Because I have only started playing the game recently, Ive been making a make over on my entire hood and quick playing one of generation to get new ideas for the families (I didnt have it installed on my new laptop because I thought it didnt work which it apparantly did with a few minor graphic issues like smaller screen. Its been almost a half year and I forgot where I was in my hood).

Anyway, now they live on empy 2x1 lots while I was editing them, so when Ive finish it in a few days, I will start building their houses (one at the time as I finish the editing), where the heirs won't move out from (similare to legacies). My hood is rather large and it going to switch between 30 to 60 household each generation where I play them by rotation, so I need to take house building into consideration. The hood is a maxi standard "isla segundo" hood so Ive plenty of place (or more like too much place ) to build the houses on, but I keep thinking how I should build the houses when playing a rotational play style.

I like the idea of more "realistic" building, where similare styled houses are stacked together, but the problem is that each family is rather random, between 3 to 7 sims per family, so that may be diffiicult to make them some of them live in almost indentical houses. I prefer to play my families by the women's age (the mother of the household or wife-to-be, my hood has a relastic modifed age system and each sim has a birthdate), because they tends to have kids around the same time so the next generation is synced and age about the same time as I move to another household. (ie. All teens are played first before moving on the children. I find this works best with my playstyle and when micro-managing things in spreed sheets and its something I will stick to ).

But my question, how would build houses when playing them in rotational play styles?
Having the families stacked next together looks a bit silly. I use spreedsheets, but sometimes it get frustating to "Locate" the next family when they scattered all over the places.

Alphabetically? My sims live in alphabetical order (but there houses are in rows too). This helps me when a family get rich enough to move to a bigger house and has to move out of the neat row to buy a farm/ bigger house/ mansion

Are you refering to there surname, or the lot's name?
(Mine are already a specific order so playing them by lastname wont work, it would ruin my spreedsheets and structure )

Pick a standard, easily-expandable, floorplan, with variations, using modern tract homes as models, and build them with a limited palette of exterior wall treatments.

For instance, I used to live in a subdivision, built around the mid-20th century, that consisted entirely of ranch houses. They all had an attached garage at one end and bedrooms at the other end, with public spaces - living, kitchen, and dining areas - in a long middle section parallel to the street. They all had concrete foundations, low-pitch shingle roofs, an entry porch too small to do much with, mixed siding and brick exteriors, casement windows, and stepping stones from the concrete driveway to the front door in addition to the sidewalk from the street to the front door. Some had the kitchen and dining in the front, some had them in the back; some had the garage on the left and some on the right; some had two bedrooms and some had three. Most had only one bathroom, but some had a master bath for the largest bedroom and some had a half-bath off the kitchen. They all had unfenced front yards and fenced backyards of uniform size. The siding and brick came in many different colors and the doorways were in different positions along the front of the house.

As years went by, owners varied the houses more. Some added rear patios. Some converted their garages into dens, workrooms, recreation rooms, or more bedrooms. (This is Texas - hardly anybody actually leaves their cars in the garage!) Some added a room above the garage or an entire second floor to accommodate growing families. Everybody repainted their siding eventually, but some people also painted their bricks. Some people did elaborate things with their yards. Some people installed fireplaces. A few people, who lived on corners, converted their garages and then added a carport leading onto the side street. But the general aesthetic of the subdivision remained the same.

If you divide the map geographically, and define this bit as "ranch houses," that bit as "bungalows," and this other bit as "cottages;" use different lot sizes and shapes for different styles (say ranch houses are built on 2 x 3 lots, bungalows on 3 x 2 lots, and cottages on 2 x 2 squares); and declare certain exterior features to belong to certain types (maybe your ranch houses are all stucco, your bungalows are all clapboard with masonry details, and your cottages are all shingle) you should be able to get distinctive uniform looks to each district and still have enough variety to serve the varying needs of your families.

I'm using PlatinumPlumbbob tips but to be honest, I'm growing tired of using the same houses for my households. I currently have like 40 households at the moment.
Peni, I really like your suggestions. It'll come in handy because I'm thinking of switching my neighborhood terrain.

I also play rotational but I can't help. I heavily rely on Pescado's Lot sync timer.
I start the rotation with the farming family because they provide the hood with fresh produces and then I play depending on events occurring during my play session. When it's taxes time, I'd rather play the mayor household first.

