I'm planning to do a BACC-esque challenge where I build a city from absolutely nothing. They'll have to chop down trees for wood, make their own glass for windows, hunt and gather their own food, etc. (using a lot of mods, obviously) and eventually build it up into a modern-day city.

I only want to create sims in CAS once in the beginning and then I'd like my playables to populate the town on their own. I won't be using any townies. But I'm concerned about having too few sims, forcing everyone to marry their first cousins, or having too many, giving me 50+ households to manage. For those who have built neighborhoods from scratch before, what seems like a good number of starting sims to make this happen?

Because my sims are going to be living in prehistoric times, I plan to have a relatively high mortality rate in the beginning because they have no medical care. I'll roll dice to determine who lives and who dies, but I'm expecting 25% to 50% of the kids won't make it to adulthood, just like real life in prehistoric times. And then adults will have chances of dying on hunts and from illnesses and so on. I'll counter this to some extent with no birth control, so they will have a lot of children. But the bottom line is I'd like to have the smallest population that I can to start without everyone becoming interrelated too quickly.

I realize there's a lot of chance involved here, but I'm interested to hear any insights you all might have.

The forst thing I would do is not restrict using CAS to just on the start and create a few founding couples to move in wthout any children to start with and have my town set up with the community service center as an outdoor farmer's market and a homestead lot on the largest lot size for moving in that first of my couples to get settled in.I started my BACC with just the Jankowskys in Dodge arriving in the spring of 1840 and the Hobbs family arived a year later.More couples are coming over the next few years and they'll be starting to work on getting ready to have children soon after that.
I've got an apocalypse challenge planned that will start in the 16th century and they'll have borth control though it wasn't always used and it sometimes failed.I start BACC games in historical times like Dodge in the 1840's and Durango in 1820 while Rapid City is to start in 1825.Riverdale is being started in 1520 on the East Coast of what is North America on the Coast of Northern Maine back in the 16th century.People were less prone to getting sick and tended to be healtheir though they did still die from accidents resulting in injuries more often and women could die in childbith and the baby suvived.They likely had froms of birth control in those times and used to make sure they were not having babies before they were ready and to stop it from happening if it wasn't safe because the young lady wasn't herself finished growing up.

Why would they have to marry their first cousins? Do you have no townies?

No, I'm using a clean neighborhood with no townies. I'm creating these sims like they're the first humans on earth, basically.

My Shape Island hood does not interact romantically with townies at all. Now I started the hood with 50 adult singles which quickly took took me down to around 30 occupied lots of single adults and married couples. I'm more than 100 Sim days into it now (using very close to Maxis lifespan) with second generation dying out and first of generation 5 being born. Thus far I haven't had any issue with finding eligible non-related potential spouses for my Sims.

First cousins have common grandparents. So I would guess that 20-25 households might be barely enough to keep the intermingling of families with common grandparents from happening.

Doing some rough calculations (which will vary according to your child mortality rate and your birthrate...) 24 non-related families starting out means 12 non-related families after one generation of marriage and then 6 non-related families after two generations of marriage (assuming perfect pairings). Are the kids of 5 other families enough for kids of one family to choose from? Assuming 3 living children per family (something more than 2 is required to grow your hood) then that's 15 Sims. So after two generations, each living Sim should have a pool of around 15 non-first-cousins to choose from but probably less. And if you plan on having the marriages based on mutual attraction or other factors, then the eligible pool drops further.

It'll vary according to your birthrate and death rate. One advantage of using townies is they do provide an additional genetic pool which you don't have to play or manage. As I said, I don't use them in my hood, but I've also had to start reigning in my Sims' libidos as the number of lots (and Sims) started growing beyond my enjoyment. After 100 days (I call them year-days in my hood since a day is approximately a year with my lifespan) I'm closing in again on 50 played lots in rotation but now with close to 200 Sims.

Another thing to consider is using a shorter default lifespan to start with to reflect the hardship of being the first settlers. Then sometime after the families have gained a foothold and show signs of prosperity, reward the future generations by increasing the lifespan.

24 singles - with 2 for each star sign.

I did Tinsel Town with 20 people-10 women and 10 men.
For the problem of 'first cousin' marriage, I've imported a couple of professors and the nanny (who's in the same age range as the 2nd generation). The town started with no townies and these were generated.

From those 20 it grew to something like 60 people, with more coming in the 3rd generation.

But: this is a modern neighborhood, and thus the death rate has been very, very low-unlike your scenario, so it might be wise to increase the number to perhaps 24 or even 50 people (reducing it to 25 couples or fewer) to keep the overall survival rate from dropping them to less than reproductive numbers.

I'm with FranH here. Regarding your death rate, you should start with many sims.

I started Bonneville from scratch with 12 sims (6 males and 6 females) and no townies at the beginnings. It's a sort of BACC-integrated hood.

I later added 8 townies (4 males and 4 females) mostly for pairing purposes. They're always 8.
I also have a low death rate. After 94 simdays, I now have 90+ sims in 29 households. The second generation is going to dye of old age soon and the 4th generation already started.

StarTrek taught me you need 30 unrelated couples to get a diverse genepool going. Although the Sims don't have the problem of inbred genetics, I'd take that as a rough number.

But you could also start with less Sims and get people moving in as the town grows (like in a BACC, where you earn CAS points to make new Sims).

@enebya _That's about like how I'm building my town in my BACC only I have it that the service center has to be upgraded before more sims move in and I have only been moving one couple in each spring so far.I require upgrades to allow toddlers to be at the service center before couples are starting to try for babies and they also have to get their family home built first before starting to try for babies.

