So, in an effort to make sense of all the careers and give them more of a structured approach, I devised a simple Tier system which is a little more complex than the original. I did this because I was having a hard time choosing which careers to concentrate on in the Level 2 category....there is just so many. I divided them into areas and sections, making it so that each career much be completed on those Level 1 before moving on to Level 2, Level 3, and finally Level 4. I'm sure we can all agree that Science and getting the lights turned on is way more important that say, Journalism for instance. Plus, you can't have many careers without first completing Science, it just makes no sense. A journalist would have a very hard time writing in the dark. Anyone can take this idea and use it for their game, I designed it because by the time my second generation rolls around I have plenty of kids to help unlock careers. I don't play legacy style all the time.....too boring. I typically start off with one family and play all of their children in rounds. Sometimes I start off with three college graduates instead of just 1....as it seems more realistic to me and still provides plenty of challenge. In any case, this is a good system regardless of play style.

Firstly there is Force/Body, Sciences, Economics, Arts, and Preservation of Self (which only has two careers in it.)

Force:
1. Military
2. Criminal Enforcement/Pet Security/Criminal
3. Intelligence
4. Athletics

Science:
1. Medicine
2. Science, Natural Science
3. Education, Architecture
4. Oceanography, Gamer, Paranormal

Arts:
1. Culinary
2. Art, Music
3. Dance, Entertainment
4. Show Biz, Pet Show Biz

Economics:
2. Law
3. Business, Politics, Pet Service
4. Journalism

Preservation of Self
3. Slacker
4. Adventurer

Thanks for devising this challenge, I love it! I start my neighborhood off post WWII and take things from there. Zombies and Nazis go together well, and make a lot of sense.

I'd stick with the traditional three-tier system. If for no other reason than because it would drive me nuts to be stuck with senile elders (Pet Service) for that long of a time. Also getting fresh food back to your region (Culinary) should be much more of a priority. But that's just my opinion - you can play your game however you see fit.

I've got a couple of ideas of my own that I've been thinking about for a while. First, when my founder either graduates from college or rolls double sixes I'll have him move into a bunker with a handful of other survivors (read: townies-to-be). When he lifts the first restriction - Culinary - I'll move him into private government-subsidized housing. In other words, sort of a variation on the asylum challenge where the protagonist's goal is to top their chosen career. Secondly, until either Politics or Intelligence is lifted (I haven't decided which) I'm thinking of arranging my heirs' marriages when they graduate college/reach adulthood - picked at random from a list of townies. (If it's perfectly arranged, then so much the better, but there's no guarantee on that front.) In my opinion, that sort of thing would go well with a quasi-dictatorship taking over the region in the wake of the disaster.

child_of_air, If you think Tier 2 has too many to pick from at once, you can divide it into 2A and 2B, I'd suggest like this:

2A: Architecture, Education, Law Enforcement, Life of Crime, Oceanography, Science, Service Pet
2B: Business, Intelligence, Journalism, Law, Natural Science, Politics

Amalia81, I like your idea of mixing the Asylum challenge in as other survivors, and allowing them to move out once it is clear they are able to stand on their own two feet (lift hopeless). I think with how the system is set right now, arranged marriages would fall under Intelligence. Int is all about social interactions, and Politics is about jobs. Neat ideas!

Hmm....I think you misunderstood me, and that's probably my fault for not explaining it better. The careers in Tier 1 can be completed all at the same time, or if you are playing legacy style, 2 at a time (with a player and their spouse). Military, Culinary and Medicine are the first tiers, even though they are in separate categories. They are all given the same amount of priority. When those are completed, Tier 2 and the careers in each category are also given the same priority as every other career in Tier 2. So you could have one kid do Science, and another kid do Law at the same time. I just wrote them out as a list, but the numbers are what is important. All the careers in Tier 1 must be unlocked before moving on to Tier 2 careers, yet one can move on into any career they choose in Tier 2. That way careers are given priority- so of course food will be unlocked first if you want it to be. Does that make sense? This system still follows the original career patterns for people.......I never play with elders so I don't mind that I can't control them at first. Pet Security is in the second Tier so it would be unlocked as soon as Military, Culinary and Medicine are completed.

