Hey guys! I really enjoy reading about peoples' rotational play and their realistic approaches to financial/political systems (like taxes and no 20k handouts) in their gameplay, so I've been toying with the idea of trying to play in the same vein.

I was thinking about starting on a very small scale. I want a rural small town feel, so I'll be starting with maybe four or five households, and I want to keep it realistic so nobody can work as, for example, a doctor without there being a clinic (and there can't be a clinic without a doctor!).

I'll just mull over some ideas I have and if you have any advice, tips, tricks, or any useful pointers, I'd love to hear it!

- Primarily a farming community to start with (are there any essential mods I need to do this?). I was thinking they use their plants and produce for food and any excess will be sold (on their home lot? A market?) and that's how they make their money to begin with.

- I want a sim to develop sewing skills, so once they reach the silver talent badge and can sew clothes, that'd give an incentive to build a community lot where they can shop for clothes. Not sure if they'd run the shop themselves or if I'd just use a spawned NPC cashier to make it easier on myself.

- Similarly, there needs to be a trained doctor/nurse in order to open a clinic (nobody could work in the medicine field without a clinic open). To solve this I was toying with the idea of letting a sim reach the skill and friends levels needed for the corresponding level in the medicine career track. So for example, in order to start a clinic a sim would have to have the skills necessary to reach the General Practitioner level in the medicine career (Cleaning 6, Logic 4, Mechanic 4, Friends 3) before they could get a job in medicine. Does this make sense? Is it too ambitious or is it doable? Could I use a mod to give them this job level right off the bat?

- Further down the line there needs to be a mayor. I want to go about it the same way as with the medicine career track: in order to become a mayor the sim in question needs to reach the skill and friend requirement necessary to reach that position within the politics field. Seeing as they'd need 10 friends, it'd make sense if all of the 10 friends are living in town (so no townies or NPCs), and it would sort of be like a real life campaign: would they vote to elect somebody they don't know/trust/care about? Probably not, so being friends with 10 other inhabitants would be vital (and challenging!)

- I'm not sure how to go about the education field however! Is there a home schooling mod I could use until a sim is qualified to work as a teacher? Do I pretend that they go to school in another district/county? To work as a teacher in elementary school, the sim would only need 2 Charisma, 2 Cleaning, and 3 Friends, so it's not very challenging in that aspect (could probably get it done in one rotation!) but what do I do with the kids while the school is still a WIP? I'm not looking to use one of those school mods, but I want every building to be present in the neighborhood for realism's sake (so there'd be a school building but I wouldn't use it for gameplay).

- As for taxes/economics... How do you do it in your 'hood? Let's say I start 5 households; 3 are extreme lower class, 1 is lower class, 1 is lower middle class; how much money should I leave them with after they've moved into their houses? (The houses would correspond to their financial status, so the extreme lower class would be small, kind of in a bad shape, and with the bare necessities as far as furniture is concerned). I don't really want to set up an extremely advanced system for the economy, but I want to keep it a little bit realistic... Something like: every Sunday they get taxed 5% of their household's worth? So if they're worth 20k they'd be taxed 1k. This money would fund the construction of new buildings, healthcare, education etc. (Just for fun; it's nothing I plan on keeping track of). Also, if they have a tv, landline, cell phone etc, they have to pay a set sum of money every week for that. This wouldn't be too much (probably around 100 for the TV, 50 for the landline, and 30 per cell phone per week; I'd just subtract this using family funds) but enough to take away a bit of cash at the end of the week and prevent them from making too much money too fast.

My thoughts are all over the place and this is a bit rambly (also English isn't my first language so please excuse any mistakes), but what do you think?

Check out the Build a City Challenge. I haven't done it myself, but from what I recall it's in the same scope as your ideas.

I highly recommend the produce yield mod (found under 'realistic gardening') from BoilingOil and the produce packing station (found under sims2>objects>Business facilitators) from Paladin. If you want higher produce yields for your family and a way to pack it into a display crate with 12 produce a piece. I use it on my farming household here and it's enough to make a profit and keep the fridge stocked

This is very similar to how I play.

Coral Bay is a small fishing town, so there is also a higher amount of fresh sea food around as well as some agriculture. This is my third attempt at an integrated hood and the one I am most pleased with.

