardrobe has a vocational trainer which allows sims with a gold badge to pass along, although I'll probably look at Monique's computer for use in the dorms for at least skills like restocking and sales. If a sim can gain badge points without resorting to mods, they're going to gain them the hard way

Once I get a full university the business school will be moved to the uni sub-hood, although I think it'll only be used for a) sims who have a top 5 business LTW or b) sims who are going to be running/help to run a lot of family businesses if they haven't already got the skills.

Regarding your electronics/car store -- they are immensely good at earning money. Practically a third of my current college funds were thanks to Liza Waring-Owens and Brandon Owens chugging down coffee and mass-selling their electronic equipment.

Ah, I forgot about the Simwardrobe stuff. Cool! What an interesting idea....

Good isn't it! :-D With servos running it I only have to close it occasionally, they spend a bit of time recharging and then pillow fight together or play kicky bag and then open it again! :-)

I've just started playing recently, and got my first community lot the other day It's very interesting playing in a living-off-the-land style at first, I always have to worry if they're able to grow enough to feed themselves over the winter. My founder just turned into an elder (already! :o) and his three kids are teens now, and since I only just got my second CAS....This seems like it's going to be very slow at first! Both the CAS sim and one of the founder's sons want to reach the top of the culinary career, so maybe they'll open a restaurant together or something. I think the eldest son is going to take over the family business, he loves gardening anyway, but I have no idea what the middle child's going to do. She wants to be an architect, but I don't think I'm going to get enough buildings anytime soon XD Especially since I've been using a modified version of Olliepop's taxation system for building non-sim owned community lots. I've decided sims aren't allowed a burglar alarm until a police station is built Only one fire so far, and no burglaries, so no law enforcement career for me yet...

How do you guys do rotations? I do mine by season, but if I want to keep them synced I can only move people in in fall. Is there a way to change what season you're in?

@lauratje86, simwardrobe does have some pretty good stuff on it I find Plantsims are also good to use for businesses, as they only have three needs and all can be filled easily at a business lot.



My advice: Build a pond and stock up on fish. You can use the fresh food during spring/summer/autumn, and when it hits winter you can have your sims live off fish instead.

I admit in that I always make sure my seasons are set to go Winter-Spring-Summer-Autumn so that they have 15 days to grow enough food to last through winter.



I tend to give all of my sims at least one business, sometimes two (never more than three unless they're long-lived or wanting the top-five businesses), and any sim who has an impossible LTW gets put in the Business career (which is open in my 'hood). Most businesses aren't visited very often due to a surprising amount of my sims rolling doable LTWs (they concentrate on their careers and children first, businesses second) but they still count towards the lot number.



I play two rotations a week, Mon 8AM-Thurs 6PM, Thurs 6PM-Mon 8AM. I have Simwardrobe's season and weather controller (Sims 2 > Objects > Other Objects > the green vase on the left of the second row) to keep the seasons in synch, as well as Neder's Day Setter to keep track of the day a sim should be on (as I move sims out on a specific day).

Just dashing in to quickly say that I have uploaded my tracking spreadsheets and info/instructions about them. For anyone who's interested in them, they can be found here: http://redmond-flats.weebly.com/tra...readsheets.html

I really love the update to the BACC. I'm working on a way of mixing it with some of the rules from the Victorian Population Challenge (https://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfb9cs8c_0c44k55cx). I've been playing the VPC lately and it's been a lot of fun, I love the concept of my sims having status and moving between the ranks, but I miss all the structure of the BACC and how it's a lot more random and varied. I guess I'll go away and come up with a mixed ruleset just for myself. Thanks for the update iCad, it's really well thought out.

e: for the time being however, im going to try out the updated BACC Half the fun for me is setting up my spreadsheets, I'm so sad..

It doesn't look like the rules say anything about apartment buildings. I'm thinking about making my own rule for apartments. One apartment lot every fifth household, or something similar.

I think iCad doesn't have Apartment Life, so no, no rules about apartments. I think that some people have talked about limiting apartments to when the city reaches a certain population, or only for certain age groups/relationship statuses (for example, all single adults live in apartments to start with and then save for a house). But I guess it's up to you how you do it! I plan to not use them until my BACC neighbourhood population reaches 5000.

Yep, lauratje86 is right in that I don't have AL, so I have nothing about apartments in my rules. I also don't have Bon Voyage, so I didn't make rules about vacations, either. I hear tell that people have made apartment rules over on the BPS forum in the thread for this challenge, which I linked to allllllll the way back in the first post of this thread...or was it linked in the rules? I can't remember... Well, it's linked somewhere. Maybe you'd like what they've come up with?

