Maybe this would fit better into the technical information section, but gameplay will cover it as well.

I abandoned Medieval for several months but I wasn't bored with it and the christmas season seemed like a good period to play it again for a change. Anyway, after debating it with myself for a few days now, I have come to the conclusion that I do not like P&N and liked the original game better. I don't like the birds (and their owners calling them every five seconds), I don't like the interrogation chair, the quests are endless and tedious and I have more bugs than ever.

Nevertheless, the deal breaker is an issue which apparently is of so little importance to others that I can not find a mention of it. All the "old" village people have disappeared and they don't come up again when I start a new kingdom. I have the NPCs from former quests (like the Ticktop golems or King Frgo) and those quest sims who disappear afterwards are still in the relationship panel of my sims, but the former village crew - Sweeper Helewise is the only one I remember by name, Bowyer Dirk married my merchant and is still around - is gone and it is like they never existed. Maybe I could put up with it, if a new kingdom started with a new set, but new townies are generated constantly and it just makes it pointless to befriend them (I am aware that I could probably invite them, but I just want them to roam the neighbourhood and interact with inactive heroes). It does not fit my style because regardless which sims game I play I always pay attention to the entire town and make up little side stories. Helewise was the ominous neighbour doing the vulgar shrubbery for example.

So, before I uninstall Pirates & Nobles can anyone tell me if this is connected to the EP or was it a change introduced with the last patch? I had my game patched to 1.3 before I took a break and did not see the townies change. I could live without the last patch as 1.3 added most of the "important" things.

Another question concerns my saves. I did not make a back-up before patching and installing the EP (because I did not expect that I could dislike a sims EP so much that I do not want it - it never happened before). I guess that those which have been played with P&N are lost, but what about the others? Their folders show April as the time they were changed. I basically play with the same kingdom all the time and I don't want to lose it. Plus, is there a way to keep my current watcher/ambition level? Are there any files I can save and put back if I have to make a complete re-install? Can I uninstall the EP without the rest?

Is your question pertaining to how to start a kingdom with the same townies/heroes? If so, this thread should be most useful to you:

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/5516778.page

But I can't think of why PN got rid of your own townies... I thought my townies were still the same after PN, but maybe I'm mistaken.

No, I did start new ambitions with the old kingdom and I have two saves for that purpose which are still untouched. After installing Pirates & Nobles I first played a game in an ambition which was already completed and then used one of those saves for the third ambition. Both times I played the first P&N quest and noticed almost straight away that those townies were gone. They don't even exist in the relationship panels of my sims anymore, they only know the other heroes and quest sims from the past, although I know for certain that they have socialised with them and should know them. It is very strange because I thought they were saved with the rest of the kingdom.

When I noticed their disappearance I started to pay more attention to the other townies roaming the kingdom and realised that I get new ones every day. I even seem to get new ones in the middle of the day if I start a new quest. I guess they are generated from the bin, so often they look very much alike, only that "Milliner X" is now "Pigkeeper Y" in slightly different clothes. Depending on the kingdom aspects there are some sims, criminals like cut-purses etc., which don't show up anymore when the aspect changes, but I am talking about the general public. Apart from the set you got at the beginning of a new game, I had like three Baxters, three Goodies, a few Poor ones, some Milliners, a couple of Pigkeepers - now I get a town full of Serfs one day and a town full of Peasants the next. Always new ones.

ETA: Here is a picture of a few of those townies. Most of them weren't very attractive, but after a while they became individual characters. Like the one in the back, inn-keeper so-and-so. He was always the one making a petition for the "sound proof chamber", the old pervert.

Last edited by doren : 3rd Jan 2012 at 07:01 PM.

Now that you've mentioned it, I know exactly what you mean. For a while, my Monarch was getting these daily responsibilities to send Guild people to the stocks, and the orange circle always appeared over a sim with a pirate-blue outfit. However, I've noticed that the names and faces of these sims were pretty much always different. Sometimes it was Merchant Yvonne, sometimes it was other names. I remember I tried to woo one of the merchants with my Wizard, but could never marry because "Merchant Yvonne was not looking for a long term relationship" or something like that. After that, when I started to look for Merchant Yvonne, she wasn't even in my Wizard's relationship list.