Expect to make mistakes and start over. What you think you want might not in the end be what you want at all.

Coral Bay started with about 12 families. Every family/every sim plays some part in keeping the town running.

Farming: I use a number of mods that either help or in some way affect that.
I can't recall what or where all are off the top of my head. Doesn't help i just got out of bed over here in Australia either.
1.Mod that gives more realistic yields to Maxis vegetables and fruit trees. Vanilla the trees only give something like 8 oranges. Far too little produce for the very expensive outlay, plus not nearly enough for a town.
2. Mod the removes harvested plants. One of the EP's brought in a bug that made the plant sit there andn ot vanish after being harvested.
3. Sim wardrobe packing stations with Boling Oil's tweaks. pack fruit and vegetable into crates. So instead of putting one apple on a shelf you can put out a crate of 12 apples. I also use the fish packing station as well.
4. No hobby tip sounds. Sims will stop and start the hobby enthusiasm sound at every single plant, okay for a small garden but very annoying over an entire field.

There is also Plumbobkeeps vegetables, grapes with wine making and they just added herbs and spices too. I keep my Maxis farms separate from my cc farms.

School: You will want the Simlogical School system. I have my own small school house which I play. The school is a residential lot. Most children go there and a few homeschool. Teenagers either home school or for a few of the bright ones there is a very small boarding school house.

Clinic: This is a residential lot and I have one DR, 1 nurse and 1 'janitor' (restocker of medicines)

Mayor: I had one right away as he needs to pay some wages. My two teachers do not 'go to work' they work at the school and my mayor pays them 7K each week. I use a halved wages mod.

Sims:The way I do things like teachers or DR's is pick a level of the job on the simblender. Then I aim to get their skills up to what they are. I do start all adults with some random skills because nobody gets 'born' as an adult except for CAS made sims. I use the sim manipulator to give random skills then I take away any over 5 points. I have found giving too many skills makes a sim without goals and too little just felt wrong and a bit boring as well. I also set my founders up as couples. Sims who I don't want promoted get a job stopinater in their inventory. So my nurse stays as a nurse. I use the meeting controller from Simlogical to call my nurse in. Also vital to this kind of play where a sim has a job but doesn't go to the rabbit hole is the simlogical institution sign with the patches added to it that you want. This stops the bus and car pool and any pop ups about missing work. If you are not use to using a whole heap of mods such as these I would sugest starting slowly to get a feel for them.

You can see a number of my businesses and some of the mods I use on my business and career thread here: https://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=561271

If you want to be super realistic you need at first send all your village men to work at low level architecture career. Without them you cannot build anything and probably your village has no money to pay for building companies. And there is job stopinator to keep them at needed level. When buildings are done, they can choose another career.

That's actually the challenge that inspired me to take the plunge! I've read the rules but I think it's a bit too intricate for me, but this is definitely inspired by the main objective of the chalenge.



Thank you for the links! I'll check them out asap.



Very informative, thank you! I'll search and see if I can find the mods you're talking about.

Re: Simlogical School system. That sounds really neat. Seeing as it's run on a residental lot, I could use it for homeschooling, right? I'd just have to add the objects? I'll have to do some reading up on how to use them, but it looks like it'll cover the basics of what I need.

One question I have in regards to having a lot where you send the workers instead of a rabbit hole (and businesses in general, I guess): how does that work with the way time works in TS2? You know, if you spend a whole day at a sim's business and then go back to their home lot at 5pm, it'll still be 7am when they get back home. Is there a mod that lets you adjust the time? This is my main issue with replacing rabbit holes for actual lots (like the school, clinic, etc).

The mods I mentioned are listed on my business thread. Just you will have to read over numerous pages.

The school you can run on a residential lot or an owned community lot. Simlogical offers Prep school, boarding school, homeschool or no school. To run a school you need at the very least the school bell, pupil tokens, institution sign and school changer. Assign the sim living on the lot as principle, click the tokens to enroll children, click the school bell to start and stop school. All enrolled children will appear when you start school. How you run it is up to you. I simply use the homework book not the school book and once children have learned to study my school focuses on skills not book work. My school is on my business thread.