Personally, if I had AL, I'd only use apartments once my population was pretty dense because in the real world apartments begin to be built when land starts to become scarcer in a growing population. Laura's idea of about 5000 seems about right to me if playing by my original rules otherwise. (I've since modified them such that my population tends to grow more slowly and is occasionally decimated by plagues. ) But that's just me. As it is, my really poor Sims live in one-room shacks on 1x1 lots with no indoor plumbing and that only cost about $2500...

That's certainly what I'm doing, too. Currently my 'hood is still small enough so that sims moving households get a 'settlement grant' ($20k) to buy a plot of land and start a house. Once my population gets high enough I'm going to be putting no20k handouts back in and aside from CAS families, all sims are going to have to save if they want a decent place to live in -- and if they can't afford a plot with some basic furnishings, they're either going to be stuck with a mortgage or are going to have to move in to a dinky apartment while they save up.

As for vacations, I leave it as it is -- the only affect living in a small village would have on a vacation is travel to the nearest airport. That can be arranged by making the sims leave a day early, but can be countered with a long vacation (losing one day out of three is annoying, losing one day out of seven isn't so bad).

Okay, so the business college didn't work as well as I had wanted it (too much to do in too little time), so it's going to be scrapped and implemented when I do get a university (amusingly/annoyingly enough, I've just had a teen grow up with the Top 5 Businesses LTW).

I'm now on to week 5b, and some of my born-in-game/adopted children are starting their own families. I'm now up to 15 owned businesses, but still only one Business Tycoon (I got really excited when one sim got promoted to the top of the Business career because yay, new business district!...only to remember that my old Business Tycoon had died). I'm calculating Business Districts by the highest number of business lots + Business Tycoons -- so if I had 35 businesses, 5 Business Tycoons and 5 Business Districts and two Business Tycoons died, I'd need three new Business Tycoons to get another Business District.

But regardless, most recent stats are 52 sims, 16 community lots (15 owned + Athletic), 10 households, and an SM of 10 giving me a population of 520. Finally I can call for services, and sims can try and get their kids in to private school.

I decided to re-start this challenge. The last time I did it was a couple of years ago, I think this time will be more fun since I changed a couple of the rules that I found annoying:

- Sims that move out who are poor (have 3,000-5,000 simoleons) have an equal chance of either going to the "poor" lot described in the challenge, or an apartment.
- All the premade houses are completely unfurnished, so I don't have to refurnish every time a sim moves out.
- I roll to find out how many kids the couple is gonna have, but if they have a want for a baby they get one regardless of how many they already have.
- I still do the "finding a proper mate" thing, marrying sims that don't even know each other was too clinical.

I started off with 3 founding families and rolled for their starting money. Carl Bildt got 20,000, Lena Lindkvist got 15,000, and Emil Johansson got 3,000. I moved them each into a "settlement" (a 2x2 lot) with a lot name of e.g. "Bildt Settlement". The rules about not changing foundations and poor lots etc aren't going to apply to my founding sims.

I also managed to get them all to fall in love with and marry one of the welcome brigade within the first couple days. Bildt married someone that brought 19,000(!), Lindkvist married someone that brought 6,000, and poor Johansson got only 3,000 from his wife. So I have a good mix of rich/poor, the Johanssons are having a really hard time but the Bildts have everything they need.

I started mine about a month ago using the original rules. Currently the population is 504 sims (yay services unlocked) with 56 sims, 10 community lots, 17 households, and a military. All of that totaling to a multiplier of 9 right now. It started off really slowly because I used the no20khandouts hack right off the bat for the added challenge. Edward McGregor, my founder, had 1 son, who decided to have 6 kids, so without 20khandouts, those children didn't fare too well on their own right away. Then one family consistently got robbed 5 playthroughs in a row, and a fire killed off one of my sims who had 3k to his name and his wife just had twins, so there was an emergency situation where I had to rescue her and those kids.

The military is up, currently with 8 out of my 17 households living at it. Right now its kind of a race to the top of the career because the top slots are all open except for those senior officers. Seems the winner will be Jason Wood who started out as a recruit in the barracks.

The college is my next goal, but it's going slowly with the no20khandouts cheat. Right now I have $150,000 saved. I probably could have more, but I like having lots of children and since there are no20khandouts, I try to build up some money for the families first.

