More Awesome Than You!

I've got a couple ideas for challenges, and I've been testing this one lately. Comments would be appreciated! Did I leave any gaping loopholes that lets people rack up high scores without effort?

The Evil Twin Challenge

It's a standard sitcom trope. It's a standard scenario in the Sims 1. So why not try it in the Sims 2?

The Concept: A single parent is raising twins, but has no idea that one twin is destined to be good, the other evil.

The Challenge: Raise the twins such that both are as successful as possible, but one is good, the other evil. In other words, the good twin must "grow up well" at each life stage, while the evil twin must "grow up badly", without either twin suffering total aspiration failure. The challenge ends when both twins go to college, both become adults, or one twin dies or othwerwise leaves the house for good.

The Setup: Create a family of three sims in CAS. One is the adult, which can be of either gender and can have any mix of personality or turn-ons, but must have Family Aspiration. The other two are twin toddlers, although they do not need to look identical. (TIP: start building each twin in the adult stage to set how you want the child to look, then change the age in CAS to "toddler" for finishing up and setting the family relationships. Also, try using middle names to mark which twin is good and which is evil.)

The good twin must have 10 Nice and 10 Neat. The evil twin must have the opposite (0 Neat, 0 Nice -- maximum sloppiness and grumpiness.) The remaining points may be distributed as you see fit. Aspiration doesn't matter at the CAS stage, because they're toddlers; when they become teens, however, you can choose any Aspiration or select randomly, but both twins must be the same Aspiration.

The House: You get the standard $20,000 and can select any lot. None of the sims can leave the household (move out,) nor can any other sim move in. You cannot use any money cheats or receive money from another family; all money must be earned through normal gameplay.

The Restrictions:

1. No hacks that change gameplay. Bug fixes and macros are allowed, as long as they do not change gameplay. Clones or recolored objects are allowed if they do not make things easier than objects already in the game, but hacked objects that are significantly better than normal objects are banned. THIS INCULDES OBJECTS HACKED TO MAKE THEM CHEAPER THAN NORMAL, or to prevent/enable use by visitors, children, NPCs, and so on.

2. Cheats, including debug mode and MoveObjects, and items such as the lot debugger are only allowed to fix something that's broken (reset a stuck object, clear a corrupt memory, and so on.) No aging cheats, except via the elixer of life (but see the next rule.)

3. NO SAVING AND RELOADING UNLESS A BUG OCCURS.

4. Rewards, if earned, are allowed. However, there is a penalty every time they are used. See the scoring section. Items that affect other actions while under their influence, like the noodle soother, skill helmet, hot tub, or cool shades, count every action under their influence as "one use".

5. No off-lot skilling or improvement is allowed. Sims are allowed to visit community lots for other purposes.

The Scoring:

PENALTIES:

• -20 For each visit from the social worker, assessed upon arrival.
• -10 For each death (or undeath) in the family. Resurrecting a zombie counts twice. Becoming a vampire counts once.
• -10 For each Aspiration Failure/bottomed-out Aspiration Bar
• -5 Every time the good twin grows up badly or the evil twin grows up well, assessed at beginning of child, teen, and adult/young adult stages.
• -5 For each zero-level skill, each twin that doesn't Learn to Study, or each twin that fails to learn any toddler skills (walk/talk/potty.)
• -5 For failing to enter private school, and for each time the headmaster rejects the family.
• -5 For each demotion, firing, or failing grade in school, applied when returning home.
• -5 For each time a teen runs away.
• -1 For each use of an Aspiration or Career Reward object.

BONUSES:

• +1 For each maxed-out skill, or for each twin's first A+ grade.
• +1 For each scholarship earned.
• +1 For reaching the top of a teen career.
• +2 For reaching the top of the adult career (only applies to parent.)
• +2 For each twin that learns all three toddler skills.
• +5 For never having anyone pass out on the lot.
• +5 For never having anyone wet themselves on the lot.
• +5 If the parent grows up well.
• +5 For each LTW fulfilled.

GOOD TWIN BONUSES:

• +1 For each best friend outside the family.

EVIL TWIN BONUSES:

• +1 For each enemy outside the family.

AUTOMATIC LOSS CONDITIONS:
Automatically lose if everyone dies or is removed from play before twins reach adulthood/go to college.
Automatically lose if you violate one of the restrictions, or fail to follow the setup procedure.