I too like your idea about moving them in with other survivors- that's actually usually what I do. In the event that these other survivors have offspring of their own, I put their kids into an orphanage and grow them up to be potential mates. I do this because I HATE marrying townies that have no family trees of their own! It looks odd after a few generations.

I just want to say thank you. The only reason I couldn't play challenges is because it had too many rules I couldn't remember at the same time, and just the option to be able to buy an awesome TV/make multiple meals/go to school, is what breaks all the immersion. I always wanted a list of mods that will complete the challenge, and I've been searching for years. I was able to do it with a medieval challenge, because thank god someone made hiders to all the modern furniture, but other than that I was stuck being bored in my game. You gave me a reason to play again. for that I want to thank you.

I don´t know if anyone is reading this still but I just wanted to thank you all. After years away from the sims 2, this was exctly what I needed to enjoy them again

I'm still reading, thank you for saying what you did! <3

Well, the changes you made make sense! I am having good luck and so far my founder lifted Medical, her husband Culinary and their heir is working hard on Military.Also, a Poodle I managed to adopt lifted Pet Service... I just right now noticed I made a small mistake. I made my lot based on the Starving Artist Lot, assuming that it would be ok with all the changes as it was on the list of possible lots at first, and just NOW realized that the spiral stairs are not really allowed.Should I delete them as I continue, or consider that the constant traffic jams that they cause are on the spirit of the challenge (My heir got fired from culinary as a teen due to missing the carpool thanks to his dad being on the lower end of the stair playing with the dog)? Also my founder got in the SS in college so...would the staircase count as a small advantage for the ss members since I built it from scratch?

I loaded the game up with the mods (I am using the Super Collection, on the Mac, so going up to BV), and did the thing where I take out for all the EPs and SPs I don't have (Freetime, Apartment Life and Mansions and Gardens), and it just would not play nice with me, so I did the half and half shuffle, and finally had to remove the Service Pets mod. That's OK. It's pretty easy to simply not select the elder sims, anyway.

However, something very strange happened. My SimBlender and Batbox (FFS Lot Debugger, from MATY) have disappeared, as well. Also a bunch of CC, but I don't mind that so much. Without the SimBlender and Batbox, I may have trouble fixing glitches (I guess I can save, exit, remove the mods, load again, get the SimBlender and Batbox, fix the glitch, save, exit, put back the mods). I boolproped up a SimModder to put under my roof, in case I need it, and I'm afraid that I won't be starting my career at level 1, without the SimBlender to fix it. I'm not sure if the SimModder will do that. I may start at level 6, because my sim has all his skills and 30 friends (Yes, I did go overboard at college, but, dude, I'm prepping for an apocalypse). So, we'll see what happens.

I am playing with all the mods, and hoping that this will work. I'll be playing it through now, and writing up and posting the progress during September, at Boolprop dot net forums, because I think that is when we'll have our SimNaWriMo. I may do some updates here, though, without all the story, just to keep things rolling.

Anyway, thanks, Phaenoh! And wish me luck.

Speaking of updates - Tim lifted Military, Jan lifted Culinary, and Tucker lifted Security Pet. I have a potential spouse lined up to lift Medical, if we have a son. Time to start trying for a baby.

One of these mods makes sims pop out of interactions all the time. No queuing actions. In fact, you have to wait until one action is completely done before you can click anything else. Talk about micro-management. And they randomly pop out of bed. Trying For Baby is impossible, because they pop out of bed the moment I click them. But they have maxed relationship, so I'm going with that as "acceptance," of the interaction. Sad, but workable as a workaround. One of these days, I'll lift the restriction that goes with the mod that makes them pop out, and then I'll let you know which one is causing the issue. But it's definitely one of these, because there was no such problem during the college days.

Congrats on getting this far already! I'm sorry to hear that you were having trouble with the mods pack, but it looks like you got it mostly sorted out. There is no reason why you should be missing your SimBlender nor Batbox. Did you double check to see that those both got back in after you did the half and half'ing?

If that still doesn't work, once you get the newspaper again, you can boolprop click that to set your job level, or doesn't Mog's job board allow you to set the level as well? Maybe take out the mods long enough for a newspaper to show up, then put it in someone's inventory so it won't get old and they can't use it.

