Sims 3 had story progression where things were programmed to happen to the households you weren't playing, but Sims 4 does not.
The only things unplayed sims in 4 are supposed to do that result in lasting changes are:
Age and die of old age, unless you change the settings so that they don't
Have a baby if you play them until they get pregnant then leave them alone, or if a premade starts the game pregnant
Finish their university terms with mediocre performance (and if you have never played them they are supposed to start a new term also)
Vote for NAPs unless you turn NPC voting off
Increase relationships and/or skills, and possibly lifestyles or sentiments now, based on what they do in the background while you are playing other sims on community lots (or when they are house guests). I think these changes only save for played sims so game performance doesn't suffer from too much info about the random townies.
If you don't have enough clubs the game may create random ones and fill them with random sims.
(Somebody correct me if I left something out)
I have heard people had autonomous woohoo or try for baby on occasion, but it's actually been a while since I read anything about it so it may have been a bug that was eventually fixed. They are not supposed to marry, propose, change households, join or advance in a career, or reproduce without player input.
Which is why so many of us rely on mods like MCCC. With MCCC Sims marry and have babies (occasionally in that order), advance in their jobs, get skills, etc.
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So in order to play without auto-aging*, we have to play that household in order to have the birthdays, right? Like even the townies? And how do we age up those who are not in the world?
I have 12 households in my rotation. I started with 8 bloodlines. My intent is that these families intertwine until they are all basically from the same 8 bloodlines, and see how they all compare. Sort of like a backwards legacy. They all started out in Newcrest and they’re slowly taking over all the worlds in the best lots.
Seasonal continuity is of utmost importance to me, otherwise they skip or repeat holidays or they miss out on growing seasons. So I follow a schedule.
I play on long lifespan with 14-day seasons. I tried to play with 28-day seasons, but I did the math and that means a child can go through his entire childhood and teenhood combined with only one year passing. So they would only get one Winterfest, they may never be a teen during Love Day, they only get one summer vacation so better make it good... I can’t accept that. So with 14-day seasons they have more opportunities to have holidays like that. I don’t like 7-day seasons, they feel too short, and one holiday after another is annoying, it makes me not want to do anything else with them like have a party.
In my 12-household schedule, I play each family for 10 days a session, with one session lasting 12 days, and it’s perfect. I like the assurance that I will get to play them through at least one weekend. I can make a lot of progress during those 10 days but it still doesn’t feel terribly long.
I think, to avoid the number of households growing exponentially, it’s good to try to limit the kids to 2 or 3, have a few households with 3 generations living in them, and focus on your other unrelated families as marriage material. Eventually they’ll all be related but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
I love playing rotationally. I’ve attempted the legacy challenge a few times but I get so bored of the same family, same house, same stuff. That’s my #1 save killer. I like having different types of sims living in different style homes in various locations. It’s also more fun when my sims have relationships with each other.
About 70. Most of them are in different saves, but I have few saves with multiple families that I rotate. I also have a save in which I only play with Maxis made Sims (premades and others that I've downloaded from their gallery). I didn't include them on this. It would make the households that I play over 100.
I do have my favorites and I play them more than the others. Still, my games are quite slow because of the fact that I have so many on rotation. It may take about two months (sometimes even more) when my rotation is full.
So in order to play without auto-aging*, we have to play that household in order to have the birthdays, right? Like even the townies? And how do we age up those who are not in the world?
Edited*
Yes, if you have aging on for active household only, they will only have birthdays if you are playing them. I have never bothered with random townies unless I adopted them, but for premades I have gone into their houses for a short time and had one person bake a birthday cake and put it on the counter. I can use it for anyone's birthday I want to, and if I leave that household right away the cake is still there anytime I want to go back and age up another member of the household. I have married multiple premade children and teens into my families this way, and then aged their parents to elder when it seemed appropriate and moved them to my retirement village so they wouldn't be immortal.
It's more work than story progression, but gives you more control.
