I think using apartments will add to the feel as this way I'll be able to use communal dining halls etc. I'm not much of a builder either but I think you really need to build your own apartments for this challenge because it's just too hard to find lots that fit all the criteria. As it is I've had to build my vassal lots on 3x3 even though this isn't strictly allowed but then there will be 4 families living there at all times. I'm also relaxing the rules about recreational objects to allow all lots a sewing machine, a creativity building loom, a cc well that produces water to drink/stock the fridge and a punching bag. I feel disallowing things like sewing and physical exertion would be against the spirit of the challenge.

Yeah, I think I will have to try and build the apartments. I'm sure it's not too hard and I have awhile until I get to the dark ages sadly. At least two more rotations of seven days, but probably more like three. I am thinking of making my second rotation longer than seven days so I don't have to do a third one.

How many royal (emperor) families do you have? I have only one Emperor but he has a lot of family members who have their own house who are also part of that class. However, I am considering making a change in the dark ages. I'm considering making only one royal family and then his family members with his last name would be the second class people (Lords, I believe). I would move the people who are Patricians now down to the third class. The people who are the third class now would be moved down to be serfs. I feel I have too much of the top two classes right now.

I still have around 3 or so rounds (I play 5 days) as well but depending on how certain events play out in game I may have to bring that forward.

I only have the one actually. I chose ranks by household not by family and arranged them partially by wealth but mostly by who could marry so I don't have as much of a problem with a top-heavy population as I could. Of my current emperor's three sons, one moved out before the era changed and is now a slave, another died young leaving only his heir living as royalty. The heir has two sons if both survive to adulthood one will either move to a monastery or move out into a fancier lord lot I couldn't bear keeping them all as emperors because it would make it next to impossible to find them spouses. What I'm doing next era is completely shaking everything up. Depending how certain events play out the emperor may or may not remain in power and either way the new monarch won't be closely related to his lords who won't be too closely related to their vassals. I don't think I could play keeping everyone in the same class for the whole challenge.

I think I will do what I was planning. If the one royal family ever fails to make an heir than the second class families can fight for the throne Game of Thrones style. That could be interesting.

So I just installed Hoodchecker and my hood has like five missing memories that can't be fixed as far as I can tell. Should I just delete my hood and start ToT over or should I keep playing? Is my hood doomed?

Have you tried running the fix option? My hood has a ton of issues they seem to just happen sometimes even when you do your best to avoid them. In the long run your hood is probably dooomed but you might still get many generations of play out of it. My hood has tons of errors but I'm just keeping on playing. When it implodes I'll just pick off in the last era I was playing or maybe the one before. I've played through neanderthal so many times that next time I'm definitely skipping it.

Yeah, I ran that and it fixed most the problems, but there are still some. I think I will stick with it until it crashes and then I will start over. I have some neanderthal ideas I want to try when it does crash.

Hey guys! I'm coming back to my ToT challenge today, will be my first time playing in in months! I have all the expansion packs on my main computer now, so excited to be dealing with the dreaded heatstroke and all that good stuff. I tried restarting the challenge on my PC a few times but I just missed my old cavesimmies too much, so I'm transferring the save file from my laptop to PC.

With regards to hood corruption, a few errors are unavoidable sometimes it seems, no matter how careful you are I figure when mine eventually implodes I'll just try and recreate what I can with a new hood and continue from there; I'm saving all the buildings I make, and we can extract sim appearances with SimPE and whatnot.

so i'm going to try this challenge for the first time O.O my sister VioletPadfoot has gotten me interested (: I'll post my weebly as soon as i get some pics up

I completely forgot to mention that I have updated my Test of Time blog again. The teens are all adults now, and the couples each have their own spot near Survival Pond. The first couple we check in with is Pauline and Richard...who find out some of the joys and tribulations of living alone. For the full story and pictures, click on the link for A Hitch in Time in my signature.

So, day two (real time) of my Challenge with a pregnant sim and her husband had to die because he got into a dust cloud fight -.-. At least his wife was pregnant.

