lol

Don't you feel sad when their time comes? For the sims you've paid extra attention to, I mean?

Large families are easy to play if you arrange things in just the right way. I know many folks don't like rabbitholes that much, but they are quite useful for large families. It means that after a sim goes to work, school, or whatever, you can just sort of forget about that sim for awhile until they get off work.

Other ideas were mentioned, like just having sims work on skill building objects, also works if you don't want to worry about controlling them for awhile.

Yet another idea is to just have different bed times for each sim, so if say half the sims are asleep or at work, you can just focus on the others.

Bathrooms have been mentioned a few times, which is helpful. It's one reason why in the houses I make, I tend to have at least one toilet for every two bedrooms. I also make sure there's at least one half or full bathroom on each level of the house. I also make sure to have at least one shower or bathtub object for every two bedrooms. Anything to reduce the morning traffic jams.

In extremely large households, you may wish to have even more bathtubs and toilets, at least 1 for every 2-3 sims or so. While I'm on this topic, the most expensive toilets are the best choice, since they don't get clogged or break down. The second choice is to have at least one sim repair at least 10 plumbing objects, so any plumbing object they repair afterward, won't break for the life of the object.

I queue my sims to do diffrent things os they all finish at diffrent times. That way I can focus on each of them. I also do not add a new family member until I'm comffortable or bored with the number that I have. I try to keep under 9 sims because I get overwhelmed and will quit playing. Currently I've been playing a family of six. One of whom is a SimBot who I ignore a good part of of the time. She's mainly arround for emergency child care anyway.

I'm one of those simmers that micro-manages my sims' lives and I can't seem to break it. I do a lot of pausing and queuing. Most of time, my sims only have one kid or occasionally two. However, since I just got Generations, I wanted three kids, so I had one child, a toddler, and then my sim was pregnant with another girl . . . and twins came out. Thank gawd for testingcheatsenabled.

I -love- large families. I tend to have 3-4 generations under one roof and I am constantly adding and shuffling by moving them out.

I have a few personal "rules" that make this easier for me. I have one couple that is the "head" of the household. This couple will get to live two or three normal (90 day) lifespans with either Ambrosia or Young Again Potion. That couple tend to be my focus. Their kids and grandkids are there to help them, and by doing so helping themselves to be ready to be booted out as soon as they graduate.

I don't really focus on any one of them for the next legacy leader. I tend to let the two leads have 3-4 hours in a day without direction. When they quit autonomously chasing after each other for a quickie, I think it's time to pick a new couple. I move the old leaders into a nice house, with plenty of cash (thank you, Twallan!) and just let them live out their days. They get invited to all the parties but that's about it.

I tend to pick the next lead from by what he has mastered Sculpting. I like to replace all that I can in the house with Sculpted Items. I find that takes a number of generations to accomplish. So whoever can sculpt something that we need is likely to get the golden treatment.

Kids are a blast. I don't mind even six at once, which I have had a time or two. I just make sure that conception occurs EARLY in the morning and life is good...

Afterschool activities are a blessing. Work at a rabbithole is a curse. The one exception to that is R.O.T.C. I don't mind the Sat/Sun schedule of that PT job but you can have the Newspaper Deliverer.

I don't know that I could do any of what I like without Twallan's mods. I can leave all the kids inventories full and know that when I boot them out that they will have sufficient funds from consigning their inventories to get a good go. I love to see what they are doing around town from Twallan's Story Progression.

Like many have said, the primary key to all of this is frequent pausing and queueing up the next round of fun. Having help available for homework, too, is a key. IF's are a boon, in many ways. In my insular community, without immi/emigration, fresh genes are a good thing.

I don't know how I've been doing it lately, but I have. I downloaded a family of six recently. Two of the girls got married to two of the guys and they are both pregnant. So I'm going to have a family of eight! It's not the first time, either. It's not hard for me to fix their needs up. I used the needs cheat for a while and got bored of it, then when I went back to not using it, it was really hard. Same goes for my friend, and she refuses to actually do anything about their needs. It's actually very amazing to watch, which is why I am so eager every day to see it. Lets call her the blob

Would you like to know how the blob plays with large families? We usually play together. I make a married couple, it makes a married couple. They live together and have two kids each. The whole time, the blob just turns the cheats on, sits back, and watches it's sims make out, woohoo and have babies. It uses motherlode like 23840328408320948 times and builds a freaking tower of a house shortly after. Then it ages up the babies to young adults, without aging up the parents. So now they are the same age. Fascinating isn't it?

I always thought The Sims was a hard game. Every version had it's own challenges that I got used to. But when the blob plays, it's just a cycle of birth, cheat codes, building and moving out. Oh, and did I mention the blob never gives it's house a roof or wallpaper? Another odd thing about the way it plays the game is that the whole house looks like one gigantic bathroom. Amazing, much moreso than it sounds. I usually get bored of the blob and order it to play The Sims 3 on another computer while I play another version of The Sims (lately, the sims medieval) on my computer. But that's when it starts to spice up the game and actually does something challenging which manages to shock me every time.

Anyway, there have been exceptions, for both me and the blob, but this is how it usually goes.

I'm a cheater. I use cheats. D: I know, it's bad! I try to play the families, but once they get too out of control I use my cheats cus I'm a cheater!

The main key for big sim families and my sanity are plenty of bathrooms, at least one on every floor and sometimes I go the american way, have a bedroom/bathroom combo. R right now my teen girl and one of the teen boy have their own bathroom off of their bedroom and they keep their bedrooms locked so only they use it (yes which means the maid can't clean it and yes she gets pissed off about it). I also have an extra bathroom in the washroom (where the washing/dryer is).

I also find that couples can share the same bathroom, so if it is a big one, I have a bath and a shower or scratch the bath and have two showers. That way mommy and daddy or daddy and daddy can be on time for work. The rest of the little critters can fend for themselves.

And I abuse the pause button relentlessly. Make sure a sim has something to do and sometimes give them a cue to do.

I use the pause and queue method. Then I switch between them to watch their needs and make sure everyone's doing what I want. The main problem with this is I find it very hard to keep up their relationships with the rest of the household. Nobody's queues end at the same time, and I forget to send them to socialize unless they ask for it. Mostly for this reason, I prefer smaller households.

I have at least one bathroom on every floor and keep them small. Then I micromanage their usage obsessively. I don't let Sims cook single meals, and I rarely try to have them eat together. When I'm running low on leftovers, I have someone with no urgent needs cook something, even if they're not hungry. Sometimes a fresh meal goes straight into the fridge.

I usually take 2-4 Sims on vacation at once. It's a huge pain to have more than one exploring a tomb at the same time, and if you bring all your Sims, there aren't enough adventures to go around.

I play with high free will on so I tend to just let the sims I'm not focused on roam about. I try to put all the skill-up/fun objects near the area that I tend to center my camera on so I can at least keep track of what they are doing.