by Anya » May 15th, 2018, 1:33 pm
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.
Last edited by
Anya on May 15th, 2018, 5:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Mutation Central: An UglacyWinner of two Golden Plumbobs!

Oceanview BACCA city built on rock and roll... and furious exploitation of Open for Business.
Wealth-boom strategy, heavy character focus, and ridiculously cute aliens.