Hello all! I'm thinking of reviving this challenge on my channel, but for now I'm sleepless and am going to make some lots and households for the prehistoric era!
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@Cloudseeker I noticed you don't have any updates for Dine Out and Kids Room Stuff yet, so I thought I would give a few suggestions
For Dine Out, I think placing restaurants in the world could be done as early as Early Civilization (since at this stage you've allowed all of the things required to open a restaurant), but it might make more sense to not allow placing a restaurant until the Old West because up until this point, gatherings were more common at a person's home than at a public place. Either way, it makes sense to restrict owning a restaurant until the Old West for the same reason
For the Kids Room Stuff, the only real gameplay additions we got were the Puppet Theater and the Monster Gaming Station (I'm pretty sure that's not its actual name). The gaming station is very high-tech, so its probably safe to leave that until Modern Day. The Puppet Theater has a very rustic style to it, and just provides entertainment for kids, so I think it would fit well in the Middle Ages (it could be fit in earlier, as kids were probably always playing "puppets" to some extent, but the craftsmanship it takes to create puppets and a theater for them wouldn't be until much later, at least the Middle Ages if not the Old West).
On a side note, although it's greatly appreciated that we can have modern bathroom amenities as soon as Early Civilization, I don't think this is very historically accurate. I think until as far as the Old West, people used a community bath house (the rich had their own, of course), so perhaps until this point you could prohibit the use of bathtubs and suggest upgrading the "watering hole" to a community bath. Granted, you allow us to use anything that we can craft with woodworking, so I'm not sure how much of a difference changing this would make. As far as bathrooms go (toilet primarily), even the rich didn't have bathrooms in their home until there was some form of plumbing... it was basically just a bucket or a hole in the ground, which because of the smell was often moved outside into an outhouse You could suggest not creating an in-house bathroom until the Old West, or even the Industrial Age.
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@ewright9 Thank you for the info and suggestions! At first glance, I'd say both placing and owning a restaurant should be disallowed until the Old West, and your suggestions for the Puppet Theater in the Middle Ages and the Gaming Station (is it any different from the base game Gaming Stations?) in Modern Day are good. As for your bathroom suggestions, allowing bathtubs only on community lots might be a bit too complicated. I see the challenge family as being the "main" family of the community anyway, so they would be rich and important enough to have their own bathtub. I do like the idea of encouraging players to keep toilets in a separate building though
@Cloudseeker Yes, the gaming station that came with the kids stuff pack allows kids to basically play pokemon... They can collect cards of monsters and then use the cards to play with the monsters virtually against each other on the game station. I haven't actually used it yet... I'm not sure how I feel about pokemon being added to the Sims. lol
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I added seven new lots and three new families for the prehistoric era, under #historychallenge! These lots/households are intended to fill the neighborhood in Newcrest (other than your starting lot) around the 40x50 lot, but of course you can use them for whatever you want The idea was that this way you could have the whole neighborhood you play in be prehistoric-style. If you guys like this, I can continue this for further eras
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Hello all! I'll be streaming this challenge today, and uploading it to YouTube in parts afterwards. Everyone is more than welcome to join me and hang out, we may even get Cloudseeker in to see his challenge at play
@Cloudseeker I was wondering, could we be allowed to use bb.showhiddenobjects to place the woodworking violins? I only ask because we can't craft these until we have at least level 8(?) violin level, and the woodworking instruments are much more lore-friendly to early civilization and the middle ages
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I was wondering, could we be allowed to use bb.showhiddenobjects to place the woodworking violins? I only ask because we can't craft these until we have at least level 8(?) violin level, and the woodworking instruments are much more lore-friendly to early civilization and the middle ages
Hmm, if the crafted violin doesn't cost much less than the regular one, sure
I might pop in and say hello during your stream if I have time (I have a lot of drawing projects that need to be done), but I can't make any promises
@Cloudseeker As I was playing today, I was hunting for frogs in Sylvan Glade and had a thought. I was just wondering if you would remove the restriction to fish in Sylvan Glade and the other hidden lots (I can't remember the names) since we no longer count fish toward the money goal in the prehistoric era.