I have consider using the lot sync timer before, but dont quiet understand how it works and havent bothered trying it because its require to be uninstalled on the actual neighborhood(s). I tends to switch household by enabled clickable neighborhoods and have the view distance on high and play a shorter season version that last for days or 1 day if I going to editing or make makeover of the entire hood, so Im sure if the sync timer would do any better job, the spreedsheets that list who-is-who-and-having.what-lifestyle plus fast lot switching, Ive never feeled that I needed it.
Now, because Ive been playing with empty lots and used hacked objects to edit the families (relationships, skills, jobs, appearance, funds, clothing etc), locating them wasnt hard to do, but when building different types of houses, this might be a bit difficult, because Ive 51 families at the moment.
and like Essa, I dont like dublicated lots either. My hood has a pre-modern flavor to it with social classes, I definitly dont want my royals to live similare to the ones of the lower classes (and in long run, it can be bored).

Edit: I start to notice how weak my English vocabulary is - I needed to look up the definition of every single architecture word PeniGriffin mentioned.

The LotSync Timer helps me to keep the hood in sync, to know when the YA must come back from Uni and to change the day if needed. That's all. :-) You have to uninstall it from the hood and not from the Downloads folder.

I don't use spreadsheets and I don't have social classes. If I did, the hairdresser would be the queen. I can't use the clickable households because of the sky mod I'm using but that's fine.
I rely on my memory regarding storylines.

Truth is I don't like building but it's also difficult to find lots that fit my needs.

I thought you had a thread like this a few months ago? I remember saying find a few houses that you liked the floor plan of and use those while changing the wall and floor coverings. I would have roads of smaller houses for smaller families and a roads of large houses for the larger families. I also seem to recall you saying you wanted to downsize the number of sims you were playing and were looking at killing a number off. So I am a bit over this thread.

Well, It was more than a few month ago. Around Jan-Feb, I asked a question on how do you build houses when having many households, because it was overwhelming and did a "plauge" where I killed off some "extras",
But starting playing the game in august, I dont have the same issues I had back them.After moving to the generation, I ended up adding more families because with Faiuwle's extended family hack and in-law fix, my selection of pontentional spouses were so small, I barely could find any with the families I had. I had 30 back then, now 50 and my thoughts on house building are a bit different, so it isn't exactly the same question. I ended up accepted that I have this many families and that creating houses would take time.

Yes, its about houses, but that question was how-to-build them, not about placement stragies how to locate your sims without having to stacking them next to eachother, so this thread asking rotational playstyle strategies, because imaging that you were playing any maxi pre-hood with over 40 families or any beyond the number you are used to where they live scattered all over the hood, would you remember exactly where each family is located?



I was more thinking about what the sync timer do when you switch between families (MATU didnt provide any examples but reading about it, it seems like its like teleport cat style, where you click on the items and get options).
Because Ive so many with same last name (There are 22 lastnames, but I did a mistake by giving some of the founders too many kids, so several ones has 5+ families with same lastname. 3 households with 3 kids each of same family adds up after a couple of generations ), The sync timer seems to only show their last name and days (plus their family number) If I understood right.



After thinking a little bit about the problem myself after asking it on here, I got an idea of creating a visual map of the hood and write down their name where they live, so rather than trying figure where they are located, I can look at it and not having to place them in like domino tiles. Not sure if this would be a pain in the neck when families are moving, but with 50 families, house changes would take a while. Just loading each lot, age them up and give them kids or edit skills take a week to do with all families (which is what Im doing now, because after a half year, Ive forget many things about the previous generation).

Well I would never have that many families again. I did once in my BACC turned integrated hood back in my old Sims 2 folder. That hood had probably 45-50 families. I started my new hood with 13 couples and have added in a few more families since, so now I have 16. The kids of my founders are now aged child (a few oopsi babies) to YA. I don't think I will find it that hard to pair them off since I don't require that they have lots of boltage, just that they like each other enough. If need be I will even change a few turn ons or star signs, those are easily changed on the sim manipulator.

The way I play is I start with my families at the top of the hill on one side and work my way down to the other end. I use the seasons to tell if I have finished playing them or not. So if most houses are in summer but a few are still in spring I know to go and play them. Sometimes I might skip a house and go back later so I am not strict about it. In my old hood I had sections for houses and sections for businesses rather than scatter them too much. I would start at the coast and work my way across again checking the seasons on the houses.

