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New History/Legacy Challenge: The Great British Sim Challenge
EmersedCrown
Posts: 120 Member
The Great British Sim Challenge is a History/Legacy-style challenge that takes you through the history of Great Britain. Here are the top ten things to know:
1. There are goals to complete for each era, for example your aim in the Anglo Saxon era will be to become chief of your world through marriage, war and money.
2. The goals cover all of the extra content (except Batuu) so that your gameplay can be really varied. But don't worry: there are always base game alternatives in case you don't own the pack. For example, if you don’t own Parenthood, then the Victorian goal of having a child with all 5 character traits is changed to you having a child with all skills maxed out.
3. There are ‘special events’ that could help or harm your progress to the goals e.g. the Black Death in the Medieval era or the Isle of Wight Music Festival in the mid-20th century.
4. The challenge puts as much thought and effort into choice, story-telling and world building as it does completing the goals e.g. in the Georgian era, you’ll need to choose: will you become an imperialist or abolitionist?
5. The eras begin in the Iron Age and end in the 00s, with all the historical periods - Medieval, Tudor, 1920s, 1970s - along the way.
6. The challenge is designed so that you could just play one specific era or chunk of eras if you preferred, so if you exclusively love to the play middle ages or the 20th century or the Victorians - you can!
7. Unlike the History or Decades challenge, the eras are not limited in length: you stay in the era until you have completed all of the goals.
8. You earn points based on how quickly you managed to complete all of the goals and there are three difficulty levels, based on the sim lifespan you choose
9. The goals across the challenge also include nearly all of the in-game achievements, so you'll be working towards those at the same time
10. While the challenge tries to stay fairly accurate to key events, lifestyle and culture of the different periods, there is one huge historical inaccuracy: it is a history without bigotry (racism, sexism, homophobia etc). This was to make sure that sims of all backgrounds can have fun and enjoy themselves in the different historical eras and your personal play preferences aren't limited by the challenge.
The challenge is too big for me to post here, but you can download the challenge (OneDrive) here and also follow the Tumblr here or the Instagram @gbsimchallenge.
I'm currently in the process of making a save file which prepares the different eras for you (households, townies, residential lots and community lots) and I keep the Tumblr/Insta up to date with progress.
If you decide to give the challenge a try, please feel free to let me know! I will follow any Tumblr/Insta/forum post that is trying it out and would be delighted if you had feedback or suggestions of how it could be improved.
EDIT 27.2.21: Challenge has been updated with some fixes. The link to download takes you to the latest version (1.5). I've also noted the source of the document (OneDrive) as I appreciate that it might have felt a bit dodgy to click on a link when you had no idea where it was taking you!
Vadish!
1. There are goals to complete for each era, for example your aim in the Anglo Saxon era will be to become chief of your world through marriage, war and money.
2. The goals cover all of the extra content (except Batuu) so that your gameplay can be really varied. But don't worry: there are always base game alternatives in case you don't own the pack. For example, if you don’t own Parenthood, then the Victorian goal of having a child with all 5 character traits is changed to you having a child with all skills maxed out.
3. There are ‘special events’ that could help or harm your progress to the goals e.g. the Black Death in the Medieval era or the Isle of Wight Music Festival in the mid-20th century.
4. The challenge puts as much thought and effort into choice, story-telling and world building as it does completing the goals e.g. in the Georgian era, you’ll need to choose: will you become an imperialist or abolitionist?
5. The eras begin in the Iron Age and end in the 00s, with all the historical periods - Medieval, Tudor, 1920s, 1970s - along the way.
6. The challenge is designed so that you could just play one specific era or chunk of eras if you preferred, so if you exclusively love to the play middle ages or the 20th century or the Victorians - you can!
7. Unlike the History or Decades challenge, the eras are not limited in length: you stay in the era until you have completed all of the goals.
