How many families to make a sustainable 'hood without in-breeding?

[vllygrl]

I am wondering what others have found when making new 'hoods/families.

What is the optimum number of families to create in the 'hood to have enough marriageable sims, yet avoid marrying yer cousin?

I prefer to have my own CAS families in place and not marry townies if possible, but too few families, and you don't have enough choices.

So, when setting up a new 'hood, how many families do you start with?

Thanks, Vllygrl :)

[Josepina]

Statistically speaking (if my math is correct) if you started with 6 non-related families (and each family had 2 children), would result in a 1:5 chance the grandchildren would be cousins.

12 families would result in a 1:11 chance of married cousins.

24 families would result in a 1:23 chance.

48 families 1:47

So 12 families with 10% inbreeding would be optimal and 48 with about 2% if it really bothers you.

[katya_stevens]

I don't mind marrying townies in as I have default face replacements and clean templates; I tend to stick to creating about 4-7 families when I'm developing a new 'hood (unless it's a challenge or story 'hood -- challenges often dictate the starting household number, and a story 'hood means I need to have quite a few background characters). Semi-often (unless I'm not allowed by challenge rules) I'll add in additional households as I play, usually with different dynamics to the founding households.

[Ynouva]

I have one main neighborhood (I deleted the others from the game) and it has 4 Downtowns and 4 Shopping District sub-neighborhoods. Since I have more places to settle, I can create more Sim families from CAS and place them in any of those neighborhoods. Most of the neighborhood and its districts is moderately occupied, so I have more Sims who are not related at all and the probability of my Sims marrying a distant cousin is almost 0%.

[dandello]

I make extra sims and put them in houses or apartments. I usually start with about 20 and then add more as more sims are born.

[Clashfan]

I start with 3 main families but then I also make all the townies/dormies in my custom hoods so I do have the playables marry them. I try to limit the number of intermarriages between the core families in the early generations, doesn't always work as they sometimes defy me and refuse to even look at other Sims I try to match them up with. Usually by the 3rd generation I have enough diversity in the playables I don't have to worry to much about in-breeding.

I also use a hack from MATY that expands who they recognize as being related to them, such as 2nd cousins and in-laws via marriage and so forth. Keeps my gene pool a bit more diverse that way.

[Peni Griffin]

IRL, the minimum population for viability is 200 breeding individuals.

[Josepina]

Or you could think of them as actors and not really related.

[supersimoholic]

When I started my neighborhood, I made a crap load of sims, then used a mod to make them all townies, then started moving my families in. That way there's always plenty of marriage choice, but it also means that they have no family, so no mess ups like - 2 brothers, one marries a girl, and then that girl's second cousins great great grand daughter marries the other and his brother is long dead, it's like... How did he live that long!!

[Pearlie]

Using Josepina's suggestion of 12 starting families with 2 kids each I did a bit of a test in excel with generational match ups. By Gen 4 match ups resulted in 3 families, with Gen 5 kids being too closely related to have kids. I wasn't as careful as I could have been however, so I think it could probably last a bit longer with more care and more kids.

I've attached the file incase anyone wants to see what it looked like, or feels like doing a better job :)

[Josepina]

You're right. In my example I only took into consideration sims marrying first cousins for simplicity. By forth generation there would be regular second cousin marriages. Down the track the whole town would be somewhat related.

So that raises the question: how related can two sims be where it's not considered too familiar?

[dandello]

You're right. In my example I only took into consideration sims marrying first cousins for simplicity. By forth generation there would be regular second cousin marriages. Down the track the whole town would be somewhat related.

So that raises the question: how related can two sims be where it's not considered too familiar?

I figure if the relationship panel doesn't show the sims related I consider them fair game as partners. I really am not going to keep too close track of cousins. i would go insane LOL. I keep track of their parents and siblings and that's it on paper.

[Julieryc]

Do you have Uni? If you do, the easiest way is to make a couple households of 7-8 unrelated sims apiece in YACAS, play them each through Uni, and then start marrying them off.

My personal 'hood starts with about 300 sims, and I don't run into inbreeding problems, even though I specifically set up several family trees to make sure that a number of the sims start related. That's probably way more than you want to deal with, but making townies who marry into your households would accomplish the same thing (as would adding families over the course of several generations - say, in generation three, you create five new families and move them in, then repeat whenever it seems like inbreeding's becoming a problem.)

[vllygrl]

Fantastic responses and information! Thank you everyone! (On holidays so computer time is limited for me right now, thus the delayed reply). This is all great food for thought and really helps me think it through -- I am working on fine-tuning my latest version of my challenge (Medieval Charter Challenge) and I want to think through the number of starting families to be sure I have enough but not too many ( :wtf: stumbles away muttering to self and doing math in head).
Thanks and cheers,
Vllygrl :)

[punkrockgoth1988]

What I don't understand is why you can't just add in a new family from time to time to add in fresh blood?

[punkrockgoth1988]

so no mess ups like - 2 brothers, one marries a girl, and then that girl's second cousins great great grand daughter marries the other and his brother is long dead, it's like... How did he live that long!!

Playing a rotation solves this issue.

[vllygrl]

Oh, I do, Punkgothrock! However, according to my challenge, there are limited starting families at various levels of social standing and new families are added only at certain levels in the challenge, so I want to make sure I have enough starting families. And I agree, playing by rotations eliminates the cross-aging thing.

[M.M.A.A.]

i only get some of my sims to marry townies in the first generations only, meaning those i create first to establish my hood.

[zoozeegirl]

I started out with around 12 families then adding more now and then. What I like about adding new families along the way is - that I can try and adjust things that
seem to become unbalanced. Like if I suddenly have too few girls - I add more girls. Or I can see that now the blue eyes are about gone from the whole hood - I send
in new characters with blue eyes.

So this way I feel I am able to control several things in one go. Of course the game often like to tease me - sending in more girls - and next woman that is to give
birth will get twin boys ! ... You know the game does not like when we get too much control :)

[vllygrl]

Ha! Ha! Thanks M.M.A.A. and Zoozeegirl! Your comments are also very helpful.

I also thought that perhaps I should set it so that it is permissable to marry townies in the first generation only, as that would solve a lot of problems; and I agree that 12 families is probably an optimum start up number. Adding families as the challenge progresses is built in at each level, so that does allow the challenge-player to tweak the gender balance and number of prospective mates for sure.

Thanks again for adding your comments, this is all helping me to sort it out!
Cheers, Vllygrl :)