I'm trying so hard to get those six adopted boys married ASAP but they can't do anything til they age up and I don't want to wait around so that's why I'm trying to get it together to send them all off to college together, let them knock themselves out making their own greek house.
But I wanted to fudge their loves lives, so I made a family with 6 teens already, nearby, actually 3 girls 3 boys so my guys have choices, hoping to get them all nice and friendly together..would be nice if I could make a dorm out of the 12 of them but not sure the game will handle that.
Because playing a household with 8 sims is really pushing things. My game goes to Windows often. It opens again just fine, doesn't freeze, but when it does open it's always with the hourglass turning over. Anyone have any advice for how to run such inflated households without so much trouble?
Also, will going to UNI push back the time it takes for them to finally be eligible for marriage, though? Doesn't it put extra non-marriagable days into their lives in the form of the hidden lifestate "young adult" and they can't marry til they are out of UNI anyway?
I don't want to crush their dreams, some of them are real hotshots academically, but I also want to get them married and out of my hair. LOL
You can call me
Iggy or Rex (he/him) 10 ways to Fight Hate
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The game won't allow for more than 8 Sims per household without a mod - they do exist, however. The limit is there so that players with computers that are at or around the minimum requirement don't completely make their game unplayable by having too many Sims to keep that much track of.
Your post comes off with some contradictions to me.
You say you don't want crush their dreams but then in the same sentence say you want them out of your hair - like you don't plan on playing them past getting them married to fulfill their parents' life goals. If the latter is the case, why does it matter if they drop out or make 4.0's? If you do plan on playing them later, why the rush to get them through part of their life?
The only thing I can say is that there is no need to rush. If you really want to rush it, have them all drop out. But if you want them to graduate and have access to four degree-exclusive careers, it is time to slow down. When all exams are successfully passed, the college usually lasts total of 24 days. Just don't play with their parents a lot so they don't die before they all get married.
I see I wasn't clear enough: I did not want the offspring to have to be stuck with the negative memory of not going to college, but I also don't want to play them instead of my original couple. In fact I would never have chosen to have them adopt 6 kids in the first place if I had known how difficult this was going to be. Was hoping I could speedrun it somehow, but nope.
I might be better off just letting my original sim never get his life wish and drowning his sorrows with umbrella drinks on the beaches of Twiki'i XD
You've both been helpful with info about how the game works so I can better make informed decisions, and I thank you for that.
I wanted to find a win/win, but at this point, I think putting them in and dropping them out thereafter just to shorten their time spent being teens, might make sense.
Maybe if I just don't care about the life wish, and let the game do what it wants, it will be better. Marriage in this game is far from plug-and-play: I've found it hard to get a single Sim I was playing, to find someone suitable who also wanted to marry them, when that was all I was juggling.
And that family I made in hopes of having convenient prospects? LOL that's going all wrong: the redhaired teen girl Poppy, seems to have some serious anger issues: for some reason she keeps having both the desire to be friends with one of my main family's sons, and the tendency to attack him repeatedly and get into fights with him, that she then loses, every time, and then cries about it. but it might have to do with her own life wish which I looked at: she wants to be a space pirate
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The one major benefit of universities is that if your sim graduates with Summa Honors (different word) Laude (GPA 4.0), has many friends and high skills, you could have your sim start the career at level 9. That would mean one promotion and enjoy that permanent platinum!
Though remember, once a sim is out of college (by getting expelled, dropping out, or graduating), they can never return there. Though dropping out is better than getting expelled as latter will result in one additional fear.
Of course I can suggest cheats if you wish. It's under spoilers.
You can use this to set the semester, have your sim immediately graduate, or have an exam happen now.
Though remember that you may not get the following things:
I don't know enough about the game to know if that was humor about the Lit major and Miss Poppy's explosive temper but it made me smile regardless.
Thanks for that spoiler, I haven't found it as easy to find Sims2 cheats as I thought. My poor game though, it's crashing on close now. I went looking to see if there are cache files I need to clean out, could only get Sims3 info that I already know, on that.
But I did have a Eureka moment that could have saved me from adopting six kids in the first place, a bit late for that now unless I want to see about a volume discount from Grimmy but if only it had occurred to me sooner, to use the ReNuYu Senso Orb (or whatever it's called) to change my pesky sim's aspiration, which then changes the lifetime wish as well.