8. You earn points based on how quickly you managed to complete all of the goals and there are three difficulty levels, based on the sim lifespan you choose
9. The goals across the challenge also include nearly all of the in-game achievements, so you'll be working towards those at the same time
10. While the challenge tries to stay fairly accurate to key events, lifestyle and culture of the different periods, there is one huge historical inaccuracy: it is a history without bigotry (racism, sexism, homophobia etc). This was to make sure that sims of all backgrounds can have fun and enjoy themselves in the different historical eras and your personal play preferences aren't limited by the challenge.
The challenge is too big for me to post here, but you can download the challenge (OneDrive) here and also follow the Tumblr here or the Instagram @gbsimchallenge.
I'm currently in the process of making a save file which prepares the different eras for you (households, townies, residential lots and community lots) and I keep the Tumblr/Insta up to date with progress.
If you decide to give the challenge a try, please feel free to let me know! I will follow any Tumblr/Insta/forum post that is trying it out and would be delighted if you had feedback or suggestions of how it could be improved.
EDIT 27.2.21: Challenge has been updated with some fixes. The link to download takes you to the latest version (1.5). I've also noted the source of the document (OneDrive) as I appreciate that it might have felt a bit dodgy to click on a link when you had no idea where it was taking you!
Vadish!
Post edited by EmersedCrown on
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Comments
I'm now into the Tudor era so I've got quite a few different pictures! I'll just try posting some of my favourites.
All of the lots/households I'll be posting are CC free and on the gallery at EmersedCrown.
The Walsh Family
Alys Walsh thought she was doomed to spend the rest of her life alone. Then, she met Patrick. Their fun-loving, slightly silly personalities instantly clicked and within a week they were married. Now they have twin toddlers, Brighid and Brynn. Alys and Patrick want to have as many kids as they can, but are all too aware that Alys has a birthday coming up soon...
They live in a typical Celtic family homestead. Life is tough and filled with plenty of rough hardwork, but they always manage to find the simple joys to life.
Angus and the wolves
Britain was once full of wild wolves. As a child, Angus was taught to hunt wolves for their pelts. Then, one day when he was a teen, Angus came across some weak and starving wolf pups. Their mother had been killed days earlier. Angus defied his father and raised the pups as his own. Now, he lives them in a secluded forest.
The recent birth of another wolf pup has gotten Angus thinking about starting his own family. But, after spending so much time with wolves, can he even remember how to properly talk to a lady?
At this point I was still very new to building, so I took an approach of editing gallery builds rather than making my own from scratch.
This first one was a pool lot that I turned into residential. It was also basically just base game, so I updated it to include content from the later packs.
This lot was a 'Roman ruins' lot originally, so I decided to 'renovate' it and imagine what it would have looked like in its heyday. It became a Roman restaurant and is currently my most popular build:
Feel free to ask for cc links
Read Sim 66 here:https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/978195/sim-66/p1
https://kelloggjkellogg.blogspot.com/2020/10/sim-66-prologue.html
It was here that I learned about poses - such a great way to make your pictures look better. I have to say though, I also like the fun of trying to find legitimate in game activities you can get a sim to do to have them make the face/action you want for the picture. So, as you can see in these pictures, I like to have a mix of poses and natural gameplay moments.
So, for the next few days, I'm going to share my favourite households, their backstory and their homes. Starting with: the Ashers!
In the Anglo Saxon era, you are trying to create and develop your own kingdom. The Asher family are the leaders of the rival kingdom that you will often come up against.
They are led by King Kenric. A powerful blend of charismatic and terrifying, he has led his kingdom for decades.
Leading by Kenric’s side is his wife, Queen Osberga. She has fulfilled her Queenly duty of having sons and now enjoys the power and status of being the most important woman in the kingdom.
Offa is the eldest son and therefore next in line to take over the kingdom. If Kenric is charismatic and terrifying, Offa is terrifying and terrifying. His takeover of the rival kingdom will be interesting...
Odi and Moira are the next eldest children. As the ‘spare’ heirs, they both lack a clear purpose. Moira longs to fight, but doesn’t really know what for. Odi is more of a lover than a fighter, but lacks something or someone to love.
