Thanks for your answers. I'll definitely go with 10% then.

I use the Sims2DB (sims 2 database) to track my sims' information, have a notebook with random notes, the family trees and lists for each generation with the names of born sims (girls left and boys right, or other way around, can't remember right now) plus the initials of the grandparents to see possible pairings and keep track of relations and I have two exel sheets: one for family founds and one with my progress (time I needed for each round).

@lbsgirl24 Would you mind posting a photo of the floorplan of your keep? I'd love to see how it looks on the inside, if it isn't too much trouble.

I LOVE seeing everyone's buildings! They look so great!

And my Colosseum needs so much work- I have to rebuild entirely, left it with my overgrown Sandsteps world I started out in, it was one of the weird ones that wasn't on level ground and looked stupid in the new islands.

But seeing everyone post together again gives me such nostalgia- so good to see you all; Taliah, VP, FlyingRaccoon, IBSgirl has been here, but you all know what I mean! As one who falls off often and doesn't post for months, forgive me if you were just here the whole time and I didn’t see it. Lol.

New happenings below in descriptions. Pardon the modern outfits, this is what the game did before mods, now I have slightly better control. But the mods did forcibly separate a happy couple and turned the Emperor Kale Cove into a 'Casanova' personality, who hooked up with and married Evangelia away from her husband when I was playing a new family. I wasn't too happy about it, but I did give Emperors a high probability of cheating on their spouses.

The only problem is, Kale is literally THE Emperor, and has only had a daughter. When I go back to playing his family he's married the neighbor's wife! So I divorced them and got him remarried to his actual wife so the line doesn't end... T_T But let him have a kid with her first to shake up the genetics a bit. So the story is- he promised her the title of Empress, married her, and said 'just kidding!' and ran off.

Also, pics of the Cove household. I build as much as I actually play the families, if not more.

Havs anyone tried a family tree/ Genealogy site? The on in my sig is called myhertitage.com, it has statistical features which I love, and can tell you the most common names on the tree, ratio of men to women, married to divroced, percentage of death or by age, etc. It's been very helpful in remembering who is who! I meant to start a blog but the tree site has been so fun to use I've been uploading all my pics and comments to there.

As for keeping track of who is who, I'm still using the orginal names of Cove, Bupkis, Saulson, Edifice, and Fahadeen. I give each male child a different last name before they are old enough to move out so there is no confusion, now I have the following surnames;

Cove, Coval, Covale, Covre, Covel, Coven, Covrale
Bupkis, Bupkisa, Bupkale, Bupkise, Bupkos
Saulson, Saulsoria, Saulsonesca, Saulona,
Edifice, Edifica, McEddie
Fahadeen, Fahadeena, Fahadeenae

........and I just realized that half of these names I have yet to update on the site. whoops.


On an unrelated note, I wanted to show you all some of the weirdest looking sims so far that have come up in my gene pool.

First there was Loki Cova, and now I'm not sure who this next one is yet (she aged up when I wasn't playing her). They both terrify me. Them faces!

I actually do something similar with initials or I used to until the generations stopped lining up and it stopped working. I have been putting of changing the names of offshoot families until the next era which tells me right away if sims are first cousins on their father's side.

Honestly I find family tree sites to be confusing so personally I haven't ventured into them. I think those two are interesting and yes a little bit scary but they're not too bad.

I've put some more house pictures under the spoiler to save on loading times.

Hi everyone,

oh, a challenge which demands tons and tons of CC and hours to catalogue the CC and then create the starter sims... just the thing for me. By now I have my starter Sims on their lots, a list of recolors I want to do, two rules I'll kick (no skin 4 for emperors? Oh noes) and questions:

in the list of things that the Stone Age Sims are allowed there's no book shelf (all right, somewhat futuristic, but still... skill building?) and absolutely not baby or toddler stuff mentioned: no toys, cribs, changing tables, potties... this could turn very difficult. Is that on purpose or just an oversight?

I'm planning to come up with some vector that mixes money and amount of friends with each other to determine the upper class. Money alone isn't power; connections count, too. I guess something like this:

- count money and friends (double points for "best friends")
- set 100 % money = highest amount of money that any Sim family has
- set 100 % friends = highest amount of friend points that any Sim family has
- set both 0% values = 0
- determine % value of money and friends points for each Sim family
- multiply both values for each Sim family
- highest number = Long live the Emperor!

... it's not as complicated as it sounds, I swear. Honestly.