EDIT: Okay here's my weebly page. I've just started getting pictures up so please check back for more updates =D

http://rainbowharley.weebly.com and my family lines page http://rhrainefamilytrees.weebly.com/valentine.html

Phew, it's been a while since I've been here. I lost my second (?) attempt too, so I'm thinking of restarting the challenge again. It looks like I have some catching up to do on the other members' challenges. :D

Played my ToT neighborhood again last night, after a fairly significant break in playing it. (I play several parts ahead of what I'm posting on my blog). So far, things are going well, but I'm glad I made the rule that there would be no deaths related to fighting in the first season, or one clan would've been doomed right from the start.

On that note, a question: do you guys kill the loser of a fight always - even if the fight's not between controllable sims at that time? For instance, my sim was visiting a community lot and two other sims, not of that clan, got into a fight.

On another note, the 'breeding' is going fairly well, although the sex ratio is pretty skewed at the moment. I'm hoping that'll fix itself, though. On the other hand, there's always fairie children (aka aliens) and the blessing of the goddess (aka plantsim reproduction) if I get into real trouble. I'd rather do without, though.

Im redoing this now, because I have my winter break soon. I did it before but never documented it! Ooooh I cant wait, this is oh so hard though! Thanks for the cool posts everyone

I always kill losers of fights even if they're not playable. However if you watch sims carefully you can minimise the fights by sending one sim home as soon as you see low level fighting (ie poking/shoving) or arguing or if you know two sims really don't get along you can always send one home when the other arrives. Personally I don't see the point in sparing the life of the loser because in my game the sims will just fight again the next time they see each other if I let it get to a full on dust cloud.

I always do the same. When I'm controlling sims myself I tend to try and avoid any interactions that might lead to fights, so the random fights that happen between visitors or on community lots feel more "authentic" in that their behaviour is totally out of my control.

I got quite a good story from all the random out-of-my-hands fights that go on when playing the other day, actually! My youngest teen, Ali, had just grown up (badly, of course), and got into a fight with another girl on a community lot. Ali won, so the poor other girl was killed. Then, the dead girl's boyfriend started picking a fight with Ali, which I interpreted as him trying to avenge her! He lost too though, so my poor teen couple was no more, RIP. Seeing the danger her younger sister was, Ali's older sister Tira attacked her, seeing no choice but to take her out, for the good of the community. Tira won, and Ali's brief reign of terror was at an end. She now has to cope with the guilt of killing a younger sister she was previously close friends with, though

My village is being overrun by girls and multiples! LOL I have two families with quads, one with twins. another one prego with natural twins. They all produce GIRLS. I have one boy so far.

No fights as of late thankfully but I can see one of the quads in one family starting a fight. Her nice level is 1

So if two sims who you're not playing get into a fight on a community lot, one of them still gets killed. Do you do this straight away on the community lot, or wait until you're playing that sim's household again? (I'd prefer to do the first one, but am unsure whether it would stick, so to speak, as community lots reset after leaving there).

I don't go to community lots much so it hasn't come up that much for me but I try to kill sims immediately. Back when I used to make a note and keep playing until I reached that household I had a few technically dead sims go on murderous rampages and kill a few other sims before I caught up with them.

I agree that some of the non controlled fight drama is great. At the moment I'm waiting for a patrician to try and murder the emperor since they've been poking and shoving for a few rounds now. It looks like this will be the catalyst that shakes up my classes (so people will actually have appropriate sims to marry next era) and I haven't had to do a thing.

Personally, I'd immediately go into the losers lot and kill them, then resume play where I was. But since I'm not using Community lots just yet, I haven't had the issue crop up. ~VP

So I do have to kill them on their personal lots, I can't kill them on the community lot?

Honestly? I don't know. Personal lot is just my preference. I know that gravestones can exist on community lots, I've had perfectly working community graveyards. But whether the death will stick or not I couldn't tell you. Or if the gravestone/urn would be there once your active sim left. I might go run a test in my test hood, but right now I'm going back to playing in my ToT. Which finally has teens on the teen lot. And has finally had a dust cloud fight. Little Enb Boretti picked a fight with his quadruplet Egara and lost. So that's one less teen at next week's camp. ~VP

Looking forward to seeing your next update :lovestruc

Oh! I did update for round three sometime last week, but i forgot to post on here, I immediately went into to play round four. So there is something new to look at (even if its mainly just pictures of sims growing up. this update was rather boring) if you haven't checked since the last time I posted I had an update. ~VP

Ah, I read that update today Loved it, so looking forward to seeing the teens at teen camp