When you start posting your adventure, send us a link! Good luck!

Good idea about taking out the mod long enough to get a paper, and just saving it (I'd call it a free inventory slot, because it's not really "real." However, at this point, it is moot. Only Medical left, and Marisa Bendett is going to marry their son, and she's at level 8, so it doesn't really matter. As soon as she lifts hers, he'll be free to take a Tier 2 job, and the newspapers will come again at that point, anyway. But it's something to consider for next time, right?

As for the Batbox and SimBlender, I didn't think they could just disappear from the downloads folder like that, but they sure did! Amazing! Good thing I saved backups.

Do you know why visiting sims won't come inside? They are friends, and the door is not locked, so they should be able to come inside, but they just stand around outside. I'm thinking of just getting a teleport and teleporting my friends in, since I can only call to invite them over, anyway. Of course, THAT mod needs to be re-loaded, as well. Most of my story-telling-type functional "cheat" objects just disappeared. Your mods wiped them out from the downloads folder, entirely. SO weird. But now I know to check. Thanks!

Any idea on why they pop out of interactions all the time? I updated my last post with some info on that, because I didn't see you reply, and I wanted to avoid double-posting.

ETA: Well, I put my other things back in. So weird how your mods made them disappear. They are still popping out of interactions, and my guests still refuse to come into the house, or even do anything other stand on the sidewalk, no matter how many doors I unlock or how many times I call them over. Therefore, I got rid of my phone (it was glitched, at that point, anyway, and I couldn't even make phone calls to invite sims over, anymore!), and put in a teleportation vase, so they can "invite sims over" and have them come inside the house, if they are friends. I'll move it outside, if I'm inviting non-friends over, but the guy left college with 30 friends, so that's not really an issue, as long as the younger generation gets introduced and makes friends, before he goes senile. He only invites his friends over, anyway. And yeah, for woohoo, I even tried swapping beds, but it's not a glitched bed. It's just a glitch. So my rule is that if they are in both in love and both in a reasonable mood, then they will "Try For Baby" with the Tombstone of Life and Death, until I lift whatever mod is making them pop out of bed every time I click on the other sim. True, there won't be any failure to conceive, but they also won't ever get any aspiration boosts from woohoo, even if they happen to roll it at the right time. So, there's a balance there, I suppose.

Even with these glitches, though, I am enjoying your variation on the apocalypse, and am determined to play through it, with the mods. I did make a few tweaks to the rules for my own game play, which I explain in chapter one of my story. I went ahead and wrote up most of that, but I'm saving the writing of the rest of it for September (SimNaWriMo on Boolprop). Now I'm playing through, taking pictures and making notes.

I couldn't use any of your community lots, Phaenoh, but I looked at them on MTS, and loved the look of them, and I decided that if you can use it in your official version, I can use it in mine. So, there are punching bags in the barracks. I didn't put in the science machine, but I probably will when I lift Medical and upgrade the first aid station. I don't even have the CPR dummy there, right now. I plain forgot. LOL. However, there's definitely scope for an upgrade. For now, I have an outpost, which combines Military barracks with a first aid station and a rations station/mess hall. It's all together in one big lot, but I lived on enough military bases to know that a combination like that is more realistic, anyway. They like close compounds, where everything can be guarded by the same small crew. I just wish I had a family of military people owning the lot, so that they could be in their uniforms, manning the place whenever I go there. I may just create an owner and some employees, just for that purpose, because that would be awesome, for story-telling. As it is, I haven't had anything story-related that would require it. I do have an invisible register, next to your phone book, and the "co-workers" phone book, so that it looks like a supply officer is checking the records for the rations distribution. Cool! And a Mess Officer (host) for the mess hall, although there again, the sims pop out of the interaction, so I just have them cook and serve their own meal, right now. Still, it looks good. I'm going for a combination of trashed and militaristic, where I can. I may split it up on upgrade to Tier 2, and definitely by Tier 3. I have not used a mod for sleeping on community lots (although you can sleep in a tent), but I may have to find and install one, for story-telling at the hospital and barracks. It depends on what story I wind up doing. For now, there is coffee on the comm lot.

