Or even killing her on the familie's lot via tombstone of L/D. That'd save some time.

As I understand it, deleting sims from the sim bin will always shorten the neighborhood's shelf life.

However, if you have SimPE, you can edit the the household name using the FAMI data - it's merely a matter of typing the desired name into the field. This should have exactly the same effect. It's a little cumbersome, since you don't want SimPE open at the same time as the game, but with some planning it should be fine. Other editing tools may allow you to change the household name from within the game, but I don't know how.

Thank you! What a nice simple solution. I love reading everyone's responses. What a gruesome group we are, plotting how to kill off the poor unwanted Sims... I vote for deleting on the lot if necessary to prevent problems in the neighborhood bin.

Deleting on lot works, i just suggest using an unused lot so that her tombstone has a place to sit that won't bother the family. Does anyone know if deleting tombstones will cause corruption? I heard it did.

Will the sky fall if I put the sim back in the bin and leave it there?

@ anna: Nope. But you'll have two "households" with the same name again if you do that.
@ VP: It does, unfortunately. MATY has a No Unlink on Urnstone Delete mod, though, which should fix that. I'd still rather build a special little graveyard lot for those sims, to be on the safe side. It's a 20 generation challenge, I want as little corruption potential as possible. ^^;

This is what I do when I need to differentiate between Family units. Makes things much simplier for me.

I don't understand how deleting a sim from the sim bin will cause corruption =/ nor am I going to worry about it, as I have so many incestious relationships going on in my roman era right now if the game is gonna puke its guts up on me it's gonna do it before I reach the Dark Ages ^_^ And what about all those kids taken away by the social worker? >_> Behind the scenes of the game - not really my thing. Generation 20 is too far away for me to stress about "what ifs" or "maybes". I'm having fun right now, and IF the game should implode on me, well....^_^ stuff happens. I'll just pretend it's the black plague or something and recreate sims to continue on with whatever era it happens in. The object of the challenge is to have FUN, don't take it so seriously; sims were created for our entertainment, not to do our brains in Im sure >_> pretty sure anyway... ^_^

It has to do with the way the game makes connections. There are now bits and pieces of those deleted sims floating around waiting to attach themselves willy-nilly to other sims, creating toddlers with LTWs and other untenable situations. How fast or slowly the game implodes depends on a lot of random factors. Although you may not care, most people starting a long-haul challenge like this will be fairly upset if they can't finish due to game corruption as opposed to burning out. You can have fun with the game without breaking it, and maintaining one's toys properly is not being too serious, but simple common sense. You wouldn't poke a hole in a football so you could hang it on a hook, would you?

The kids taken by the social worker are forming your adoption pool, with the last taken being the first up for adoption. There's no game problem with those.

No need to frighten us, lol. When the time comes, I guess it comes... (but hopefully that'll never come)

In which case, I must say that I absolutely loathe familyfunds...
I think that I'll just use the SimBlender to change last names; I like how you have so many branching families, taliahneth, with so many Faulkners XD.
I'll most likely make up some "extended names"- for instance, when one of my non-heirs moves out from the Ash family, I will rename his last name to be something like Ash Alpha or Asha, or something dumb like that. I plan for only my original lot to have its name intact, but who knows?

taliahneth, did your emperor marry his 2nd cousin?

Also, I want to start working on a family tree, but it takes so long...

@Yuki: I thought so and I'm pretty sure I have the MATY mod, especially if it was in the director's cut. I'll investigate that in a minute. Not all that important at the moment as a tiny graveyard for "lot name people" has it's appeal.
@Moonlight frog (who has an awesome avatar): We're not trying to scare you, we're trying to pass on tips so that this neighborhood will last all 20 generations. And I agree on familyfunds. it is evil. ~VP

I've tried the challenge twice before, and failed within the first 5 rounds everytime due to varying reasons, such as stupid old laptop (3 years old? More like dead I say), hack conflicts (ugh) and constantly changing how my founders look (I'm going to be with their offspring quite a while, is it a crime to want to make them as perfect as possible?)