Lora and Lar, as the youngest of the Asher children, are just playing and enjoying being young. They haven’t truly learned yet what it means to be an Asher.
The Oakes family have a pretty idyllic home:
And their lives used to be just as idyllic:
But things became more complicated on the day that Cwen told Tryggr she was pregnant with another sim’s baby...
Tryggr loves baby Sae as much as his own daughter, Cate, but there is no denying that his marriage to Cwen has never quite been the same.
So many cute couples:
And I was really starting to get the hang of how to build on my own. I was no longer editing Gallery finds from this era:
It feels like the medieval era is possibly the favourite pre-20th century historical era on Sims 4 (or maybe Victorians are first? Either way, Romans are third and Regency is fourth, IMO) so I want to spend more time in this era showing you the households/builds.
I'll start off by showing you two of the most challenging builds I did in this era:
This 'monastery in the mountains' was my first try at having a build surrounded by debug rock but that was still playable.
I had to rebuild it so many times to get it right!
And with the castle with a moat, I learned a valuable lesson: finish constructing the building with stairs, windows and doors before you even THINK about landscaping. I'd finished all this beautiful moat, only to realise that the castle wasn't symmetrical and that messed with stairs placement so I had to delete the moat and start that over again once I had fixed the castle
My only wish is that it truly could operate as it is designed - to have a restaurant and a bakery and a fishmonger and a church and a tailor and a blacksmith and a market and a washerwoman all running their shops on the same lot. That isn't a genuine request to EA or anything - even with my 0 programming knowledge, I know that that would be an utter nightmare to try create. Still, it's nice to dream!
Berta and Ranulf are two of the best fighters in England. And they have seen more than their fair share of battle.
However, all that fighting has taken a toll on their personal lives. They’ve had over seven children, but none survived past infancy.
Imagine their joy when their daughter, Gundred, survives. Ranulf and Berta know how dangerous the outside world can be and will do anything to protect their daughter.
They teach her everything they know about how to fight. But they also keep her locked inside their crumbling castle, often leaving her alone for months as they go off to war.
But Ranulf and Berta are now nearly elders and Gundred is a young adult. She needs to leave the castle and find her own way. But how can she do that when the walls of this castle are all she has ever known?
The full challenge can be downloaded from the link in the very first post (which I forgot to mention is a OneDrive link), but I'll also start posting it in the forum here.
Starting with the introduction!
I. Introduction
The Great British Sim Challenge is a Legacy-style challenge that takes you through the history of Great Britain. You will start in the Iron Age and play until the 2010s. Each era will be unique and will aim to embody the spirit of the age - at least as far as The Sims 4 allows! As a result, there will be limitations to what you can buy, use and do in each era. These limitations will ease as the eras progress. Each era comes with a set of goals for you to try and complete. The goals will aim to cover all of the game achievements and give you the opportunity to engage with all of the features of the base game and additional features added by the extra content.
This challenge takes its inspiration from the History Challenge by Cloudseeker and Snowie, and the Decades Challenge by ZombieCleo and Kakeru_naruse. I am indebted to these individuals for bringing me hours of fun and inspiration. There will be several similarities to these challenges, but also enough differences for this to feel like a distinct challenge. As a big fan of tabletop strategy games and RPG open world video games, my aim was to try and bring some of those elements to a Sims Legacy Challenge. This challenge is as much about the RPG story-telling and world building as it is about achieving the goals.
There is one glaring historical inaccuracy to this challenge: it operates in a history free from sexism, racism and homophobia. The aim here is not to whitewash Britain’s dark history: Britain is directly responsible for the oppression and murder of literally millions of people over centuries; we have perpetuated racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and more in order to maintain exclusive power structures. Nevertheless, to recreate such discrimination in this challenge would essentially mean that only white, straight, male sims could have any fun before the 20th century – and that is no fun for players either. Therefore, no rules or goals create limitations in these areas. If you wish to place the limitation on your own game – go ahead.
