Genius samantha_kathy! I agree, a very inventive start. Very intriguing too. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next with those rambunctious teens... ohh the possibilities



This is a good point! I think I got so deep into my own challenge I got bogged, as it was the length of it that appealed to me as well as the changing of the eras. So while I'm in definite agreement that people should play to their own styles, after having a break I'm going to return to how I was originally playing - and this time learn to take breaks instead of running off like a mad hatter pulling my hair out as I go! Ya'll quote me on this when I try to run away again ya hear?! Not that I can run far... --> Of course this does entice murphy to come mess with my game just when I'm getting back into it =/

Randomly... how do I check this thread so often yet still manage to miss the free ultimate sims2 collection from origin?! UGH some higher power hates me! (that's what you get for abandoning your challenges people) *throws herself down on the floor in despair*

For two seconds... sims to torture now adieu!

taliah~

Hi folks, nice to meet you all. Came across this challenge today and have decided to give it a go! I have always liked the idea of these historical-esque challenges, but figured I'd get bored with them quickly. But with the neighborhood constantly evolving, this looks like it'd hold my attention. I loved reading everyone else's stories, though I confess I didn't read all 83 pages.

I don't have seasons, so I'm using the Simstones custom career to support my families. Think the fact that my sims aren't constantly on the brink of dying of either starvation or heatstroke removes a layer of difficulty, but it's still been challenging. So far there's been two sets of twins, and only one boy born out 7 babies! I fear for the next generation at this rate, haha. The women are all constantly grouchy form the childcare and pregnancies, and always seem to be picking arguments with each other... I'm betting it won't be long before the first fight! (As a note, if both parents of a child lose fights, I am planning to move them in with the family that "killed" them and have the victors raise the kids as kind of slaves? Just to make sure everyone doesn't die out too early.)

I made a tumblr where I plan to document the cave sims' progress: http://katsimsblog.tumblr.com/.

I can't find if these are allowed:
buyable chickens; worth while because they reproduce and you can eat eggs or chickens. Um, but you have to buy food (SimSlice)
banana & coconut tree; can be placed on lot. And the coconut tree can be "played" on.
there is also a little "harvestable" apple tree, and grapes.
This seems more like foraging, but maybe too easy?

I use things like harvestable apple trees and berries in the hunter gatherer phase by placing them on a community lot, sims then need to make a trip there and they can only do so once a season. They can also fish there. Once they come back from that one trip, that's it. That's the food they need to survive on that season - which means large families have more trouble surviving.

Chickens (as well as other farm animals, by Beck (I think)) aren't used by me in the hunter gatherer phase. I use them in the farming phase, where each family gets two animals (which type depends on the rank at the time) - one female and one male - which then produce babies. With good management, there never needs to be hunger again. They also get an allotment of garden plots to grow crops.

@Taliaheth and Nesxya great to see you guys back

I am mostly playing my roman hood when i find the time to sim but did put a few days into my new neanderthal hood as well.

@grammapat we've all chopped and changed the rules to better fit our playstyles. If something doesn't feel like cheating to you then go for it the challenge is next to impossible by the original rules. One of the things I'm currently trying in my new hood is using tg berry crafting stations and fruit tree crafting stations from plumbbob keep to simulate gathering. Personally I don't find they make the game too much easier as long as you don't have too many of them. Each of my families has three berry bushes on their lot and even with hunting they need to ration their food to put aside enough for winter. So just play how you like.

@Samantha_Kathy I love the prologue It's a really interesting take on the challenge. A gathering community lot sounds really interesting. Weighting survival against large families would be useful to ensure everyone's survival, ironically it's always been my smaller families who struggle to feed themselves in the past.

@Palhoncho I'm loving your start to the challenge. I wouldn't suggest deleting the mail boxes as that can cause corruption. Perhaps a no social worker hack would help. It does get easier once you have teens to look after the kids.

In case anyone's interested under the spoiler is an update on my second ToT hood (I'm probably nearing my tenth attempt by now lol) and an explantaion of my approach to the challenge this time round.

Thanks lbsgirl, I didn't end up deleting the mailbox in the end because I wasn't sure what the outcome was, definitely won't be doing it now! It's definitely easier now that some of the kids are old enough to help with chores, and the mums have enough cooking skill that the stove isn't catching fire constantly. Might install a no social worker hack just to be safe though, I'd like the father to be able to continue work if the woman dies.

I like your ideas for the challenge, the idea of measuring wealth in land and materials rather than money is definitely more realistic.

