So, do you have any other questions, or is the problem solved?

"Business: A new position in this track opens every time a player-owned business of any kind reaches Rank 5. It is unlocked to everyone once someone becomes a Business Tycoon, the top of this track."

Does a home business count?

And for clarification: if my town doesn't have a grocery store, but my sims orders them through phone, which costs 450. Do I [familyFunds #family -225]?

Yes and yes

What!? Where does that rule come from?

It depends on what version of the challenge you are using, but the Redmond Flats version has rules about using services/groceries.


Personally its never been an issue for me, as I put a grocery store early as a cheap business, or otherwise have had the founder garden for food/money in the early game

Oh, I see. Thank you

Not using the spreadsheet, but for curiosity: What does "Position Open" Stand for?; What's the difference between "Position Opened" and "Position Available"? I just found these two under Career Status tab.

I can guess that Position Opened is for positions/ranks that have been unlocked after some restrictions have been met and Position Available is probably for the actual positions that are available in the hood. Because you may have unlocked a position but a sim has taken it. The latter is probably so that there aren't two sims in the same high level position, like police chief or mayor, and so that there aren't too many sims in the same profession--so you don't have 10 cops but only one firefighter, etc.

Give me an example, because I'm really not getting it.

Sure! For example, say you have a total of 50 lots in your neighborhood.



So now you have 5 positions 'opened' in the architecture career. If you have 2 different sims who have the architecture career, you have 2 positions 'filled'.

Does it all make sense now?

No, I mean the difference between "Position Available" and "Position Opened" columns.

I'll give you an example direct from my game, because I do use that spreadsheet. There have been three burglaries in my hood. I have one sim currently employed in the Law Enforcement career. So if I look at Law Enforcement on the Careers page, "Positions Opened" is 3, one for each burglary. But "Positions Available" is only 2, because one of them is taken.

I decide now that it would be worth of time creating university, but the problem is: I wanna take 10% of each household as suggested, but I do not know how to do that? I had hard time trying using the "100%*

Actually, I think I got it how. Taking 10% of 2,290 will be 0,229?

Yes. The trick I use for 10% is to just move the decimal over. So 10% 2,290.00 is 290.

I do x*10/100

Or just divide by 10

When did you guys start taxing your households? I'm only on my first gen, and the oldest second gen is nearly an adult, and I haven't started yet. I figured it was best to set-up some really profitable businesses first rather than really impoverishing the households and slowing growth. Maybe I'm just too right-wing though :P

I start taxing when I have 2 households because :

1. I think that when a family lives in the middle of nowhere alone, they take care of their kids education by themselves so no taxes needed for a university
2. When I have only one household I forget to pay attention to rounds so I don't think about the taxes, but when I have a second household, then I HAVE to make rounds, so I can think to tax them.

The main reason is the second one, of course :D

I'm loving this challenge so far, despite of slow it is to get the population at least to an half an number. Sucks that I can't (or will not be able since I haven't tried it out) collect taxes from all four households, due to three of them having the same last name, therefor the cheat doesn't work properly. I can't wait until I can get to share my stories with you guys later on. )

If this can help, what I do when I have a new household is to quit the game, change its name with SimPE so they are all different. My households are named 001, 002, 003, 004... etc. The name of a household never changes in game so I only have to give the next number to a new household. That way I can collect taxes with the familyfunds cheat AND I know which household has to be play in the next round :-)

That's a good stradegy. Although, I personally not gonna use it, but I will start naming my new sims with their life-purpose/goal, relatived to the challenge. That would keep me on track by reminding what my each household will be doing to expand the city. Never used SimPE and I planned on but never have the time to install and download it (got no excuse for that).

I started taxing at the beginning as per the rules, 5% of the lot value "paid" at the end of each week by each household.

Ah, we must be using different rule-sets. The rule set I'm using says 'can', and is a 10% tax. I think four of my seven households have lot values of near §100,000, so a §10,000 tax every week would be too much of a kick in the teeth right now. For example; §9,000 can build 3 servos, which I can sell for §18,000 or more. I think I'll go with an exponential wealth option and try to get a sim with over a §1,000,000 to donate, rather than pay 100 weeks of §10,000

Edit: Also, what are good options for the free city-owned businesses? So far I only have a church that functions as a graveyard/wedding resort, but otherwise have no idea what to use the slots for. I'm thinking about a park as that can't make money but am otherwise out of ideas.

Movie theater, city hall, theater (that would actually work, if you can make up an area where sims could walk onto platform and talk with each other and interact with objects. <<<< This actually gave me an idea to make my own in my city.

You didn't mention that you were asking about a custom/alternative set of rules, I'm talking about the original rules (and yes, it's very hard to earn an university, it's a challenge ).

Giving a quick scan over that, we are apparently using the exact same rules apart from only one or two differences, mostly notably the increase from 5% to 10% tax for uni . So otherwise I've been following the original rules faithfully as I haven't even started taxing

5% is way less hindering to growth.