I think I'll also need an uncomplicated way to change family names. I'm quite happy with the Stone-Age names I came up with (N'Dr'Xo, Conn-Ar, La N'Ga, Grohl... kudos to anyone who gets the common denominator!), but they won't do for roman antiquity.

Hope I'll have pretty pictures soon.

@Frogsnack I would have long since gone crazy, when my sims would run all around town doing stuff while I'm not playing them. Even if I'm not micromanaging them as much as I used to, I still can't stand missing anything that's happening (which is why I need so long to play...).

@lbsgirl24 Your keep looks great and I really like the idea with the villages and palisades.

@alchemist For my neanderthal sims, the only ways to gain skill points were cooking, cleaning, repairing stuff and the third generation had some toddler toys (mostly logic I think). Apart from those toys, I had cribs, changing tables and potties for toddlers and babies. And each household had a doll house, which was mostly used by the kids, though.

I didn't determine the classes for the roman age by money only either. My emperor family for example wasn't the richest, but they have the highest number of friends and a lot of skill points/badges. Another important point for me for the ranking were possible marriages. It kind of makes the game more realistic if your future emperor doesn't have to marry a slave because all the patricians are his cousins. Even if you can always simply ignore the cousin part if you want to. :p

Changing family names (and especially household names) is easiest with SimPE. You can also change individual family names with the sim blender or a similar object, but I don't think there is another way to change household names except SimPE?

I think very few if any of us are playing by the original rules.

For skilling I just let my sims learn by doing. So they learned to cook by burning a few plates of fish, the learned to clean by cleaning etc. I allowed toddler toys from the start because my logic was hey kids are going to go bang on some hollow rocks to make pretty noises (xylophone) or try and build things with rocks (logic toy) their parents or older siblings might even carve them wooden toys or make toys out of grass and leaves for them (small toybox toy) so I allowed some toddler toys from the start. I think it would be very tedious without cribs especially if you're playing by the original rules of no house. Some people sacrificed one bed for unlimited toddler cribs while others played with a limited amount. I think you'll find that your sims don't strictly need to study skills.

I use this painting to change sim names. http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=289073 When it comes to giving new households new names you either need to use SimPE or a workaround. Personally I don't trust myself with SimPE so I use the name change painting to change everyone's last name. Then I move one sim out, move them into a lot and merge the rest of the family in.

Building Update
I built the 'native's lot', the port, a fisher lot and started on a farmer lot.

@alchemist: I'm not going by skintones fro my emperor either. I kinda nixed that rule by using custom skintones with a total of nine colors (babies, toddlers and children are all one color, white, and when they become a teen, their skin changes color depending on what skintone they are and what gender. The whole thing is explained on my website) My emperor will be decided as the male in the family with the most friends. So I have an excel sheet that has two pages. Page Two is a list of every family and every friends of the family, though they only count once. So if two Boretti's befriend the same Giampa, that Giampa only counts once in the Boretti list. Page One though has a bunch of formulas to figure everything out. I input the money and number kids (which is anyone teen and younger still on the lot), and lot worth of every family. It counts the number of friends from page two, and uses a bunch of formulas to tell me how people are ranked. A weighted formula gives me the final ranks, heavily weighing in the favor of friends, then in number of children, and just barely (in comparison to the other two) counting money and lot worth. Its complicated, it took me a long time to piece it together, and only kawaiimarshmallow knows the whole thing because she sat next to me and transfered the data onto her computer to attempt to use to track hers.

Anyway, in my game I need to go do the last day of teen camp then play them all one day back with their families before my round is over. So hopefully I'll have an update for y'all within the week. My Aoki family is apparently destined to be slaves since they have the lowest number of friends and the kids don't seem to be as interested in bringing home friends from school, which the other families do thus have lots of friends. Dunno, maybe the Aoki children can fix this at Teen Camp when its their turns. I think whatever family is in the fourth position when I create them is destined to be my least thriving. In all three attempts that I've made, my fourth family has ranked the lowest every time. I can't remember what was causing the Farrars in attempt #1 to be failing. In Attempt #2, the mom died thus limited the number of kids the family could have. And in this attempt, the Aokis are plagued by single births where the other families are having multiples, and long waits between some of the births. Not that some of the other families aren't having those right now, but since the women are getting older, that's okay with me. Anyhow, I'm off to get lost on the internet. I'll try playing my last day of Teen Camp tonight after work. Or tomorrow, assuming my sister doesn't command my attention as the Birthday Girl. ~VP

That sounds terribly like me ...




