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[BETA] The Sims 4 History Challenge
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Not long after my last comment on this thread, I cleared my browser cache/cookies, etc, and have since been unable to log into my account here. For some reason it was constantly asking me to make a new account, and not linking my EA account correctly. So I apologize for not checking in for so long, but thank you to everyone who stuck through it and a big thanks to veteran players who answered questions for me.
To you and to the many people who send e-mail requests for the scoresheet, it is linked in the updated google doc (and on the original post of this forum thread). HOWEVER, this link will send you directly to the master copy of the scoresheet, which nobody can edit except for myself. Please follow the instructions on the first page of the scoresheet to either make a personal copy for yourself (file-make a copy), or print a copy.
You're absolutely right! The soulmate aspiration is nowhere to be found, for some reason. I'll make sure it's added to the next update.
On the topic of grafting, was this before or after the gardening update that came out just before seasons? When seasons came out, the base game patch that they released with it overhauled gardening and made grafting significantly more difficult to achieve.
Traits aren't restricted per generation in this challenge, only aspirations since some aren't able to be completed until specific eras and/or aren't fitting for the era.
I HAVE been working on revamping this challenge, as @Sarahkay said (some of you may have noticed me lurking on the History Challenge google doc the last few days). I'm fondly referring to it as the History Challenge 2.0, as it will be a rather substantial overhaul. My goal for this challenge is to make each era feel unique (as they already do) by letting the restrictions force you to play by the rules of the time period while the goals encourage you to really become immersed and live the way historic people lived in that time. I also want to make the entire rules, goals, and eras descriptions a bit more clean and streamlined so that it is easier for people to read and understand everything, instead of being intimidated by a wall of text. I'm about halfway finished as I'm writing this post, and hope to have it finished by the time Island Living comes out.
Some things to look forward to (or maybe not):
So with all that in mind, now is the perfect time to let me know your suggestions and ideas for this challenge! I really do want to hear your feedback, as I'm making a challenge for all of you, not just myself.
Some ideas I've been toying with that I'd love to hear your feedback on are:
As always, thank you all so much for your support of this challenge! Feel free to @mention or pm me with any questions or suggestions! And sorry again for ignoring the forums for so long.
I'll have to think a bit more on what new Eras to add, but letting you guys do every other generation will be easy for me to add--just an optional tweak to the rules.
That's a good idea, I hadn't thought about that. I'll probably make a new thread for it when I release the new updates--either later today or tomorrow morning.
Also, the rounding up to ten eras sound like a great idea! Only if it doesn't bring a huge headache for you, though.
I think I might release the updated challenge later tonight, after I finish typing it up in bbcode for the forums. There is preemptive support for Island Living already in this update though! Your Sims can use the boats, beach towels, bonfires, and fish traps in the first generation. Also, your Ancestors can be mermaids if you want
I know from some early access stuff I watched on the pack that the island with the volcano has a waterfall your Sims can shower in, so the large lot on that island is in the new "recommended starting lots" section of the challenge. I'm super excited for Island Living as well, and am torn on whether I should play the History Challenge there, or something more normal first to get an idea of all the new stuff. In any case, Sulani seems like it'll be a perfect world for this challenge
Change Log 6/17/19
Island Living Support
Although the pack isn’t out yet, I’ve preemptively added support for the new items/occult added in this pack. I’ll add support for the new aspiration and careers once the pack is out and we know the details on those.
-Yes, I know I’m a sucker for occults. Witches will probably be allowed as Ancestors too, when we get them.
-The new bonfires are also allowed here, but fall under the already existing category for bonfires.
Challenge-Wide Rules/Goals
-You may pick and choose what goals you want to complete at what difficulty level--you don’t have to choose one or the other and stick with that for the entire challenge.
-Historian goals will give you double points.
-I also made some changes to the challenge-wide rules to make them easier to track/support any amount of DLC packs. Just read through them all and see what’s changed, as there were lots of little changes.
Generation 1: Stone Age
Generation 2: Early Civilization
This generation is when things start to really get overhauled. Read on!
- Notebooks (and by extension, computers) and all writing-related goals have been removed from this generation. It just wasn’t fun or immersive to play with broken mods, or to have a computer sitting around your otherwise tech-free household.
