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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 3:19 AM Last edited by LauraPamplonaS : 6th Sep 2022 at 4:13 PM.
Default How do you decide which sims belong to which generation?
I was wondering, for everyone who likes to play generationally and continue having babies until the hood can't handle it anymore, how do you divide your generations?

In the beginning of my custom hood, it was very simple. My founders were my Generation 0, and their kids were the First Generation, and then the babies born from them became the Second Generation, but then I had the incident where my first Gen 3 baby was born, but some Gen 2 babies where still being born, which made them younger than my Gen 3 baby.

This just gave me a mental breakdown because I pictured how difficult it would be to keep up with my generations as the hood progressed, since I want to let my sims have babies whenever they want to.

Then I decided that I was going to stop defining my generations by who their parents are, but now with "birth order", so every sim who is born around the same time belongs to "Gen A", regardless of who their parents are, especially because I started adding newcomers to the hood because everyone was related with each other now, and then I continued with Gen B, Gen C... and that's where I'm at right now but this gave me a lot of peace of mind.

I hope I was able to explain myself and that this explanation didn't give you a headache. Anyway, I'm super curious to know how others deal with this?

Also, I want to show you my generations so far, because I like to take photos of them all together I wait until they're all adults/young adults and I hold a mandatory meeting

Generation 0 (The founders that I created)


Generation 1 (The founders' babies)


Generation 2 (Generation 1's babies) (This is where my crisis began because these sims' ages were all over the place. If I waited for my teens to grow up to take the photo, some of the older ones would be turning into elders)


Generation A (Anyone who was born in the next 4 rounds)
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Forum Resident
#2 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 5:54 AM
I had the same thing happen with my Shape Island neighborhood. I've completed 120 Sim-Days and there's currently 205 living Sims. Gen 1 was 50 adults that I created and are all in the graveyard now. Gen 2 numbered 75. They, too, are all deceased.

I decided to count the Generation level through the birth parent (the mother usually except in cases of alien impregnated males). It gets a bit confusing though. If a Gen 2 male and Gen 3 female have a child, then I consider the child to be Gen 4. But if a Gen 3 male and Gen 2 female have a child, then the child is Gen 3 like its father.

This means currently both my Gen 4 and Gen 5 Sims range from adults to babies.
My Gen 3 Sims range from elder to adult with some deceased.

I may have to reconsider my generation labeling though. Especially if I keep playing. Eventually I could see it happen where maybe a Gen 7 male and a Gen 5 female have a child which I would consider Gen 6 which would be the generation before its father. So going by birth order would make more sense.

But setting an arbitrary "generation defining day" using birth order might be troublesome too. Babies born a Sim-day apart could be considered different generations.

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Mad Poster
#3 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 5:57 AM Last edited by Debby1957 : 5th Sep 2022 at 6:13 AM.
When I was a teenager, I babysat for a cousin and Aunt. My Aunt was the mother of my cousin. Both had babies around the same time. The Uncle (my Aunt's baby) was younger than the nephew (my cousin's baby). My Generations work the same as real life. All children of the original generation is the 2nd generation. All their babies are the next generation, and so on and so.
Edit: Actually the Aunt was my mother's Aunt (my great Aunt) and the Cousin was my mother's cousin. The nephew of the babies was my generation, and the Uncle was my mother's generation.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 6:54 AM
A generation is not a real thing, it is a category, which is solely an organization tool. When you have a lot of variety in your neighborhood - large families and small families and CAS sims and premades married-in townies and so on - as I tend to, a generation is not a useful way to organize. Instead, I've always dealt in age cohorts.

Depending on the choices made in day-to-day play, I often have uncles and aunts growing up alongside niblings, going to college at about the same time, dating the same people, and so on. The child of one founder might marry the grandchild of another founder. When I did my uberhood challenge (currently reblogging on tumblr), in which Rhett Hart of Widespot went around impregnating one (or more) lady in every (genderswapped) premade neighborhood, I had to invent the concept of "co-sibling" to represent the relationship of two sims who shared a half-sibling without sharing either parent, regardless of the marital status of Rhett and the mother in question; a concept which was soon expanded to include co-cousins, aunts, etc. Co-siblings were often part of the same age cohort and much closer to each other than to the shared sibling. They could date each other, but it was generally assumed that even if they broke up, or never got to know each other well, they would always be connected through the sibling and that they were in some ways responsible for each other as if they were more traditional family.

In Drama Acres, I had six core families with a shared backstory, and, outside of the direct grandparent-parent-children nuclear genetic ties, sims from these families addressed and referred to older members of these families as aunt or uncle, members of the same age cohort from these families as cousin, and to younger ones as niece or nephew. The Hawkins family produced nine children, all of whom were technically "generation one," but the youngest of whom were in the same age cohorts as older members of "generation two," who had toddlers and babies in "generation three" when that hood (to my everlasting regret) got too crashy to play. Trying to think in generational terms in Drama Acres would have done my head in!