If you have the visitor controller you could also ban the mail carrier from the lot or else delete the bills when they bring them home. Good luck with your challenge

Had horrible luck today! I noticed the first boy born to the caveman hood, a kid named Rex, was furious with one of the other kids so I took a peak in his memories to find out why. Turns out he recently lost a fight

I knew this meant he needed to die so I got Rodney's Death Creator set up and tried to kill him- but encountered a rather worrying glitch. Instead of dying an object error on the grim reaper appeared! The kid either carries on living but becomes unselectable, or just dissapears without a trace, depending on whether I pick "reset" or delete" :/ I've tried killing him in a number of ways; the same thing keeps happening! It's really weird, because when I tried killing the rest of his family, including his toddler sister, (just to test it out), everything went fine. Any ideas on how to go about fixing this?

Nevermind, ended up killing him the old fashioned way, in a pool, with cheats turned off. (Wanted to avoid that because I hate the wretched puddles their ghosts leave behind, but oh well.) Still got a weird grim reaper glitch initially (http://puu.sh/b7ZG5/3bf04c83b2.jpg) but after a minute or so it disappeared and the usual death sequence followed.

I feel so bad for my poor Teshash family! Little Rex was one of my favorite kids :'(

I find children tend to glitch out unless you kill them with the death creator in a way in which they can actually die (drowning or fire) I used to just set fire to sims by moving them and a grill onto the roof. I feel your pain, I just lost one of my favorite sims as well. It was a real pity because she was married to the son of a patrician family and he doesn't have a son. To make matters worse I'm at that stage where there are only a few possible marriage candiates for each family so losing one is really annoying.

There are three female teens he's unrelated to. Two are engaged to his younger brother and cousin (who I only just moved out of the house at the start of my current round) and the other is a werewolf slave and is betrothed (plus I'd rather keep all my wolves to the one lot).
There is a plebian toddler and a few slave children who he might be unrelated to but knowing my luck they would just be murdered before reaching their teens. I suppose I could make him a CAS sim but I am trying to keep it 100% original sims and I really don't need a CAS patrician when my slave population is so low.

So my options;
1. Have him marry the fiance of his cousin or younger brother
2. Move the cousin/younger brother back in to marry and have kids at home. Technically the cousin should be the heir.
3. Have him wait for one of the little girls to age up
4. Since his parents are quite young I could also have them try for another son. Otherwise I could have him adopt one of his nephews as heir or something.

Any opinions on which one I should go with?

Having him marry his younger brother's fiance would put his brother into the same predicament as him, presumably? Although I suppose as a younger brother there's slightly less pressure for him to have kids since he has more time left. Having him marry somebody else's fiance brings in a lot of dram though, which I always find really fun for story-telling. It all depends how attached you are to the existing couples and whether you're willing to split them up too, I suppose.

Personally I don't like it when my sims have a large age gap between them, although I suppose it's more historically accurate since brides were often really young in roman times! Plus if he's still only a teen the gap wouldn't really be that bad.
I think adopting a nephew as an heir could be a cute option, too. Adds variety to the families. Or maybe he could adopt the son of his cousin, since the cousin is supposed to be heir?

I'm trying to let my 2nd gen's relationships develop naturally since I don't need to worry about family relations getting in the way yet, but it's so difficult to resist planning the pairings in advance! I channel this urge into the stories by pretending the parents are all constantly matchmaking, haha.

I might see which girl he likes better of the two betrothed ones. His cousin and brother both can't marry anyone else either but since they're glorified plebians it may make more sense for one of them to marry a slave (one of the slave girls is nearly a teen so it isn't a massive age gap). He just grew into an adult. I'm not really attached to any of the couples (it was literally here are the three girls you could marry and pairing them off according to age) but I may see how they get along with their original fiances first but it shall be interesting.

On age gaps I generally have small ones but it I did marry a founder to a second gen sim (and then another second gen sim when she died) but at this point in the challenge keeping the bloodlines going is a much bigger priority.

I know what you mean. I did a series of challenges to pair off my younger gen 2 and older gen 3 sims and I was always wanting to 'cheat' and put them into the couples I really wanted.