And like you said, all of these started happening after I installed PN. Also, I think the disappearance of my Royal Advisor and Servant happened around the same time I installed PN as well, and that really messed up my game.

I would recommend you enlist the townies you care about into a hero's family... I've started doing that so my important NPCs don't disappear on me again.

The one you mention shows up in all my games as Gondar something or other but he has different professions each time; the last beig a guard. I think until you add saved sims into the mix, the game has very few sims to rotate in and out.
I have learned to grab simmies that catch my eye and add them to active families or marry them to a hero before they disappear.

At least I still have Bowyer Dirk as the husband of my merchant, he is my favourite. But since the others are gone for good, I have no way of saving them anymore.

Uninstalling P&N does not bother me though, unless I could not use the untouched saves and continue playing my old kingdom. I try to hold back, but yesterday I was so upset that a friend of mine had to suffer me going on and on with a long rant, although he does not have the slightest interest in sims games. First I played the "Purge" quest, which turned my king into a paranoid blood-thirsty monster (and did not fit the character of my fun-loving if frivolous monarch, who could never be bothered with punishment and cruelty) and afterwards the Order in the Kingdom quest.
I think this last one was giving me the rest. It had already dragged on for far too long, when my wizard - and wife of my monarch - had to pick up the pirates to bring them to the town square. It took them about 28 sim hours to appear and I thought this quest was bugged. When they finally did arrive - Hooray! - and were escorted to the town square, I expected a relatively short trial, but it continued for another day. My king constantly called his parrots, only to listen to the echo in the well or send a personal letter a second later, so I did not have enough time to send one to find a treasure (and get it out of the way). Next my wizard had to interrogate the admiral and again "persuade" did not work (why give two methods of interrogating if one does not work?), the second time he lost consciousness and the third time the last action was not cancelled, so I did not get the option to interrogate. When I cancelled it manually I was back at square one. I just shift-clicked the task away, because I could not be bothered anymore. I only wanted to end this quest. When I thought it was finally done, the king once again had to walk from the throne room to the town square and by this time I was ready to scream. Not to mention that you always have to wait a bit and linger before the next quest task comes up.

It concentrated everything I dislike about this EP. I used to stretch out the quests by playing my little side stories but although the new quests are much longer, they leave me less time to do so. Every new quest I played forced me to run around the kingdom all day, from the forest to docks, to the village, back to the docks, to the throne room, back to the village. And the war theme does not interest me in the slightest. I would have been happier with an EP just giving me horses and maybe a few new pieces of furniture and clothes.

That does sound frustrating... I know exactly what you mean. For the first two days after I get quests, I usually just go about my merry way, doing responsibilities or acting out my side stories. But the new quests don't really offer much in terms of time and enjoyment - always running back and forth. That's why I opted to teleporting nowadays, just to save me time and avoiding such tediousness as walking.

I agree. I use teleport all the time and I am heartily sick of most of the quests.

I don't think that what's being described here has anything to do with P&N or the 2.0 patch level. If I start a new game in any ambition all of those same premade townies will appear in the new game. I do not do the bit with saving my game and moving it to a new ambition by swapping out those save files, such that I can start a new game with my old hood. If this is how the OP is starting a new game then I think this is the cause of the issue.

I imported a save of the kingdom to start the second ambition and then I used a save from the second ambition for the third one. When I did it the first time I had all the townies that were there before. The thing is they disappeared from the (second ambition) kingdom too, which was the first one I played after installing the EP.

I have started the fourth ambition now - not importing this time as I use my heroes' children - and I get some of the premade townies in the new kingdom, but not all of them. There are a few of them I haven't seen before (apothecary something - a really fat guy in purple clothes with red hair, for example), but they could be the "normal" variation. At least they don't rotate. However, I am rather convinced that it happens when you begin to play the P&N quests and I ignore them in the new ambition.