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I was just wondering if you would remove the restriction to fish in Sylvan Glade and the other hidden lots (I can't remember the names) since we no longer count fish toward the money goal in the prehistoric era.
That is a good point. I'll make a note of that in my update document. You may play without the restriction right away (since it might be a while until I get back to actively working on the next update)
I caught myself up (my, this is an active thread ) and noticed that there wasn't any discussion regarding the new update that allowed cross-gender Sims and so on.
In my personal opinion, we shouldn't be allowed to create and play as cross-gender Sims until the Modern age. But, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be able to play a Sim should they be born different this way... especially since completely neglecting a child is the only way to get rid of it. As far as wearing clothes of the other gender, I think that this could be restricted until the Roaring 20s, but only lightly restricted. You can take the gender preference sorter off if you're looking for something purely aesthetic like jewelry or a hairstyle, but not for clothes such as dressing men in women's clothes and vice versa. I quite enjoy this update and find myself using these aesthetic things for almost every Sim.
Along with this update, we were given the "change Sim" option. This just lets us go into CAS full edit mode without using the cheat, and is accessible via dressers (and mirrors I think?). With this you can change the rule regarding cas.fulleditmode, but still restrict full edit mode to just adding aesthetic changes like tattoos and for changing gender roles (modern day).
My next question is, when should our kids be allowed to talk to/spray away the monster under their beds? I don't have much experience with this (since you kinda need a bed for that :P ), but from what I've seen I would suggest restricting only the option parents have to scare the monster away with this strange monster spray, as that seems like something that wouldn't be lore-friendly until a late era, but I do know that the kids getting out of bed to talk to the monsters can be rather annoying and that this spray is the only way to keep them from doing that.
In response to your earlier question about the violins, the buydebug handcarved violins for adults are worth $125, while the regular violins are worth $450/$15,000. The child violins, however, are worth $765 in buydebug as handcarved, and the regular child violins are $185/$320. So out of this... I've determined that buydebug is wierd, lol. I would probably just ignore the buydebug handcarved violins question if I were you
Reading through the posts over the past few months or so, it seems like the goal of earning 20k in the prehistoric era only from woodworking and collectibles is going to be a hard one to get... Even in Zoey95's playthrough she said that she barely achieved the goal after three Sim weeks in the highest collectible area. I'll keep you posted on this as I'm determined to play through the whole challenge, but I'm a perfectionist and will do whatever necessary to get that 20k, even if it means churning out babies to work as slaves in some sort of woodworking sweatshop. In any case, it might be worth considering switching your goals around a bit as I've never even come close to killing off my Sims in the prehistoric era--with just a bit of common sense and a campfire it's extremely easy to keep them well fed, thus making the task of not letting any Sim die of anything other than old age a rather trivial task and an easy 3 points. Also, I think it would be common for Sims in this era to die, so perhaps making that goal worth less points would be good in this fashion as well since you only have to give up one point to kill off your Sims to prevent overcrowding (as we know, I'm not a fan of moving my Sims out... you're either in the family or you're in no family at all ) Update: After 4.5 hours of gameplay I've earned about $5,000 from collectibles and woodworking, breeding frogs turns out to be a HUGE money maker
Although I will be playing this primarily on stream, I am planning to split up the stream sessions and post them on YouTube as 30 minute episodes Feel free to add this to the main post, I would almost suggest just putting it with my previous let's play of the challenge and just linking my channel. As always, I'll be keeping everyone posted here on my progress and questions Please let me know if you want more era-themed lots to fill the neighborhoods, I'm planning to make them for my playthrough anyway. You can expect these lots to be designed for Newcrest.
Post edited by Snowie on
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I've decided to move my Sims and their lot, including the surrounding lots/families, to Windenburg because I want the opportunity to build on the 64x64 lot and thought the island in Windenburg would be a more "natural" atmosphere for my Sims to live in I'll use cheats to make sure they don't gain or lose money in the process. I don't think this will be giving myself an advantage or anything since 1. I could have started there in the first place, 2. I'm literally just moving everything the way it is to the lot in Windenburg, and 3. I could have gone there at any time for plants/fish so I'm not getting myself anything I couldn't have gotten before by moving. I hope this won't invalidate my playthrough as a test for the challenge as I plan to make it all the way through
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@cloudseeker Hello! Just checking in *waves* I had been meaning to stop by and chat about restaurants and the new kids pack.
