I usually immediately switch to the loser's lot and kill them there. Mostly because if they die on a community lot then their decedents won't get haunted, and I like to torture my poor sims.
I've toyed with the idea of having them die on the lot of whoever killed them though, that way their graves would be "trophies" of a sort, and they'd haunt the lot of whoever killed them. I think it's the best plan, but already had a formula by the time I thought to start doing this.

Finally finished round three of my first generation (have barely played because of school). Thanks to everybody on here I am having much more success with ACR getting my sims pregnant. You can read updates at http://cjar4u.wix.com/bubblesandsims
The last play through of this round was a particularly crazy adventure, one that I've never experienced before. Darita Karr got sunstroke and because of that, all six of the Karr children were taken away by the social worker! :O Now Tumnal and Da'h are completely alone with no kids. If I found a way I would totally consider cheating some kids back in as I miss them so much. Oh well, life goes on I guess. Good way to control the population at least.
I'd love to hear if anybody has thoughts (or moral support for my tragic loss haha).

What you could do to get the children back is have another couple - who have never had their kids taken away - adopt from the ages groups the kids were. The kids that were taken away should be the first ones in the adoption cue. Then, you can use something like the simblender to transport the kids back to their own parents and add them back to the family tree. You probably need to change their last names back too, I think you can do that with the simblender as well.

As for preventing this from happening again, there is a no social worker hack out there. I use it, and it means that the social worker will never come. Children can be hungry, sun-stroked, or whatever, and the social worker never shows up. Be careful, though, as children can now die of hunger since they're not taken away! (Toddlers still can't die, though).

I use the no social worker hack, too.

I think until they get adopted, the kids still stay on the family tree, so you could probably get them back using the teleporter shrub (to bring them onto the lot and then add them to family again.) I haven't tested this myself, but it should work in theory?

I will experiment and see what can be done. I may try using Inge's Teleporter Cat as well, see if that does anything. I don't really want the parents to have too easy of a time getting their kids back though because I guess the point is they shouldn't come back but I'm being selfish >.<

Not selfish, just time-period consistent. Social workers (as depicted in the sims, where they take away children from bad parents) didn't exist until the 1800s at the earliest, although in most parts of the Western world it took until the early 1900s before any child protection laws were made. There was a lot of charity work, dating back to Ancient times, that helped the poor and thus also children, but parental control was absolute for many, many centuries.

I use a no social worker hack too. It's just more realistic especially for this challenge. That and in normal gameplay I tend to let needs drop pretty low before I take care of them, so I get a lot of pop-up warnings otherwise... ~VP

Without social workers, can toddlers theoretically die of hunger? I've killed them with the death creator before, just to test it, but I'm curious as to whether it can happen in the game

Also, I finally, FINALLY, completed round 6 of my challenge! It took months what with university work, haha. The Roman age is getting closer all the time though, which is exciting!

As far as I know, no, toddlers can't die of hunger. They'll go way into the red, but I've never had one die before.

If you don't want that family to get the kids back you could always have a family friend or something adopt the kids by teleporting them to the lot and adding them to household. This does keep their family ties intact. I also don't play with the social worker mostly because it's annoying to see ta sim's great uncle waltzing past the house still not a day older than he was fifty years ago.

I'm pretty sure toddlers can't starve as well.

Well I can highly recommend Inge's teleporter cat to anybody who needs kids back. All I had to do was summon them and then move them in and it was like they were never gone (except for the parents' memories). Which is basically what you all so kindly suggested to me.
I downloaded the nowelfare mod as well but I'm still not sure if I want to use it. With regards to historical accuracy, I was just going to pretend that any kids taken by the social worker were basically killed by an animal or abducted by a rival tribe. But I guess now I realize I'm not strong enough to part with them, at least not when every single one including the heir is taken away.

Oh man, that one set of orphaned twins I played whose (shared) husband was frightened to death by ghosts? Well, looks like both the twins were frightened to death by ghosts too, and now their toddlers are gonna have to raise themselves! It was probably tempting fate to ask if it was possible for toddlers to starve, haha.

I think I'm gonna have them live by themselves until the end of the round and then, on the last day, whoever walks past the lot will "discover" the poor things, and they'll be adopted by them! Adoption roulette, haha.

Oh and RE: nowelfare, I find about 50% of my kids die at some point anyway, usually due to in-fighting, so it'd be way too hard for me to do the challenge without it!

Since in my first challenge when taken away kids were walking past I actually started killing kids when their needs dropped into dangerous territory and say they died of heatstroke or starvation or whatever (a few of my families ran out of fish a few times). It was pretty hard to do but much more historically accurate and better when it came to time continuity. This only happened once or twice and that was a few challenges ago.

