@abcbok It's really amazing how fast you're advancing. XD I'm not even in the roman era yet (but nearly there :D) and I started this damn challenge in january '13. >_<

@Theflyingracoon ah that makes sense. I've let up a lot on the god modding with this challenge but I still control sims to make them garden and make friends and sometimes clean as well as the things you mentioned.

@Phoenixfire88 I handle and cats much like I would in a normal game. I have one family with a few (aka 8) wolves from wolves they started adopting in the neanderthal era. To simulate domestication when they had two wolves breed and the pups fully trained in calmness I made a CAS wolf that wasn't aggressive and added her to the family.

I was going to just play with strays but I have pretty bad luck with adopting strays and I prefer the shock of seeing kittens/puppies from the adoption center growing into monstrosities. At the moment most bred pets were bred from adopted pets or from the wolves. At the end of the roman era I'm going to use all my free CAS sims to get pretty, era appropriate pets and then try to keep the pet population going without adoption. Should be fun.

At the moment I don't kill pets for fighting because it's just a pain to do but I may have to start with the rules I'm implementing for the Dark Ages. Do any of you kill pets? If so how do you do this?

@abcbok I tried to comment on your blog but I'm not sure if it went through. Regardless I too am shocked by your death rate. Are you finding all those rolls make for a really high death rate?

@jckgwk I'm still a little in shock about it but realistic sickness does do that. In the past even when realistic sickness wipes out nearly a whole family I have a few toddlers and babies who survive (normally a child as well) to keep the line going. I'm just happy it wasn't one of my core families.


I'm just one round from the roman era. I'm kicking it off a day early because my gen 5 sim grows up on the first day of round 7, I mean come on, I'm not playing through a whole round because she was born one pesky day late. I still haven't quite finished building yet. I need to finish the second lord lot, build a third viking lot and another lot for a vassal and serfs, on a related note since I have so few families I'll be playing with one/two serfs to a vassal. Later when I have more families I think I might let a third serf family live in the protective walls of the town but after that they're on their own. Since I've had all spring/summer up until this point in the Roman era this next round will be in autumn to prepare for the long winter I'll be starting the dark ages with.

Thanks for sharing your stories and ideas about the game. I think that those of us who are still playing this challenge two to three years later are all a little addicted to our notebooks. But I have to say how happy I am that I was keeping really detailed notes because when my hard drive got fried, I was able to rebuild all of the couples who were getting ready to get married right where they were a year ago. That way I didn't have to start all over with a new set of five families. I also use a single color for my families based on what "country" they live in. Green for England, Blue for France, Red for Spain, Brown for Germany, Yellow for Romania, Purple for Italy (King) and White for Turkey. My King and Dukes wear crowns, my barons wear headbands and my peasants wear cloth caps. That way when someone wanders onto a lot, I can tell their rank and ethnicity.

What does everyone do to help keep track of your little Sims?

I used a My Heritage for awhile until I hit the 200 sims limit and then I didn't want to pay for more. Does anyone know a good free site that will allow for more names? I imagine at this point that my full tree would have about 1000 names on it.

I found that I had to have a small hut with a roof (floor tiles to make a ceiling and not just a decorative roof). I tried to have them sleep in tents, but I lost so many Sims that I had to build more families.

I've finally decided my rules for getting witches and vampires. Any sim gaining the power to cheat death and peace of mind successfully and then get struck by lightning will turn into a witch. If a sim wishes for power to cheat death and a long life successfully or not then they have a chance of turning into a vampire. Maybe 1/10 chance or something.

@TheFlyingRaccoon Haha well, it's not necessarily a good thing Me and my boyfriend barely have a social life outside of our computers and each other ^^' But hey, at least I can play sims all day ._:

@lbsgirl24 Hm, no, I don't think I recieved any comment from you :/ I think my death rate is low, at least compared to yours haha My rolls are the only thing that kills people so far, I don't have realistic sickness or anything (yet). I'm glad I play with them though, would be really boring if nobody died
And I did kill a wolf, the only way I found was possible was to age her with boolprop and then Set to birthday again when she was an elder. She did get two or three more days, though, but she died in the end.