Play-wise I'm still not complete with the Early Civilization Era. My writer died after completing 19 books, only 7 were best sellers. I'm disappointed by not reaching the goal of 10, but I don't think it's an impossible goal. One issue I did have, the notebook did not work for resuming an already started story unless a computer was on the lot. I was pretty far into things before I realized that was also the issue with not being able to write on community lots.
I could not get my other sim to earn money playing the violin on her home lot, another residential lot or even the desert area just outside their lot. So she had to be on a community lot to earn money. So I found my self alternating between the two goals, with breaks in-between for my storyline. I probably could have reached the goal anyway except I made the decision that storyline was more important for me. Had I used a younger sim, I might not have needed to make that choice *shrugs*
My violinist had yet to reach her goal, but she's not an elder yet. I've yet to host a guest party with a gold status, given the lack of stereo and bar. But I will keep trying. I'm disappointed that dancing around a bonfire does not count as dancing. Nor does listening to the violin count as listening to music.
I mostly agree with @ewright9 on his assessment on restaurants and kids stuff. The Void Monsters and game belong in the modern era. I'm on the fence about the puppets not being allowed until the Middle Ages. I think it would be fine in the Early Civilization era, but I have no objection to waiting until the Middles ages.
As for restaurants, I think they could be placed as Early as the Early Civilization Era. They were not common and usually placed in roadside inn for travelers. Since I am almost complete with that era, I guess it doesn't matter to me a lot. I will prolly build and share a tavern-style Middle Ages restaurant in my Gallery. I will place it in my game, but only visit as my storyline dictates. I may also place a restaurant in the form of a castle for visiting royalty or such. Given the goals to meet in the eras, I won't consider owning a restaurant until The Old West if even then. I will have to wait and see.
As I approach the Middle Ages, I must ask: Does the dance floor work without music? Otherwise is there any point to placing a dance floor until The Old West?
Overall I'm still having a blast with this challenge. It is loads of fun and the goals aren't too easy to reach IMO.
PS - I wanted to add. Every few sim days I start my game in manage worlds. I add lots, families, take the other households into CAS for wardrobe changes and to adding grandchildren to my descendents. I figure as far as long as it doesn't effect my goals or aspirations, then it just helps my world and story have a more natural flow. I realize there is one aspiration involving grandchildren. I will take care when working on that aspiration to not "cheat".
I've decided to move my Sims and their lot, including the surrounding lots/families, to Windenburg because I want the opportunity to build on the 64x64 lot and thought the island in Windenburg would be a more "natural" atmosphere for my Sims to live in I'll use cheats to make sure they don't gain or lose money in the process. I don't think this will be giving myself an advantage or anything since 1. I could have started there in the first place, 2. I'm literally just moving everything the way it is to the lot in Windenburg, and 3. I could have gone there at any time for plants/fish so I'm not getting myself anything I couldn't have gotten before by moving. I hope this won't invalidate my playthrough as a test for the challenge as I plan to make it all the way through
I picked the desert lot that was the Oasis Park lot for my challenge in order to have the most natural screenshots. I have regretted not selecting the Windenburg Island on occasion. It's a great place to play without modern civilization intruding.
In my personal opinion, we shouldn't be allowed to create and play as cross-gender Sims until the Modern age. As far as wearing clothes of the other gender, I think that this could be restricted until the Roaring 20s, but only lightly restricted. You can take the gender preference sorter off if you're looking for something purely aesthetic like jewelry or a hairstyle, but not for clothes such as dressing men in women's clothes and vice versa.
I try to avoid making rules that don't really affect gameplay, just so that the rules won't be a massive wall of text, so I probably won't place any restrictions on crossdressing or customizing the gender options like body frame and such (there are naturally masculine women and feminine men after all). So instead, as with all other flavour stuff, I will leave it up to the judgement of the player.
