I love huge families in the sims 3 but I can never deal with so many people .. Even when I have twins and they're toddlers I find myself playing more as the kids and the parents wander around and get fat or whatever,,,,anyways I guess what Im trying to ask is how do you guys play with big families..?

I tend to avoid large families. My last family was a couple with three kids, but each child had an IF. I aged them up and the hosue was maxed. It was no fun. I can't meet their needs and the potties sure get congested. I prefer smaller groups of simmies.

Awesome Mod's Supreme Commander. I set the sim to a certain task and they focus on it and take care of needs as need be. Still have to keep track of the rest of the family to make sure they don't get stuck or start doing stupid stuff anyways but it gives me a little more freedom to focus on one or two sims.

I avoid them as well. A family of four is big for me already. Usually when I have a "biggish" house or a house with toddlers, I tend to play the family the TS2 style. Staying in the house lot, and not going so much to community lots, unless its for grocery shopping. Also when I have toddlers I don't visit people, but have people visit me, I also tend to give families RH jobs. There are a few exceptions, like my fisherman but his job doesn't require that much attention, I just send him to the fishing lot, and then in the evening I send him to consign the fish he caught, but other than that, he's on the lot fishing all alone while I'm home taking care of the wife and kids. If the family does have an Ambition job, then I will play the job for a while, (for example do a one decoration gig), and then return home and concentrate on the family. Or if it's possible I'll have the person with the ambition job do something that doesn't require much hands on action, like work on their skill.

Thankfully the toddler period is only about 5 days in my game + 1 day for babies, after they are grown, and going to school, the gameplay does become easier again. Unless all members of the household are interesting, with hobbies all around town and you want to play them all. Then it's time to prioritize that which Sim do I concentrate on today, and whom will I concentrate on later on. It's very rare that all Sims in the household are doing mega-interesting things at the same time.

I play large families by trying to attend everyone's needs but ending up neglecting them all. Large families require so much work that it is almost impossible to look after them properly. Ani's suggestion is the best so far; staying indoors minimises accidents and mood failures. Personally, I find the ideal household to be a bachelor or just a couple, aka two adults. Everything more than that, be it toddlers, kids or other adults, gives me the attention span of a muffin. =.=

copious amounts of gin will help you cope with almost anything

I'm playing a family of 13 right now (two elders, one adult, five teens, two kids, a toddler and two babies). As funny as it might seem, I don't find it all that difficult. Sure, they don't get a lot of individual attention, but I just like playing this way. A few things that I always do:

*Two teleport pads. It makes getting them all to school on time (okay, more or less on time) way easier.
*Unless I know school or work is coming up, they either get left to their own devices, or I put them on skilling to keep them occupied.
*Foosball tables are essential for teens after school. Set the whole lot of them to use it until their fun is up enough to do homework.
*LOTS of bathrooms...
*Kids can entertain and feed toddlers, which is absolutely wonderful if you've got three kids, five toddlers and only two parents.

It's just about getting into a "rhythm", really. And not fixating on any one Sim for too long.

I'm playing a legacy right now, so I have a pretty large family.. I just let them do whatever the heck they want most of the time. They seem to tend to their needs well enough. I'll intervene if someone is doing something stupid, or I want to fulfill wishes.. But, honestly, with two parents, three kids and a soon to be playable IF, I just let them do whatever they want.

I've been playing since Sims 1 so I have a lot of practice I just constantly switch between each member and I never have any problems. But like I said, it's taken years of practice to get this adept

I tend to play large families too. At the moment I have a family with two adults, two kids, two toddlers and two babies, so full house. How I do it is like Acid Fairy. Simply shift a lot between the different sims, and loads of pausing. Whenever someone finishes a task I set them on (or a line of tasks I set them), I'll pause and set them on their new task.
I usually occupy some of them with skilling so that they will not be in the way while I take care of various diaper emergencies.
I also never just take care of a diaper or whatever. I make sure those kids and toddlers are absolutely green before I let them go. Even if the other one is crying. It isn't efficient to "put down-pick up" too much.
Kids bake their own muffins, so that's food taken care of. I always have saved food in the fridge for everyone else. I have toddlers take care of social by playing doll house - preferably with each other as that build relationship too. And the kids build relationship very easily with toddlers by peekaboo, so they do that till they're full. Saves time later building the kids' relationships to each other.

So, basically: loads of pausing and loads of action ques and loads of watching their needs + a very steady routine on school / workdays and complete anarchy in weekends.

You played with all 8 Sims on TS1? I found it difficult enough with 4.... I lost more than one pregnant mother to the ravages of the wonderful "I won't do anything, not even saving myself because my needs are too low"

I almost always play with 8+ sims in a household, it's really not that difficult. Just have freewill on and it'll be fine, I play with 6 toddlers very frequently and it's chaotic fun

Two is a crowd for me, i stick around to "try for baby" then forget that sim and move on.

