Sim Strategy Discussion
Zazazu:
Because I was hijacking someone else's thread again, and because we haven't had a good playstyle bragging discussion in months, feel free to post what you're doing and why you are more awesome than I. We can then steal each others' ideas.
Quote from: Me
I don't mind that the money comes from nowhere. It's going to be paid back, afterall. In my 'hood, everyone has access to a mainland bank for loans, but not for deposits. The bank won't provide that level of service for a function that doesn't gain them money. Not until a bank branch is built on the island, which could be never with my randomization scheme, do the riffraff get interest on their earnings. Only the mayor can have a savings account, and that is only used for community funds. Tax payments are too fluid to do an automatic payment for. Most of the households are around the $3k/season mark, but one is around $8k/season and a couple are around $5k/season. But if they remodel in the middle of a rotation, their taxes are going to change. My sims get a few breaks...land is free (kaching), so they can buy whatever size lot they want wherever they want and don't have to worry about the cost, though as things are filling up they are restricted by what's open. They don't have to pay property taxes until the end of the first full season they've lived in their home. Sims who moved in on the first day or second day of the season do really well from the beginning, while those who move in on the fifth day are going to get hit before they have too many promotions (if they do get multiple promotions, I roll for career level).
My full-service massage parlor lot is a good example of keeping sims down and what they shouldn't be doing yet...it's a 2x2 lot where the house and biz takes up almost every available square (excepting a small walkway). Two stories, extravagantly decorated, and valued at a property value of a bit over 62k. Bonnie has the ticket massage & tickle biz going 24/7 at a rate of $20/hr and level 10. Shelbie is some low-level in the Adventure career and her husband Julius is a Senior Officer in the military. Four kids amongst the three of them are in private school, paying about $200-$300/day each. Property taxes are $6,200/season as the house is done being decorated. Mortgage is finally paid off, but they are bleeding money. Pretty soon, Bonnie's going to have to turn the whoring up and the kids are going to all have to get teen jobs.
No one owns an off-lot biz yet. I kept wondering why no sims were rolling "Entrepreneur - Xtype" until I realized I hadn't added it to Random Stuff. Oops. I have a ready-to-own car lot and restaurant, but they are unplayed until someone buys the lot. Any lot that requires employees to function is dead in the water until owned. Commercial investment being what it is, they basically drained off the tax fund for no point whatsoever until someone deems to purchase them and half the lot cost goes back into the tax fund (half cost as an incentive to starting a business). That being said, I haven't decided what kind of tax they'll pay. Probably a flat fee-per-business each time they pay property taxes. Since the tax system has nothing to do with income, what level they are or how much they make wouldn't affect anything.
Property taxes on lots with home businesses don't differ from lots without businesses. Yeah, they potentially have the opportunity to make a lot of money. I negate a bit of this by not allowing your basic retail biz on residential lots (farm stands are fine) and not taking the money incentives, ever. I check the lot value and just transfer 10% to the mayor. I do this right when the season gauge fills full, or at 6:00 am if it fills in the middle of the night (don't want to mess with sleep patterns). Since that's when I rotate, it works. Load house, play for days, season bar fills, pay taxes, switch houses. Houses are numbered in the description and I have a couple of maps to help since they were placed randomly. One map is of the empty terrain with a numbering guide and street names. The other is gridded, with numbered and color-coded occupied spaces.
At least one person in every family knows the mayor. This is going to change when Penelope Bleu takes over...she was a marry-in who just happened to be a Senator already and would have the necessary skillpoints for mayordom right before the Mayor kicks it. So I'll have to transfer to household funds instead and have the mayor transfer it all in one hit into their savings account. No biggie. One more line on my spreadsheet...I already keep one for townie aging tracking. Every time it's time to start playing the mansion I roll the randomizer to see if a community lot will be built and of which type. Then, I build a lot within the account parameters and transfer/donate moneys out of the bank account. If I don't have enough to build a respectable lot, they get something crappy. Case-in-point: Atomic Arcade. I have no pics on me, but the thing is butt-ugly, tiny, and has almost nothing in it. After Six, the teen hangout, was built after I had skipped a round as far as building goes and is much nicer. Still kind of empty, but that's what later community improvement initiatives are for when land is too full to build anymore community lots and I'm occupied switching from single-family residences to duplexes and lowrises.
Another thing: residents can't just start off-lot businesses whenever they want to. They can only take over pre-built lots. Right now, if someone wanted to own 5 level ten businesses, they'd be screwed. This amuses me.
Quote from: Lion on 2008 May 23, 16:47:27
Thanks for sharing. I have extensive spreadsheets, and I thought I was anal. But color-coded maps? ;D Show them, show them! //Jumping up and down.
cenoura:
How did you start your neighbourhood? With one family? Do you use a randomness generator, like the one linked to in the Peasentry? How did you decide what optioins to put on it? What else do you roll for?
I want to do something like this myself over the summer vacation so that The Sims still holds interest for me - Even though I've just installed Free Time, I'm finding myself getting bored with the game rather quickly now.
I've just installed clean templates (wow - loading times are great!) and have one family which started off with two adults. There's a few townies I've made, but I'm not sure what to do with the neighbourhood yet.
I have little patience with the business side of OFB and so I'm not too sure I want to play my neighbourhood with owned businesses.
So I'm interested in what other people are doing with their neighbourhoods and particularly how they manage the money sides of things.