My next question is, when should our kids be allowed to talk to/spray away the monster under their beds? I don't have much experience with this (since you kinda need a bed for that :P ), but from what I've seen I would suggest restricting only the option parents have to scare the monster away with this strange monster spray, as that seems like something that wouldn't be lore-friendly until a late era, but I do know that the kids getting out of bed to talk to the monsters can be rather annoying and that this spray is the only way to keep them from doing that.
This again seems to have no major gameplay impact, so I'll leave it up to the players to make any restrictions themselves, at least for now. If it turns out that talking to or scaring away the monsters have significant effects, I'll reconsider.
In response to your earlier question about the violins, the buydebug handcarved violins for adults are worth $125, while the regular violins are worth $450/$15,000. The child violins, however, are worth $765 in buydebug as handcarved, and the regular child violins are $185/$320. So out of this... I've determined that buydebug is wierd, lol. I would probably just ignore the buydebug handcarved violins question if I were you
Very well. The violins shall remain unchanged Well, If you really want to keep things time-appropriate, I suppose you could buy the crafted violin, and then use the money cheat to set your money to what it would be had you bought the violin that is the most similar stat-wise to the crafted one.
Reading through the posts over the past few months or so, it seems like the goal of earning 20k in the prehistoric era only from woodworking and collectibles is going to be a hard one to get... Even in Zoey95's playthrough she said that she barely achieved the goal after three Sim weeks in the highest collectible area. Update: After 4.5 hours of gameplay I've earned about $5,000 from collectibles and woodworking, breeding frogs turns out to be a HUGE money maker
In any case, it might be worth considering switching your goals around a bit as I've never even come close to killing off my Sims in the prehistoric era--with just a bit of common sense and a campfire it's extremely easy to keep them well fed, thus making the task of not letting any Sim die of anything other than old age a rather trivial task and an easy 3 points.
Hmm, you make a good point. I'll make a note of this in my update document.
I've decided to move my Sims and their lot, including the surrounding lots/families, to Windenburg because I want the opportunity to build on the 64x64 lot and thought the island in Windenburg would be a more "natural" atmosphere for my Sims to live in I'll use cheats to make sure they don't gain or lose money in the process. I don't think this will be giving myself an advantage or anything since 1. I could have started there in the first place, 2. I'm literally just moving everything the way it is to the lot in Windenburg, and 3. I could have gone there at any time for plants/fish so I'm not getting myself anything I couldn't have gotten before by moving. I hope this won't invalidate my playthrough as a test for the challenge as I plan to make it all the way through
I've yet to host a guest party with a gold status, given the lack of stereo and bar. But I will keep trying. I'm disappointed that dancing around a bonfire does not count as dancing. Nor does listening to the violin count as listening to music.
Yes, this has been the topic of a lot of discussion. I am probably going to redesign or replace this goal, as it seems to give people much more trouble than it should.
As for restaurants, I think they could be placed as Early as the Early Civilization Era. They were not common and usually placed in roadside inn for travelers.
I suppose you could have a tavern-style restaurant in the Middle Ages, but I don't think I'll put them any earlier than that. I think they would be a bit too much of a rarity during Early Civilization. Not sure yet if I will restrict owning a restaurant to a later Era, I'll have to think about that some more.
PS - I wanted to add. Every few sim days I start my game in manage worlds. I add lots, families, take the other households into CAS for wardrobe changes and to adding grandchildren to my descendents. I figure as far as long as it doesn't effect my goals or aspirations, then it just helps my world and story have a more natural flow. I realize there is one aspiration involving grandchildren. I will take care when working on that aspiration to not "cheat".
You can do pretty much whatever you want to households other than your main one (except actually play them), since Sims that have moved out from the main household can no longer contribute to any challenge goals.
@Cloudseeker I know you've probably got a lot of updates in the making, but do you think we can get a revision to the gold medal on a house party soon? Either an unofficial update in the form of a comment, or an update to the challenge soon It's been a while since I was in Early Civilization for this challenge, but perhaps you could change the goal to a silver medal? That may be too easy though, I'm sure @Zoey95 would be able to confirm. Perhaps if you changed the goal altogether, you could change it to something like "Have one Sim read every book", since Early Civilization is centered around knowledge.
