Build a City Challenge Chat

[Anya]

Anne, Avenie, Scribal_Goddess: thanks for the feedback! Putting a price tag on it sounds fair, though I might make it free for the scientist/doctor and their household, while other Sims have to pay them.

Another thing I've been thinking of is adding an extra restriction on apartments; that is, I'm not allowed to build or place apartments until someone in Oceanview has a job in the Architecture career. Possible variants include limiting the number of apartments per person to get an Architecture job or requiring the Architecture position opened by the addition of a subhood to be filled before apartments can be placed/built in that subhood.

[Avenie]

How many children do you normally let your families have? I have ACR at the moment, and it feels like everyone just wants baby after baby after baby. It's good for population, but it doesn't feel quite right! Does anybody set ideal family sizes by personality, or by aspiration, or anything else like that?

[Anya]

I don't use ACR... I just go by a) what my Sims roll wants for and b) how many children they seem like they should want based on their personality in my head. For instance, Estella and Mark Greene seem like a "three kids" couple to me, while the Newton-Ferreiras are more "Adopt! IVF! Aliens! ALL THE KIDS!"

[Pony]

I tend to go nuts with kids, I have a lot of big families, especially in Silver Bend. But I'm finding I'm getting overwhelmed as they grow up and get into college. So I decided to impose a two kid limit on most of the families. There will be some challenge and LTW based exceptions of course. But two kids is enough for and heir and a spare to each family. So the population still grows. But I'm not getting overwhelmed in college. Or at least I hope I won't. I have several ten kid families at the moment. College is about to get full blown insane lol.

[Lorinsv]

I don't use ACR either. Out of the 25+ households currently in Mesa Vista, only a couple have a lot of kids (4 and 5 respectively) and a couple have 3 kids. Most have one or two, because I don't really enjoy keeping track of lots of Sims in a household, and like Pony said, it gets even worse at Uni. A lesser number in my BaCC don't have any kids, which is a welcome break from larger families, and allows me focus more on building up MV's businesses.

I did add the Newsons though, and the Goodies are planning to start an orphanage, and I plan to someday do a Nickel and Dimed Challenge, so there are and will be quite a few more kids, but some in a less traditional sense.

[Livvielove]

Hey everyone, as I've been finishing up a few other challenges I've strongly contemplated giving this a go! I've got the UC and would like to jump in. Does anyone have any tips for me as a (relatively noobish) player?

[Anya]

Tips? Hmmmm... I guess my strategy is pretty much as follows...

1) Having kids right away is great for Family Sims, but kind of meh for everyone else. Making sure your Sims are financially established before having a family leads to fewer Social Worker visits. Getting your Sims to earn craploads of money also puts you that much closer to getting Universities, which will keep your Knowledge and Fortune Teens from plummeting into aspiration failure upon reaching adulthood because they didn't get to go to college.
2) In lieu of the baby boom, go for businesses and try to unlock neighborhood additions. Your Sim Multiplier and CAS points will increase your population faster than having your CAS Sims multiply would.
3) For businesses, retail is a great way to get badges and stars. Set everything to a fair price and micromanage your playable Sim(s) like crazy while it's open, and close the business periodically for mood-ups (unless you have enough playables to stagger shifts). Don't bother with employees unless you really, really want to; you don't need them.
4) If you do feel like you need employees, don't hire them. Befriend them, move them in, use them as cheap labor, and then move them out to make their own households. This has the added benefit of giving your new playables badge progress, which can really kickstart any businesses they decide to open.
5) Why move them out? Because having more households helps you earn more NPC lots, which can easily be used to unlock more careers. More lots also gets you Architecture career slots.
6) The easiest career unlock is Music (see: my BACC founder, Victoria, rock goddess and entrepreneur of many talents), but Slacker and Dance are both easy to get a position in as well, and Oceanography is pretty easy to open for an individual Sim (see: Estella, my first CAS Sim, who didn't even go about it the easy way by using a community lot pond). Law Enforcement is a bit of a crapshoot, especially if you helicopter-parent your Sims like I do.
7) Servos and high-alignment Witches are OFB game-breakers, Servos because they don't suffer the energy hit from a Dazzle, and Witches because they can use their thrones to mood up super fast. Infallibly Good Witches can also use Benemoodus Simae on coworkers and customers if they've got the reagents. (Witches are also less likely to become boring... sorry, Servos, but you're just too easy to take care of.)
8) Fortune Sims are also good when it comes to businesses, because running one will charge their aspiration meter up like whoa.
9) When you get toddlers: peg box and/or wobbly wabbit head. Not only does it keep them entertained (and therefore out of your (Sims') hair, but maxing Logic and Charisma before adulthood will get you career unlocks when they age up.
10) Regarding the ridiculously-priced-ticket-plus-dazzle trick: this is THE BEST way to make an absolute metric buttload of money. You'll need a lot of coffee (and/or other mood-ups) to pull it off, but it works. The original model used snapdragons to keep the guests on the lot, but if you want to be more realistic than that, some good-quality entertainment items should keep your guests there for at least a couple hours. Chess tables are good starting out, but once you've got the money, pool tables and hot tubs are a good investment.

[Lorinsv]

:wave:
Hey everyone, as I've been finishing up a few other challenges I've strongly contemplated giving this a go! I've got the UC and would like to jump in. Does anyone have any tips for me as a (relatively noobish) player?

