Ah thats kinda like what i wanna do! I wanna have little stories for each generation (not necessarily with every person, but maybe focusing on a few each generation with their own stories) and then also have the regular pages with all of the information on the sims in each gen. Not sure if im gonna do religions yet, but i still have a long way to go since i just restarted~

For everyone who doesn't want to do a lot of setup or has never worked with excel, you could try using the sim tracker http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=464379 It's great for tracking things like genetics, personality, age, households (members, current season/day, money), skill points, friends and such. There's also the sims2db http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=107994 which I liked using, but the problem is that it's only updated up to OFB. Which means you can't track things from newer expansion packs, you don't have the newer turn on/offs and so on.

I also finished writing the post for the first round of my newest attempt on my wordpress. The posts will be published during the next week.

I read your entries. They were fun. :D

I was using the Sim Tracker (and still use it to see who ages up on a particular day. Especially helpful when you haven't played in a while and want to know when the infant will age) But with so may sims, its getting laggier and laggier to load a page of the tracker, so I'm using excel to keep track of stuff instead. Especially since I usually just want to check a tiny thing, or compare it to another sim. ~VP

I use notebooks, but sometimes I forget to write stuff. Same thing with the tracker, I just forget to update the thing. XD

Sometimes my best reference source are the rounds I blogged.

A few posts should be up in about 20 minutes. I schedule them sometimes so too much time doesn't pass between posts even if I haven't played in a couple of days.

I always have the sim tracker open when playing and add some information (mostly adding new sims) while playing.
Then at the end of each round, I make a 'complete' update of the sim tracker and my excel sheets.

ugh so my game isnt starting :c
i think its prob some cc i recently downloaded so now i have to go thru *everything* (눈-눈

so far for TOT tho ive gotten thru the first round of 4 of the families~!

Edit:: got it to workk~
So just a little run down of the families: All their family names have something to do with an element bc i figured that would be a cool way to separate them so, so far i have--
Aeris (Air): Hava and Beval, children: Ellil and Tuuli
Onatah (earth): Nuna and Damek, children: Mitja and Yegor
Neci (Fire): Shula and Virochan, cildren: Azar and Tzila
Salila (water): Ambu and Ato, no children yet <-- im on this fam for first round right now
Jana (plant): Zuza and Rimon; also no children yet

I wil prob make a blog next week or the week after since thats the last week b4 finals so you all can see pics~ i love how some of them came out!

Hey all! I don't know if anyone has noticed it, but I've stopped uploading things on my blog. This doesn't mean that I don't play... I do. I just lost the motivation to blog about it, since there's a lot going on in my real life. Not bad stuff though!

I started a new ToT (again, yeah) with my progressive Neanderthal rules that I uploaded earlier, now a bit modified to be a little easier since I noticed they could be stuck on some steps for generations if they are unlucky. This time it's the traditional five starting families in a single village, and I let them all have their personal progress, meaning that just because one family discovered gathering, it doesn't mean that they all get access to it.

Two of the families have already reached fishing and the other three are still at gathering, which are steps three and two, so it's still very even. The family who reaches the Roman Era first will be Emperors and patricians, so it's a bit of a race

I just had my very first quads, and with the twin toddlers they had from before it was a round from hell... It didn't get better from the mother dying by childbirth (I'm trying out playing with healthscores this time) and the father always having the fear of changing diapers either. Poor daddy Blaze had too many breakdowns to count

I love that some of you have started blogging, I'm reading everything I find!

I definitely noticed! Lol I've been waiting for a week for the next update! Lol

I started a ToT to compliment my other challenge hood, the Legacity... So far the founding families... Or clans, have been made and moved into the hood. I might document it online. I'm not sure yet though. I'm planning on taking a lot of pics of the development of Ralibabai in case though.

Is there any learning from each other with your rules? Like, one family discovers gathering and one member of another family marries into them or befriends them, would that other family then 'learn' how to gather from the first family?

While that makes a lot of sense, I personally don't play it that way because I want to keep it a "race". I just let the knowledge of one family spread to the other branches of the same family. If anyone wants to play with the rules I posted, it's completely up to them on that part

By the way, if anyone wants to see the modifications I made to the rules after trying the first steps out, just tell me here or in a message and I'll update you! I noticed that the original version could take much too long time for the amount of steps there are. Personally, I don't feel like being in the Neanderthal Era 5+ generations, so

I'm interested in seeing the changes if you don't mind. :D

I second that.

Of course I don't mind
I've only reached farming so far, but it was the first two steps that I noticed were too long, so to not repeat the whole thing, I'll just post the new hunting and gathering rules. You can find the rest on page 108!