I don't know what could be causing the disappearing npcs issue. I have the latest patch and pirates and nobles and I still see all the old townies from before I had P&N. I have noticed though that npcs generated for a responsibility (for example the guildsman that the monarch has a responsibility to send a parrot after) is a "temporary" npc. After you sic the bird on them they start walking away and if you hover the mouse over them their name changes to one of the townspeople. I imagine when they get home they "reset" back to their normal self because I've seen them later as their original self. My guess is some issue is causing some people's games to not reset the townspeople to their original selves but disappear or just never walk back out of their houses. I couldn't say because I don't have this issue. Since the temporary npcs are a product of P&N I imagine that dropping back down to the base game should fix the issue.

Interesting observation about the guild/pirate emissary and overall a very plausible explanation, because it fits very well with what I am seeing in my game. I noticed the same about a cut-purse. He was standing by the well as "Cutpurse Fredrick" and the next time I looked (maybe after the end of the quest which added security), he was still in the same spot but had turned into "Peasant Fredrick".

In the new kingdom I got Crone Ghastia, Goodwoman Samantha, Huntswoman Felicia and a few other sims from before. Helewise and Dirk are not there, instead I got some others I did not recognise (Marquis Chad, Apothecary Chadwick, Fishmonger ...) but who definitely look like pre-made characters.
However, I am on the third quest now and I begin to see these random sims, with the P&N NPCs showing up at the same time (guildsmen and such). I have to watch this for longer, but it seems as if they are pushing the former characters out of the way. I think it is normal that you get new townies as the town grows, but previously they were simply added to the other regulars.
In that light Shimrod's explanation would make sense too, although the reason would not be the importing process, but the fact that I started with a fully developed kingdom. If P&N creates a new set of EP-related townies (and uses existing ones for temporary roles) when the kingdom reaches a certain size, this could have become messed up and resulted in the disappearance of the old ones.

I have tried another tack to keep people from disappearing and it seems to be about 95% effective. I had one of the priests covert them and they kept coming back. Possibly it was to attend sermons? But Patient Bertram became Peasant Bertram and has kept reappearing inside the walls.

P&N added some new townies who walk into the hood from the Village Shoppe every day (if they are pirates they come from the ship at the dock I think), and they take the spots which your previous townies had, so some of your earlier townies from this save game have "disappeared" as you call it. This is normal. When your hood is full size there is a limit to how many of these people will appear every day. In all of my save games I have had 2 of the Guildsmen and 2 of the Pirates appear as townies, so this is 4 spots which are taken, so at least 4 of the other people my heroes know from before will not be showing up.

The townie named Chadwick is a base game townie and I think Marquis Chad is a base game townie too. You simply haven't seen them before because you are playing the exact same hood all the time, and when you started this hood for the very first time the other people like Hellewise got into the hood first, and then the limit was reached, so Chadwick never appeared.

So to answer your original question, if you uninstall P&N but update to the 2.0 Base Game, I will say that your hood will return to normal, the townies you knew before will return again, or at least some of them. In the specific game you mention now, Chadwick has snuck in there though, so he's taking one of the spots for your other townies.

To save your Achievements and Watcher level info when reinstalling, save the file called ach.package which is in the My Documents area, TSM\Saves folder. Simply move this file back in there after a reinstall. However, in your case, this file will have info on P&N Achievements so I'm not sure if it is a good idea to move this file into a non-P&N game.

I have another suggestion concerning these townies you don't want to see, regardless of whether you uninstall P&N or not. If you kill one of them, some other townie will walk into the hood instead, who will sometimes be one of the people you're missing. This can be done quickly by using Grim's Core mod or by using the Execute by Sword in my mod here: http://gnautylilgnomes.com/forum/index.php?topic=3417.0

At the moment I am taking a "get out of my view" approach because I can see the potential problems if I uninstall/reinstall. I save the game shortly before 9 am and reload it if they get some of the P&N responsibilities (sic a parrot/falcon, make pirate face, read war crimes docket, scry into the future of war). If a play with two heroes like the knight and the monarch - where it can be difficult to get not at least one of them - I click those responsibilites away and kill the shirked responsibility moodlet afterwards. War, what war? It is not happening in this kingdom, because I say so.

