Sim Strategy Discussion
Avalikia:
Would it weird you out if I randomly asked you to pretty please let me see a copy of your RandomStuff.txt Zazazu? I keep bumping into posts where you mention bits of it and it sounds much better thought out and detailed than anything I've been able to come up with. I'm sure that if I could see what you have I'd finally be able to make one for myself that I actually like. And I could use a break from the perfect utopias I keep creating. (Even my stone age neighborhood has been boring lately.)
Zazazu:
Nope. I just got done editing it, actually. Changed the career/career level to one query and to list the text description of the job. I'll be assed if I can remember what level 6 Slacker is off the top of my head.
cenoura:
Wow, just had a ganders at your file Zazazu, and look at all of those names! Was that some copy+pasta I saw there from several different sites? Did you vet them before you put them into play?
Also, thanks for the tips about the community gardens. I figured it would work something like that, however I wasn't aware of the cheat to get the food ready to harvest, and didn't want to go through five/six straight days of growing only to find that they didn't "stick". The idea there was that my Sims would have a community garden that they'd only visit in the Summer and Autumn to harvest their food.
Some of the ideas in this thread are great. I just wish now that someone would start the "universities in a normal hood" thread, I'm very interested in that too but have no idea how to go about doing it.
Zazazu:
Names are US Census data, stolen from other's lists in the Random Stuff thread, taken from baby name sites, etc. I may have a few duplicates in there, but I figure that if they are duplicated that means they are more standard names you'd see more often anyways. None of my current sims have the same name yet. I have Rose and her daughter Rosalie, but that's as close as it gets. There are a couple of townies with the same name (I have three Amy ...), and I have a townie named Tucker and a playable child named Tucker. With 37 living playables (2 more currently incubating) and about seventy townies/NPCs, that's not too bad.
I'm fenced regarding community gardens in this 'hood. They did get a fishing hole (literally, lot's on a big slope and there are stairs running down from street level to the pond and bridge; it's about a story and a half down) so everyone can snag their own fish.
pixiejuice:
You guys all have some great ideas! I use Random Stuff too, and a deck of cards when needed. I play to my Sims wants and fears and personalities as closely as I can, and try not to have my own ideas about what I want them to end up doing.
My ‘hood is huge. I have 79 playables and a chart where they're all listed by age. This is how I keep everybody in sync, and I can mark by their names things like who has bad credit, who's currently pregnant, who owes what money, or whatever. I play everybody 2 days at a time, and I use Inge's agecons, modified so that one day represents one year. By the time I get through, it really does feel like it's been two years in the hood.
Nobody gets any free money. They take out loans with Inge's shrubs for their homes and businesses. Kids pay a ton of money if they want to go to college. They can take out student loans if they can't afford it. My sims have to pay back their loans at 10% of the loan every play-session, which is 2 sim-days. I'm very strict about this, and if they can't make their payment, after three strikes, I declare them bankrupt for 10 sim-days. This hardly ever happens though.
It's so hard to keep these sims poor, without going the all OFB route, which I don't have the patience for. I only allow skill building if they have a want for it, so that keeps about half of them in pretty low-level jobs.
The only thing I have to add that hasn't been mentioned is that I like to play with random disastrous events in my random file. Some of them are kind of morbid, but realistic. Things like people dying, losing jobs, being forced to move out of the neighborhood, midlife crisis where they change their aspiration - and some good things too, like inspired to take up a new hobby. I think someone shared a similar random events file once. It's really the thing that's kept my game the most interesting for as long as I've been playing. And the rule is I have to follow through, no matter what. Even if it's one of my favorites. And a lot of these things also help me keep the population manageable, because after all, not everybody lives to die at old age, and not everybody lives their whole life in the same town they were born in, you know? Even so, my population is just about as big as it can be while still being manageable.
Then there are rules like, any time someone is in a bad mood, they MUST argue with the person closest to them, be it parent, spouse, sibling. It really should be built into the game that you fight with your spouse when you're in a bad mood. I mean, hello, that's what spouses do!
No exiting without saving rule. Whatever happens happens, even if I don't like it at the time. It almost always makes the game more interesting.
Any time someone gets depressed, they MUST roll the random file, and they have a 1 in 20 chance of offing themselves. Morbid, I know, but it happens, doesn't it? They have 10 in 20 chance of doing something, anything, to make themselves happy, regardless of the consequences. And 9 in 20 chance of just moping around. They have to roll again for every day they're depressed.
So, basically, I like to keep the game surprising me.
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