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How Do You Manage Your Population?
elanorbreton
Posts: 14,543 Member
I'm just playing through my first proper legacy, the Everything Legacy Challenge. Being on a normal lifespan, I can see the sims around me ageing quicker than I am used to and I suddenly had a panic about them all dying off and being left with nothing other than hideous randomly generated npcs.
So... I have started going through manage households and pairing sims off and giving them the occasional toddler to grow the population.
It got me wondering what everyone else does.
So, what do you all do to keep your population strong and varied in age groups? And do you keep returning to restyle them as they get older?
So... I have started going through manage households and pairing sims off and giving them the occasional toddler to grow the population.
It got me wondering what everyone else does.
So, what do you all do to keep your population strong and varied in age groups? And do you keep returning to restyle them as they get older?
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If I didn't have MCCC I'd probably do the same with downloading sims from the gallery - it's a really quick and easy way to keep things fresh, and change populations, without having to do a huge amount.
*is sick, ignore airheadedness, confusion or typos*
My Families Via PlumTree App
Also, periodic culling. I sometimes cull townies myself and I might eventually cull others if my rotation gets too big, if so, I'll say that they moved away. Every so often, I add new sims in different ways with different back stories. It currently works for me.
Recently, I played again after a break and I've got all these different sims running into each other. It's fun. I guess I like doing things myself.
There are times that I'll build or spend time managing households or doing other game admin. It doesn't take me that long though. Making a new sim, I'll say, "Alright, I need to cast a sim." I might have a description or some key characteristics, I'll then either make one in CAS or pick a townie to edit into acceptability. So far, it's not all cousins dating each other (or any). It's a lot of different socio-economic brackets.
So, a rich teen falls in love with a poor sim from the wrong side of the tracks but the parents don't approve, for example. Or, the parents kind of don't care and the new couple has to figure out how to make it on their own. Some interracial couples, some LGBT, some really religious, some Sulani locals whom I ignore in other worlds (sure, I'd take a setting to restrict sims to certain worlds), one vampire. Some pre-mades, some not, at this point, some children of pre-mades in a new generation. I have new Goths who are like 3rd cousins of the originals. It's a mish-mash, I guess but I like that. Everyone's got a back story even if it's just a sentence or two.
You'll be surprised at how many NPCs end up looking gorgeous thanks to genetics. The Behr line, for example, is one of my favorites for later generations.
I really, really, REALLY enjoy this aspect of the game (population control). I don't want to play these households but I love to watch from afar.
All the sims err'day
I don't know how people without Deaderpool's mod manage their story progression. I was pulling my hair out before I dl'ed his mod.
I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.
Ha'aheo, e hoʻomau i kō kāua aloha, kau a kau.
I don't usually do much with the population other than the ones that are my Sims friends. Sometimes I make them have spouses and children, but not often. The only thing that I often do is I add Sims from the gallery to the world, sometimes I make them myself. If my Sims have children I like to add families who have children too. I want to have friends and possible future spouses for my Sims. I don't use any mods.
I don't use mods, but maybe one day I'll look into it
So I manage the population manually and some of my sims age a lot faster than the others, but I don't mind it as long as they are not very close friends with my played sims. I often try to keep the families that are close with each other about the same age, but if they fall out of touch then they may start to age at different pace.
And yes I do return to restyle the background families as they age, especially the ones I like
The random generated townies add variety to my game and at times I go through them and may mark the interesting ones as played and delete the worst ones. I play rotationally and often have aging on for the unplayed sims, so the townies may age up quite fast, but I don't mind it.
I've been playing since TS1, and this is the only version of The Sims where I've even really downloaded any mods. But this game feels like I NEED mods to make it any way enjoyable. It feels so plain and boring without mods. But with mods... it's good
I too am about population control in my legacy save, though it can get a bit tiring at times because on top of editing bizarre offspring I give almost every npc outfit makeovers (mainly teens and up).
Thank goodness for the preset outfits... I wish there was a way to make our own.
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But, yes, I wish we could save our own preset outfits and add to them from the gallery.
i always set my playstyle to long lifespan, use MCCC to adjust time from 25 to 250 to slow it all down during the day and allow sims to develop properly over time and with a long lifespan it takes a much longer play time to get through multiple generations, it gives you time to build up everything the way you want, time to play the family you want out and have a lot of adventures along the way while the adjustment in MCCC lets your sims develop their skills. MCCC runs everything else in the background as well.
if i set my 90 sim couples off on it, the population would explode out of control in a hurry! xD
any unmarried sims would pair off quickly, including those who would never want to be married. So obviously those few sims will be the exception in mccc flag for never marrying.
Now if only there was a mod for outfits for when sims age from child to teenager..
All couples do have a child shortly after marriage or moving together. Then I play each household only every second year, meaning each household I play should consider making another baby every time I play them. But - I use a dice to limit this a bit, as the ideal number of kids would be 2-3. A simple version of how I limit them: While female is YA the dice must show 4,5 or 6 for them to try for baby. If she is A, dice must show 6. Technically only my very fertile women can try for baby when A, which limits this further. Basically I try to have everyone done with their births while still YA.
I use a spreadsheet to keep track on everything including births. By checking the notes I will easily see what households shall try for a baby during this round. I play houses in the order I feel like, it also makes births a bit spread around year. Which is a good thing as I keep track on what season they were born, not only year
With University I see my routine might get under pressure as man y YAs will lose 4 years to their studies. If this results in less births I might adjust the dice rule, saying YA gets top try for baby if dice shows 3,4,5 or 6. Btw, trying for baby isn't the same as having a baby, in some cases they had to try 3 or 4 times (4 yearsx2), because the tryforbaby did fail. That couple had their furst success after 8 years, meaning there might be only one more - if they are lucky on first try.
@bshag4lv What are your settings like? I'm not fully overrun but I have been twice.
I noticed while playing the other day that Fernando Veleta (Malcolm's grandson) flirted with Vanessa Knight (Malcolm's great-granddaughter) so the game must lose track at some point and we get inbreeding!
I play with aging on for current household and all unplayed NPCs. And sometimes I have my male sims impregnate female NPCs for 🐸🐸🐸🐸 & giggles.
Yes, this. If population growth matters to me, I use MCCC
If I really don't want to use mods, I might do what you do - going house to house to add tods etc. - but it's always such a hassle and as long as ageing is left on, the issue just keeps coming back all the time.