Depends. Most saves start out with one, and grow from there as children are born and grow. I just can't seem to just let MCCC deal with the little buggers! Usually one family per save - unless we're talking my premade save. That's just for fun, and a lot of families!
@PenguinFoop Oh I forgot, you can age up not in world and unplayed townies if your sim is friends with them. You can bake them a birthday cake and I forget how it's worded but there is an option to have a guest blow out candles and age instead of a household member.
How many households? Oh man, that's a tough question! I do heavy rotation, and although I've never counted, I'd estimate I have at least two dozen households to choose from? The actual number is probably well over 30....
I have more than 20 saves, with most of them being rotational (not counting my 2 templates and 2 test saves). Most saves I haven't played in a very long time. Its a "I'll get back to them one day" thing. Usually, I'll have 4-10 households I play in a typical save, though. +/- a few.
I won't even try to guesstimate how many families I have in total.
I struggle to play just one household most of the time yet I see threads where people play entire villages. I have no idea how they do that. One can be a struggle for me. So how many do you play and how do you manage more than one?
Currently none. There are too many things missing from the game to make it interesting for me.
This game needs more Sailor Moon!
Hold SHIFT while using the FRIEZE tool to apply it to a single wall, and not an entire room!
I have 2 saves where I rotate between 6 households each (for a total of 12 households across both saves), and 4 households in my Realm of Magic-focused save - 1 for each magic discipline.
@PenguinFoop Oh I forgot, you can age up not in world and unplayed townies if your sim is friends with them. You can bake them a birthday cake and I forget how it's worded but there is an option to have a guest blow out candles and age instead of a household member.
Thanks for that info. Every time I try to throw a birthday party, it requires a birthday sim and can only choose from those in my active household. So are you saying that I can throw the party but instead of aging that sim up, I can age up a sim that is a friend of the family's? Wouldn't that give the "birthday" sim in the household a sad moodlet or something?
You don't have to throw a party, just bake a cake and put candles on it and invite the sim over to blow them out.
And if you did have a party, I'm pretty sure you could still have more than one person age up if you had more than one cake, or put new candles on as soon as they were blown out before someone took a piece. I'm not sure about the party goals though so you might want to have the household member go first to make sure it would work for the party.
You don't have to throw a party, just bake a cake and put candles on it and invite the sim over to blow them out.
And if you did have a party, I'm pretty sure you could still have more than one person age up if you had more than one cake, or put new candles on as soon as they were blown out before someone took a piece. I'm not sure about the party goals though so you might want to have the household member go first to make sure it would work for the party.
Yes, I know you can have more than one birthday sim and have each of them blow out candles/make a wish (which also ages them up) but didn't see an option to age up someone else. I'll have to try it again when my children finally make teens and start developing deeper feelings for their' childhood friends.
I'm at 12 households now. Willow Creek is pretty much owned by my Sim Family. Only 3 residential lots that are owned by townies remain.
That's how I feel my game is going to become if the aliens don't leave my poor sim alone. He's been abducted 3 times!!! I love it now though because there are so many options open to me now (at least when I age up my two children and three toddlers). I think my world is in very real danger of being taken over with the spawns of Camron. lol
I've been playing one save for five years. I've racked up dozens of households by now that I rotate between randomly. I play with ageing off and basically just go at my own pace; it's just a game, so there's no reason for me to treat it like a chore.
I know some people will rotate on schedules, but I personally play whatever household I want to at any given moment. There are households that'll go untouched for many "Sim-years". Schedules can work if you want to feel more organized, but it's all about preference.
In the end, really the biggest thing that's helped me is again, playing at my own pace with ageing off. If I played with it on, all of my Sims would be dead by now and I'd never have any time to experience the lives of all my Sims. I have so many households to juggle, it's more fun for me to leave it off and choose how and when things happen.
Most important part is to remind yourself that if you're not into rotational play, that's fine. Everyone plays differently. Even playing just a couple or few different ones is just as fine.
