The other three families haven't had heatstroke yet. I installed the waterfall shower and they use that to cool down at least once a day and I have all of them living in houses, it was just that I didn't think about overheating so I let my pregnant Sims work outside instead of keeping them in the house. That's one round done at least.

If anyone's interested, I just posted the results from my first round!
https://trecereacaveman.wordpress.com/

Hey there fellow Simmers! I'm new here, and womdering if anyone can help me
Which expansion packs do you need for this challenge?
How do you give the gifts of money when sims of different classes get married?
And how do you get servants, farmhands and knights etc. living in with the people they are working for? Are they official things in the game or do you just move them in jow you usually would then get them to do work?

Thanks for your help!

1) As far as I know, you can play with simply base game, though seasons is recommended (I think) just for the ability to garden/farm. And in later eras, OFB would probably be helpful, though I don't know as I've never managed to progress that far.
2) For gifts, you can use pescado's Money Order, or simply put an item in the sim's inventory equal to the cost before he/she moves into the new household
3) The servants/farmhands/knights/etc. are normal sims. Just move them in like normal and direct them to do all the work/chores instead of the upper class sims. A larger households mod would be useful if you don't want to limit the size of your upper class families b/c they have live-in servants. Also having any EP Uni or higher would be helpful so that you don't have to work to get the servants to move in, just combine the families in neighborhood view.

I guess that's it. Good Luck!

Without Seasons your neanderthals can't farm or fish. That's why Seasons, at least, should be installed.

Thanks both of you, those were the two expansions I was planning on getting so glad to clarify
What is pescado' s money order?

The money order is here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...php?topic=215.0

@FireflySong Look's like an interesting first round you got there. Keep it up.

As to my own challenge: After over one and a half year, I finally finished the neanderthal era two days ago. \o/ And then spend half the night writing down information (skill points, badges, friends,...) to create a ranking. I proceeded a little bit different from what the rules suggest, though. I didn't consider the households with the same family name as one, but each household separately. Otherwise marrying sims off would have been nearly impossible. After analysing the information I collected, I wrote the households down from richest to poorest and then shuffled them around a bit according to existing (and possible future) relationships. The only 'problem' with the distribution I ended up with is that a lot of light skinned sims ended up as slaves and dark skinned sims as patricians, but whatever. I'm happy I got it working.
And that's how it looks now:

Emperor family: Ehler
Patrician families: Monsa2, Bottlefield
Plebian families: Monsa, Brandt, Onsen
Slave families: Brandt2, Bottlefield2, Ehler2, Ehler3
'Native' family: Monsa3

I think I'm going to give everyone new names for the roman era, too. And now, I just need to finally update my blog to reflect my progress. >_<

Here’s my idea: a while ago I downloaded BecksFarm farm animals like chickens, pigs, sheep and cows. These animals come with a slaughter table. That means you can raise the animals, get them to have little animals (cows can get calves, pigs can get piglets, the chickens lay eggs and if you have a hen, they’ll hatch into little chicks (and idk about the sheep)). This way you can have a real farm.

A farm, however, does not fit the Neanderthal Era, but hunting does. I once read somewhere on here I believe, that you can get sims to go gathering food buy making a community lot and planting for example tomatoes on that lot. Then have a sim stay there for a few days while the plants grow. Then later on you can send your sims there to “gather” food, like in the real Neanderthal Age.

So what if we try this with the farm animals. You could send a couple of sims to that community lot to hunt the animals (slaughter them on the table) and so they will bring back meat for the family to eat.

I have no idea if this will even work, but I’m willing to give it a shot. It would really make the Neanderthal Era more authentic if they can also eat something else besides fish and vegetables/fruits.

On another note, I have been rereading the Clan of the Cave Bear and it’s making me want to resume the Totm challenge. I think I’ll go play it again someday this week and I’ll try out the hunting thing. (though I might not stick around for a long time with sims 4 coming up).

EDIT: I tried it and I made pictures. Behold this adventure (look at the pics)

SO yeah, it didn't quite work out as I wanted to. The first problem is that the sim has to buy the animal, instead of placing it there when creating the community lot. And as the animals are quite expensivfe (250), there's no point in hunting at all. The next problem is that even though you can slaughter the animal, you can't pick up the meat and take it with you, which sucks big time (especially with the plans I had for farming, during the next eras).

Conclusion: my idea doesn't work

I did try something similar to that in the past and as you discovered it doesn't really work well. One idea that has recently been made possible is since there are now a few crafting stations that create food at Plumbbob Keep a foraging environment could be stimulated by giving each tribe a set number of bushes/trees depending on how much land they owned. If you wanted to implement a hunter gathering society sims might be able to hunt by having the hunting party fish for a small amount of time (1/2 an hour or something) each time they go hunting.