Since you don't have all the EPs, maybe some of those mods have the wrong iteration? number? I can't recall off hand what that is called, but if you check the BHAVs at the top center-right and it says 8009 instead of 8007, that might be what is causing your problem. That would be my best guess for what is causing your jump bug. Try taking out all of the 8009 packages from your game, if that fixes it, add them back in one at a time till you have the bug again. For each one that causes the bug, set it aside and try the next one. Then once you have all the bug-causing packages, try changing each to 8007 one at a time and adding them back in. Changing them to 8007 could easily break the package and cause new bugs, so first make sure you need to edit it, then make sure it didn't break anything worse.

I guarantee that my mods did not make your other downloads disappear. That's just not physically possible. It is most likely that when you were removing downloads half-and-half to find your bug they either didn't get put back in or accidentally got deleted instead of moved. I've done that myself more than a few times, and accidentally deleted my main neighborhood doing that once! (I had a backup, so I was fine, but that was a heart attack I didn't need!)

As for why they won't come inside, that I do not know. I'm fairly certain I didn't get that tricky with disabling things, and no one else has ever reported that, so I'd imagine either you have some door locking problem (which you've ruled out) or some conflicting mod. That one is puzzling.

I love where you are taking the story! Everyone's versions are always so different. I'm excited to see pictures. You are doing pictures with your story, right?

Top Center Right of what, now? BHAV? What's that? Oh, if it involves SimPE, I can't do it, because I'm on a MAC. I have never modded anything, and haven't a clue how to do it, anyway. I guess I'll just have to live with it.

I had your mods in a completely different folder, and moved them in, all at once in the same "Phaenoh's mods folder" into the game, and my CC randomly went away. It may be physically impossible, but it still happened, because I did not even touch ANY of the other download folders, at all. Also, they disappeared BEFORE I did the half-and-half test on your mods. It was just "move this folder in, and BAM!" Totally weird, although I have actually had that happen before, in another iteration of this game. I think it's Mac thing, because it never happened to me on Windows, that I recall. VERY annoying. I love my Mac in many respects, but my Mac does not love The Sims 2. Or 3. Or 4. Or 1, in fact. Bleh.

BTW, did you know your name auto-corrects to Phenol? I bet you get that a lot. If I miss it in future, I'm sorry.

Yes, I am taking lots of pictures, and putting together PowerPoint slides to share on AuthorStream. It's the only way I know how to do it. I used to have PhotoBucket, but now I can't get that to work, because 1) it wants me to upgrade, and 2) it won't let me upgrade, so no upgrade to me.

Hehe. Free will is funny. My zero neat-point sim will autonomously clean the dirty dishes, but my 4 neat-point sim will ALWAYS leave them to rot. Every single time. This first generation, I am leaving them with as little furniture as possible, so that they can't randomly do stuff they're not supposed to do, and so that I can take time to consider placement of future objects. Now that they have a child (It's a boy! Just like I hoped!), they are starting to get more stuff, and more micro-managing. Tupak will grow into a teenager right around the time Tim gets senile, but I could use the Elixir to draw it out. I don't think I will, though, because I could use that to grow Tupak up faster, instead. I think I misspelled Tupak's name. Probably because I'm not a fan, but I wanted a name with "Two" in it, because he's going to be the first sim to attempt at Tier 2 lift, and I had heard the name before. Anyway, I think my pain pill is kicking in and I'm just rambling, so I'll get back to my game, and check in here, later, with another basic update.

Oh, btw, I love your rule about having 64 usable squares per floor, rather than 8x8. It allowed me to make a 6x10 roof, for the obstacle course! Huzzah! Pictures will be included in the PowerPoint slides. And I tested it with both of my adults, and it DOES build fun! Those kids will be fit as a fiddle before they grow into teens. That kid. They're only having one this generation. Usually, I go for bigger families, for faster lifts, but I'm following your suggestion of starting out small. It's a completely different strategy for me. I have finished multiple apocalypses with Minstar's rules, and ... What the heck is a Minstar?! Damn you, autocorrect! Anyway... Back to the game! Wheeee!