This is how I play too, many rotational families, with aging mostly off. I have become so close to my sims, I hate for them to miss out on each consecutive pack. My main save ( saved in many saves, in case a save should become corrupted ), has been going on since the beginning of my play, a few months after the sims 4 came out.
I personally get too bored playing one household, I just can’t stomach legacies ( also can’t stomach rabbit holes ). Lately I have released some of the premade householders from my favorites and rotational play.....I just had too many households with all of them and my own ( many I barely touched). Though, there are several I still play, ( who could give up the Goths? They have been around forever!! And the Landgrabbs are my rich family who owns most of the retail businesses.). Most premades are still in their homes. Even without playing several premade households I still have a great deal of households I do play. It’s nice to have a game where many are at the height of their career and can take off time for fun, others are new families just starting out. My sims develop a life of their own with different personalities, likes and wants (at least in my head they do! Lol). I’m still waiting for real babies, to age up a couple of my babies. My sims are interconnected, friends with each other, enemies with each other or acquaintances, may belong to the same clubs. Unfortunately, I play so many families and don’t rotate on any schedule, so some families lose friendships because of decay, but in sims 4 that’s made up pretty easily. I wouldn’t mind more saves except for the fact of spending time finding or making community lots, I like my sims having a variety of lots to visit.
Currently I have 8 families I rotate between. But it's more split like 4/4 since I have stories going on between specific households. This way I can either rotate between the households in one story, or just play a different story all together. I play them both in the same save (that I make occasional copies of) so I can still see the sims from one group out and about when I'm playing another. I also play with aging off. I have stories I'm trying to play out and I like to control how much time I get with them (especially whenever any of them go to university). The age up option on the cake is a life saver haha.
I also have a range of families I've made just to flesh out the world a bit with sims I'd like to see. And sometimes I'll even play them a bit too. I've got some classic sim families in this category like the Goths, the Calientes, and Don Lothario. I remade them because I hated how they were made for TS4, so now I actually like seeing them around. I still need to remake the Pleasants and give them their parents back haha.
So yeah! I like the generally 8-10 families per save size. It doesn't feel too empty, but it's also not too overwhelming. I couldn't imagine having as many families and save files as some of the people in this thread...So intimidating how do you keep track of it all...
Technically only one. But I do have satellite families in the very same save. I began with the Cantrell family when the first four children were teens. Made them some neighbors who had triplet daughters. Set the only daughter's fiancé and his family into their home. I decided to tear up my usual script with this game save. Both Aaron and Joey were married, or about to be married (Joey), so I normally would put their spouses in my game. Not this time. I aged them up, two Sim days at a time to show their birth order. Sent the triplets off the Britechester-U housing them in the other dorm. Then moved my four Cantrell YAs into the Wyvern Hall, I think it was. Ultimately, once they graduated, Brianna invited them all to live in the Castle Keep belonging to her fiancé. Aaron and the firstborn of the triplets, Regina got married (eloped). Erik (Global Superstar) asked Kayleigh to marry him on Winterfest Day. Joey was just accepted into Med School, so he and Hayleigh decided it best to put their engagement on hold for the time. The parents of my Cantrell's made a gift of a small bungalow to their eldest son, Aaron and his wife.
They and their little son moved into that. Eventually, I had Erik, Kayleigh and Joey and Hayleigh move into another place for a time. Once their son was born, they moved into a house Erik had contracted to have built. Joey and Hayleigh eloped and they all moved into Erik's mansion. This is the household I play. But the Goldens, the Cantrell's (parents and youngest son) and for a time Brianna's in-laws all live in the same save. I will pop over to the other households, now and again, especially when it's time for another baby to be born, just to keep up, or to age them up. And they are always calling and chatting with each other, plus, the families get together for birthdays (mostly for the grandchildren) and Harvest Day is nearing in my game. It's a lively save, I must say.