@cespencer That thing with the colors is really smart, I might use that later on. So far they are only 6 households though, so I still recognize everyone ^^

That description fits me and my boyfriend pretty accurately, too, so no excuse there. XD I guess, the main reason why I'm advancing so slow is because I have phases where I don't play the game at all and which last sometimes for a few months (or half a year *cough* hasn't played between september and february >_>).

I also pretty much have no life either. It just takes me forever to play a round b/c like TheFlyingRaccoon, I take long breaks to do other things. Like play games on my playstation that I've already beat at least two dozen times so far. I have managed to get my fourth round/week finished, but my internet is being annoyingly slow so updating my website is exceptionally annoying right now. Especially since I changed how the pictures show up on my Generation pages (that took for-freaking ever do due to crappy internet.) However, I'll probably be back either in an hour or two, or possibly tomorrow to announce that I updated.

In regards to colors, I might use colors when I hit roman times to denote classes. I know at that point I'm going to pause playing for a short while while I find and make some era appropriate clothing in the proper colors. There's an idea rolling around in my had to make some togas in separates so that I can mix and match different styles of tops and lengths of bottom. And possibly use a sash thats an accessory to denote class... This bears some thinking on, and I have like four to six rounds before I need to work on this (so at my rate of play thats like a year or two from now) But for now, the colors are just because I made my suits in eight colors and each sim wears one color their entire life, so I keep track of that. And only Gen Two gets a random color assigned. The Gen Threes will wear the same color as their same gender parent. ~VP

Edit: And I'm back a few hours later to announce an update to my site. Details are on my Updates page, but its just Round Four, and a change to how my Generations Pages look. Oh and an addition (I think it's only one) to my links page for new ToT sites. If anyone sees that I haven't got them listed on the links page (and you posted about your blog/site on this thread) let me know. I'm trying to keep a comprehensive list of all of us, but sometimes I miss things. Also if I missed you, a link would be appreciated so that I don't have to sift through a bunch of back pages to find you. ~VP

Haha, so we're not the only ones
I just recently started playing The Sims again after playing WoW for nearly a year. Our private server died though, so we had to find new hobbies I played some Sims 4 before realizing it only made me miss Sims 2, and here I am Can't get enough now :D

Oh, that link collection makes me realize I should put one on my blog, too

That link collection took forever to compile. Mostly b/c there are so many pages on this thread to sift through. I may have had to steal a few from other people's sites too...

I dabble in Sims 3, but I keep coming back to 2. I just can't play S3 b/c I can't stand my sims being out of my control. Frogsnack gets major points for managing to play this challenge in that game. ~VP

I did a list now, but I only took the links I found on the last five pages of this thread. I might have missed someone. If someone wants to join the list, just tell me!

I like The Sims 3, but I get tired of it pretty quickly. Nothing beats The Sims 2!

Just finished Round 9 and if I calculated correctly I only need 3 more rounds for Fulvia Zima (my firstborn generation 3) to become an adult! She's a teenager already But now I have 8 households and the ones with 8+ sims can take 2 hours to play... But I am approaching the Roman Era, I guess

abcbok, I am so jealous of you. I'm in my third iteration of this challenge, and my Gen 2's *should* start having babies this next round, but it all depends on when my soon-to-be-adults get pregnant. My oldest Gen 2 is two days from her age transition. So three or four rounds after that child is born, I get to start Roman times. Of course I might give that child a few days as an adult in Neander-times just to finish out the round. Or start Roman times a day or two before he/she hits adult, all depending on timing. So approximately three and half rounds after my first baby is born, my Roman Ages start (finally.) I was looking at what my cutoff for teen camp was and its two rounds/weeks to the day from birth to teen transition, as long as the child was born before 6pm, and 11 more days as a teen, so that 3 and half weeks/rounds. So depending on when in the week the first Gen 3 is born, my roma times will be starting a few days early or late. Just so that I don't have two eras in one round. Wow, I ramble...