Anyway, I'm almost ready to go to the Roman era on my 3rd attempt now (2 more rounds), so I can more or less say that I have joined the challenge as it seems to be sticking this time! Due to various constraints mentioned above, I have adapted my gameplay somewhat, but it still boils down to the same. Aside from a minor glitch with my skintones ( ), which hopefully I can sort out tonight as I think I now know what the problem is, my play has progressed nicely.

I've been keeping detailed records and family trees, and even incorporated some learning time into it by practising writing macros in my spreadsheet for tracking who's coming up for marriage, ranking in terms of money, deciding who will be killed in Roman era (learning can be fun!).

Although now when I have it open, and my sister asks me why am I doing work at home, and I'm like, it's for my game, she just looks at me funny and backs out of the room slowly....

Welcome Princess and congrats on third time being the charm lol Do you have any pics to share?

Hey Moonlight Frog *pat on the back* "Venimus, vidimus, vicimus..." LoL, moving on now

I have a very vivid imagination when it comes to dealing with the "restrictions" in the sims *tongue in cheek* so as to what you see on my website, and what "actually" happens in game, is sometimes not entirely....accurate and I don't want to spoil the fun. In answer to your question, no, the Emperor did not marry his 2nd cousin ^_^ (legitimately she's his first cousin) his mother, Ziska, is Gisela's Aunt. And if that blows your mind, wait until you see what happens next round O.O my storytelling is not for the faint of heart =/ or narrow minded. I do have ACR with inteenimater (?) that thing, that makes certain things possible.

And thank you ^_^ I'm glad you're getting enjoyment out of my disobedient sims.

As for the family tree - I highly recommend tribalpages - and the earlier you start the better, right? I'd really like to do a bigger version of the one in game, with pics and stuff, which I attempted recently and oh my goodness ~_~ there are too few hours in the day for trying that, I might just make do.

Congrats to Princess Arabella! Third time IS the charm, this is actually my third attempt too and so far so good, the Roman era is cooking with gas now!

taliah~

I actually have my own family tree maker program but this tribal pages looks pretty awesome! I might have to give that a go. I love the different ways to can display information. Oooooh even better ! I can actually export the data I already have in my own program to the tribal pages. Fingers crossed it works !

Cool! Thanks for the TribalPages tip; I must try that sometime soon...

Lol, I can't keep up with your family tree; so... is Gisela his actual blood relative? Did you use a mod for that?

I'll hopefully be putting the family pictures and trees on my blog this weekend. I use Family Tree Maker to keep my info nice and neat, in addition to Excel, and I use OneNote to make general notes on each lot and to take screenshots easily.

What is this Tribal Pages thing? Did I miss something?

How many households do you have by the time you transition to the Roman Age?
I just finished round 8, still Stone Age, with 14 households and it took quite some time. ^^; Fortunately it's still not boring.

I'm not going to blog about my sims, but here are a few highlights.
My founder couples have been extremely faithful. I wanted a smooth start with no half-siblings and enemies so early in the challenge and it mostly worked fine. With their children, however, there is a little more drama going on. ^^ It wasn't all intended, too, as I sometimes just forgot that I actually wanted to marry that girl to boy A, not boy B... Well... Once I broke up a dream pair - those too were perfect for each other, what a shame - because the girl accidentally got pregnant from her childhood friend who she didn't even have a crush on. Thanks, InTeen and RiskySneakout. But this couple now works fine, too. It's just less... perfect. ^^
Right at the moment I have a pretty interesting setup. I can't wait to see if it'll work out as planned. ^^ See, there's the only surviving daughter of the Gold family. She married the youngest son of the Rock family that is by far the richest clan around. Note that Squirrel Gold didn't bring any money into the marriage. Only a few days after the marriage she thought she caught her husband, Starfish Rock, cheating. I'm really not quite sure what was going on there as he was actually arguing with that other woman. (Not very romantic, is it.) Whatever it was, Squirrel was angry and went so far as to attack and therefore kill him. So now she has all his money and could bring it into another marriage. The Wood family, currently ranked 3rd, has a son she could marry. With "her" money the Wood family could possibly even rise to 1st place.
That is, of course, only if Squirrel doesn't get killed in the meantime - she has made an enemy, too.