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Today I saw @ewright9 livestream this challenge and it looks amazing. I'm going to add this to my Challenge List! I have 1 question though about the prehistoric era. You have to have 5 kids with different sims, but they have to be born at home. I'm assuming this means that you have them all with the female? Does the starter male have any involvement at this stage, or is he just there for show?
I know you've probably got a lot of updates in the making, but do you think we can get a revision to the gold medal on a house party soon? Either an unofficial update in the form of a comment, or an update to the challenge soon It's been a while since I was in Early Civilization for this challenge, but perhaps you could change the goal to a silver medal? That may be too easy though, I'm sure @Zoey95 would be able to confirm. Perhaps if you changed the goal altogether, you could change it to something like "Have one Sim read every book", since Early Civilization is centered around knowledge.
I have made a note of the house party goal in my update document, and I'll take a look at it once I get back into actively working on the challenge (I am taking a break at the moment to work on other projects, as I was continuously running into walls trying to work on this). For now, you're more than welcome to try out a modification to the house party goal, and see if it could possibly work for the challenge
I have 1 question though about the prehistoric era. You have to have 5 kids with different sims, but they have to be born at home. I'm assuming this means that you have them all with the female? Does the starter male have any involvement at this stage, or is he just there for show?
The kids only need to be born at home if you want them to be your successors. So you could have 1 (or more) kid with your two Ancestors, and then your male could wander the town and have children with 4 other women, and the challenge goal would be satisfied. You could also move in 1 mate at a time, wait until she gives birth, and then move her out but keep the child.
@Cloudseeker If I were to change it to something like "have one Sim read every book", what items would I NOT use that you had to add to the era in the hope of making the gold medal goal achievable?
@AlHollandiyah I'm going to be having the male in my challenge take over the "have children with 5 different Sims" goal, if we can ever get the ladies to accept our attempts at romance What I've done that works in the past is to build up their romantic relationship, then try for baby several times (3-5) in order to ensure that they will get pregnant. I usually do this at a community lot where I place a tent (or a bush) so that the mate at home doesn't get jealous After about 4 days you should see a baby in your male's relationship list, but can meet the prospective mother after a couple days and should be able to see if she's showing yet or not. Hope this helps
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I was thinking of a solution to the "family portrait" issue of not being able to paint the whole family as someone has to be painting, and I thought we could create a "painter" Sim who would be pre-uploaded to the gallery with level 10 painting skill, probably one for each era You could then just move him/her in with your family when you're ready to paint the family portrait, then move him/her back out and set your money back to what it was before he/she moved in! I would be happy to create these era-themed painters, but of course you could create your own if you wanted If you wanted to add this officially to the challenge, you could simply allow players to move him/her in whenever necessary, or you could require that the family pays a commission/befriends the painter to allow him/her to be moved in and paint the family portrait. I can get started on these era designed painters as soon as I get the OK from @Cloudseeker
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@ewright9 That's actually a pretty good idea, I like it I could even see how it might be possible for someone with modding skills to create an actual hireable painter service, who would come and paint a family portrait. But manually moving in a painter and paying them a commission sounds fine as well. I can't say off the top of my head how much such a commission would be, but I'm thinking it should be a bit on the expensive side, since it's both a one-time thing per Era, and you don't have to practice painting with one of your own Sims. You're very welcome to try things out and see what would be a good, sizeable investment, yet not so much that you'd feel economically crippled in any Era.
EDIT: Oh, and by all means, go ahead and create some Era-themed painter Sims. It's not like I would be able to stop you anyway
Comments
Started the challenge a while ago but decided to start documenting everything recently
sarahssimssite.wordpress.com
Started the challenge a while back but only recently started documenting all of it.
sarahssimssite.wordpress.com
@Cloudseeker Yes, please add it to the main post.