Hmm now I'm itching to start another hood to give it a go.

Off topic im going to do my test of time challenge using samantha's rules they look like there alot more fun and im using a shorter lifespan mod so it doesnt fell as tedious as a normal lifespan

@lbsgirl24: that's interesting idea as well. Keep me updated if you try it out!

Here's another idea: how about going to a community lot and digging for treasure. this is a similar idea to your first idea about hiking, but by digging for treasure, the sims are more likely to find someting. (though I don't know if digging for treasure comes with a specific expansion pack)

@jckgwk: what shorter lifespan mod are you using? I've been looking for a good one that allows me to shorten all the lifespans, not just the teen lifespan, but at the same time, I want one that won't conflict with inteenimator.

its just called shorter lifespan just look up lifespan mods here and i think you need to read the comments to make it work with inteen i dont use that mod so i dont know

@Floor1304 I'll definitely let you know. Digging does come with BV from memory but it might work better than hiking. The thing with treasure is they often find really expensive objects which is kind of unrealistic. With lifespans the agecons package is really useful it allows you to edit the lifespan to your own specifications (assuming you have simpe) http://www.simlogical.com/sl/Sims2Pages/Sims2_Aging.htm I'm not sure if it does conflict with inteenimator but I haven't had any issues with it so far and I've had it in for ages.

Hey guys, Im now halfway through my first round and loving this challenge already!
However, one of my families is starving, because they cant seem to catch any fish... Can anyone tell me if Im doing something wrong?
When I click fish, they throw the line into the pond, more violently than the other families who are fishing successfully, then after a second the rod twangs backwards and out of the water, and they stop fishing
, without catching anything.
I cant see anything Ive done differently with this family, but I keep trying to no avail, and they going to starve soon unless they catch something! Help!

I don't know if that could be the problem here, but once sims are really hungry they don't stick to occupations that take longer (like fishing) anymore and just stop after a few seconds.

Sounds like they're too hungry to fish. There are a few ways you can manage this with varying levels of 'cheating'.
1) Have another family give them a fish by teleporting a family with at least one bass in their inventory to the lot, make the other sim selectable and transfer the fish over. (You could also load up another lot, invite over the starving family and use the 'give gift' interaction to give them a fish). You could have them repay the fish later or not as you see fit.
2) Buy them a new fridge (or groceries over the phone if you have an empty fridge hack). While it is technically against the rules sometimes sims just have no luck and don't catch anything edible on the first day. Personally I would empty the food from the fridge once the sims are feeding themselves from fishing.
3) Move on to your next family and hope the starving family shows up on the lot. When they do have the members of the next household fish and then ask the members of the starving household to join them. They should fish for a while and hopefully catch something.

In general I find that sims often risk starvation if you don't get them one bass as soon as you start playing the family.

Hi Everyone! I hope those of you still playing are enjoying the Challenge. I am still working my way through and have made some minor changes to the rules hoping to speed things up. ie shortening the life span of teens so I can get to the leader! ST has sent me the link for her Official Facebook Page so if you want to check that out please visit https://www.facebook.com/SimsAToT?ref=br_tf

Yaw are doing so good! I wish I could still play, but my computer has became crappy. I get a new laptop in Dec, and I can't wait!

Hello, Wow it has been a crazy year for me the last year. I'm peeking in and trying to catch up to everyone's posts and challenges. I have a lot of updating to do! I decided I needed to return to the one thing that makes me half way sane: playing Sims. Oh well, this challenge is a long one so it works out pretty well. No hurry to finish, something to the pass the time. How is everyone doing? Missed all of you.

Hey All! *waves to everyone* looks like we're all coming out of the woodwork (planetary alignment anyone?) I popped in yesterday and got hooked (as usual) catching up with things. It seems like some people have made it to the Dark Ages, and a few in the Roman Era too - lbsgirl24 are you playing both Roman and Neanderthal?! Crazy! I love it (is totally going to do that too). Anyone else notice how it's so exciting to reach the Roman era only to find that you miss your Neanderthal Simmies so much you're in mourning? XD And yet without the Roman Era to strive towards I'm not as interested (contradictions much).

With that in mind, I went looking for my old pictures (as kept the gazillion from the abandoned Tempus life) and discovered I am missing the entire last round I played, which is HORRIFIC because that's the round my beloved Detlef got cursed and now I have no record of it GUH! (count to ten... count to ten...). And double whammy looking at all the pictures made me miss them so much I'm going to brave the neighbourhood today to see if I can salvage anything...! (fingers crossed people) it was getting freaky last time I was in but heck half the fun is after having a break I have an idea so if the neighbourhood will play along for a while I might be able to continue for a bit.