On the plus side, I have three days off from work (it was four, but I spent today waiting in line to get my drivers license transferred between states), so hopefully i can get through quite a bit of Round Five, and hopefully have a Gen 3 child, and if I play long enough, maybe hit Roman Times for the first time. But considering it usually takes me a month of playtime to complete a round, and I'd have to do three, that last one might be a ways off. But we shall see. ~VP

I've read about people using genealogy sites a few times now, so let me share two possible alternate solutions: FreeMind and CMap.

Both are completely free programs used to map ideas, and I've found they're extremely practical to keep track of all sorts of information, from the plan of my newest school project to the genealogy and personal characteristics of my sims.
CMap is most flexible about linking what to what and putting stuff anywhere you want, but FreeMind is visually more structured and allows you to hide the branches of the tree you're not interested in at the moment.

I'm not including links because I'm not sure that's allowed, but you can easily Google them.
Have fun

I have to say, once my first generation 3 child was born I was surprised at how quickly she became a teenager. If you're completely sick of the Neanderthal Era, you could always get the teens pregnant if you have InTeen My oldest one is in the very first household, so even when I get her all grown up I'll have 7 more households to play -.- I'll try to enjoy it since it's the last, though

Round 10 is finished now and all my founders are dead... I guess it's a good thing ^^ And I'm also excited because this generation has at least one born with all the hair and eye colors So no genes has gone missing yet!
I did notice a small problem though, I decided I don't care about pairing them up after skin color in this era since I feel like they can't possibly know what's going to happen in the future, and plus they aren't going to be able to marry whoever in the coming eras so I'd let them do it now. But by doing this I only got one couple with skin 1 and 2 xD I'm solving this by letting all the males with skin 1 and 2 be eligable for emperor even if their wife happens to have skin 3, but the heir to the throne will be the first son with s1 or s2... But I think I already know which family will be emperors, honestly
Well, I'm off again! Updating in a couple of hours (big family now!)

EDIT: And oh, thank you Eldonyx I've been thinking about how I'm going to keep track of them all easily. Will check it out!

I'm using tribalpages for my family tree. I like it because it's quite intuitive to use and especially if you have most of your sims in there already, it's really easy to add new children. And you can have photos in the tree (although you can just upload around 100 or so without paying).

I nearly finished rebuilding my hood. The buildings are all done (except some furniture missing, which I'll add when I play the respective families), I 'copied' my sims over from the other hood and adjusted their characters/interests/etc. and am currently setting the relationships, which is by far the most tedious part. With around 50 sims and 50*49 possible relationships (as I have to set them from both sides). Thankfully my sims don't know all of their neighbours. XD

Right now I took a little break, though, from all that relationship setting and am updating my blog. ^-^

My Neandersim just got themselves two brand-spanking-new community lots. My phones keep randomly screwing up, so until I can figure out how to fix that, they can go to the new Hunting Grounds and Watering Hole. The Hunting Grounds is a 2x2 lot filled with lots of trees, a couple of benches, a grill, and an axe throwing station. Only Teen and Adult males are allowed there, unless a child goes with his father. The Watering Hole is also 2x2 and is open to everyone. There's a pond, a waterfall shower and a hot springs. To complete it are a few benches, a grill, a couple of pieces of wooden playground equipment (thank you Phaenoh), and a few toddler toys since I have a mod that allows toddlers to join their families at community lots.. Plus the requisite trees and bushes.

I'm half worried I'll have to migrate everyone to a new neighborhood to solve my phone issue because its the only neighborhood it occurs in.