After paying attention to it, I discovered that it is not only the emissaries who turn into ordinary townpeople afterwards, but also other characters used for responsibilites. I have loads of "crude sword customers" for example, who wear a guard uniform in their thumbnail but are pigkeepers and peasants by name. They are never the base townies though, but randomly generated ones, who then run around in the kingdom for a bit (and may stop the others from turning up that day). I think this was done intentionally, so that you have to go through the full procedure everytime, when you get the pirate face responsibility for example. As if there was any fun spending hours on a single responsibility.

I don't mind getting some new faces in a new kingdom but I want them to show up on a constant basis so that it is worthwhile socialising with them (although they were an unfortunate pick, because I chose the barbarian throne room this time and the ones I got are mostly far too well dressed). When I go back to the previous saves killing some of the new NPCs sounds like a good idea. Do you think it would be the same if I just delete them? There are several options to get rid of unwanted sims.

I play the game on Free Time a lot, most often with the Responsibilities turned off. I generally only have Respos on if I'm wanting to level up a hero. If you have respos turned off, those extra sims generated to do the respo do not appear, so some of the spots for your original townies won't be taken. I think you can also turn off respos when doing the quests.

Your description of these respo sims hanging out in the hood, having their name altered, is how it's been for me too in all save games; I simply haven't noticed it that much as I generally have the respos off, so don't see these sims very much. I don't recall this happening with the respo sims in the game previous to the 2.0/P&N, this is definitely altered. I would think that this is a 2.0 alteration, just guessing, so without P&N installed, this would not be reverted back to the pre-2.0 activity. So my answer up above isn't correct I think; the game won't be returned to normal if one goes with the 2.0 without P&N.

I'm sure you can simply delete sims, remove them, murder them; it doesn't matter in this game how you do it.

Okay i have no idea what you're talking about, but just wondering if medieval is worth the money. Please reply if it's good!

answering rawrritsme

That's highly subjective. For me, personally, no it wasn't worth the money. Word on The Sims Medieval EA list is that the game is dead. Customer service and tech help from EA has been spotty and not necessarily satisfactory with this particular game. But there is a small, extremely loyal, hardcore fanbase for the game that will loudly, and sometimes viciously, defend it to the death. It will depend on how you play and what your expectations are.

If you expect a SIMS 3 clone with Sims 3 style features you will be sorely disappointed, don't waste your money. The only thing it shares with SIMS 3 is the CAS. Sandbox play is possible but limited compared to other SIMS games. If you are looking for a closed end game that will break you into both Sims games and RPG games, then you'll enjoy it. If you've never played any type of SIMS game then I would guess you'd like it. If you want something historically accurate, not bloody likely. If you want an amusing way to kill time in a charming atmosphere and control little people, you'll love it. There is a quaint ambiance to the game and the graphics are pretty. This game is far less customizable than SIMS 3 and some people find that more relaxing and less confusing in terms of game play.

If you can pick up both games cheap, yep, it's worth the money. It's an fun little game that will keep you busy for hours and hours on end. It has charm, ambiance, it's own story line, and can be challenging which most SIMS games are not. Questing and daily responsibilities will keep you on your toes. If you have a Mac with Lion OS there will be some issues and I would recommend you to Gandaalf over on the EA Medieval list who has had experience with them. Get the disk if you can as there have been some issues with the digital download.

Hope that helps. I reiterate, whether you like the game will depend on what you want from it, what you expect from it, and how you plan to play it.

Last edited by ladyskye : 14th Jan 2012 at 09:18 AM.

I agree with ladyskye, it is impossible to say whether it is "good" or not. The base game was worth the money in my opinion, the pirates & nobles EP was not (and it was rather expensive for what you get). It is more "Sims Renaissance" than medieval and even then it is mainly fantasy. Personally, I don't mind because I play stories I have in my head and diverge even further from historical accuracy. I feel that the Pirates & Nobles EP - contrary to the base game - forces some aspects on me, which I am plainly not interested in (bloodshed and war), so they are a nuisance to me. My sims (in all games from Sims 1 - Sims 3) have problems to deal with and don't always have the perfect living conditions, but overall they tend to be rather happy pixel people. If you like to enforce a certain amount of cruelty on them, you may enjoy the Pirates & Nobles EP much more than I do.