Homeschooling is just done on a sims lot, where the child lives. These children I have do one homework book a day. Often these are farmers children and they spend a good part of the day helping out on the farm. To homeschool you set the child to 'flexi school' on the school changer. You should not need the institution sign out, but if the bus does arrive place the sign and that will stop. Your child can also do no school work at all.

The homework book is different from the school book but I find the school book tedious because children set to work on it tend to get up and leave. I find it a pain and just too hard to chase 9-15 children around my school to do school work. Kids never leave the homework book.

There is also boarding school.

You don't have to play a school lot to use the system either. If you simply set all children in your hood to prep school they will catch the bus at 8 and get dropped back home at 5. Yes it's a longer day but they get no homework. My teens at boarding school catch the bus at 8am Monday and get dropped back at 4pm Friday. It's up to you if you also want to set up and run the school. I enjoy it since the kids are learning skills and socializing.

Another mod that I could not be without is Community Lot Time. This stops that whole, I must now replay the day thing. So your sim leaves her home at 8am for her shop, she stays there all day and leaves for home at 5. You have gone with her to the shop and when she leaves her home lot will load at 8am but she wont be there, she will have the away icon showing. Just like a sim does when they go to a job or school. The lot then can be played. If no one is at home it will kick into speed 3 until 5pm, which is the time your sim left her shop. Then time will slow to speed one as your sim arrives back home.
There are a few bugs since it never got out of beta. Don't take a pregnant sim off the home lot unless you are ready to use max motives. occasionally their motives drop while you wait, they should stay static. Occasionally it doesn't kick in and your sim arrives home early. I use the set hour cheat. Sometimes the mod only kicks in with a certain mode of transport. So you might find sims can only walk, only take a car or only take a taxi. You may also have none of those issues. I have only once had the pregnant sim glitch so I reloaded and used max motives. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=7462.0

The thing to bear in mind when going for "realism" is - that there isn't any such thing. "Literary realism" is just another genre of fiction, which uses certain literary conventions and structures - if it doesn't have more structure, less discursive dialog, and more plot than rea life, it wouldn't be readable. Similarly "realistic games" are still simplified. It will never adhere to some abstract ideal of realism, and I've seen people bang their heads against walls trying to make games more realistic than were fun to play.

So any time you hear yourself say: "I need to do this because it's realistic," stop and ask yourself "but is this a part of realism that will be fun for me to play?" Because that "need" there is a flag. You don't need to do anything. If you enjoy using community lot time, letting teens get pregnant, and high costs of living with low bills, go for it. If you dislike playing one of those elements, but feel obliged to include it because it's "realistic" - dump it before you start feeling reluctant to play.

Always, always remember - this is your game, your rules, and reality is what you say it is!

Yes, there is: it's called "Community Lot Time" and it's here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,7462.0.html

I don't like the community lot time - I wish I could go to work at 8am and come back home to have a whole day ahead of me - go out at night, dance until I almost drop, back home - and, wow! still time to sleep 8 hours So for me - my Sims get a lot more done without it - especially since they have to go to community lots to skill.
Agree with Peni - be as realistic as you want to be; but never stop having fun. (Life is stranger than fiction, remember )
Aliens are, of course, totally realistic as far as I am concerned.

Agreed! I've never even *considered* getting the CTP project installed, just because I like my sims having some extra time. I don't do comm lot skilling, so that's not what they need it for. But to compensate for all the extra time on their hands, they have to work at keeping their motives up, and they need to keep scoring Aspiration points to not end up in distress. So no CTP and no comm lot skilling... I'm happy enough that way.

Personally, I belong in the "realism" category, but as long I can get the "vibe" of making the choices more relaistic, thats more than enough for me!

Like I dont like simlish things like Randomly switcing life states, have 10+ kids or has no age limit for kids or dating (okay, okay, these things MIGHT happen IRL as well )and a random person can become the major with no background or using aging potion to live alot longer than others, ----- are stretching it a bit in my case. So those kind of things that are possible in the game are things I would always tweak.

Some "realism" Im using:

# I use a X days = 1 years aging (modded) system which correspond the sims life real-life aging. A recently graduated YA are 23 years old, while teens are 13 years old, stuff like that. Currently, I modded it so 4 days equal 1 year, or one day is three month.