Someone asked a very similar question in another thread. This is what I wrote there:


Now, I don't think I would run into problems with marrying 1st cousins, at least not for a while, if I continued the hood (I got to generation 2 and was pairing up gen 3)--but then I was pretty vigilant about my pairings, and I planned who would marry who just to avoid this problem. I had a detailed list of sims in the neighborhood and I was strict about who got to breed--heirs and spares only. I have to say though, that that was pretty unfun and sucked the joy out of playing the new generation a bit. That hood was a test hood, mostly just a way for me to iron out my ideas for an eventual BACC or integrated hood and it taught me a lot. When I stopped playing that hood, I was looking for ways for sims to meet organically, form their own relationships, and have some input in their romantic lives.

I think some of the other simmers who've posted know about more about genetics and starting a long running hood, so I would consider their recommendations a lot. However, for me, I would probably lean more towards something like Essa's hood because I really don't like big hoods. As I said in my previous post, I just start to feel too disconnected. Plus I want to get to the end of my rotation. That's when I plan to do things like hood building. So the way I'm leaning towards setting things up now is to make my own townies and move them in periodically. The original BACC did this and I can see why now. My hood is going to be later in time--modern day or late 19th century, so what I came up with was two systems, a "return point" and boarding house.

I'll try not to get too detailed, since you only asked about how many families to start with and I tend to be wordy, but basically I wanted a way for sims to get things I didn't feel like having them make. Or things they couldn't make--though Sun&Moon have made a number of sets since I did my test hood and their metalsmithing and refine and shine sets in particular would be a great help. Anyway, with my Return Point, I was leaning towards making this a subhood, but it could be just a lot on the edge of town. Sims could travel there, buy things they couldn't get in the hood, and mingle with other sims. If it was a subhood, then using the game's townies would make sense, storywise--I could use it as another mini town, or it could be a military base, etc. I could send outcasts there, too. Any new CAS sims would be moved in there before being added to the main hood and I'd set them up, with skills, backstory, and money. I'd play them for a bit, develop relationships, etc., and probably let them shop and get some items to bring along, to symbolize them moving. So yeah, a Return Point gives me a lot of options to add sims, things, and story. The boarding house would just be an extension of that, and I'd use it no matter if my Return Point was an entire subhood or if it was a lot on the edge of town. Though if my Return Point was the lot, I'd probably have the boarding house run by a playable. Just like I have rules about making sure there is a mayor and a tax collector, etc., I would have someone or a household run the boarding house. This person would also probably run the school, now that I think about it, because in between move ins they'd have lots of extra space. Anyway, new sims would move into the boarding house for a while before getting their own households or marrying in somewhere else. Again, this gives new CAS sims time to build relationships and a bit of story. Skills can be randomized but it's hard to drop a new CAS sim with no history into an existing, bustling household in a way that makes sense. Anyway, you can follow the BACC guidelines and give yourself some townies to move in when you reach certain milestones, or you can plan to do it every so often, depending on your rotation. Either way, if you like smaller hood set ups, this seems to be the best option.

And you can have fun with it and create stories around different groups of people and why they're moving around and coming into your main hood. For a prehistoric hood you could say that a group of nomads decided to settle down, or a war or other conflict brings in new people into town, or a weather event like a flood or drought. Or you could start large but split them up at first--like maybe you start with 30 couples and you split them into three villages or subhoods. Each village could have different characteristics and traditions and style of dress. That way "new" sims would just be coming from these other parts of the world. You could add chances for if sims would move, too--like maybe spares have a chance to roam and choose to leave the subhood/village if they don't get married. Or you could set it up so that one group is your main and the others get played on a slower basis so that you have a pool of sims to draw from when you need new sims. Lots of possibilities.

...besides, in other times & places it was common for 1st cousins to marry, even brother/sister (Egypt royalty), and multiple husbands or wives.

I started Coral Bay with 12 founding couples, but more came later. I also have some self made townies and a few dormies and NPC's and I have added in some of them. I keep all my hood ageing. if you don't want any other sims to come in you would probably need double that if not more because they will quickly become related. if you don't mind marrying cousins then I guess it doesn't matter.

Unless your hood takes place in a very remote place I would not do away with all townies as it isn't realistic for no one at all to stumble across your sims. People travel and move and its normal for some ebb and flow to occur.

I found it easier to start with one couple settling into town in the spring and building a house on their homestead lot over that first spring and the summer before fall arrived and they'd also make sure there was a building for the farmer's market to move indoors before winter arrived.I'd tend to add a second couple as early as the following spring or wait another year and add them in the third spring.I'll have them setting up to start perparing for babies to begin arriving in town once there's at least four couples homesteading in town and also move in other families to make sure there's young children to eventually become marriage partners for the children born to the first couples.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I've tweaked my backstory a bit to be more in line with what I want. My sims are now going to be modern sims fleeing their old, dying planet to make a new life for themselves on an uninhabited planet (Plumbob II), but their spaceship crashes and vaporizes upon landing, destroying all of their gear and leaving only a few survivors who were lucky enough to fall out of the ship before it crashed. So now they're forced to live like primitive people and to procreate with one another to continue the sim race.

Based on what everyone's been suggesting, I'm thinking I'm going to start with 50 sims. I've randomized looks, personality, skills, interests, talent badges, hobbies, aspirations, etc. and broken them into 10 groups of three to six sims each. I still have to make some decisions about death rates and the resources each group is going to have access to on their home lots, but then I'm going to set them loose.

But it is not recommended for human beings, because as the royals showed us in several notable families, it's not a good thing.

Pixels don't suffer from such physical problems-just merely their family reunions tend to be messy affairs.

FranH; yes crazy royalty! And in Sims, total confusion when the game tries to figure out relationships!