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Tips for Family Play
giallorossi
Posts: 167 Member
I have never tried the family play. I am not really good at controlling two Sims at once, so I figured I would fail at controlling a whole family. But, I'm going to start a legacy challenge, and I'd be very grateful if you guys would give me some tips about family play and the legacy challenge. Thanks in advcance. 
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Please learn, I'd like to know if there is any family play.
Thank you. Will keep it in mind.
Toddlers would make a lovely addition to game, but just because there are no toddlers in game, it doesn't mean families don't exist. A family isn't only made out of a toddler and two parents. An adult child and two elderly parents make a family too, or a child, and a single parent, for that matter. In this thread I started I was asking for tips, not for smarty comments about how TS4 doesn't have toddlers. But, thank you anyway for taking time to say something.
Try taking a family picture.
- Take advantage of traveling if you feel overwhelmed by keeping your sims´ needs up. Take one or two to a venue and the rest of the family will replenish their needs on their own while you are away.
- Turn off Free Will. It is better to have your non-controlled sims stand around idle than having to deal with the nonsense they will initiate on their own. Especially when it comes to cooking and blocking the kitchen. Once you are comfortable with playing a larger household you can always give them back their Free Will.
- Sims react to everything within their line of sight. A single bathroom can be used by more than one family member (and thus save time in the morning) if you place some walls that block line of sight between toilet and shower.
Just don't grow the family to big to fast and take advantage of a stay at home grandparent.
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I now manage 3 sims and its easy, not that the number is high but i had 6 before as well and 4 of them teenagers that needed friends, a story, boy/girl friends and daily activities to match their personality. But when i had them as babies one by one it really didnt matter and it wasnt that hard.
Their story plays itself and you just go with it
Btw your comment on different types of families is awesome. I also like having a single parent with a kid/teen and it's really fun to juggle being a good parent with having a successful career.
My only tip for you is not to worry about controlling them all at once or even controlling them all the time. You can leave the others on freewill while you play/focus on one.
This also helps the Sims do things you might not expect- shows their personality, too.
So, don't stress about having more than one Sim and hope for some unexpected interactions when not controlling them.
Oh! And another one: Manage your population so culling and townie-creation don't throw your game off. Here's some things to consider:
- Use the MC Command Center mod to stop culling if you want to be able to see genealogy long-term.
- You can also use it to prevent culling of townies (who might be your Sim kids' best friends or love interests!), but if you don't want to do that that way, move not-in-world families you want to keep in the game into houses.
- Your kids will inevitably go to the park a lot, which will generate new townie families. Unfortunately, a lot of those families will consist of one adult female, one teen female, and one child male ... which makes an imbalanced population. You can edit the families in Manage Households to make them more balanced before you find yourself wondering why when your boy child has become a teen, he can't find potential girlfriends.
My families love to play horseshoes together (need Outdoor Retreat) in the parks at Willow Creek and Oasis Springs. They also play cards together, swim, cloud watch, and tell group stories, especially about ghosts when it gets dark! You can even place a campfire--you don't need to go camping to enjoy it wherever you want. If your Sim is alone at a community lot, you can always opt to click to bring other family members there with you, so kids can come do homework or work on skills or whims---same in Get To Work in a retail business you own. Family members can assist in helping or greeting customers. Objects such as activity or science table and kid's violin are great to place at community lots for skill building and fun, besides playing on monkey bars, etc. Don't forget community hot tubs too, since kids can now use (need Perfect Patio), and they seat 8 Sims.
Another way to take family portraits is by paint-from-reference. You can turn off free will and position family members how you like, either standing or sitting, take the capture, and have your Sim start painting them! The better the painting skill, the better the outcome. You'd need a live-in roomie to do this if you want all family members to appear in the same portrait, but it can be done with a little planning.
When her fun is high enough she does her homework. Every lot has a fridge, microwave and a shower.
I play with free will on. a good tip is to pause, and give a list of what you want everyone to do. But don't fret when they do their own thing.
Just have fun.
...it works well. You can also merge people into families, or add totally new families. It is kind of fun to merge a family members from one of the premade families ( like goths) with another premade sim ( like a cild you made between the pancakes) and use the genetics to make a child between them. I recently took the callientes into manage households ( since the family was beginning to die out) and genetically had each sister have a child with Don Lothario to keep their lines going.... I kind of have fun doing this... lol. It is cool to see what their offspring look like and it fills my town with children and teens so when the older sims die... The town and friendships can continue between families.
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)
25Aug2014