And I too, am a user of Tribal Pages, even if my current linked to family trees are on a weebly. I DO have a tribal pages for them that is mostly updated. It might be missing a few plantsims, and the newest births, but it is up to date otherwise. ~VP

Phew, I just spent a lot of time making a family tree... Was very surprised to see I've already had a total of 72 sims! Really wondering how

I am officially beginning my last round tomorrow! It's very exciting And everything is still up to date on the blog
I'm really thinking about changing my writing style somewhat for the Roman Era, we'll see what I come up with. I'm going to start using Fraps too to get better pictures.
I'm going to bed now so I can start playing soon, haha

@abcbok ah ok thanks with the pet killing thing. I think I migth be able to introduce a mortality to my pets soon. I'm loving your recessive haired sims, it's so great when things start popping back up isn't it? I think I shrieked when I saw the first 'where did your hair come from' babies. Regarding the skin colour thing I'm pretty sure pretty much no-one kept that rule in so if you're more comfortable having them fight it out with everyone none of us would hold it against you.

@VP your community lots sound beautiful and congrats on getting so close to the next era. Must be exciting.

I haven't had much time to play sims lately and despite having a week off this coming week I'll be focusing on writing, since I'm doing camp NaNoWriMo this month. I have been thinking about my dark ages and the future spouses for some of my sims (with class restrictions there still isn't much choice unfortunately) I think I'm going to be adopting a system of sieges, similar to what Cespencer has been doing but with my own twist. I'm probably going to roll to start a siege when the vikings walk past the first household played in a region. The odds will vary to do with the age of the sim walking by, whether they are accompanied by a large dog and on how late it is. If a siege is triggered it will start on the same day of the round for all households in the region but it cannot start after the first household has been played.

If sims are outside and don't have dogs to warn them whenever a Viking walks past they'll have a chance of being killed/injured. The siege has a chance of carrying over seasons but if things are going on too long the lord/monarch family will be able to try to make a deal with the vikings. They can try to bribe the vikings or form a diplomatic allegiance through marriages. If that fails they can always attack the vikings with teen and older sims. These things won't necessarily be successful and could end badly. While a siege is on sims cannot have their soup each round, will not be able to visit other lots (I'll be using the prisoner tokens to do this) and will not be able to bring in food from the outside. I'll also be limiting how many crops they can grow. Should be buckets of fun.

lbsgirl, i completely forgot about Inge's Prison stuff (though I was going to use them in later eras). Now I have a better way to keep my hermit sim (whose only purpose is to be a placeholder on a lot so I can change the last name of a household without much trouble) off lots than by making sure there's a visitor controller on every lot and banning her when she pops up. If she has a prison token in her inventory, the VC will automatically ban her. Which reminds me, I need to put the VC on my new community lots. ~VP

@lbsgirl24 oh yes, I was super happy too haha. And now I love seeing my only blonde's hair amongst all her dark haired siblings ^^ I've noticed that everyone seems to have their own version of the rules and I think it's great. As long as we enjoy our playing like we're supposed to anything is fine And I am very excited to read about your Dark Ages!

I just finished my last Stone Age (since they aren't Neanderthals I don't call it this ^^) round and I'm going to start preparing for the Roman Era now. I have some buildings done, like a palace that I may have gone a little crazy with considering how it costs 400k But I have some more buildning to do, downloads to make and I haven't even calculated who's my Emperor yet. But I'm super happy and excited!

Wow you did all that fast im impresed what's your secret

I started playing the roman era! I made it! \o/ Well, I have not even finished the first day in the first household, yet, but psst. :P

Hopefully you get your building done faster than me, @abcbok My palace is 'just' a bit over 100k, I think. ^-^

@jckgwk Haha, honestly I just play too much Sims How far have you come?

@TheFlyingRaccoon How fun that we're entering the Roman Era at the same time ^^ I seriously spent the whole day building, furnishing, decorating and giving make-overs... Phew! And I'm not done yet, still have to build the bathing house. But I'm really pleased with how everything looks and turned out How's it going for you?

I haven't started with the sims yet because I'm on vacation right now and today is the last day I can access internet so I will have a lot to update next week.