ETA: Here's another thing I've never seen before in the game: I entered Boolprop TestingCheatsEnabled True, and tried to Force Error on a couple of glitches objects, and absolutely nothing happened. No pop-up with the choice to Cancel, Delete, or Reset. NOTHING. Never saw it before, and I don't know what that means. So, now, if a thing is glitched, I just sell it and replace it. It's not cheating if it's fixing a glitch, right?

Yeah, that thing I said required SimPE. You can still do half and half with my mods to find your bug, but you seem to be coping with it pretty well.

I had a mac for all of a year, because it was required by my college program. I started my current hood on that mac, and then as soon as I was allowed to switch to a PC I brought them with me and never looked back.

I also go by Phae, but I'm sure that autocorrects to something else funny.

I have an obstacle course in one of my family's basement, and the oldest teen ran that course for hours. She had on a thinking hat and it was fall, and she skilled all the way from 0 to 6 without ever getting back to normal fitness (she was all the way fat to start with). Maybe I have a mod conflicting, as another family member kept rapidly losing her extremely fit status, but don't count on that kid actually getting 'fit' from the course. They'll have plenty of body skills though!

Glitch fixing is never cheating. Just don't force glitches so you can 'fix' them in your favor...

I'm too technologically illiterate to be able to force a glitch. All I know how to do is workarounds.

So, half of Tupak's toddlerhood was spent with the Charisma Bunny, and Tim invited all of the target spouses that he identified and befriended during college (you know, the ones with all the best jobs), and I got some great pictures, but he didn't even MEET all of them. I guess there are limits on just how much social interaction you can have with the Charisma Bunny. Still, I was hoping one of them would come out with a speech bubble about his parents' first woohoo, or some such.

He'll meet them as a child, and befriend them one at a time, before his father goes too senile to invite them over. When he's a teen, he'll be able to invite them, himself, and so the circle of life continues. For now, though, I'm just happy to have him toddler trained. Yes, I did the potty training, although usually in an apocalypse, I leave that, because diaper-changes boost the hygiene half-way. But with a snapdragon, he never had any issues, anyway. I love the snapdragon. Two would have been better, but it would also feel rather cheaty.

So, I'm going with "magical apocalypse," and the snow is non-toxic, so if you want a sponge bath, you gather up the snow, melt it in a kettle on the stove or grill, and fill a basin with snow-melt water to sponge bathe. I was downloading kettles and buckets for water-collection purposes, and found a "milk bucket", that toddlers can play in, and he loves it. It actually boosts hygiene a tiny bit, but it was hardly noticeable, alongside the snapdragon, anyway. I liked the picture of him playing in his parents bathwater, though. Now their bath water IS toxic. LOL.

He's a cute kid, but he's not very bright. Skilling is pretty slow. Or maybe I'm just used to smart milk? Anyway, I hope he at least gets halfway up the Charisma ladder before he grows up, because he won't be able to do it again until he's an adult, because it's no fun. Body, cooking, cleaning, mechanical, and creativity will be his skills.

Does your Education mod, that removes schools, make the kids fail, or just make them hold steady at C? Because I would love to have him get a job in Medical, reach adulthood at level 3 in the career, grow up and lift it, and then marry the Mayor. I do have a doctor for him to marry, if that doesn't work, but an early Politics lift means NO MORE CHANCE CARDS! Also, instead of saving the Freetime careers until the end of the Tier, and lifting them all at once, I'm rolling them into some of the other careers. Politics and Architecture, Natural Science and Oceanography, Journalism and Intelligence, Show Business and Entertainment, and Music and Dance. It's a more gradual lift, and these things go well together, and make sense from a story-telling perspective, rather than a bundle of "free" lifts all at once.

