Dying of old age at the beginning of elder??

WestGhost

So I've been playing the same family for twelve generations now, have switched computers and added EPs, and have encountered many glitches. But this is the weirdest one by far, and I want to know if anyone else has had this problem before.

In this family, there are two adults, two teens, one child, and five small dogs. Generations triggers the Free Vacation opportunity and I take it. My current heir (Patronum) is a couple days from Elder at this point. Patronum comes back as an elder, which I take to be normal, since he was very close to elder anyway. His youngest daughter and two of the dogs have also aged up while the parents were away.

Everything's fine and the family spends the day together normally, but by the next night Patronum dies due to "old age" even though he just became an elder! Maybe he just wanted to be translucent and shimmery like his namesake?

I may just go ahead and save this on a separate file to play through and see what happens, but it does seem rather odd. Anyone have this happen to them before, and do you know what might be causing it?

igazor

That means Patronum aged up twice in a row, but the life stage after Elder is Death by Old Age. In code-speak, the first time didn't switch off his aging up alarm.

There are probably thousands of threads on this forum about the Generations EP Free Vacation scenario. It is hopelessly flawed and should generally be avoided or at the very least only accepted if you have a safe saved game to revert to from before the scenario begins (sounds like you have that). Although some players are able to use it successfully, the chances of glitches like this or ones much worse that render the game totally unplayable going forward are pretty high.

WestGhost

@igazor Thank you so much!! If anything, it managed to make the game more interesting. After playing for twelve generations, I don't mind. But I'll see if there are any worse glitches going forward and revert back if it gets bad. I really appreciate your help!