Hah. Look up the family trees of some of the early roman emperor on wikipedia, or, if you're hard to shock, Cleopatra (VII) . You'll find a few branches missing, especially with poor Nero - can't say his mother didn't do anything in her power to get him to the top. Other royalties, too. So, cousing marriages in anything between prehistoric and early modern? Go ahead, have fun.


Otherwise:

thanks to everybody for your replies and advice! Especially the name changing painting, it's perfect. As for toddlers: I really think that a few toys and at least a rug for babies make sense; that strikes me more as an ommission in the rules as an intentional decision.

By now my families are up and running (and a few bugs are bugging me, but that is another sordid story), and the heat is really turning into a problem - my poor Sims are sunburned half of the time, and no end in sight. That actually nearly snipped of one of the families before they even made it into the second generation - poor Luana was just happily married and happily pregnant, when she keeled over and the Grim Reaper turned up. Her husband Tor (no, not from Asgard) managed to plead her back into life. That wins him a thousand "best husband ever" points , but with nothing but summer I‘m a bit worried.

How do you guys handle that problem? I have couples which hardly get any work done because the one that‘s still standing has barely time to hydrate his poor crispy-fried spouse before he keels over him/herself. I try to let them sleep during the day and work in the night, but they don‘t need 12 hours sleep.

Apart from the little problems of my poor Sims dying on me - great challenge, and I‘m very impressed at how much great CC is out there.

I‘m toying with the idea of starting a blog about this challenge. Anyone here interested in reading stories like that or would that be purely self-indulgend?

The thing is with game mechanics (first) cousins marrying isn't quite possible and I know it makes me a little uncomfortable to marry cousins to one another.

Are you playing with huts? That makes things so much easier. Generally what I used to do was use a hot/cold shower mod and have overheating sims shower, drink water or relax on a bed/chair inside. Mostly this was enough to keep my sims green but it might be harder if you're playing with the social worker.

I probably read way too much Jane Austen, and history, to be uneasy about two of my Sims-cousins marrying, but of course: everybody plays to their own preferences. As far as I remember the rules, we'll be playing with only 5 couples plus one added during Roman Antiquity, so the gene pool will be a bit shallow as it is.



I do have huts, but it's not helping much - I just played one of my couples and they could hardly take care of their baby because five minutes after a glass of water they'd be back in heat-stroke, and as a side effect they were constantly exhausted and had to sleep. But thanks for the advice!

I can see I'll need hacks; or maybe I'll kick that "eternal summer" thing in the prehistoric phase. It doesn't make that much sense anyway - prehistoric humans had to deal with some awefully cold winters. And the last hours of my game-play consisted of little else but keeping my Sims out of heat-strokes - hardly the point of the challenge and it gets boring quickly.

@alchemist I guess that your problem is that nearly all your sims are already overheated and don't manage to get a normal body temperature again. So, maybe you could try resetting their temperature (for example with the Sim Blender) and then you might be able to get a grip on it with the help of the hot/cold shower hack and drinking water. Another useful object is the waterfall shower, because it increases fun and therefore sims are more likely to use it. And it has a 'Cool Down' funktion which also increases fun if I remember right.

The gene pool may be shallow but it is manageable even with nearly losing a couple of families to find non first cousin matches. I had three couples with three or fewer surviving children and fingers crossed I'm over the hardest part of finding matches and I married pretty much all my sims as per the original rules relating to class.

Try having them drink a few glasses of water in order then, the most important thing is letting them cool down completely. Try to keep them inside doing things that don't raise body temperature until they're back in the green. From memory sleeping in a bed will raise already elevated body temperature but napping on a bench inside will bring it down over night.

EDIT I think my game may be in trouble...

Why? Here's an excerpt from my spreadsheet, it's only up to the point where I've updated my blog to but things aren't looking good.

Males: 31
Females: 23

Why is this bad? Last round I had only two more males than females that means nearly every baby born this round was a boy.... which means I may have one round where it becomes very hard to marry sims off. Plus the abysmally high birth to death ratio this round I'll need to be careful to keep my sims alive and having plenty of kids for a few more rounds.

Erm okay I started the Challange today and.... well my Sims keep overheating, any help with that?

Keep an eye on the sims thermometers. When they become red, I usually let them have a drink of water, but sometimes they become sunburned first. Drinking water is the fastest way I know to cool sims down.
I have had little to no trouble with temperatures. I have a very controlling playing style, however... if one were to let loose sims all the time in forever-summer, I can foresee many sunburns in the future.