For Dine Out, I think placing restaurants in the world could be done as early as Early Civilization (since at this stage you've allowed all of the things required to open a restaurant), but it might make more sense to not allow placing a restaurant until the Old West because up until this point, gatherings were more common at a person's home than at a public place. Either way, it makes sense to restrict owning a restaurant until the Old West for the same reason
For the Kids Room Stuff, the only real gameplay additions we got were the Puppet Theater and the Monster Gaming Station (I'm pretty sure that's not its actual name). The gaming station is very high-tech, so its probably safe to leave that until Modern Day. The Puppet Theater has a very rustic style to it, and just provides entertainment for kids, so I think it would fit well in the Middle Ages (it could be fit in earlier, as kids were probably always playing "puppets" to some extent, but the craftsmanship it takes to create puppets and a theater for them wouldn't be until much later, at least the Middle Ages if not the Old West).
On a side note, although it's greatly appreciated that we can have modern bathroom amenities as soon as Early Civilization, I don't think this is very historically accurate. I think until as far as the Old West, people used a community bath house (the rich had their own, of course), so perhaps until this point you could prohibit the use of bathtubs and suggest upgrading the "watering hole" to a community bath. Granted, you allow us to use anything that we can craft with woodworking, so I'm not sure how much of a difference changing this would make. As far as bathrooms go (toilet primarily), even the rich didn't have bathrooms in their home until there was some form of plumbing... it was basically just a bucket or a hole in the ground, which because of the smell was often moved outside into an outhouse
@Cloudseeker I was wondering, could we be allowed to use bb.showhiddenobjects to place the woodworking violins? I only ask because we can't craft these until we have at least level 8(?) violin level, and the woodworking instruments are much more lore-friendly to early civilization and the middle ages
I might pop in and say hello during your stream if I have time (I have a lot of drawing projects that need to be done), but I can't make any promises
In my personal opinion, we shouldn't be allowed to create and play as cross-gender Sims until the Modern age. But, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be able to play a Sim should they be born different this way... especially since completely neglecting a child is the only way to get rid of it. As far as wearing clothes of the other gender, I think that this could be restricted until the Roaring 20s, but only lightly restricted. You can take the gender preference sorter off if you're looking for something purely aesthetic like jewelry or a hairstyle, but not for clothes such as dressing men in women's clothes and vice versa. I quite enjoy this update and find myself using these aesthetic things for almost every Sim.
Along with this update, we were given the "change Sim" option. This just lets us go into CAS full edit mode without using the cheat, and is accessible via dressers (and mirrors I think?). With this you can change the rule regarding cas.fulleditmode, but still restrict full edit mode to just adding aesthetic changes like tattoos and for changing gender roles (modern day).
My next question is, when should our kids be allowed to talk to/spray away the monster under their beds? I don't have much experience with this (since you kinda need a bed for that :P ), but from what I've seen I would suggest restricting only the option parents have to scare the monster away with this strange monster spray, as that seems like something that wouldn't be lore-friendly until a late era, but I do know that the kids getting out of bed to talk to the monsters can be rather annoying and that this spray is the only way to keep them from doing that.
In response to your earlier question about the violins, the buydebug handcarved violins for adults are worth $125, while the regular violins are worth $450/$15,000. The child violins, however, are worth $765 in buydebug as handcarved, and the regular child violins are $185/$320. So out of this... I've determined that buydebug is wierd, lol. I would probably just ignore the buydebug handcarved violins question if I were you
Reading through the posts over the past few months or so, it seems like the goal of earning 20k in the prehistoric era only from woodworking and collectibles is going to be a hard one to get... Even in Zoey95's playthrough she said that she barely achieved the goal after three Sim weeks in the highest collectible area. I'll keep you posted on this as I'm determined to play through the whole challenge, but I'm a perfectionist and will do whatever necessary to get that 20k, even if it means churning out babies to work as slaves in some sort of woodworking sweatshop. In any case, it might be worth considering switching your goals around a bit as I've never even come close to killing off my Sims in the prehistoric era--with just a bit of common sense and a campfire it's extremely easy to keep them well fed, thus making the task of not letting any Sim die of anything other than old age a rather trivial task and an easy 3 points. Also, I think it would be common for Sims in this era to die, so perhaps making that goal worth less points would be good in this fashion as well since you only have to give up one point to kill off your Sims to prevent overcrowding
Although I will be playing this primarily on stream, I am planning to split up the stream sessions and post them on YouTube as 30 minute episodes
Play-wise I'm still not complete with the Early Civilization Era. My writer died after completing 19 books, only 7 were best sellers. I'm disappointed by not reaching the goal of 10, but I don't think it's an impossible goal. One issue I did have, the notebook did not work for resuming an already started story unless a computer was on the lot. I was pretty far into things before I realized that was also the issue with not being able to write on community lots.