This challenge only requires the base game but includes goals that cover all of the extra content.
At time of writing Journey to Batuu and any later as yet unannounced packs have not been included in the challenge because I don’t own them. I do intend to buy all newly released packs (with the exception of Star Wars; that pack will never be part of this challenge) and update the challenge later.
Any goals which use extra content also have a 'base game' version in case you do not have that pack. If you spot any goals which do not provide a base game alternative, please let me know so I can fix it.
Terminology Clarification:
World – a complete sims world e.g. Oasis Springs OR Newcrest OR Forgotten Hollow
Universe – all the worlds you own e.g. Willow Crest AND Oasis Springs AND Newcrest
The aim of this challenge is three-fold:
1. Complete the goals of each era
2. Complete the goals in a time frame (era length)
3. Complete the challenge-wide goals
The era ends when you complete all of the goals of that era. Your points for the challenge are based on how many sim days it took you to complete all of the eras.
Once you know how many sims days you spent completing the challenge, calculate your score by multiplying your total sim days by the difficulty level multiplier:
Hard – x1 multiplier
Sim lifespan - short
Season length - 7 days
Medium – x3 multiplier
Sim lifespan - normal
Season length - 14 days
Easy – x4 multiplier
Sim lifespan - long
Season length - 28 days
For example, if it took you 200 sim days to complete the challenge on medium difficulty level then your total challenge score is 600.
The aim of the challenge is to get the lowest score you can.
The life spans are based on the default 'short' and 'normal' life spans of the game. You cannot use a mod to fiddle with how those days divide across the ages.
A scoring table can be found at the very end of the challenge document (download link in the first post of this thread)
There are 12 eras in this challenge:
Iron Age
Roman Britain
Anglo Saxon Era
Medieval Era
The Tudors
The Stuarts
The Georgians
The Victorians
Early 20th Century
Mid-20th Century
Late 20th Century
00s
You progress to the next era when you have completed all of the goals for that era. You will need to keep a record of how many days are passing to help calculate your score (I provide a scoring sheet at the end of the challenge document to help with this).
You do not have to play all of the eras. You can play a single era in isolation or only play a certain group of eras, e.g. up to the Victorians or all of the 20th century. It is up to you.
Each era will list all items available to you and all rules which apply (including those which continue from previous eras). While this makes the information with each era quite long, it is designed like that so that you don't have to keep scrolling back to earlier eras, and to make it easier for you to understand all of the rules and limitations if you just want to play certain eras in isolation rather than the entire history.
While a lot of objects will be allowed from the start, many of them will not create an immersive experience in your era due to their appearance (e.g. décor items). You are therefore encouraged to use items which look appropriate to the era. All cosmetic CC is permitted. CC which allows you to behave in a more era-appropriate manner is also permitted e.g. typewriter CC to use instead of computers.
At the start of each era will be historical information and images of the era. These are not necessary for the challenge per se but are there to help you understand why the goals are designed in that way and may help you with story-telling and world building ideas.
The first post in this thread has the link to the full challenge document (it's a shared MS Word doc on OneDrive).
The Broke Legacy - chapter listing
I.III Recommended Mods & CC
MC Command Center by Deaderpool
It is highly recommended because of the added story-telling and world building it can provide to your eras: you will be able to disable culling (essential for building up the generations needed for the achievements), allow children & teens to quit school, turn off autonomous phone interactions, prevent homeless sims in all their 21st century outfits from moving in to your lots etc. There are a couple of points where this mod isn’t required but is mentioned as it helps with following a goal/rule.
NPCC Mod by Paulson
This mod can help with the story-telling of your challenge by keeping down the number of random sims created and creating more of a sense of community in your neighbourhoods. It is not necessary for completing the challenge but is recommended.
Slice of Life by Kawaiistacie
This mod can help make your story-telling more vivid due to how it has overhauled the emotions/personality systems. It also adds a menstrual system.