Really, I love this challenge and everything that's going on. There are households that are indeed a little boring sometimes, but I still usually like to play them. They are a nice break from the hectic and chaotic families.

Hello everyone, I've been lurking here for a few days and thought I'd say hi. :D

I'm loving this challenge too - I've just started it and I'm currently on round four. My 2nd generation sims are starting to transition into childhood and I'm all eager for them to grow up and form families of their own!

I started a blog for my challenge, it's at http://minervatestoftime.wordpress.com/ if anyone wants to take a look. It's really just to help me remember what went on when I played each lot. :P

Yuki I have 10 households so far but at the end of this next round I will be adding at least 3 more to the mix so it sounds like we are pretty close. Dont sims drive you batty with screwing up your perfectly thought out plans?!!

Welcome eorienna ! Love your sims and their totems ! What a cute idea. Thats a neat stove. I havent seen that one around before but then again I dont get out much lol That pic of the wereolf is a great angle. Hubba hubba @ Wolf and his loincloth. Your babies have such cute little booties - early baby gap? All your decor is making me wish I had of paid more attention to that when I started to play. :-O poor Flint. So early for deaths. Thats a great update ! I really think the look of your game is wonderful. Keep at it !

I must have extremely even tempered Sims, I've never had a fight break out!

Anna220, haha yes poor Flint - Arrow hated him from the first moment he laid eyes on him. I tried to keep them from being on the same lot together because I didn't want them to fight, but Arrow snuck up on Flint and started an arguement when I wasn't paying attention.
And what annoys me the most is that I have so few blondes! I was totally hoping for Flint to have many many blonde babies, lol. Now there's only one blonde in my hood. Bah.

I think I'll add to the gene pool a little later on, by letting one of the families move in a teenage townie girl to be a wife to one of their sons (when she is of the right age)... I'm not sure. I'm thinking about how to use the ranks - it doesn't make sense that one of the sons from the lowest ranked clan would be able to find wives among the higher ranked clans. So what I'm thinking is, maybe they arranged a marriage with a girl from a tribe living far away... I'll have to think about it a little.

What I love most about this challenge right now is that for every round, I am sort of finding my own gaming style and adding to the rules for my hood.

Last edited by eorienna : 28th Feb 2012 at 05:01 PM.

@Moonlight Frog - yes they are blood relatives ^_^ their parents are brother and sister.

@YukiShine - the more the merrier right! DX the horror... LoL I can't remember how many families I had when I first moved ;_; maybe 16? I have 20 now just 2 rounds in haha

The biggest problem I have right now is that everyone is related somehow so it's difficult setting couples up; the rules say to add a new CAS sim every era or something but that didn't work for me as some heirs to direct lines were without a mate in my 3rd generation, so they've had a CAS sim created for them, and I'm also adding a new family each generation (at least) now. Maybe it'll fix itself a few generations in, or just get worse >_< I'll find out eventually! ^_^

taliah~

It's so much fun to read other people's stories, particularly in seeing the choices they make in translating the different historical eras into sims gameplay. I think one of my favourite parts of this is the historical dimension. I'm finding myself researching clothing styles, houseplans, decoration, and other relevant historical information for each time period as I get to it. (I've only made it to the Roman Era so far, but I've looked ahead!)

I've decided to join this challenge. It'll be my first one. I'm a history major, so when I saw this challenge I was all Yay! Perfect Challenge for me! I've set myself up a blog to keep track of it because I've enjoyed reading all the blogs y'all have written. Once I get a week's worth of events (sim time) I'll post the link to it here.