# Dating and Kids are slightly more realistic where they can only date sims within their agegroup (with some exceptions, just like real life.) and they can only have kids during a certain time of their teen/adult hood, like fertility, and may not have dozen of kids, especially not twins two times in the row (poor mothers who actually able to birth out twins year after year ) Along with fertility, I also added a risk of childbirth where the pregnant can die after giving birth, which just for story plots.

# Use Cyjon Stopinator so sims cannot change in career whenever the game want it.

# The hood is roughly inspired by BACC, where career and sims added in a way that make sense to me.
How careers are added such as Medicine are inspired by the BACC. I add them as the hood grows larger. but dont follow the bacc rules for it. In my game, a sim can only be a nurse if they had a diploma and there is a community lot or even terrain decoration placed on the hood. Diploma from university are only available when I added university, whihc is added when the major has collected enough taxes to build it.

# The royal or the major collect taxes daily with Monique Payeer bill - how much you tax depends competly on how much you can handle.
This one thing I kepts semi-realstic, the taxes are a bit higher than other simmies might use, but the taxes stand for ANY fee - electricity, rent, water, medical etc ...everything. Regardless of the amount you tax them, it make the process alot easier. I also use Visitor Controller, to ban the mail career so these "taxes" are also "bills". For my own hood, I prefer simplified so I tax same amount for sims with similare economy group using Payeer bill from Monique. Taxes are daily:
> Outcast, Homeless, Orphans, (Underclass) are not taxed as the major in my hood dont pay attention to them.
> 250$ for the Low Class (a farmer earns about 200-500)
> 500$ for the middle class (a teacher earns at least 500)
> 1000$ for the highest class (high rank and famous sims earn quiet alot)

The taxes/bills are roughly based on how much they earn on average. Usually, its the highest one who get the lowest taxes, but I went the other way around as I want my rich sims to still work for their wealth rather getting wealthier and wealthier. While poor sims need to work a bit extra!

Retired elders, Graduates, Roomates, Kicked out sims etc may share a custom aparment I made for them. For that, I tax them $100 daily. My sims graduated in the main hood (Squinge college pack), so I havent decided how much the education fee will be yet.

Sims are also able to take loans with Cyjon Loan Jar and Monique Hacked computer to save money or transfer it to another sim.

# I also use the Simbolical school system but only use Flexii school for homeschool or sims who cannot afford to go school (poverty or if playing a medivial settings. My hood is premodern.). I flag the sim with flexi school and dont think about any further.

# My hood is also a farming society with different social groups where the more poor families take care of the heavy farming while richer families pursuit more job sucking careers.
But as far as "managing" it, I tends cheat this part to make it a bit easier. I use money cheats to give the business owner some funds from their businesses and such. Keeping track of every detail like how many crops are needed for the entire hood are NOT something Im patience enough with!

# Many mods that make the game slightly harder (or easier) but make more sense than "vanilla", like no 20K hand outs but these are too many to mention. I use also alot of hacked objects, where I can change a sims skills and career level as I wish to suit the story plot or when I find it needed. Mostly use Insim, Simblender, Hacked paintings (to for example change lifestate or surname) and College Adjuster.

As far as Community Time, this is something I bend as I don't find it important to make everything "realistic". Im happy as long I get the "vibe" and Im somone who prefer to keep it more simple. I dont see any point in a game that too frustating to play when you to pick every single area to be realistic and cannot handle those "rules". So I only add realism on areas where my tolerance level can endure. Its not a heavly strategic game to me. I play it to relax, not to stress over winning over a boss or a rival.

I actually want a mod in real life that lets me go to work and then come home and have it be 7 am again and I have all day to screw around making pottery and cleaning my toilet. Anyone know WCIF that? :D

Yellan, I'd like a mod like that too but instead I'd play sims all day.