- I changed the goal of hosting a house party completely, as that goal also wasn’t ever quite hitting the mark. Along with this goal, refrigerators and stoves were also removed as they weren’t ever quite fitting in with the Era. Let me know if this is too much of an annoyance, and I might consider allowing fridges again so that your sims can grill and store food.
- The collecting goal has been removed, so that this Era is a little more unique from the last.
- Violins have been swapped with guitars for this Era.
- Selling tables have been added to this Era, because for some reason they weren’t otherwise allowed until Modern Day.
Pretty much the only goal that stayed the same in this Era was earning money from tips (yay?). Check the Early Civ goals section for Historian mode and specifics, but the new goals on Casual difficulty are as follows:-Looks familiar, I know. Don’t worry, we don’t have duplicate goals.
-Punching bags have been allowed in this Era for the completion of this goal.
Generation 3: Middle Ages
To support the artistic focus that will be in the new Renaissance Era, the Middle Ages has become more geared around wealth and family.
- Removed puppet theaters, dance floors, pianos, and pipe organs from this Era. Added refrigerators, stoves, and violins.
- Moved gender restrictions and affair/🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸 consequences to the suggestions section.
- Removed the Painter career from this Era.
- Removed the Painter Extraordinaire aspiration, added Soulmate aspiration.
- Replaced the Museum in this Era with a generic type wedding/church venue.
As with the previous generation, nearly all goals for the Middle Ages have been changed. They are:Generation 4: The Renaissance
This is an entirely new Era! It was inspired by the Baroque and Elizabethan time periods, which was around the height of the Renaissance as well. I felt like we needed another generation to make the transition from the Middle Ages into the Great Sim Frontier (Old West) a little smoother. This Era is heavily focused on music and the arts.
Generation 5: The Great Sim Frontier
This generation has been changed quite a bit, and renamed to reflect that. It was frequently brought to my attention that the “Old West” or “Wild West” time period was after the industrial revolution started, which is entirely correct! However, the industrial revolution and the wild West were still going on at the same time, so many of the wild West inspirations have been moved to the Industrial Revolution Era. This Era is based more off of the American frontier now with the mischief focus changed to farm life.
- Fittingly, you are allowed (and encouraged) to move your household as desired after you reach this Era.
- The Chief of Mischief aspiration has been removed.
- Gender restrictions moved to suggestions section.
- Employee restrictions moved to suggestions.
- Book Publishing frequency restriction removed.
As with previous generations, most of the goals have changed at least a little bit. This is what the new Casual difficulty goals are:Generation 6: Industrial Revolution
The major changes are starting to calm down, now.
Generation 7 and 8: The Roaring 20’s and Modern day
These two Eras were left largely untouched, I only removed gender restrictions and tweaked goals to support the Historian difficulty level.
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Can't say I've seen those around anywhere, sorry. You might try asking in the Deaderpool discord.
The goal to have kids with 5 different Sims is completed by one Sim, so you can do it with whatever Sim you want. Aside from the goal, you're not required to make your Sims have different mates unless you want to.
I have a question though. I'm currently in the Middle Ages with my family and one of the goals on the Google Doc is to complete the Gardening Collection. I have every single base game plant EXCEPT for the UFO and it's really frustrating me that my teenage child is about to age up and potentially begin the next Era before I can complete this goal! My question (for anyone who knows) is: Is it even possible to collect the UFO without the ability to travel into space?
Currently I have embarked on this challenge and I want to inform you that it is impossible even if it is not French to be able to reach the goal of having a fish worth 1500
The resale price of sturgeon not exceeding 300§
My apologies for not replying! I check this thread regularly but didn't get a notification for the last few comments for some reason. I'm sure you've made it well past the Prehistoric Era now, but you're correct in that the UFO can only be obtained through a rocketship, at least according to the wiki. I'll do some testing to see if the highest level seed packets have them too, but for now just complete the collection with everything other than the UFO.
Hello! I don't speak French, so I apologize if you can't understand everything in my reply. The goal isn't to catch any fish worth $1500, but rather to catch specifically the Anglerfish, which is only found in the Forgotten Grotto (boarded up tunnel in the Oasis Springs park area) while fishing with high quality fish as bait--so things like Salmon, Bass, and Batfish. You can find one worth $1500, but it takes a lot of time and a bit of luck which is why that is the harder level difficulty for that goal. Hope that helps, good luck fishing!