Awhile back, I posted some very general "getting started" tips for newbies here:
http://boolprop.net/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=442&start=200#p51925

If there's something specific you want help with, ask away!

[Seera]

How many children do you normally let your families have? I have ACR at the moment, and it feels like everyone just wants baby after baby after baby. It's good for population, but it doesn't feel quite right! Does anybody set ideal family sizes by personality, or by aspiration, or anything else like that?

They get however many pregnancies they get via ACR. If I didn't have triplets and quads on top of it, most would likely have 3-4 kids. ACR does factor how close they are to elder in their chances/success rate for pregnancy.

I haven't bothered so far with ideal family size.

But I like seeing how genetics plays out so I don't mind the baby boom.

:wave:
Hey everyone, as I've been finishing up a few other challenges I've strongly contemplated giving this a go! I've got the UC and would like to jump in. Does anyone have any tips for me as a (relatively noobish) player?

1. Plantsims also break OFB. They don't get the energy drain from dazzle either and they just need the sun lamps and a room with a shower and they'll be good for ages as they don't sleep.

2. For retail stores, keep the store small and use playable family members for employees. It can be done to rank 10 with just 2 Sims. If you keep it small.

3. Know what your strategy is for raising the Population. Baby booms or not? And for the SM - Business districts and Universities are the two main ones there. You can change the strategy once you start playing, but it's nice to know for when you get a Sim who has a LTW that isn't going to be able to be met. Like a founder with the LTW to be The Law.

4. I would recommend the original BACC as it will let you start off small and work your way up and get more used to how Sims 2 plays vs Sims 3.

5. I would advise not doing a restaurant as one of your first businesses. This one would be easiest with about 4-5 playables, with one of them having maxed cooking, and the others having decent Body points. Restaurants are the hardest business type.

[Anya]

2. For retail stores, keep the store small and use playable family members for employees. It can be done to rank 10 with just 2 Sims. If you keep it small.

Seconded. Heck, if you micromanage really, really hard, it's possible to do it with one.

5. I would advise not doing a restaurant as one of your first businesses. This one would be easiest with about 4-5 playables, with one of them having maxed cooking, and the others having decent Body points. Restaurants are the hardest business type.

Also seconded. I'm not even going to try running Estella's seafood restaurant until she gets that last Cooking point (which she rolled a want for, yay Knowledge Sims!) and can move in a couple friends to host. I do think she'll have fun when we get there, though; Cuisine is her One True Hobby. (She's also the best Sim cook I've ever played. The no-burned-food record remains spotless.)

[Pony]

I love running restaurants. The only thing thing is you have to hire employees eventually hire employees. So your other Sims can visit the restaurants in their rotations.

[Livvielove]

You guys are awesome! I've been reading the original rules and while I kind of like the twist added by Nepheris, I don't think I'm ready for that... lol!

I have a quick question about community lots though, do you place one down in the beginning? How do most founders start their business? I get that after 4 hourseholds you can place a community lot, but couldn't I just place a bunch of them down? I'm confused by how that part works. Maybe I just didn't read the rules closely enough.

[Pony]

You can place community lots down in the beginning, but you must have a sim buy it for it to count. I've built several community lots in Veda, but they don't count yet because no one has bought them. But usually when I start a new BACC, I plop down the founder's lot and a community lot for them to buy.

[Anya]

You can add as many community lots as you like, but they don't count for anything until a) a Sim buys them or b) you unlock them as an NPC community lot. Though I'm a little fuzzy on whether a business has to stay owned to continue counting.

New house rule proposal: businesses still count if the owner dies without passing on the deed (even though they're no longer owned), but if you want to sell them you need the Business career to be fully unlocked and for the business in question to reach level 10.

[Lorinsv]

In the beginning stage of a BaCC, businesses almost always need to be purchased by your Sims. They can be a pre-built lot or an empty one (more affordable initially) that you can build on. Owned businesses are easy to come by as long as you have the money to buy them. That's why you see lots of digging for treasure in BaCCs - it's not easy to set up a household and a business at the same time when you're just starting out.

Once you start earning community lots as laid out in the rules, those can simply be placed and don't have to be owned. Money usually isn't as much of a factor, but there are more limits imposed on acquiring them.

[Pony]

Slowly closing the gap in between what I've played and written in Silver Bend. I can't stop playing, I'm all the way to the Starr house in week 7 and just about to finish up writing week 6. So there will be updates coming out for Silver Bend soonish. I usually sit on them a little so I can go back and edit them better.

Though I'm a little nervous, I'm about to head into another college semester. And it's honestly what's dragging me down. It's just so boring to play sometimes. But I don't want to just speed 3 the whole way through. It's pretty much studying and starting to pair up Sims with spouses. Or trying to crank through 50 first date wants. Maybe I need to finally found an exclusive Greek house and let my Sims party more. Or have my business minded Sims start working on their businesses and let the abuse their dormmates as a source of free labor

[MichelleCYoung]

I did another week in my BACC GageNation. It's posted here.

You know, I don't usually like playing so strictly by the rules, if it's not an actual apocalypse, but I'm having a blast with this one. When I get Youngdale back up, I'll play that again, but the rules set is both different and looser. Now, I'm actually counting fires and lightning strikes, being pleased when a burglar appears, and opening up specific community businesses just so that I can get a position open in a certain career. So different. But so much fun!

Next week's entry will be week one in my Baby Boom Challenge, right there in GageNation. It's a fun place to host new and different challenges.