Hold the phone... lbsgirl you have werewolves in play?! Dang girl that must be exciting! *moving in* I was planning on having creature features at certain eras but they all seem to be "down the track a ways..." but in retrospect I seem to have trouble keeping my bloodlines going without all the extras so maybe it's a good thing I just stick to the regular... hmm >_> yeah... *slinks away*

As for your dilemma that does sound like a tough one; I get personally attached to my sims so it would all depend on that... I have no idea (big help). Curious to me though... have you not added any CAS sims yet? I found I linked sims up mostly on same ages for Gen2s and then the Gen3s didn't want to match up with anyone coz they were all related and I ended up adding a new family to help out; since then there's been no probs. I do wonder though if it's possible with just 5 families to get all the way through without any CAS sims whatsoever...? Keeping in mind too the five original bloodlines; or would that not matter? *is just confusing everyone now*

Age gaps are no issue with me XD *disturbed simmer* they're always entertaining; though mostly accidental really it just sort of happens with so many sims I forget their ages, move them in... oh oops 20+ year difference sorry about that!

Speaking of ages though... I am discovering some very young patricians left to fend for themselves in Tempus and all available girls are older than them , and in my new version I've had 1 boy and 4 girls born in the first round - what is up with that? I think my new computer is sexist

taliah~

I'm kind of regretting having them introduced so soon (pretty much all of my sims have at least one *Simname howls* fear at any given time so having them on lot or having visitors on their lot is kind of a nightmare. Each sim from one werewolf parent has a 50% chance of being born a werewolf (I cheat to make them a werewolf upon reaching their teens. I roll for this on the teen birthday) and an additional 50% chance of being a dormant werewolf (if they are savaged by an adult relative. I only roll this when the sim is actually savaged. If they fail this roll they die. I plan on pretty much only using this for knowledge non werewolves or if there appears to be no wolves in the next generation). If any other sims are savaged they automatically die.I may add in a roll for sims with grandparents who are werewolves who are savaged but I'm only on the second generation of werewolves at the moment so it hasn't really come up yet. I'm surprised you didn't get plantsims at least in the neanderthal era, this time I have been lucky but in most of my other attempts I had a few.

I haven't added a single CAS sim yet. I've had to be very careful with marriages so far and I pretty much assigned everyone to ranks based on who they could marry rather than wealth but it looks like it will all work out if I ignore some large age differences and most of my sims survive.

Awhile back I did the maths and with four couples, each having 3 surviving children, one of whom marries each of the other families. If a child of each of those couples marry one child from each unrelated couple the fourth generation can marry without any problems. So as long as you don't completely lose more than one family (I had two families nearly completely wiped out early on) and you're careful with marriages it is possible. I've copied my notes from when I worked it out below in case anyone's interested. It can be done but it's quite easy to mess it up, especially if you completely lose a family or two (or have the families that breed like crazy in the second generation also breed like crazy in the third generation, then everyone ends up related/married)

Say we start with four couples, A, B, C and D.
Once the second generation marries we have AB, AC, AD, BA, BC, BD, CA, CB, CD, DA, DB and DC
Each of those families has two families to marry into. When the third generation marry you have ABxCD, ABxDC, ACxBD, ACxDB, ADxBC, ADxCB, BAxCD, BAxDC, BCxAD, BCxDA, BDxAC, BDxAC, BDxCA etc
So who can their children marry?
Let's look at ABxCD. If you look a little closer the children of all the families with AB in their name are cousins, same with all those with CD. However the children of those BA and AB only have the founders from A and B as common ancestors. The founders are actually their great grandparents which makes them unrelated enough to marry.

I agree when it comes to age gaps. If a nearly elder sim looks like a 20yr old who's to blame us for confusing them? They don't bother me as much as they used to tbh. Wanting my favorite elderly sim to keep having pretty babies (why do all my pretty or interesting couples die early?) kind of outweighed the weirdness of marrying him to someone younger than his son (and then to her youngest sister when she died).

I hate it when that kind of thing happens. Sure it adds drama but it does get repetitive after awhile.

I think I've had one play through without vast gender differences, this time it's been pretty good but I've still had more girls every generation so far.

As to my dilema I have most of a round to work it out so I'll see how I like the existing couples and then work something out. I would prefer to have the slaves/plebians marry slaves/plebians since I have more upper class sims at the moment.

I've updated my blog. This part's called 'Life Without Adults' where the teens are getting used to living without adults. It's not nearly as smooth as they'd dreamed of. Check out A Hitch in Time for the full story and pictures.