I think in my first generation I lost 60% of kids before they could have kids so the last thing I needed early on was a lower percentage making it to adulthood. I wouldn't mind losing some of the kids to the social worker to be honest but losing all of them for one child getting a little hungry was just too much.

Can I ask, does anybody use Trips/Quads and if so what settings do you have them at? I have 2% Quads, 6% Trips, 18% Twins but I already have 3 sets of twins and 2 sets of triplets out of 19 births. Seems like a lot. I thought I had put the percentage chances low enough.

I use the trips & quads mod, and I've got the settings on the numbers that are standard. I didn't fiddle with it at all. Personally, more kids would be welcome in my game. If I really have too many sims, I can always do a ROS to kills some of them off.

The natural maxis percentage for twins is 10% ... so anybody who installs trips and quads without adjusting the default percentages (25% for twins!) will have a looot more babies than they'd ever signed up for! ...Or rather, that they didn't double check to sign up for. 18% is better than 25%, and it lines up pretty well proportion to 6% and 2%.
Since I liked the maxis percentage for twins, and like realism... to a point (I want multiples sometime, game, even though it's not terribly realistic!), I looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multip...s_and_frequency real life chances and... adjusted them. So I usually have a 1 or 2 % chance of quadruplets, and a 3-6% chance of triplets.

No matter what, the chances are going to be higher than usual (can't have fractions of percentage chance). But if you fiddle the percentages to go above maxis 10, then you'll notice the disparity more than usual.

Sorry for my ignorance but what does ROS stand for?
Wow thanks that's very informative. I definitely like lots of kids but at the same time I want to control my population, and realism is always a nice goal to have. I use Hook's Randomizer on MATY to randomize a lot of things like Aspirations and whatnot, maybe I'll use it to get fractions of percentages for the chance to get quads/trips etc. and then just choose in game whatever the result is.

ROS stands for Random Occurence Scenario. Here's a really good explanation, including an example ROS file and play examples: http://plymouthfalls.wordpress.com/...ence-scenarios/ Make sure to check out the sim/household list as well as the neighborhood list (both in the same file on different pages). It's an awesome way to bring some random, fun events into your game to spice things up. And it forces you to be creative when trying to write a story, so it makes sense with what's come before. For ToT, you'll probably need to adapt it, or write your own list.

*cautious wave* Hello, I started this challenge a while back, found it to be too much, restarted, and then got busy with college. o_o; But now that I'm on break, I'm having more fun with it! I started with just three couples: One light-skinned and blond-haired, one dark-skinned and black-haired, and one with skins 2 and 3 and brown and red hair. I don't think I'm going to blog about it, but I may post the occasional update here if anyone's interested. =)
I look forward to simming with you all! n///n

I set my odds much lower than the original. I have quads at 1%, triplets at 2% and twins at I think 12% or something. I like having the chance of triplets and quads but I like them to be quite rare. I used to have the odds around 2% quads, 3% triplets, 15% twins but after the fourth set of quads were born in game (plus one set of triplets) I toned it down a little.

With my original odds 1/5 births would result in multiples and 1/20 births would be triplets or quads which both seem a little high for my liking. Hopefully the next time triplets or quads turn up in my game it will be a happy occasion rather than one that makes me wonder why triplets and quads is out to get me.


Awhile back I was considering writing a test of time ROS for the game. I might see if I can dig up my old files if anyone's interested.

ROS may be just what I need to make my challenge more interesting for me. Again I might generate a list and then use Hook's Randomizer. lbsgirl24 (don't know what to call you) if you have the files I'd be more than a happy to take a look at them to see how I can incorporate it into my game. But if not that's fine, I wouldn't have a problem coming up with my own list.

Welcome faerie! Your challenge sounds interesting. Will you be adding more sims later? Because if not, the grandkids of the founders might have an impossible time of finding someone to marry.

@lbsgirl24 I plan to write a ROS specifically for use in ToT challenges, after I've finished my ToT Challenge Variation Ideas document (2 more time periods to go!). Unfortunately, December is a really bad month for me, as life is exceedingly busy this time of year. Maybe in January we can collaborate on the ROS document?

Thank you! I am actually adding three CAS/Townies per Neanderthal generation - one for each of my founding families heirs to marry. I'm playing it like my founders came from a large tribe where their water hole was drying up, so these six found a new water hole. Some of their friends visit occasionally, and the heirs of the three main families each fall in love with one of them. I'm planning to stop that come Roman Era, though. All in-bred from there onwards, hopefully.

I would look forward to seeing that very much. Just so I can add some variation in my game if necessary.
Sounds good. And yes please update us especially if something wacky happens in your challenge ^^