Technically only one. But I do have satellite families in the very same save. I began with the Cantrell family when the first four children were teens. Made them some neighbors who had triplet daughters. Set the only daughter's fiancé and his family into their home. I decided to tear up my usual script with this game save. Both Aaron and Joey were married, or about to be married (Joey), so I normally would put their spouses in my game. Not this time. I aged them up, two Sim days at a time to show their birth order. Sent the triplets off the Britechester-U housing them in the other dorm. Then moved my four Cantrell YAs into the Wyvern Hall, I think it was. Ultimately, once they graduated, Brianna invited them all to live in the Castle Keep belonging to her fiancé. Aaron and the firstborn of the triplets, Regina got married (eloped). Erik (Global Superstar) asked Kayleigh to marry him on Winterfest Day. Joey was just accepted into Med School, so he and Hayleigh decided it best to put their engagement on hold for the time. The parents of my Cantrell's made a gift of a small bungalow to their eldest son, Aaron and his wife.
They and their little son moved into that. Eventually, I had Erik, Kayleigh and Joey and Hayleigh move into another place for a time. Once their son was born, they moved into a house Erik had contracted to have built. Joey and Hayleigh eloped and they all moved into Erik's mansion. This is the household I play. But the Golden's, the Cantrell's (parents and youngest son) and for a time Brianna's in-laws all live in the same save. I will pop over to the other households, now and again, especially when it's time for another baby to be born, just to keep up, or to age them up. And they are always calling and chatting with each other, plus, the families get together for birthdays (mostly the grandchildren) and Harvest Day is nearing in my game. It's a lively save, I must say.
What a great story!
So you're saying that you mainly play the original household and intermittently play the children's families that have moved out?
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Which is why so many of us rely on mods like MCCC. With MCCC Sims marry and have babies (occasionally in that order), advance in their jobs, get skills, etc.
Fun must be always -- Tomas Hertl (San Jose Sharks hockey player)
I have the May's, father, mother and YA daughter
The Grove's, grandma, mother, father, and toddler
Me, Myself, and I - self explanatory
TINY HOUSE CHALLENGE
The May Family
Modeling Career?
Edited*
Seasonal continuity is of utmost importance to me, otherwise they skip or repeat holidays or they miss out on growing seasons. So I follow a schedule.
I play on long lifespan with 14-day seasons. I tried to play with 28-day seasons, but I did the math and that means a child can go through his entire childhood and teenhood combined with only one year passing. So they would only get one Winterfest, they may never be a teen during Love Day, they only get one summer vacation so better make it good... I can’t accept that. So with 14-day seasons they have more opportunities to have holidays like that. I don’t like 7-day seasons, they feel too short, and one holiday after another is annoying, it makes me not want to do anything else with them like have a party.
In my 12-household schedule, I play each family for 10 days a session, with one session lasting 12 days, and it’s perfect. I like the assurance that I will get to play them through at least one weekend. I can make a lot of progress during those 10 days but it still doesn’t feel terribly long.
I think, to avoid the number of households growing exponentially, it’s good to try to limit the kids to 2 or 3, have a few households with 3 generations living in them, and focus on your other unrelated families as marriage material. Eventually they’ll all be related but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
I love playing rotationally. I’ve attempted the legacy challenge a few times but I get so bored of the same family, same house, same stuff. That’s my #1 save killer. I like having different types of sims living in different style homes in various locations. It’s also more fun when my sims have relationships with each other.
I do have my favorites and I play them more than the others. Still, my games are quite slow because of the fact that I have so many on rotation. It may take about two months (sometimes even more) when my rotation is full.
Yes, if you have aging on for active household only, they will only have birthdays if you are playing them. I have never bothered with random townies unless I adopted them, but for premades I have gone into their houses for a short time and had one person bake a birthday cake and put it on the counter. I can use it for anyone's birthday I want to, and if I leave that household right away the cake is still there anytime I want to go back and age up another member of the household. I have married multiple premade children and teens into my families this way, and then aged their parents to elder when it seemed appropriate and moved them to my retirement village so they wouldn't be immortal.