I went ahead and reprogrammed him so now he's a Pleasure aspirant (he already spends every spare minute at the poker table so why not?) with a Grilled Cheese Secondary Aspiration.
And I saw his husband (who is Dean of Admissions in Education) working on some promotion skills, doing some reading and darned if he didn't get the pacifier thought bubble and I was like OH NO YOU DON'T!! and put his head right into the reprogrammer and got rid of that family aspiration before he decides to adopt more as soon as the others start moving out!
Close call, but a miss is as good as a mile!
So now I'm just waiting for the youngest to age up to teen in a couple of days, with the hope I can just then consider them on their own, move my empty nester couple into an apartment or smaller house, go on vacation, and forget that all happened? I originally hoped to have an alien baby for them to raise together once they were done seeing the world together but after having a sixpack of kids, I think they're both ready for a few sixpacks and a lot vacation.
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But yeah, I usually don't bother completing lifetime want as its two major benefits are a lot of influence points and aspiration points (which I can easily save up) and permanent platinum.
But...
Permanent platinum can be obtained two other ways:
1. By filling up the lifetime aspiration bar to the max. This is the bar that gives aspiration benefit points (which can be used to get a secondary aspiration). It slowly raises or lowers depending on sim's aspiration bar. Not only that, but some major life events like marriage, graduation, opening a business etc will raise this meter some amount when they first occur.
2. If your sim gets a genie lamp (which can be delivered when a sim has a high lifetime aspiration bar and high hobby enthusiasm), they can wish for peace of mind, which will give them permanent platinum if it succeeds (if it fails, enjoy everything breaking!).
So yeah, have your sims enjoy their hobbies at their free time and good things will come to them eventually. Including less of those "Have a Baby" wants.
I had a born in game Sim roll Romance as her LTW. She was permanent platinum during her teen years and she hadn't even flirted with anyone let alone get her first kiss. She was helping to raise her 4 quadruplet siblings.
I use the LTW as a guide for what I do with the Sim. Not everyone in real life achieves their desired goal. My above Romance Sim never completed her LTW. She wanted to enter a career that I couldn't put her in due to the rules of the challenge.
I have a mod called ACR where I can put in Sims Ideal Family Size and if 2 Sims have different Ideal Family Sizes the one with the larger one has to convince their spouse to have more. Which is likely the case for a Sim who wants to marry off 6 kids.
My Sims who end up with the 6 grandchildren want best hope they end up with multiple kids and that they have enough kids on their own. Because I'm not going to force it. And those with LTW's that require X number of kids best hope their spouse also wants lots of kids, they get "lucky" with the multiples, or they can convince their spouse (and they have to roll a baby want to be able to persuade) - it involves formulas and a pair of dice.
Thanks, @EgonVM for the insight about a Literature degree being the only one that supports Space Pirate as a career. I wish a Lit degree could do that in real life! And for the other bits of advice and insight. I didn't realize how very little I knew about Sims2, but am grateful to learn.
Currently my long-suffering couple got stuck in limbo buying their vacation home in Twikii Island. They never seem to have arrived, and it just takes me to the vacation home, in build/buy mode, with no live mode available, but back home in Belladonna Cove it says they're at Twikii Island. I haven't figured out how to get out of that jam yet, but that's a separate post.
I like your suggestion, @Seera1024, of Sims Ideal Family Size from ACR. I use a few of their other mods (to stabilize the game I think) so I'll have to go looking for that one. It sounds more realistic, anyway, as well as a good way to protect against desires for crazy-high-numbers of kids that seems to be a peril of the Family Aspiration. I'd like a sim to want a family once in a while without wanting to have their own reality show
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Oof... I do hate this glitch. I remember when that happened to me, but with owned community lot. I Googled the fix for it and eventually got it fixed. However, the community lot that broke will never work again. I mustn't visit it or I'd activate the glitch again and I can't visit it with other sims.
I remember using SimPE to fix it, but I don't exactly remember what I did... One thing is for sure: the aging bars got reset.
I do hope you get it fixed.