Anyway, if the no-school mod makes him fail, I may put in a Slmlogical home school, just to maintain the C grade, since it doesn't make sense to have the "You're Failing! I don't want to hire YOU" thing happening, if there are no schools, at all. If you don't want to hire teens who are "failing" school, don't hire teens, at all, since without a school, none of them are failing. Either you allow teens to work, or you don't. I suppose, I could say that teens simply cannot hold a job, until Education is lifted. Well, I'll see what happens with the mod, and how it feels, story-wise. It's not too cheaty, if you don't go for A grades, right? Besides, I have long wanted to design a functioning Slmlogical school, and need those things to build the Education community lot (may have to make it residential and create a teacher character?) to play-test it. After all, it IS permissible to have other player characters in the neighborhood, right? They just can't lift restrictions, and don't need to be played in strict rotation, like the family/restriction lifters do. IF I lift Law before Education, I'll have to have the Slmlogical home-school option, just to keep the kids from being taken by the social worker, won't I? In that case, I could move out one of the spares and use them to build and run the functional school! How cool would that be?

ETA: Pre-Freetime novel writing: You do not get a novel delivered. You just get paid. My founder is busily writing novels, just to put "books" in the bookshelf, but they never show up. I just force him to spend the time earning the right to read for fun. Hah.

ETA, again: Tupak grew into a child. I knew he had full active points, but gee whiz! This kid runs everywhere. He's almost too fast for me to keep up, even with a pause button. Neither of his parents can run, at all. Where did these points come from?

ETA, again, again: I had to stop playing this, because for some reason, I have encountered a glitch I just can't seem to work-around and until I can, I'm stuck. Well, I'll just have to try again, some other time. Still, it's a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the time I had.

I've already done this before but this time I wanted to try it using my typical arsenal of mods - dangerous fires (the deadliest version), harder skills, halved wages, bigger bills, real sickness, the whole she bangs (oh, baby when she moves, she moves - okay, I'll stop now).

In the original apocalypse challenge, my story was that Natalya Alkaev was a starving artist who somehow managed to live through the initial nuclear holocaust and was the region's only hope of recovery because the area was so devastated that nobody thought that there'd be any survivors even though there were actually several roaming around (most of them zombies). I recreated her for this challenge.

It took me 3 tries before I decided to surrender and start over without the mods. The first round was the farthest I got but Natalya barely managed to get through Level 5 of the Culinary career before she started a fire that killed her and destroyed her shack.

Fine - second round. It all went swimmingly until she came home with the flu and died promptly afterwards.

Okay, that was just bad luck. Third round - no fires, no illness, no zombie attacks, Level 4 Culinary. It's still a long way off but oh, my gosh, I think I can do this! Well, nope, the criminals ransacked the place and took everything - including the clothes on her back, leaving her nothing left but an invisible suit to wear. Without a bed, sofa, or fridge, and the only passerby a horde of zombies, she keeled over, absolutely miserable and wishing that she had just died along with the others.

As you can see, I couldn't top any of the careers and lift anything. Time to remove the mods if I ever want to progress.

(Too bad she was also my Asylum playable back then - poor girl couldn't catch a break!)

I'm replying to this October 2015 post. It took me over 2 years to finish this challenge, haha! I had a baby in real life and let me tell you, sim parents have it SO EASY. Anyway, the heir mentioned above was able to lift Medical and recovered from the flu! Yay!

Current status: Many generations later, an heir had 2 children: Meteor, who had the required legacy trait of alien eyes, and Nebula, who had normal eyes. Thus Meteor became the heir of his generation, but after 4 tries, was unable to produce a child with alien eyes. Meanwhile, Nebula gave birth to a son with alien eyes! The trait skipped a generation! Meteors 4 children and Nebula's son lifted all the final restrictions and completed the challenge, making them the royal family. HOWEVER, now there is dispute as to which line has the true heir to the crown. One of Meteor's normal-eyed children could have a child with the required trait (like Nebula did), but Nebula is trying to usurp the throne since her son has the trait here and now. She argues history because there was another line that died off because it did not produce alien-eyed children.

That's my current game. Honestly, I'm not even sure which should be the true line, so I'm happy to hear you all's thoughts on this.

@ttowntallyho : I very seldom venture into the Challenges Section (Here be dragons!), but, when I saw it was you, I thought I'd just drop by and welcome you back to the MTS forums. I haven't seen you around for a while, and it's good to see you back again! Congratulations on your baby. I hope he/she is beautiful! But probably hasn't got alien eyes?