Back on topic

I started my current hood as a BACC with 8 sims.
I don't do social classes though because I like things to be fair in my game (unfortunately they're not IRL). My sims aren't either filthy rich or dirt poor.
For taxes, each household pays 10% of the amount one can see from neighborhood view and get credits if they have children (-500§ per kid). My mayor uses the money to pay the teachers and build or improve community lots. I keep track of the funds (nothing too fancy since I like to keep things simple).
For bills, I use AH's bigger bills mod + tuition: http://www.simbology.com/smf/index....61086#msg161086
In my game, bills include various fees even insurance policy. I'm still debating about removing inheritance money.
The tuition part of the mod is for my students. I don't know why but dorm bills were only 100§ now they're much bigger.

I guess my game isn't "realistic "anymore. BO's alien experiments mod makes it into my game because I want more variety when it comes to supernaturals.

I love community lot time and wouldn't be without it. I love that a sim can miss a car pool or a birthday and be in trouble, that if someone kicks over their trash they won't know about it until they arrive home. I love that it's so realistic; that your sim is away at their shop so your other sim is a single parent for the day, as they would be if you were out for the day. Coming home to relive the day is weird like the groundhog day movie to me.

Whereas not having community lot time means I get a much more realistic sense of time passing, of each day being a composite representing many days.

Basically, you're either a community lot time player, or you're not. It's one of those mods that's very much take it or leave it - if you like it, you can't live without it, and if you don't, you wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot-pole.

You may have to experiment to find out which you are. Or just finding out about how it works may cause your heart to leap up to meet it, or run away in revulsion.

It's a bit like ACR, (which I don't have) you either love it or hate it.

If you don't want to use community lot time, you can use Sim Manipulator to change the time instead.
I'm now using community lot time, but I just started using it, and since it only works on taxi's, I don't use it for all my sims.

Taxes - They are due this turn. Sims will have to pay 10% household tax and 5% Property Tax. I "borrowed" $500,000 to start my hood, the banker paid it back, cause I used a census and taxed all the townies $1,000 each.

My town always starts with a farmer, but it's not enough to feed everyone so people still use Maxis grocery shops. In fact, I use Townies and Maxis made community lots because I'm too impatient to wait for my town to develop. I play the game backwards, my aim is to have everything playable and owned by my own sims. They go to maxis jobs, and then have the goal to create a proper playable community lot to go to, rather than starting with nothing and having to home school everyone, and have everyone farming just to put food on the table.

I feel my game is realistic. You walk within your neighbourhood, you need a taxi or car if going to another sub-neighbourhood. Sims take out loans for houses, university education, and business. Whenever I can find a sim in the legal career, the courts, prison and police will get started. There's a modded hospital, but without a sim in the medical career there is no clinics and no counselling available. We got crime a plenty in my town. Two criminals and no police, so we got dives, we got warehouses, and soon the Museum will open (with no worker) so they can get something big to steal. Business open as soon as my sims need them, before that they do without or use boring Maxis non-payable lots.

How it works varies by game. In my game it only works by walking, but in my medieval game it's only by taxi. Bit of a bug bear to get peasants to call a taxi (even though it's a nice horse and carriage) but it's really too nice for peasants who would have walked.

Hmm. I just realized something. Some of our hoods are way too small for the average Political career. Wonder if a small town political career is available anywhere. I don't want my Hamlet mayor getting paid as much as my City mayor. Time to DIG FOR DOWNLOADS!

But you've hit on a lot of things I've done myself. In Sedona (cause it's my smallest hood ever to date), I have a doctor whose private practice is next door to his house. I have a small one room schoolhouse when the sim toddlers reach kid stage and I'll be using Simlogical's school mods for it. Currently, they're all in daycare since the town is too isolated for a nanny. Simlogical mods and PCSims mods are also being used for my doctor's office (along with the massage table for examinations!).

For taxes? I'm lazy. So I use the Bigger Bills mod. I think mine is from MATY. The mod should include taxes (higher taxes) each time bills arrive to the house. So my sims pay bills and taxes.

My only real advice is to have fun with the realistic side of things. My sims in Sedona don't have regular jobs for 2 reasons: 1. I thought the little place was in the middle of nowhere land. 2. I wanted to make my sims work for it and get inventive. I have the same thoughts for my clinic, school, and the police and fire station.

Keep your realism fun and don't get deeper than you'd like. Besides, it's fun to watch your sims struggle.
(Btw: My police station/fire station is a one room office across the hall from the one room library in the 3 room town hall. That's how small Sedona is.)