I've been doing other stuff, but I did get in a short round of the houses. I think I mentioned I was somewhat further than the update showed. I've actually got several teens now, in fact. And what is probably the youngest of gen B are toddlers. I've been judiciously elixiring my founders so they wouldn't die when their grandkids were still babies or whatever, but I think I probably could've given them less. Eh, whatever. Current adults are due some elixir, too... just one dose each I think, but we'll see how that works out.
I really need to figure out how I'm handling college this time around. It was easy to stick the three kids from Gen A into one chapter's worth of college, but this time there's more kids, population pressure in one house, and couple instances of large age gaps, so I might do the elder kids' college as part of a regular update, maybe grouped together in the end or beginning of a chapter. We'll see.
I'm actually separating out household pictures and notes into separate folders as of the last update, too, so that if I end up with a lot of stuff, I can concentrate on the main line and do cousins and such as smaller updates. (Not that I'm taking any fewer pictures of cousins, but so far at least I've still got plenty of HD space, and in a couple gens I'll start pulling pics off the computer onto CD or something.)
Some people asked if I'm going to continue to play the whole neighborhood rotation-style, which yes, I will answer in the actual comment thread, but I've been thinking about how I want to handle it so I'm going to ramble a bit here.
The quick answer is: If I can keep the population down enough, maybe.
So... realistically, if I let my Sims breed as much as they want (or even close) while I'm going for 26 generations, my neighborhood will explode long before I reach it. So I need to limit the breeding of kids to some degree at least. Not to mention what it'd do to the length of time between updates.
ACR loves giving me extra kids. I will probably do something to lower the chances of Try for Baby... I honestly don't recall if there's a global option for that or not (I'd have to look) but I can do it house by house if necessary.
What I may do is limit any given couple to one kid unless they've got a kid-related LTW. (Excluding the heir, of course.) I'm not sure, because of course we all know I'm addicted to toddlers, but... it'd probably be smart as a goal.
One thing I'm definitely doing is figuring out who a) doesn't need to go to college (college takes me long enough with only three or four kids, let alone a dozen or two), and b) who probably doesn't need kids at all.
Category A is hard to define. For instance, I was going to skip college for a couple Sims in gen B and have them go open me a business, but then I was realizing I might need to send one for a LTW. I don't remember which careers require a degree and need to look that up. (Just Uni careers?) But basically, if I think I might use them to run a business, they don't have a LTW that needs college, they don't have a LTW that would be far easier to achieve in college (20 BF/Lovers, for instance), and they aren't, say, Knowledge Sims or something else where I think they'd really miss out on the concept, I might just take them straight to adult.
Category B is easier. First, Romance Sims will only get kids if they marry someone who wants them or are the heir... and my Romance Sims will probably rarely get married. Pleasure Sims who want 50 First Dates are also going to skip marriage and kids. Any Sim that rolls a pet-related LTW gets no kids unless they marry someone who wants them... and I may even have them skip marriage, depending. And a certain percentage of the kids will end up not marrying for whatever reason (like, for instance, the ones I mention in the para above).
And once it's Sims-legal for kids to intermarry, I'm going to try to encourage it outside the main line. So 2nd cousins or whatever are fair game to keep the population more steady.
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Once you can start intermarrying, it'll probably help cut down on some of the population explosion. I think the first two or three generations make it seem like the game is going to explode, but after that, you can try for closer to zero level population growth.
ReplyDeleteIt can also help to have sims 'room' together. My Parker/Thompson/Toyanaga house would have been much more frustrating if I'd given them each their own home. Since the house was almost full, it kept Comet and Andrew from throwing another baby after the twins. It's also more fun for me to play fuller houses (though this one is a little extreme. It now has ten sims and two pets).
I have a harder time with large houses, which is why my Uni students tend to get private houses, or only one roomie. In some ways it probably does slow me down, but it doesn't feel slower, and I don't constantly feel like I'm missing something smoeone does while paying attention to someone else.
ReplyDeleteNow, the folks who aren't likely to have kids, moving them in together is definitely a possibility. But... eh, we'll see. Maybe now that I've gotten over my ingrained desire to micromanage every moment of every Sim's every day (I still do a fair amount but I'm more likely to leave certain Sims alone) it'll be easier. I'm even thinking of founding a couple family Greek houses (either one for each gender, or maybe one studious, one party, not sure).