I dont care about boltz, I couldnt pair mine off because I dont like inbreeding, in-law romance or townies. Removing Inteen and adding the fauwle hack made realize how closely they were related by blood. So I ended up adding a few "breeders", mini families with only one main household (4 set of families with 8 sims each consist of two elder couple + 1-3 kids each, two elders are siblings) That resulted in 51 families in total, after the grandkids married to the main families (fast playing them by aging them up and "cheat" with their relationships). Sure the rotation are longer, but at least It easier to marry them off now.

Now I limit kids to max 2 per households and micromanaging how many heirs are from each founders (same lastname). It works so far and hopely next generation will be around 30 households only which is the amount I prefer to play now. I tired of aging them up so after I done editing them, I will give them real houses to live in and turn off the cheats. Creating the houses while playing them and play them "normally".

My hood is huge and rather flat landscape so im struggling with the placements of the houses. PS: this is how my hood looks now, quiet silly, eh? They will probably live on max 3x3 lots, now 2x1 taking only a fraction of place from the the hood.

I never lose track of my families. I click from one house to the next, with a point in each neighborhood designated as "start" and a consistent order of subhoods. You can see the names and faces from neighborhood view, and since I play one-day rotations all I have to do is remember which household I played last. Since I take pictures with the in-game camera and update the story albums, if it's been awhile since I played (and I try to play consistently and only take breaks between subhoods; this is of course not an option for everyone all the time) I can always check the storytelling folder and look at the most recent picture taken. They don't have to be right next to each other in order to be clickable, either - I can click on the Land house from almost anywhere in Widespot, and since my graphics upgrade allowed me to view long distances I can click the Weiss house - which barely fits in the same shot as the rest of the neighborhood - from the Lands. I have houses at college which are hidden from other behind neighborhood deco trees, but with a little effort I can get the little household identifier labels to appear when I wave my cursor around the trees, and click when I see the one I want.

If you set up your neighborhood in a way that makes intuitive sense to you, you should be able to pick a starting point once you've defined the separate portions of the map, and grow systematically from there. Remember that no plan survives contact with reality, and be prepared to make minor adjustments on the fly. Remember you can move lots around safely (as long as you keep inhabited ones out of the lot bin) and plant as many visual cues as you need to with exterior features and neighborhood deco. Plant a deco pond in the middle of a block and surround it with families who live by fishing, that sort of thing.

I edited the Lot Sync Timer (in SimPE) and have made sure that all the families are numbered. Instead of the long version of the lot "Lot 2, Family Smith, day 1", I've got "#1, Jon Smith, Day 1".

I also edit the family name in SimPE to reflect which Smith the house might be. That way I won't get mixed up with "Jon Smith" and "Joe Smith". I also name the lots numerically so that I don't get mixed up with which house is where. This is the very first thing I ever do to a family in SimPE: change the name of the family in the lot to that of the founder-it's very valuable when you have multiple couples with the same last name-like Capp or Monty!

Right now I'm playing through a rotation that will merge 8 single sim people to make couples, using a formula for moving them out on a Monday and moving in new people the same day.

As for building the houses, I just build one prototype and use it for every family at every stage of their lives. It saves time and frustration. Of course you can change the houses inside and out over time as well, with different wallpaper, plants, etc.

If you asked about the picture attached, i havent created their "real" home yet. Now they sit waiting on temporary ones, because I like to edit the family before moving to most part, finished build lots.
But thats the way I tends to create hoods when playing rotation, stacked together, sometimes with business in between, because Im still lacking with landscapes..

Pescado removed the teleport feature from the lot sync timer because one of the later EPs made it dangerous or something, so it does nothing. All it does is run a count in the background of which day each household is on. I find it very, very useful

I play them alphabetically and I play each one until the start of the next season. But I play the sim at college 2 years at a time because otherwise they're younger siblings (who didn't go to college) will be elders by the time their older college going siblings will graduate.

I remember when it did teleport between houses-I dearly miss that feature, for sure.
Pescado never held out hopes of ever revisiting any of his hacks..so it's what it is.

Thats good to know and thanks you mention it, Ive fairly good control how long time I am at each household (use spreedsheets to track their age and details and then playing seasonally and if I screw up, I just insiminator to remove the extra age) and was only curious about that feature where you could switch households by clicking on their name, so if it onlys counts the day, I dont think I really need it afterall.