@AndrewGloria Thank you!! She's a girl, Jubilee, and is 21 months now. No alien eyes unfortunately, but still cute as a whip (will pm you a pic in a bit). How are things with you? Are Andrew and Gloria still around or have you moved on to other families? I guess we'd better talk in pm so as not to derail this thread. I'll try to play and post more often, but it's hard because Juju doesn't play a wobbly wabbit thing for hours like sim toddlers do.

Edit: It says I can't send the pm because you have no more space, so you'll have to take my word for it - she's a cutie! :lovestruc

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post, but has anyone ever considered a "Reverse Apocalypse" challenge? When basically, as generations go by, the game becomes more restrictive, rather than lifting restrictions.

I guess we could do it that way as we enter the apocalypse full force, like there are still humans about but the apocalypse slowly starts destroying everything else. You know, that sounds like a good idea story-wise too. I'm not sure how it'll end though.

Edit: I just finished setting up 2 other neighborhoods, but I've been itching to go Apocalypse and Asylum again. Maybe I could try a slow burn "reverse apocalypse" style instead of a direct apocalypse.

A reverse Apocalypse would be an itneresting "decline of Civlization" scenario. The environment changes, resources are getting depleted...and slowly that causes Sim civilization to crumble.

But yes, how would you end it? Do an Apocalypse challange with the same family/hood? That'd be 20 generations! Or do the Aliens arrive at the end of the Reverse-Apocalpse Challange and rescue the Sims? (kinda anti-climactic)

I guess the biggest thing is that a Rverse-Apocalypse challenge doesn't allow for as much player agency as the conventional Apocalypse Challenge; you can really do anything about what is happening, except having your Sims live with it, with no alternative.

The idea itself does have a lot going for it, but the realization might require some extra work/ideas. Maybe some bonuses; like if a family consistently has someone with a golden gardening badge and constructs a green house they can feed themselves when nature outside goes kaput or some sort of rescue or revival at the end of the challenge your Sims can work towards.

We could cycle back to the apocalypse challenge - imagine the despair as we slowly lose everything then hope as we attempt to gain it back. We'd have to be in it for the long haul that way, or we risk giving it either a bad or anti-climactic (edit: spelling) end. It works story-wise, yet that's definitely a hard climb afterwards. It makes sense if we use the mods in reverse order too.

If it were my game, I wouldn't have any bonuses because I'd be assuming that the situation is that desolate (it's an apocalypse after all), but it'd be great if someone could come up with a system. I don't think most people will enjoy starting with such a depressing decline!

Years later, I'm still doing this challenge. Although I don't play legacy style- I've got three founding families instead of just one because I hate legacy style. But I just wanted to say how much I'm still enjoying this!

Same here. I like that there are new mods coming up that fit this challenge so that coming back with new additions and changes makes it more interesting. I'm considering adding Laura's Out With the Bathwater mod and incorporating it into the Medicine career for clean water, but I still have to work out the kinks. Since they can only leave the lot once a week, they could pick up some water supplies along with the military rations*. Maybe they can get more water sources or invent more water collectors with Oceanography, Natural Science, or Science. Would they be able to carry that much water around? Hmm...

I don't play legacy style either since I prefer having a few starting households around, I'm a bit finicky about age synchronization, and I thought it'd be more interesting story-wise to have people from various lineages lifting the restrictions and restoring society from a post-apocalyptic state (though those founders' lines might intersect anyway...). Despite having more sims from the onset, however, it's taking forever to get past the first tier! I'm certain it's because of the other mods I've put in - I know I said that I'd remove them, yet I wanted to give it another shot. Some of the sims are disqualified from topping certain careers, which means that I'll have to wait much longer for a suitable descendant, moved-in spouse, or another possible survivor to do so.

It's somehow actually more fun for me this way - it seems that I'm a glutton for punishment. I've even added ROS for related disasters and scenarios.

*I use the empty refrigerators mod, so I have them pick up the rations at the military base instead of buying an essentially useless refrigerator, which ends up doubling the expenses.

Edit: I somehow managed to lift culinary and quickly moved the founder's townie lover in, hoping against the odds that she'd have enough to cover the bills. She brought a whopping 1 simoleon. I thought, hey, maybe she has a career I can work with, but nope, she's a freelancer! Goodbye, Reinier, I knew you well.