I always play with families with at least four or five kids. It's not too difficult. I just switch around everyone and keep their needs up, make sure I have a house with two or three bathrooms (it ALWAYS comes in handy, especially when all the kids need a shower at once), and I usually assign each parent to teach one of the toddler skills (Mom will teach how to talk, Dad will teach how to walk, and then whoever's around at the time gets to potty train). And I always try to make sure all of the children and teenagers are ready for the bus by around 7:45 so there's no last-minute clothes switching or any straggler who won't leave the television. And when I want to send my parents on a date together, or have one of my teens go out with their friends, I send them to a rabbit hole (say, the Bistro), go back to the family, and keep an eye on how much time the happy couple has left. When they leave the Bistro, I switch to them and send them to a symphony so I can keep an eye on the family again while they're in there.

I don't

I love big family members. 16-24 family members in one big house is great. :D

I don't have any problem, since sims can do anything by themself. It's even fun to watch what they doing.

I don't need to worry about food, toilet, hygiene, etc.

But there are several minor problems like: the sleep time, somehow they usually go to the bed by themself, but usually one-two sims need to do manually. There are also a problem with the food, since sims love to cook a new meal rather than eat the leftover food in refrigerator. But I fix it with the a food mod. The other problem is the skill build up, if you put several "skillable" objects, sims usually autonomously use it and develop some unwanted skills. There's no fix for it yet, since there's no mod to freeze the skill build up.

Haha I tried but I used to cheat a lot back then. Going back to TS1 nowadays is impossible. I used to have that purple magic mirror and I put it on every single community lot and in every single house!

I honestly don't think anyone could play TS1 without cheating. It was brutally difficult at times. Then again I was 12 at the time... so possibly I just found it hard.

No, it really was that difficult. I played houses of 8 back then and I couldn't do it without the magic mirror and other 'helpers' (and I was 30). That was mostly because of the terrible pathing the game had though. I remember that I used to put 3 doors in every bathroom and Sims would still get stuck in there and miss work.

I still play large families and don't find it all that difficult. I just pause, tell everyone what to do and then hit play, rinse and repeat. My Sims don't really have relationships outside of their house though, because I have no patience for that and it messes up my schedule. Also, I always have at least 3 adults in the house, usually 4. That way the kids can never outnumber the caregivers. It's a good rule in real life too...never let them outnumber you!

i find huge households easier to play in sims 3, but i usually run out of ideas for what i want to do with certain sims and monopolize 2-3 of them. the rest end up with crap traits and/or doing whatever they want while i manage those interesting 2-3 sims.

I don't usually play large households - two or three sims is ideal for me (just one gets boring quite fast).

However, at the moment I have a family of eight sims and it's a lot of hard work. The family has two adults, two teens, three kids and a baby. It's easier now without any toddlers but the baby will age up soon. *sigh* And how did I end up in this situation? Well, for once I decided to follow the hopes of my sims closely. And the parents ended up popping a wish to have a baby - and then another and then another. And they weren't even family-oriented, for goodness sake!

It's not that difficult to play large families but it takes a lot of micro-managing. The sims can take care of their basic needs quite well these days, so it's possible to just let them do whatever they wish to. But since my sims are all more or less over-achievers, I can't just do that. I have to keep eye on them so that they skill enough, tend the garden, paint, scultp, write novels and so on and so on. Those busy little beavers.

I focus more on one sim and let the rest do their thing unless their needs are so low such that they're near death. :p

I don't find it difficult playing large families in terms of keeping everyone's motives up. As long as you have high free will on, two or more bathrooms and plenty of beds/sleeping bags/recliners, then sims can survive fairly well by themselves. I also tend to place lots of Easels and musical instruments in the house and you know how sims like to obsess over them , so they're always occupied one way or another.

What I do struggle with when playing a large family is getting to know everyone's personality when there are so many different sims to consider. I currently have a family with 6 children and I have no idea who to chose as the heir for the next generation because I don't feel as though I know any of them well enough yet. I'm so busy checking on the other sims in the house and making sure they aren't doing anything stupid that I rarely get to focus on a single sim. For me, part of the fun of the game is getting to know my sims and finding the perfect partner and career path for them. But with so many sims to consider then there's rarely time to focus on much apart from keeping them alive.
However having said that, I do enjoy the challenge of large family's and I like the idea of several generations living under the same roof.

WOW! You're such a caring and considerate sim mommy/daddy! :lovestruc

Haha, not really! I do enjoy torturing my sims sometimes too .
It's just that I play with autonomous/risky woohoo on so I end up with a lot of unplanned pregnancies and I tend to never end a pregnancy unless I really feel like there's no other option.
Since Generations, my sim kiddies obsess so much over their creepy ass imaginary friends that they seem to be permanently occupied which is good when trying to manage a large family (as long as they remember to actually eat and not wee themselves ). It's just that I like to actually know my sims and I feel like sometimes with large families, the focus becomes primarily on keeping them alive above anything else.