Even in less extreme cases, my habit of playing University means that brand new "gen 0" or "founding members" get added willy-nilly, which makes things even more complicated: not every family is going to be in the same generation. You have to organize things in the way that's useful to you, or you're better off not organizing at all.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
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Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#5 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 7:07 AM
I don't. If they are close enough in age they can have a romantic relationship, if they are further apart they can be friends. i never understood what the generation thing was for. In a family grandparents are obviously one,m parents the next and kids the third. But that doesn't take any working out.

What do you 'do' with it, game play wise?

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Top Secret Researcher
#6 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 2:31 PM
I don't bother thinking about it. My head would probably implode.

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Mad Poster
#7 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 6:34 PM
@joandsarah, I think generations are probably a useful organization system for legacies and perhaps other sorts of challenges. It's also much simpler to apply it to single-family-based play than to neighborhood-based play. Sometimes it feels like we're all neighborhood players here these days, but it was not so, and is not so, and honestly God forbid it should be so, because diversity in play style is good for the fan community's ecosystem.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Forum Resident
#8 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 8:18 PM
I only count generations when it comes to my main family, counting the founder's children as generation 1, grandchildren as generation 2 and so on. I just do it for fun and to keep some kind of track of how people are related to each other. Of course, people's actual ages vary a lot within and inbetween the generations, just like it tends to be in real life with families that are large and/or have big age gaps between children. It also means I have a few siblings that belong to entirely different generations. In one case I had a generation three-sim have a baby with someone I count as an honourary part of the extended family in generation four. I counted their child as generation five. For the neighbourhood at large I don't define generations. Depending on what I'm looking at I might just consider that this is the current batch of school children, these are the grandchildren of the premades and so on.

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Theorist
#9 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 8:38 PM
I only count the generations for one family (in Pleasantview it's usually the Goths)
And the only reason why I'm doing that is because I always had the dream of playing a neighbourhood for 10 Generations. I never managed that, I usually get to gen 4-6 when it stops being fun for me due to having waaaaay too many Sims.

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Field Researcher
#10 Old 5th Sep 2022 at 9:18 PM
Ah yes... Bram, the last born of Generation 3 in my Five Founders 'hood. (I counted the founders as Gen. 1) Half of everyone else in his generation has passed on and the other half is nearing their end in the nursing home. He was my first wild card and fits in better with Generation 4. Though Gen. 4 is probably my largest in age range. Some of them are elders with teenaged or young adult children and some of them have just graduated college and are expecting their first babies. Regardless, the more generations, the more entropy, as a rule! Anyway, I find it easier in a legacy style 'hood like that to track generations since all the founders started at the same age. In a prosperity or premade 'hood it's a lot harder with the mix of elders and adults and what not.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#11 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 1:14 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
@joandsarah, I think generations are probably a useful organization system for legacies and perhaps other sorts of challenges. It's also much simpler to apply it to single-family-based play than to neighborhood-based play. Sometimes it feels like we're all neighborhood players here these days, but it was not so, and is not so, and honestly God forbid it should be so, because diversity in play style is good for the fan community's ecosystem.


I've seen rotational players like Cindy/Pleasantsims do generations, she may have even made the idea popular. Even when I watched her play on stream or back on her videos and she would talk about these kids being generation A and these other kids Being generation B because they were born a few days later, I never got the why behind it.
In a legacy its obvious that grand parents-parents-kids are 3 generations but this isn't about that kind of generation but more kids separated by the days of a rotation. So say 2 kids were born in house A over a 4 day rotation they are generation A and then house 2 has one child in that rotation so they are also A but their next child is born the rotation after so they are generation B. This is how I understand it. i just don't get the purpose of it unless its to keep track of ages for sending kids in groups to uni maybe. I just make a note of when they should be going.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#12 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 3:56 AM
@HobbesED Oh I get that! My style is kind of similar. My plan initially was to only allow sims from one generation to get together with each other, but one of my Gen 1 kids and one of my Gen 2 babies were relentless about their relationship and would not want anyone else. My fear was that if they were to have a baby, which generation would that baby belong to? Ultimately I let them be together and I became less strict about sims from different generations pairing up, and I do the same thing you do! Gen 1 parent + Gen 2 parent = Gen 3 baby, I just don't guide it by the mother.