*struggling to keep on the straight and narrow* LoL XD now I really want werewolves it sounds like so much fun! *spoiled child* In my original challenge I did have ONE plantsim - not sure if she ever made it online - but I didn't want them so I fixed her straight away; pretty sure I had just been playing with them not long before and was kind of over them - for all their cuteness with that pollen of happiness thing and sprouting uber cute toddlers at will XD to keep them away I just used kids and teens to spray the plants. Now I have the ladybug houses to keep that problem down thinking that would be more realistic than manmade insecticide =/ that's my theory and I'm sticking with it anyhooo~

Thanks for that info *saves that immediately!* I'm really really wanting to stick with just the original families so hopefully that works for me. I think it was the "let anyone marry whoever they feel like and then let them breed like crazy" thing that stuffed me up =/ probably... (definitely!)

How quick is it to play through a round just starting Neanderdal Era? oh for the love of just five...

@samantha_kathy - exciting stuff! I do love a well placed lightning strike

taliah~

Heh, sounds like I'm going to have to get over my hate of age gaps if I want my neighbourhood to prosper! It won't be the end of the world if I have to introduce some CAS sims (I was thinking of making a Zeus/Jupiter for the Roman stage anyway, he'll go around impregnating random women just as he does in classic mythology, haha) but it'll be nice if the majority of them are descended from the original 5 couples so i'll keep your tips in mind, lbsgirl! You've certainly got it down to a science :P

samantha_kathy, I love your take on this challenge! Very creative, and having 8 sims all partying away on one lot must be a lot of fun.

I'm on my 3rd round now, and so many deaths! One father was killed, and then his ghost frightened his poor grieving wife to death. Their twins had just reached the teenage years, so luckily there was no visit from the social worker. It throws off my plan of marrying them both off to the same boy, though. (I have way too many girls, so polygamy seems like a plan.) They have to look after their little siblings so they can't move out! I suppose I could have him move in with them instead, though I was initially planning on having him inherit his parent's land.

Have also discovered echo's farming stuff, so I'm excited to introduce farming to my game even without seasons. I'm planning on bringing it in when I reach the second generation, as if they've "discovered" farming :D

I finally have my ToT blog up to date, heh. Currently in the middle of my 3 round! Here it is: http://katsimsblog.tumblr.com/

I've not kept a blog/story alongside my sims before, but I'm glad to be doing it now It keeps me interested, and I have a feeling that having it all written down will be helpful in jogging my memory once the population starts growing! Already I'm finding it useful in remembering what the heck all these babies are called

I've used it to work out the gender ratios of the 2nd gen, and as it turns out there's 9 boys, 9 girls! There was a lot of girls born initially, followed by a lot of boys, so I think most of the girls are going to be taking on much younger husbands! I'm a little sad it's all ended up so neat and tidy (I want polygamy!), but the 1st generation are far from finishing with their baby-making, so the possibility is still there :D

Plantsims do stop being fun quite quickly without the sun lamps, by the time I got the plantsims from my last attempt in a good enough mood to listen to me the sun was nearly setting lol.

@Palhoncho you could always just marry one of the girls to the original spouse. You could always just wait for a younger sibling to grow up and then move them out. The prospect of farming must be exciting I always struggle with names as well, I wish I took better notes in the first era. Lucky! Even gender ratios are good even if they have a bit of an age gap. You could always kill a few boys and have polygamy if you really wanted to. Your updates bring back so many memories of the neanderthal era So many deaths and so much drama. One difference I've noticed between our games is that twins in your game seem to get along, in my game multiples tended to murder one another in the neanderthal era.

Looking back on my notes I had 36 kids born in the second generation (two families only managed 3 or 4 kids but the others had around 10). Just 13 boys and a whopping 23 girls. 60% however died before reaching adulthood. With a really uneven gender ratio and such a high death rate no wonder I don't have all that many households.

I've started using the radience lighting system and a seperate program to take pictures. I'm honestly amazed at the difference. At the moment I'm about two and a half rounds into the Roman Era, making slow progress towrds the dark ages.

Aaahhh, why does everyone starts getting active here again just as I'm off for a vacation in Japan. >_< But it's still nice to get an insight in all of your challenges again. I don't really have anything new to tell though as I haven't gotten around building my roman hood with all the vacation preparation and, of course, the actual vacation. But yes, blogs are great because you can look back and see how far you've come and new computer + lightening mod + fraps = amazing.
I've only gotten plant sims at the end of the neanderthal era, so until now they did not have much time to annoy me. =P But I might allow them to have kind of a rite (like making a sacrifice to a sun god) to refill their sun need during the night in the roman era. I'm not sure yet, though, because they already have a lot of advantages compared to normal sims. And does anyone know if they can actually die when their sun need is low for too long? Or only if one of the other 2 needs is low, too? Until now I've only had one of them become unconcious.