I could not get my other sim to earn money playing the violin on her home lot, another residential lot or even the desert area just outside their lot. So she had to be on a community lot to earn money. So I found my self alternating between the two goals, with breaks in-between for my storyline. I probably could have reached the goal anyway except I made the decision that storyline was more important for me. Had I used a younger sim, I might not have needed to make that choice *shrugs*
My violinist had yet to reach her goal, but she's not an elder yet. I've yet to host a guest party with a gold status, given the lack of stereo and bar. But I will keep trying. I'm disappointed that dancing around a bonfire does not count as dancing. Nor does listening to the violin count as listening to music.
I mostly agree with @ewright9 on his assessment on restaurants and kids stuff. The Void Monsters and game belong in the modern era. I'm on the fence about the puppets not being allowed until the Middle Ages. I think it would be fine in the Early Civilization era, but I have no objection to waiting until the Middles ages.
As for restaurants, I think they could be placed as Early as the Early Civilization Era. They were not common and usually placed in roadside inn for travelers. Since I am almost complete with that era, I guess it doesn't matter to me a lot. I will prolly build and share a tavern-style Middle Ages restaurant in my Gallery. I will place it in my game, but only visit as my storyline dictates. I may also place a restaurant in the form of a castle for visiting royalty or such. Given the goals to meet in the eras, I won't consider owning a restaurant until The Old West if even then. I will have to wait and see.
As I approach the Middle Ages, I must ask: Does the dance floor work without music? Otherwise is there any point to placing a dance floor until The Old West?
Overall I'm still having a blast with this challenge. It is loads of fun and the goals aren't too easy to reach IMO.
PS - I wanted to add. Every few sim days I start my game in manage worlds. I add lots, families, take the other households into CAS for wardrobe changes and to adding grandchildren to my descendents. I figure as far as long as it doesn't effect my goals or aspirations, then it just helps my world and story have a more natural flow. I realize there is one aspiration involving grandchildren. I will take care when working on that aspiration to not "cheat".
I picked the desert lot that was the Oasis Park lot for my challenge in order to have the most natural screenshots. I have regretted not selecting the Windenburg Island on occasion. It's a great place to play without modern civilization intruding.
This again seems to have no major gameplay impact, so I'll leave it up to the players to make any restrictions themselves, at least for now. If it turns out that talking to or scaring away the monsters have significant effects, I'll reconsider.
Very well. The violins shall remain unchanged
Good to know, keep me posted
Hmm, you make a good point. I'll make a note of this in my update document.
That is alright
Yes, this has been the topic of a lot of discussion. I am probably going to redesign or replace this goal, as it seems to give people much more trouble than it should.
I suppose you could have a tavern-style restaurant in the Middle Ages, but I don't think I'll put them any earlier than that. I think they would be a bit too much of a rarity during Early Civilization. Not sure yet if I will restrict owning a restaurant to a later Era, I'll have to think about that some more.
You can do pretty much whatever you want to households other than your main one (except actually play them), since Sims that have moved out from the main household can no longer contribute to any challenge goals.
The kids only need to be born at home if you want them to be your successors. So you could have 1 (or more) kid with your two Ancestors, and then your male could wander the town and have children with 4 other women, and the challenge goal would be satisfied. You could also move in 1 mate at a time, wait until she gives birth, and then move her out but keep the child.
@AlHollandiyah I'm going to be having the male in my challenge take over the "have children with 5 different Sims" goal, if we can ever get the ladies to accept our attempts at romance
EDIT: Oh, and by all means, go ahead and create some Era-themed painter Sims. It's not like I would be able to stop you anyway