Thank you for responding! That was interesting to know!
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#13 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 3:59 AM
@Debby1957 Oh my I had to read that real slowly, my brain! Thanks for the response! I think that makes a lot of sense.
Mad Poster
#14 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 4:03 AM
When I have a neighborhood created, I use the logging device of the Sims2 Database, which keeps the generations clear and clean. I'm also very attentive to who was born what day, and what year. I don't like having a mess when it comes to labeling.
So far in Arundel we only have 2 generations-the Founders and their offspring.

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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#15 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 4:05 AM
@Peni Griffin Exactly! Diving my sims by generations is solely for organization purposes. Like you said, I've always thought this wouldn't be a useful tool with premade hoods, since they come with a lot of variety in ages already established, but with my custom hoods where I start off with x number o sims, all around the same age, I usually like to keep track of who belongs to which generation. I am definitely a neighborhood player and I like to keep records of my sims because that's what's fun to me. Thank you for your answers! Also, your co-siblings system was an interesting read!
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#16 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 4:11 AM
@joandsarah77 I do it mostly for organization purposes, and because I like to have nice pictures of all the sims who lived in my neighborhood, so it's easier to divide them in generations. I don't do it for every neighborhood I play, since they're all different, but when I'm doing rotational play around my whole neighborhood, I like to keep track of how their world has progressed over the "years" and it just gives me piece of mind to know that my sims belong to a specific group. I don't use it for coupling-up purposes, since I'm fine with my sims getting with pretty much anyone they want, even if it's someone from a different generation. I guess it's not for everyone but I really enjoy making my spreadsheets with my records of the sims who live in my neighborhood. I also do keep track of which day in the rotation they were born in, though it's not very important to me.

Thank you for your answers!
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#17 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 4:14 AM
@Kligma That makes sense. I like that you refer to your sims as "batches". I do that too Thanks for answering!
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#18 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 4:16 AM
@Orphalesion I get that! I also kind of fear what might happen when I ultimately have way too many sims to play, which is part of why I like to keep track of them in generations--that way at least I have records of them and I don't forget them. I guess I'll get to decide what to do later when it's time to. Maybe an inevitable apocalypse will come to my neighborhood and only a few sims will survive. That'll definitely reduce my population and the story of my neighborhood will keep going. Thank you for answering
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#19 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 4:20 AM
@Vladora I totally agree! And I think that's part of why I started being so crazy about generations. It was a lot easier on my mind when my neighborhood was just my founders and their babies; it was a lot cleaner and it was easy to play, but since I have a lot more sims, I felt the need to set an organization style. I just embrace the chaos and I keep records of all my sims so I don't forget they exist Thank you for the response!
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#20 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 4:22 AM
@FranH I'm not familiar with that at all! I'll have to check it out. I remember when my neighborhood was just two generations too. Back then it was a lot easier to play the hood! It's still interesting and entertaining to me but it's definitely different. Thank you for answering!
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#21 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 5:53 AM
@LauraPamplonaS I thought it must be for some kind of organization. I also play rotationally with fairly strict season/day age timings and keep close track on the toddlers who will be ageing up and going to playable school, kids going to playable highschool and teens going to uni. I guess I simply don't group them unless they are born on the same day.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#22 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 8:21 AM
Quote: Originally posted by LauraPamplonaS
@Debby1957 Oh my I had to read that real slowly, my brain! Thanks for the response! I think that makes a lot of sense.


There's more. My Mother's baby brother (my Uncle) is only 5 years older than my oldest sister ( he's 12 years older than me). He played with us when we were growing up. His youngest daughter is only 1 year older than my oldest nephew. They are 2 different generations, although they are only a year a part.
Mad Poster
#23 Old 6th Sep 2022 at 9:43 AM
I'm about to begin playing Pleasantview from when it was first founded in the turn of the 17th century and will start playing the ancestors of the Pleasantview families starting with the Jankoskys who are one set of GOth family ancestors and also the Pleasant couple who arrived in the colony about a year or two after the Jankowskys to start new lives with a hope of a modest fortune as landowners.
Lab Assistant
#25 Old 10th Sep 2022 at 11:44 PM
For my neighborhood, Fairplay, I initially started out by labeling the generations by who was an elder, adult, and teen at the start of the neighborhood (elders were gen 0, adults were gen 1, teens and below were gen 2). Of course, I realized how flawed of a system this was way too late. Initially it all started making sense with certain pairings when they matched generations, but after a while I started to lose track of how exactly I could number sims by generations when someone who was technically generation 3 married a townie who would've been generation 0.

Hence, I threw out that system, as messy as it was, and decided that I now will separate sims by generation by what round they're born in. At the end of a typical five day round, all sims who were born in the previous round are now in their own generation. I also decided to move my deceased sims to their own part of the spreadsheet so that I didn't have them clogging up the space. So far, I've found it really makes a lot more sense to separate them that way: that way, I don't have to do complex math whenever a younger and older sim decide to have a child together.
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