It's more work than story progression, but gives you more control.
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I won't even try to guesstimate how many families I have in total.
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Currently none. There are too many things missing from the game to make it interesting for me.
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Thanks for that info. Every time I try to throw a birthday party, it requires a birthday sim and can only choose from those in my active household. So are you saying that I can throw the party but instead of aging that sim up, I can age up a sim that is a friend of the family's? Wouldn't that give the "birthday" sim in the household a sad moodlet or something?
And if you did have a party, I'm pretty sure you could still have more than one person age up if you had more than one cake, or put new candles on as soon as they were blown out before someone took a piece. I'm not sure about the party goals though so you might want to have the household member go first to make sure it would work for the party.
Yes, I know you can have more than one birthday sim and have each of them blow out candles/make a wish (which also ages them up) but didn't see an option to age up someone else. I'll have to try it again when my children finally make teens and start developing deeper feelings for their' childhood friends.
That's how I feel my game is going to become if the aliens don't leave my poor sim alone. He's been abducted 3 times!!! I love it now though because there are so many options open to me now (at least when I age up my two children and three toddlers). I think my world is in very real danger of being taken over with the spawns of Camron. lol
This is how I play too, many rotational families, with aging mostly off. I have become so close to my sims, I hate for them to miss out on each consecutive pack. My main save ( saved in many saves, in case a save should become corrupted ), has been going on since the beginning of my play, a few months after the sims 4 came out.
I personally get too bored playing one household, I just can’t stomach legacies ( also can’t stomach rabbit holes ). Lately I have released some of the premade householders from my favorites and rotational play.....I just had too many households with all of them and my own ( many I barely touched). Though, there are several I still play, ( who could give up the Goths? They have been around forever!! And the Landgrabbs are my rich family who owns most of the retail businesses.). Most premades are still in their homes. Even without playing several premade households I still have a great deal of households I do play. It’s nice to have a game where many are at the height of their career and can take off time for fun, others are new families just starting out. My sims develop a life of their own with different personalities, likes and wants (at least in my head they do! Lol). I’m still waiting for real babies, to age up a couple of my babies. My sims are interconnected, friends with each other, enemies with each other or acquaintances, may belong to the same clubs. Unfortunately, I play so many families and don’t rotate on any schedule, so some families lose friendships because of decay, but in sims 4 that’s made up pretty easily. I wouldn’t mind more saves except for the fact of spending time finding or making community lots, I like my sims having a variety of lots to visit.
I also have a range of families I've made just to flesh out the world a bit with sims I'd like to see. And sometimes I'll even play them a bit too. I've got some classic sim families in this category like the Goths, the Calientes, and Don Lothario. I remade them because I hated how they were made for TS4, so now I actually like seeing them around. I still need to remake the Pleasants and give them their parents back haha.
So yeah! I like the generally 8-10 families per save size. It doesn't feel too empty, but it's also not too overwhelming. I couldn't imagine having as many families and save files as some of the people in this thread...So intimidating how do you keep track of it all...
They and their little son moved into that. Eventually, I had Erik, Kayleigh and Joey and Hayleigh move into another place for a time. Once their son was born, they moved into a house Erik had contracted to have built. Joey and Hayleigh eloped and they all moved into Erik's mansion. This is the household I play. But the Goldens, the Cantrell's (parents and youngest son) and for a time Brianna's in-laws all live in the same save. I will pop over to the other households, now and again, especially when it's time for another baby to be born, just to keep up, or to age them up. And they are always calling and chatting with each other, plus, the families get together for birthdays (mostly for the grandchildren) and Harvest Day is nearing in my game. It's a lively save, I must say.
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What a great story!
So you're saying that you mainly play the original household and intermittently play the children's families that have moved out?