I would like to try this challenge!
However, I have run into a small issue. The "gain hygiene from swimming" mod isn't working for me, my computer won't even let me download it! So I have decided to give up on the mod. Is there any way to gain hygiene without this mod during the pre-history stage?
Your Sims should gain hygiene from swimming without a mod at all--it only goes up to 50% hygiene, though. You might be looking at an old version of the challenge, as that mod isn't recommended anymore (since it's both not needed and doesn't work anyway), so make sure you're using the most up-to-date rules here. You can also get hygiene from deodorizing cream made with the herbalism skill. You'll have to go to Granite Falls first for the ingredients, but they're all plants so you can easily regrow them at home. Hope that helps!
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> My apologies for not replying! I check this thread regularly but didn't get a notification for the last few comments for some reason. I'm sure you've made it well past the Prehistoric Era now, but you're correct in that the UFO can only be obtained through a rocketship, at least according to the wiki. I'll do some testing to see if the highest level seed packets have them too, but for now just complete the collection with everything other than the UFO.
> (Quote)
>
> Hello! I don't speak French, so I apologize if you can't understand everything in my reply. The goal isn't to catch any fish worth $1500, but rather to catch specifically the Anglerfish, which is only found in the Forgotten Grotto (boarded up tunnel in the Oasis Springs park area) while fishing with high quality fish as bait--so things like Salmon, Bass, and Batfish. You can find one worth $1500, but it takes a lot of time and a bit of luck which is why that is the harder level difficulty for that goal. Hope that helps, good luck fishing!
I also struggled with this goal so much that I had to give it up because my founders died of old age before I could catch anything worth more than $300 - and that was with the whole fam fishing all day every day, with max skill. I genuinely think that the value of this fish has been changed since they altered the fishing skill in one of the updates - I'm pretty sure it's not possible anymore. This is the 2nd time I've done this challenge, the first time I did was 2 years ago and then I caught a $1500 anglerfish easily.
Hi, and welcome to the challenge! The first time I attempted this challenge, waaaaay back when Cloudseeker was in charge and it was fairly new, I didn't use any mods or CC for it. So it is definitely possible, but in general you're going to be more immersed in the challenge if you have stuff that really fits the time period.
As far as CC goes, it's really only the first few Eras that I feel they're most "needed" in--I personally don't use CC in my game except for this challenge, so I understand not wanting to use it. You can definitely get away with a few outfits that have animal print on them or look like leaves for the Stone Age, and can go for a Grecian-esque "all white" theme for Early Civilization. After that, content from packs like Vampires and some of the extra fancy stuff from City Living and Get Famous will get you through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. There's plenty of old west/colonial style stuff in Strangerville, and Luxury party has some good stuff for the Roaring 20's. The only build/buy CC that is close to required for this challenge is the typewriter, which you can replace with a computer (there's special notes on this in the Great Frontier section, I believe).
Now for mods, the ones recommended in the Google Doc are pretty much the bare minimum, but are still entirely optional. MCCC has a lot of cool features and some good synergy with this challenge, such as flagging Sims to not be culled (so that you can reliably meet your Ancestors' ghosts in the Modern Day), letting your kids/teens quit school so that you don't have to cancel the interaction all the time, and enabling aging for Vampires so that you can play as them without giving yourself a huge advantage. The empty worlds mod is just to save you time, so if you don't mind bulldozing things then you don't need it at all.
The challenge rules were designed with base game and Outdoor Retreat in mind, and nothing else. Even the most challenge-breaking things (no typewriter, your Ancestors getting culled) have workarounds and will not lessen the difficulty of the challenge in any way, just how immersed you are into the current time period. I hope that helps, and I apologize for the long reply--I have a habit of rambling on occasion
> Some ideas I've been toying with that I'd love to hear your feedback on are:
> * Complete or partial removal of randomizing traits/aspirations.
> * Support for playing an "extra long" version of the challenge, where you progress upon the birth of every other generation, instead of every generation.
> * The addition of two more eras (rounding it out to an even ten), that would be based in the 60's-70's and sometime in the future (possibly requiring Get to Work?).
I'd love to have two more eras. Ten is a really attractive number for me. As for "every other generation" i have already been playing this on a customized life span, a longer one, so that would be very welcome.