Lifetime Skills by TwistedMexi
This mod is not allowed because it makes the challenge easier.
Emotional Inertia by roBurky
The mod is not recommended because it makes the challenge much harder but use if you wish.
Other Mods & CC
All cosmetic mods and CC are allowed. On my Tumblr Greatbritishsimchallengecc.tumblr.com I have a CC directory for all the challenge eras.
Any mods not mentioned which would make the challenges easier to achieve are not allowed.
Mods which technically make things easier by improving sim behaviours but don’t make any goals significantly easier to achieve are allowed if you want (for example, a mod which improves how sims autonomously care for babies). It is essentially down to you to decide what’s fair.
If there’s a mod that you think is pertinent to this challenge and warrants being specifically discussed in this list, please let me know.
Mods that add new careers or aspirations are allowed if you feel they add to your storytelling (e.g. there are some great medieval ones out there), but make sure you judge whether the salary/ease of promotion makes the challenge significantly easier (in which case you shouldn’t use it) and whether the fact that these careers don’t count in the challenge makes it much harder (in which case you probably shouldn’t use it but could if you wanted).
These are goals which can span multiple eras. Your aim is to complete them by the end of the challenge (the challenge ends when you have completed all the goals for the 00s). If you do successfully complete the goal, then you get to deduct the number of days specified next to the goal.
1. Play a household for ten generations or more. Deduct 20 days
2. Play a household for 26 generations or more. Deduct 52 days
3. Play a household for 100 generations. Deduct 200 days
4. Complete every collection, including collectibles added by packs (except Day of the Dead skulls and Positivity Posters) Deduct a day for each collection completed.
5. Reach max level in every career (inc. part time and each branch) Deduct a day for each career completed (count each career branch separately).
6. Complete every aspiration at least once Deduct a day for each aspiration completed
7. Make 20 BFFs with non-player sims. Deduct 10 days
8. Buy every rewards trait and potion at least once Deduct a day for each reward trait and potion bought.
9. Reach max level in every skill (skills added by mods do not count; skills that max at less than 10 skill, such as dancing, do count) Deduct a day for each skill.
10. Woohoo with 50 unique non-player sims. Deduct 10 days
11. Earn 50 gold medals on social events. Deduct 10 days
12. Have 400 babies across all sims (one of your challenge household sims must be the parent, but the baby does not have to be part of your challenge household to count). Deduct 100 days
13. Perform 30 marriages with 20 different NPC sims. One of the betrothed must be in your challenge household. Deduct 10 days
14. Have a playable household of eight ghosts. Deduct 10 days
15. Get to Work: Be abducted by aliens 3 times. Deduct 10 days
16. Get to Work: Discover 10 aliens. Deduct 10 days
17. Discover University: Complete every degree at least once across all sims Deduct 20 days
18. Snowy Escape: Have every lifestyle at least once across all sims. Deduct 10 days
Delete all buildings in all worlds. I highly recommend using the Empty Worlds save file by SrslySims to save you some time and bulldoze the lots in all worlds for you.
Pick the world you want to start in. Options are:
Willow Creek
Newcrest
Magnolia Promenade
Brindleton Bay
Forgotten Hollow
Glimmerbrook
Windenburg
In your chosen world (you may also spread into other worlds), build Iron Age style residential lots. If you intend to have pets in your household, build a vet clinic. Move in households of 4 - 8 sims into each of the residential lots. Ensure that they are era appropriate and mixed-gender. These will be the other 'tribes' that your household could marry into/battle. The total number of sims in residences plus homeless townies should total at least 20.
In your chosen starter world, create a park community lot called 'Sacred Grove'. The lot must look like a grove/forest. Add a few toilet bushes/off-the-grid toilets. Create a 'natural' pool. Build a basement and fill it with any non-era objects which the game requires you to build for a park, e.g. sinks. Do not provide access to the basement.
OPTIONAL: build Stonehenge [park community lot]