Oh no. This gives me the impression this may or may not ever be fixable. Dang it, I was attached to that couple. But I'll just have to start again and try to make ones that look similar and tell myself, they lived happily ever after at the lavish beach house with private shoreline, and never came back. It still makes me sad though, to lose them after all that.
I'll turn my attention to the adopted sons' college experience for a while.
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You can get the family back. Just the lot they owned will be the "never touch it whatever you do".
so how do I get the couple back then? Clicking their home lot in Belladonna Cove just gives me the prompt that they are in Twikii, and when I go there, live mode is greyed out and they don't appear anywhere. I can't seem to access them from either place?
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First, if you don't have any other Sims on vacation other than the ones who are stuck in limbo or even in the vacation hood, you can simply delete the vacation world (within the game) and the Sims should return back to their home lot. You can add the same world again if it isn't a custom world you were using for a vacation hood.
Second, if you don't want to go through the fuss of marrying off Sims you can use the headstone to make Sims become involved with other Sims on a lot. (cheat). Choices on the Headstone can help relationships and spawn kids etc.
As far as having six grandchildren, no one has to go through the romance to do that, simply adopt. LTW filled.
If it's too much of a chore to tend to those six, you can always move them out with another Sim and put them in a house (so your Sims can call them) or buy them each a cellphone, and or leave them in the bin, and never play them again. You can age up Sims with the Simmodder cheat object in the game. Or play them later, one by one by adding a Sim you don't care about to household and have them move out with all or each one at a time. Easier to play one by one.
Crashing, it sounds like you don't have the game set with Graphics Rule Maker correctly to where it won't crash, and will use the right amount of memory to keep it running if it's setup correctly.
Things that use too much memory in The Sims 2.
Walls, walls use a lot of performance power for this game. It's why a vacant lot is much smoother.
Inventory, for every townie in the hoods. If Sims visit owned businesses and your Sims sell them stuff every day, they are loaded down with stuff in their inventories.
Memories, every time you see Sims on community lots there are more memories being generated for every Sim there.
That's just a few things let alone how many Sims and visitors are on a lot.
It's why the Graphics Rule maker must be set to read the correct amount of RAM and memory on your video card.
University, there used to be a mod that sets the week for each semester to 3 days or maybe even 2 days. No one says they have to pass...lol.
I think I got it at Mod the Sims years ago but can't remember the name of it. But 3 days was enough for most of them to make the Dean's list in my game so that mod was very useful to shorten their time at college.
Really appreciate that, Cinebar!
If I delete Twikii Island (not sure how but will see in the game) my sims get plopped back into their house in Belladonna Cove, and then later I can reinstate Twikii Island and probably this time, just avoid buying any vacation homes there? That would be a great solution!
I got around the marrying off of 6 adult offspring problem by sticking the parent Sim's head into the Renuyu senso orb and changing aspiration, which gave him a different lifetime wish along with it. Then got them all off to college at once, where they're doing really well, all made Dean's List. But I didn't know a lot of what you mentioned, so thanks again.
I will check again to make sure I set it up to use more RAM, I recall changing an .ini file for 4 GB RAM instead of 2 but can't recall whether that was for Sims3 or Sims2. Big households are a big problem like you said, which is why I am going to strive to avoid having any Sim with a wish for tons of kids, ever again (plus it becomes drudgery to mass-produce childcare, for me at least).
Will check Mod the Sims for that idea.
Again, thank you and everyone else here who has been so generous with their help and advice, it's such a nice community!
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Just make double sure no one is living there or on vacation (actually in a hotel or vacation home etc.) This should bring the couple that is stuck back home. When your played Sims visit a dorm you can't control them but can only interact with them. You have to greet them at the dorm door just like you would greet a visitor at the home lot.
I've been in Belladonna Cove and seen only what look like packs, and no option to delete them. Like from Belladonna cove I can click on the University one and go there to play, but it just winds up with Live Mode unavailable, no option to delete anything. Just a row of circular icons, and clicking on them enters them, but there's nothing else to do but click on them. ?
ETA Thank you @Cinebar! I went back in and finally found how to delete them, they don't make it obvious, it's a tiny little graphic with no color of its own, off to the right, very easy to miss. The couple are back home, safe and sound.
I still want to go to Twikii on vacation, but is that safe now as long as I never again go to the beach house they bought? Are vacation homes just not safe generally?
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