Liz:
Unfortunately, I tend to favour the ADHD School of Sim Strategery. I'll start a new neighbourhood, custom up a new batch o' townies/downtownies, give Crypt o' Night yet another facelift (one of these days I'll remember to just save the damned lot somewhere before I zorch its 'hood), CAS up a sim to start the 'hood with, and leap right in there. Little to no thought put into it, really. Then I'll usually play that first sim pretty intensely until they're all LTWPlatted, marry 'em off, knock 'em up, look it's a toddler, and then wander back into CAS to make a new hamster to play with. Only *very rarely* does one of my 'hoods manage to see the birth of a 3rd generation before I go swanning off in search of something new and shiny.
I've tried the Apocalypse Challenge a couple of times but got bored with it. All the restrictions kept me on my toes and so forth, but it just got so tedious - especially once the rules about taking jobs changed and it was more a crapshoot than something I could really plan and implement. Whole thing felt more like an endurance challenge than an entertaining game, so I quit. Legacy challenges can keep me entertained for a generation or two, but I still lose the fight to keep my brain from wandering off. I actually just finished my first Asylum Challenge and am quite miffed to report that I had no aspiration failures, no deaths, not even a single damned kitchen fire. Sure, they tried to starve to death, but on the verge of starvation, then the buggers just magically figured out how to feed themselves. At least I had one particularly lulzworthy bitch (10 Body and, like, 2 nice) who spent her days in search of housemates to whomp. Literally, she would spring out of bed and head straight for her first target of the day... But I digress.
I quite envy those of you who so meticulously craft and follow your neighbourhoods' lives. I've never even had a Servo in my game, as I can't be buggered to play a family long enough for anyone to badge up to that level. ::)
I do love playing this game, but my poor sims wind up leading the most boring little lives... :'(
Zazazu:
Quote from: jemjie on 2008 May 24, 10:40:39
How did you start your neighbourhood? With one family?
One sim, Mystery Bleu. She's long dead now. She started the farm lot and married one of her customers. He's the narrator on my blog.
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Do you use a randomness generator, like the one linked to in the Peasentry? How did you decide what optioins to put on it? What else do you roll for?
I use Random Stuff, in the Peasantry. Love that program. If I didn't use it, all my sims would end up being Family and Knowledge. I have two scripts. The one I use the most gives me three male names, three female names, aspiration type, 2nd aspiration Y/N, 2nd aspiration type, college (Y/N, dropout year, weighted towards Y), LTW granted (if not excluded by college) Y/N, Career (if they don't have a career LTW that's getting granted), Career Level, Family donation (although this hasn't been used yet...none of my families really have enough to throw money at their kids), To Build or Not to Build Y/N(for the mayor), Build what?. My other one is a townie creation script that I only use for things I have to do in CAS, like vacationers and dormies. Gender, Life Stage, Astrological Sign, Aspiration, Turn-ons/-offs, First Name Male, First Name Female, Last Name, # in family (for vacationers).
I write the results in the sim description for my playables. A typical sim's notes look like "Family - Pleasure...Junior drop-out...No LTW...Journalism - 4 - Fact Checker."
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There's a few townies I've made, but I'm not sure what to do with the neighbourhood yet.
I generated the first batch of townies en masse with the mailbox. Lazy. Every townie aging run I generate some children. Up to now, it's been five kids per round, but with my playables exploding and it feeling a bit too early to have them intermarry, I did ten kids this round. I'm Deleted 2'ing my dead elder townies to keep my character files a little cleaner. Kids are done with the townie gun.
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I have little patience with the business side of OFB and so I'm not too sure I want to play my neighbourhood with owned businesses.
BRY makes things much easier. As it is, though, I much prefer home businesses to off-site. Terrence (the immortal with a deal with Death) does most of the crop raising on the farm lot. He also runs the stand on harvest day, though I generally have the other residents harvest the plants and pack them up with Paladin's packing station. They're kind of rolling in it as his son and daughter-in-law have top level jobs. "Kids" are about to kick it, though, and he'll be left raising his youngest grandson. In another house, Connor is working towards being a cult leader and his wife Caroline is running a salon with just herself doing the makeovers from 7 to noon. They are doing decently, but the house is still pretty empty. The slap & tickle biz is a ticket biz. Those are really easy. I just threw down a hot tub on the porch, a dart board, couple bathroom stalls, and put Bonnie's room off of it with her bed and a massage table. Rest of the lot is the residence for her sister, brother-in-law, twins, and sister's two kids. I don't do sales socials (except selling a massage periodically) and set the ticket rate at only $20. It was at level 10 about 15 days in.
cenoura:
I was hoping more people would reply to this thread. I love reading about other peoples Simming strategies. Zazazu, the amount of variables in the game that you randomise must make your gaming a lot more interesting - I often have certian paths I unknowningly go down time and time again with my Sims. This is why I'm setting up my new neighbourhood.
I now have three families. The second and third family were given a random amount of cash to get started, and now pay back that money to the first family as a form of mortgage. They will be paying a lump sum at the end of each season for two seasons, thus paying back the whole amount plus an arbitrary 6% interest. The second family own a clothes store which will only be played by visiting families so they can change the awful clothes their children grew up into. The head of the third family is waiting to get into the architecture job track - these new families need somewhere to live! - and in the mean time is selling deco from a home business.
The clothes store pays a tax, a percentage of the lot value, while the home business pays a tax related to the level of the business - currently set at 5 x the level, payable at the end of each season. I currently pay these by using the familyfunds cheat - but once I have the children move out and there are multiple households with the same name I'm not sure what I will do.
The taxes and mortagages will be used by the first family to buy, build and maintain community lots that will make free destinations, such as a park and church. These will be built at the beginning of the third year. I may make a couple more families then too, perhaps a nunnery to go along with the church.
I've really enjoyed playing in this style, and I hope it will continue to hold my interest. I was going to start out with just the one family, but got bored with them after one year (four seasons), which is why I've introduced two more families. I love the flexibility, a reason why I didn't get along too well with many challenges.
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