I don't know if anyone added rules for vacation spots, so I had to add a rule for the Bon Voyage vacation spots. My rule was that each place can only be unlocked after the Adventurer Career is unlocked AND there is a themed building to match each vacation spot (IE - an oriental restaurant to unlock Takemizu Village, etc). Then each building in the vacation area has to be unlocked according to the game rules about community lots.

Another rule I have is that I flip a coin any time my sims woohoo as for whether they are going to try for a baby or not. That is of course, unless they WANT to have a baby, then they just go for it.

After the majority of my careers get unlocked, I'll start doing some mini challenges. I want to start an asylum challenge within my challenge, but of course, I have to make sure the careers are unlocked in case the person gets a career LTW.

Having a great time so far. At 18 population (no multipliers). A lot of sims are just about to hit Adult and move out, so I expect to be getting a lot of multipliers pretty quickly :D

I stuck one in anyway, with a note that IF the LTW was unachievable due to needing degree/career not yet unlocked, then the playable HAD to max all their skills, regardless of their aspiration. If (as in my case) the LTW subsequently becomes achievable, you can then switch back to the normal rules.

Anyway, mine's now standing at a population of over 3,000. This is more due to sim numbers as the multiplier is only at 11 - you work out the figures!

Sims no longer count for population after they die, right?

I'm doing this challenge now that I've got spare time for summer break. I've tweaked a few rules and added a handful of my own, but I think I've got the spirit of the challenge. I'm blogging it here.

I'm attempting this at the moment, and I set up a little website for it. (for me to keep track and to show off to my IRL sim playing friends :P) http://amanshire.weebly.com/

My town is called Amanshire and it's Founder is an Elf/newly turned PlantSim, Penryn Baines. He's already lost his wife and mother to 3 his first 3 children, right after she had her 3rd miscarriage (2nd in a row - Miscarriages come with ACR) so that wasn't good. Then he had 6 PlantBabies to fill the void. He'll probably have another when I play again, to make it an even 10 - Maybe more, like 20.

I'm the one who will suffer updating the website with all that information and pics if he does have 20+ kids, LOL.

I count them in mine - I figure if I played them, they should count. Otherwise, it would REALLY take forever to reach 50,000.

Other players don't count them though, so it's up to you.

I haven't seen any posts about others playing without OFB (or many other EP's), so, I'd just like to throw my ideas out there.

I have DD, so, the only EP I have is Nightlife, and, it's really fun playing a BACC (regardless of my lack of other EP's). I'm still in the process of play testing my rules and setting up different foundations and such, but, I'll have a website up soon, if anyone is interested in trying it out, but, doesn't have the extra EP's.

I will say, it's quite a bit of book-keeping, but, then again, from what I can see, with or without OFB, it'll be quite a bit of book-keeping.

Anywho... That's it. If anyone is interested in seeing the rules (they aren't much, just a different take on various sets of rules I've found floating out about the internet - I'm still playtesting them), let me know, and, I'd be glad to post them, or a link to them.

ETA: The more I thought about it, the more I realized I really did not want to go through the motions and work of setting up a website and maintaining it - so, I just typed/copied and pasted/edited the rules on a word document and am gonna post them here.

These have hardly been play tested, so, please let me know if some of them are crazy-unreasonable or too easy. I haven't even begun to contemplate a spreadsheet (there are so many out there already and Excel really hates me), so, this is it.

It's a "guide" - So, it's a long read. It's basically an edited compilation of all of the other challenge guides.

(P.S. Mucho Gracias to iCad for putting up her wonderful resources for others to pull from; your detailed explanations really helped.)

Okay, so I have just found this challenge and I am eager to try it. My question is how does the rule that you have to play every family in the bin apply to the families that are already in the bin when you create the neighborhood? Do you have to play them too or do you delete them when you begin?

You don't delete them ever because doing so will corrupt your hood! If you don't want the bin families, either leave them there (but children, teens, and anyone with a job will come home from work/school) or start a brand new neighborhood using empty templates for the stealth hoods.

A stealth hood is the device that loads the family bin families, townies, strays, etc., into your neighborhood. When setting up the hood, you back these up and replace them with empty templates like those found here:
http://meetme2theriver.livejournal.com/63030.html
Scroll way down the page - she's got clean, fixed, and empty (not the same thing) versions of the base game hoods and subhoods, which come first, but for a BACC all you need are empty stealth hoods and, if you want to make your own townies, all the no-regen-anti-redundancy hacks.