Hunting:
1 daily hike, men & teenage boys (each alone. Not everyone has to go hunting if the first sim is successful, unless you want them to)
Successful: Filled hunger for all sims
Unsuccessful: Half filled hunger for all sims (if two sims hunt and are unsuccessful, the family hunger gets filled half + other half = completely filled anyway)
10 successful hikes

The difference here is that the successful hunts no longer have to be "in a row". The very first time I played this I got lucky and someone actually managed to get 10 successful in a row immediately, but I also noticed that some families reached generation 3 without being close to the next step, which was very frustrating (especially when they reached 9 and then failed!).

Gathering:
Allows 1 fruit tree, 1 daily dig for treasure
Water discovered from digging (allows sinks), 1 harvest

Here I changed the number of harvests. To get only one can take up to 4 rounds, which means that it could potentially take 12 rounds to pass this step (originally they needed 3), which is just too long in my opinion.

Fishing and farming are working fine so far, and looking at the rules I think the next steps will work out too. If they don't and I change anything, I'll tell you!

I tried the older hunting rules with the 10 successful ones in a row and none of my households had it in 5 rounds. So I agree that 10, but not in a row would work better in we want to leave the Neanderthal era before we become old and gray ourselves. lol

I've been using the CC tress for the harvests , I forgot it took that long with the original trees.

I agree that it will be faster with these changes. Thanks for sharing.

What i've done is figure out which families have best friends in other families (that aren't considered family) and they then have an alliance. They can trade, pass along knowledge in your case, and form most of their friendships/marriages with those they have alliances with.

So.... I think now I really should prepare for the Simcalypse. :/

I decided to rub the lamp Awhida has had since forever in her inventory and this happened.

The Genie is not there, but the message appears. *sigh*

Edit: Another household before the Fiskmans also got a genie lamp, so I went and rubbed it. The genie appeared. I thought it had to do with the "repair game" option, but when I went back to the Fiskman's and rubbed it again, no genie appeared. So I... moved out the sims into another lot and...

@Lisrouge, glad everything worked out!

I just finished a household where I had my second quads. Once again, the mother died from it and it was a complete mess She had 7 children before the quads, one of whom died, so when the babies came they had 10 children in the household. Two teenagers, but anyway. It was awful and I really feel the need to vent a little... I'm starting to have second thought about this triplets and quads mod :P
I'm starting to get worried about the amount of households too, I know I said that I wanted many but now I have to eat my own words. Generation 1 was 5 households, generation 2 twelve. I don't even want to know how many there will be for generation 3, I'm just hoping it won't double again... But it probably will. This sucks, because I don't want to start over again, but I also don't want to kill sims on purpose and I don't know how to solve this Does anyone have some advice?

sweetie, you've got quads (and possibly triplets. I'll freely admit that I haven't been keeping up with everyone else's games) being born. Your generations aren't going to be small. My current Gen 2 is still pairing itself off and thus creating new households for me, and I'm already at 15. I expect to be in the 20s before Gen 2 finishes, then Gen 3 will start and everything will explode again. Thankfully at that point I switch eras, but still there will be a lot of households to play when I start the Grecian Era. But at least then I'll have different classes to play and every single household won't be the same thing, just with different sims.

But if you want less households, nothing says you have to have just one family on a lot. If you wanted to keep a set of siblings together on a lot and add their spouses, go right ahead. It would cut down on amount of households, and without a hack to allow more than 8 sims, would also slow your population growth. ~VP

@abcbok, Thanks!

I feel your pain. lol You could do what VioletPadfoot suggested. But make sure they are brother-sister siblings, and that they are straight, because if not then.... this and this could happen. lol

Also remember there will be coliseum fights and then when the dark ages come the vikings and the plague will also come. This are the thoughts that keep me going. XD Although, right now I don't care if they keep giving me triplets since , for now I hope, I don't have to start over.

Thanks guys. I'm gonna take a small break from playing ToT until I know how to continue

It's between so long since I've had the time to play Sims! I guess I read this to get my fix, lol. Good luck and happy holidays to everyone.

@abcbok I don't know how you currently handle these things, but here a few ideas:
You could roll for death by childbirth every time a woman gives birth. Either for every birth (once if it's a single birth, twice for twins, ...) or just for the last baby from each pregnancy (woman with no other children gives birth to triplets, you roll with the odds for the 3rd birth). If you set lower death rates for the first births and then higher ones, you can more or less control how many children your sims have. For example just giving them no chance to survive the 6th baby born. (Which still could allow them to get 5 + 4 = 9 children though. XD )

You could take T&Q out of your game until you feel you've got your population under control. (Or lower the odds.)

You could add monastries/convents to your game, where only adults of one gender are allowed. That way you can cut down on households and the amount of sims in your next generation. If you have for example one lot for each gender with around 5 sims, you have 4 lots less to play.

I've been trying to build pools on my lots for the Emperor/Pharaoh family (apartment base lots) and every time i try to add onto an existing pool or try to save with pools built on the lot, my game crashes. i tried before and after moving my families onto the lot. Anything you guys may be able to suggest??