@lbsgirl24 I've had rounds where all sims born had the same gender, too. Though I've been rather lucky because I first had one round girls only and then one round boys only. So, it kind of balanced itself and everyone can be married quite easily. Maybe you'll be lucky, too? And even if not, I'm sure you'll find something interesting to do with your redundant males.

@Phoenixfire88 Like mentioned a few posts higher up this page: the Waterfall shower with the 'Cool Down' option, the hot/cold shower hack, drinking a lot of water and paying attention that the temperature is going completely down when you take care of it, so it doesn't raise immediately again.
Edit: Oh, and don't let them go to sleep with heightened temperature or they'll likely get an heatstroke.

I suppose, I have my fingers crossed. My death rate for the round is also around my birth rate, maybe a little higher this round so hopefully things pick up next round.

Sleeping while hot is fine as long as the sim is a) inside and b) on a bench or sofa rather than a bed.

Thanks for the link to the waterfall shower TheFlyingRacoon! Now overheating is less of a problem. Haven't finished my first rotation yet, but so far I enjoy it. Have gone the "after the end" route and use mutants in the place of the different skin colours and also added different habitats for them

2 families of purple skinned gnomes (replacement for S1 in the original rules)living in the jungle and profiting from the abundant fruit and water there.
1 family of lizard people replacing the S3/S4 couple living in a rocky gorge, still with enough fresh water for the rock shower, but less fertile than the lands of the gnomes.
And 2 families of cheetah people (replacement for S4) living in the dry grasslands of the local plateau so it is less fertile than the jungle AND there's not enough water for the rock shower...will be interesting.

So far the game has been funny with the welcoming committees. The cheetah people seem to be the most sociable ones, having visited the gnomes and the lizard people already and befriended them. The gnomes and lizard people on the other hand know nothing of each other.

Will also be interesting once the different strands of mutants start to mix, I expect some interesting hybrids to come from this.

Does anyone know where I can find a period appropriate charisma toy for toddlers?

I don't, but if you have the EP that allows Nursery Rhymes, you could have them do that over and over ad nauseum.

This charisma pot is what I use for charisma.

Me Me Me Me Me! :lovestruc I luuurve reading other ATOT blogs to see how other mad simmers are interpreting/twisting/not/coping with the challenge. Pretty sure my blog is self indulged >_> *pondering...* it's good fun looking back on what my sims got up to, because for sure you forget bits and pieces the further along you get, and having pics with stories rather than just hastily scribbled notes is always more interesting. So by all means self indulge away!

Totally delayed response, too, sorry... we had a cyclone whoosh through last week and my internet decided to DIE for FOUR days.... *the horror!* on the exact days I had free to play sims... "Don't play sims, Taliah, you can't update your blog... you'll get behind again and then get mad at yourself... oooh but just ONE family.... maybe TWO will be okay, yeah? Maybe THREE families....." five families later .... honestly, why do I even bother trying to control myself... (finished Round 2 though - booyeah! )

@TheFlyingRaccoon - your lots are amaaazing!

taliah~ (who is procrastinating her blog updating already)

I'm also using the hot/cold shower mod to keep my sims from overheating. having the shower, toilet, kitchen (but not dining area), and all the sleeping stuff (except the bench that no one can use to nap because there's usually a toddler playing the music sticks) inside helps too. I haven't had a case of overheating in a long while, though some sims do develop sunburns from heat frequently. I generally get to sims and get them into a cold shower before they get to sunburn stage though. And I've been playing a lot more hands-off than my normal play. anyone with a really low need get directed to fill that need. and people get told to work in the garden (usually whoever has the lowest in "Fun"). and when they get obsessive about taking babies out of the crib, they get directed to join whoever is fishing. But other than that I'm keeping mostly hands off. Well aside from friend making. any kid who brings a friend home from school is told to befriend the friend via Pescado's Macrotastics. and every day, one sim in each family gets to use the phone to raise any sagging relationships and befriend those he or she has met but not yet befriended. This sim is generally the oldest sim on lot that has relationships that need a boost. And now I really want to play. But I need to go to bed, so play will have to wait until tomorrow. ~VP

@LauriMizutani @lbsgirl24 I downloaded the charisma pot. And I always forget about nursery rhymes, so thanks for that reminder, too.

I've been updating my blog recently, trying to get it up to date again, if anyone wants to take a look. I also made some progress in my roman hood. The only buildings missing for the moment are the aparment houses for my town square and the temple. But I still need to furnish the palace and I'm kind of not really motivated. =P