If Medieval was the only sims game I played (I still play Sims 2 and got more into Sims 3 too in the last year), the limitations in building and customisation would bother me more. But since I have two other games as an alternative, I can always play them if I am more in a building/creating mood. However, I think that despite its limitations it still allows for enough freedom in game play for a player to have their personal little sandbox, depending on how creative they are. At the moment I am trying to juggle the storyline I play with the goal of the particular ambition (bring all heroes to level 10), the quest tasks, daily responsibilities and the aspects (health, security, culture and knowledge), which affect the overall well-being in the kingdom, and I find that challenging enough to interest me for another while. I like the humour and some icons or descriptions still amuse me.

Overall, I mainly need to be able to get attached to my sims and I do like my medieval heroes.

So yesterday the same thing happened again. I played the evolution of the chinchilla quest (with the peteran priest, which means that he has to give a sermon to all the hunters and families hurt by chinchillas) and my entire townsfolk changed.

I would really like to know whether this is triggered by a certain event (like renown reaching a certain level) or simply a glitch. But it excludes the explanations that it was due to importing (as I started a new kingdom in this ambition) or that those townies were removed to make space for new role sims (the pirates and merchants for example are still the same). Already during this quest the first familiar faces began to appear. I was very surprised when Sweeper Helewise suddenly appeared on the scene. The following day (new quest) Bowyer Dirk came walking in from the village. Over the course of these two quests more or less the entire set of regular townies was replaced by a new set.

The reason why I find this so strange is that those previous townies are completely removed. My merchant who recently adopted a quest child, still has this child in his relationship panel although it can not be retrieved. But mid-wife Justina, his lover, is not there anymore, it is like she never existed. I feel sorry for him because he could not decide between her and the magician and now the magician married someone else and he has to find a new woman to soothe his burning loins (he is licentious).

Maybe I'm missing something big, but why is the townie issue so important?

It depends how you play whether it is an issue or not. I involved townie sims in my game play right from the beginning when I played Sims 1, maybe they have a special attraction because I can not control them directly and have to use a playable sim to bring them to do their part. I do it less in Medieval, but usually I spent a lot of time editing the entire population of a town and after a while characters evolve in my mind. It disturbs me when sims "I have gotten to know" are suddenly erased from my game. In this particular case I was in the middle of marrying off my hero sims and I had it all set up as I was about to finish this ambition and intended to carry on with this kingdom for a bit longer. My merchant was supposed to marry Justina, who had proved to be always conveniently available when he had a dry spell and with regard to my jacoban priest I was undecided whether he would marry flowerseller Penelope or discover his dormant homosexuality and his attraction to trader Andrew. However, relationships are always an aspect for me and I also care for those sims, who have become friends with my heroes.

Apart from that I am a curious person and I like to find out the mechanics of this game and understand it better. The way I see it, if there is a pool of say 20 townies when you start a kingdom, the game does not just randomly select 20, but has a small group for each "role". Instead of "Marquis Chad" I now have "Lord So-and-so from Snordfolk" but likely can not have both of them in one kingdom. If the new character replaces the "slot" of the old one, i. e. overwrites it, it would make sense why they don't appear in the relationship panel anymore. The reason why the whole set would be exchanged at some random point escapes me though, which makes me wonder whether it is a bug.

well, I rarely pay attention to the townies, but when I do they've been the same as from the base game. so I guess you can uninstall the game and try again or you know, accept that the sims you knew and loved are dead, and move on, creating new stories with the new sims.

Most annoying is that one of the sons of my queen went missing too. There was a bit of a muddle when my spy married the prince of Effenmont because most of the royal family was added to her household. The first-born son of my monarch was left out and apparently towniefied. I added the family back to the castle via the build-master and the first-born son later when I noticed that he went to the village to sleep (all this happened several quests ago). However, he got lost with the rest of the townies although - contrary to them - he still exists in the relationship panel. My queen and her husband hardly had a relationship with him anymore and they can't invite him.

Curiously enough, my queen could invite Nevin, the boy from the quest, who my merchant adopted and he just came over for a visit. I was pleased that he still exists but overall my impression is that the townie rotation indicates an error.

Glitches happen, I don't think there's a fix for this, soooooooo