Off for a good night of sleep on my futon!

@lbsgirl24 haha, siblings in my games always tend to get along well! Perhaps because I push them to play with each other if their fun levels are looking low, although for the most part they befriended each other without my interference. (Or maybe because I'm very close to my own brother and tend to romanticize sibling relationships a bit?) I had a lot of fun playing Angela and Lilith Pleasant from Pleasantview though, so it'd definitely be cool to have some enemy twins for a change. There's three whole sets of twins in my game so far, so it's not too late!

Very jealous of all you Roman era folks! I did a class in classical civilisation at school and it was always my favourite, I have tons of plans for Rome already. (I'm going to make an Ancient Egypt subhood alongside it, and possibly have a big political Roman/Pharaoh romance akin to Mark Antony/Cleopatra.)

I don't think plantsims are particularly difficult in Neandersim Times. If one of mine passes out or nearly does so, once its daytime, I send them to shower, if I can then make them fish. Usually there's someone else to fish with them, so they gain sun and love at the same time. If I couldn't send them to shower, I just wait for them to fish for a few hours then send them to do that and send them right back to fishing until their sun meter is full again. Then I try to keep them outside for the remainder of the day to avoid a repeat. This is probably the reason why my plantsim families are the richest since excess fish get sold off in my game. I wonder how different my game might be if I stockpiled the fish until later? Hmm.... I really should get back to playing... ~VP

I suppose the sibling thing is probably just a play-style thing but then most of my sims aren't overly nice so that may also have something to do with it. I'm ahving so many issues with converting the bmps from FRAPS to pngs so the next update may be a while. Funnily enough my plantsims got really rich as well.

One of my sims was killed by their brother today, whoops. Looks like some of my siblings don't get along great, either!

Man, I am officially addicted to playing this challenge. I find myself up at ridiculous hours thinking "just one more family round", much to the annoyance of my parents. I suppose it helps that it's summer and I have nothing better to do, hehe. At the rate I'm going, I should reach gen 2 this weekend, which is exciting. I'm looking forward to it since I'll be able to introduce farming

Also looking forward to Roman times a lot, I have a great set of rules regarding the gods I'm working on. I've always loved Greek and Roman mythology so I'm going to make a few of the Roman gods as custom townies. (I want them to be a more "random" force rather than something I control, plus it makes them effectively immortal!) Sims can befriend them and get certain befits from it (their "blessing"), and even have romantic relationships with them. Of course, if the god aren't happy with a Sim, the Sim will be punished in some cruel way. Usually death, but in some cases they might destroy their home, or kill family members? I'm still brainstroming the system. If anyone has any other ideas for blessings/punishments, let me know!

Reading some of the great ideas other people have had, I'm a bit disappointed I didn't come up with a bit more culture, tradition and religion for my cavesims. I really dig the stories with matriarchal tribes, spiritual beliefs, and all that good stuff. It's not too late I guess, but I kind of dived in without planning anything, whoops. So much regret!

I know the addicted feeling. It must be very exciting

Sounds really interesting I can't wait to see how you play it. I'm thinking of replacing the Colosseum deaths with a offering of the lives of elderly slaves (since killing children or adults makes little sense if I want to keep my population going) to some deity or other. Perhaps a cat deity. I did have a bunch of punishable by death things planned out and a hunger games themed Colosseum thing planned but my population can't really support it.

I find that coming up with culture beforehand tends to take some of the fun out of it. Any culture my sims have had in previous attempts have been due to events in the game.

In my first attempt the penguin from seasons keeps wandering past the houses despite the season being set to summer. My sims called it the illogical penguin and had to feed it fish. (Come to think of it nearly all my games have followed this religion since) After one family couldn't afford the payments and started to die from sickness I decided to kill a sim each time the penguin walked past and was not fed. It also helped to keep earnings from fishing down since they fed the penguin so much. In the ice age when fish stocks were low my sims instead built shrines (snowmen) for the penguin.

In one of my games where I played a matriachy with complicated marriage customs it was due to a crippling shortage of girls and the fact that only six or seven girls lived long enough to marry and two of them died soon after (there were at least 40 kids born).

It's not too late. Pay attention to the strange little things your sims do, make odd occurrences part of their culture.

Today is a monumentous occasion in my game. The recessive genes are finally starting to come through from dark haired couples Yay.