On that note, speaking of those addictive Neanderthals, I decided to start again recently going back to basics with the original rules bar a few tweaks that are purely for sanity purposes - which I have done on my newer computer that loads like it's got cheetahs running through it's harddrive... ! Random fact - it takes me 7 minutes to get into my sims game on my old computer !_! ya'll just pick your jaws up off the floor now I'll wait... once I'm in it's fine but ya KNOW right?! (I've had slower... in the original days...moving on now). With the new Neanderthals (Im only a few sims days in) I'm experimenting with the THS and birth rules from the Warwickshire Challenge for a bit more excitement in the death and life department. Originally they all just lived happily ever after -but that's never fun right?! And creates too many households, too much linear non-excitement; so this time I've given more death options but that's too much disadvantage for the girls, so I noticed somewhere on here (I'm sorry I read so much the last few days I've forgotten who posted it!) mention about hunting and rolling options for that which is brilliant, so every season my boys lose a few hit points for hunting. No idea how it's going to pan out but I'm looking forward to it.

I'm pretty sure I've said this before but this thread is just the best! So many people come and go from this challenge and there's always plenty of help and ya'll so nice about it too. :lovestruc (everybody blush now). It was going good over at the bbs before too but I just saw yesterday this particular thread has been going here since 2011...?! Right?! I can't even remember what I was doing back then! When was that?! (obviously playing too much TS2). Cor... I gotta go dig around Tempus now and see if Korbl will forgive the mess I made of his life and come out to play~

It's good to see everyone again you all rock!

taliah~

Whew finally got through all the new pages in this thread!

@bnymph thank you and yes, steal away. It is wonderful that everyone shares ideas. Makes this challenge fun.
@Samatha I love your idea pages. Scribbles notes for later. That's what I'm talking about brainstorming!

As for all the newcomers, welcome
As for all the old times, missed you!

@Cspencer I'm in tears for you
@taliah hugs, great to see you

As for the shortening lifespans. Yeah, I can understand wanting to do that. Laugh, the funny thing is the point of the challenge was the length of it. Not only 20 generations but the challenge to test your nerves in doing it! But i think its wonderful that everyone is adapting to make it fun and unique to their own play style and learning new play styles!

I jumped into my Delta Group, much easier. Rinse and Repeat, not much story driven. Great to get back into the game. About halfway through Round Three, halfway through the neighborhood.
I try and play one to two households in one day rotations each day. That way I don't burn out and I get into a pattern to balance out playtime with RL.
I also have for the first time an uberhood! I never played one before, so I have been playing the maxis premades. I'm really enjoying it! The oddest thing was to have Bella back. Laugh. Poor Dina, I'm having to rethink some old Maxis storylines from Pleasantview. I'm trying to get the hood all to the same starting day, so I can maybe post about the Uberhood for fun or Megahood or whatever they call it nowadays. Again only one to two houses a day for balance.

As for my Delta Group
I was going to do the same thing with my teens, divide them up into communal caves based on family ranking to have them mingle and free up space!
I'm actually thinking about doing a uni prehistoric hood to mix it up. Allowing maybe only Art degrees. Prehistoric peoples did have learning and spiritual centers. I plan on doing an Egyptian group. So math, astrology, art, dance, crops, farming, cattle breeding, writing were all taught. As for the neanderthal stage I figure it could be a vision quest or a tribal training period. Again to free up living space and provide population needed to prevent bottle necking when the death and mortality rates start kicking in. I find it easier to provide the basics: shower, tub, food ... if not playing a house full of babies is awful! Therefore, like most players I prefer rolling or creating scenarios for deaths. I'm thinking second or third generation start kicking off the die rolls. Anyhow, lots of ideas to think about. I'm still a long way off than everyone.

Also LOVE the idea of keeping a future prehistoric tribe migrating for the Americas down the road. Excellent idea!

I still need to catch up on everyone's blogs, pages, and challenge updates including the new facebook.
I'm hoping to start updating my weebly very soon. I can't believe a year has passed without me playing! RL, wow it goes by fast.

I will be checking again very shortly and let everyone know when I have an update.
Love you guys. This is the best gaming group I have ever come across. Hugs.

I've done it - I restarted my Test of Time Challenge. It will not be blogged about in clearly defined rounds, but as a true story. The prologue is up, as well as an 'about the challenge' page that gives some background, a rules page that shows the rules I'm playing by and there's the 'state of the world' in which I keep population counts, probably I will update this the first day of every season, giving a real look into the ups and downs of the population. It's also the only page where you can see the rounds in action, so to speak. I hope you'll all enjoy it. The link to my blog is in my signature, it's called A Hitch in Time.

On another note, I still plan to update my variation ideas with the last two eras, but oh, where to find the time!

Let me be the first to say nice way to start a blog and a creative way to start a blog

Thank you! I'm a writer at heart, which is why I often times have problems remembering to take pictures. But stories, oh, I can come up with tons of them