CHAMPION:
You are a champion if you finish the challenge without taking any penalties (currently seems impossible.)

impossible? Hardly. Difficult, perhaps, because with the evil twin you have to walk a thin line where you grow up badly without actually bottoming out, and of course you have to teach them their skills so you then have to target one's fears without affecting the other, but after you get that worked out it's a cakewalk. there's no reason the social worker should come, careful managing avoids the next few penalties, and normal gameplay easily avoids firings, demotions, rejections, and the like.

I suspect this challenge is too easy, upon first reading it.

Maybe too easy to get positive points, but I think you're underestimating the Champion requirements. To be a Champion, you can't just get a positive score; you have to have NO PENALTIES. The difficulty lies in the toddler stage: it doesn't seem to be possible for a toddler to grow up badly without taking some other kind of penalty.

EDIT: fixed broken quote.

Too easy. You don't even need to hit any fears, just don't hit any wants, which is easy enough to do. However, there's an huge point exploit where you can milk some 30000 points out of the "friends" thing if you really wanted to. You need to cap all your stackable point awards to prevent this.

I dunno. Those toddlers seem to always have lingering "Learn to Talk/Walk/Use Potty" wants that are hard to avoid. That's what keeps biting me in the ass: it's easy to get the good toddler to platinum and learn all three toddler skills, but in my latest attempt, Evil Twin held on to all three wants for a couple days. And the fears were always unfulfillable stuff, like "Parent Dies". I eventually had to fulfill one of the toddler skill wants, to avoid the penalty for not getting any toddler skills at all.

Twins are in childhood now and it should be smooth sailing from there, but I'm currently at a -4 penalty. The +2 for Good Twin learning all three toddler skills was balanced out by using the skill helmet twice. Also, I only let the Good Twin get the A+, because so far Evil Twin keeps having "Get an A+" show up, as well as "Do Homework" (I sidestepped that by having Good Twin do Evil Twin's homework once, but I had to let her ask for homework help once in order to get "Learned to Study".)

I can up the penalty for not getting any toddler skills at all, and make the deaths/transformations/permanent removals automatic failures instead of penalties. I can also change the best friend/enemy bonuses to +1 per 10 best friends/10 enemies, max +5 total. Other possibilities would be to turn some of the bonuses into penalties: instead of +1 for reaching the top of the teen career, make it -1 for NOT reaching the top. Probably good to do that with A+ grades and maxed-out skills, too.

Any other suggestions?

I haven't found that to be true at all.  Rather, toddlers tend to roll "be held / played with / etc." wants when they wake up, which roll over to "Learn" wants once you've fulfilled one of them.  If you studiously avoid fulfilling one of the socialization wants, you should never get the "learn" wants.  You can help this along a bit by locking one of the socialization wants, particularly "be read to" which you'll never fulfill accidentally.

 - Gus

Just do those right away. It doesn't matter if it satisfies a want or not. Even at full platinum, they will decay back into the red given 3 days of nothing else. Since the one you want to grow up badly isn't going to be doing anything anyway, you can tackle that first.

OK, this is going to require rigorous testing, so I'm now proposing a mini-challenge:

The Evil Twin Toddler Mini-Challenge

Raise two toddlers and have the good twin grow up well and the evil twin grow up badly, without any deaths or social worker appearances.

Setup and Restrictions: As for the longer challenge, but we'll relax the "don't save and reload" restriction for the purpose of testing. No need to make multiple families, just one parent and two toddlers will do.

AUTOMATIC FAILURE if:

• You break any restriction on the full challenge, except for the "no save and reload" restriction (for testing.)
• Any sim in the family dies, transforms into a vampire or other abnormal form, or leaves the lot or is taken away.
• Any new sim moves into the lot.
• The evil toddler grows up well, or the good toddler grows up badly.
• You claim the challenge is beatable without actually trying, or claim a positive score without posting your strategy and score breakdown. Come on, the toddler challenge can be played in only a couple hours...

REVISEED SCORING:

• -1 For each missing toddler skill (Talk/Walk/Potty,) per toddler.
• -5 For each toddler that fails to learn any toddler skills at all.
• -1 For each toddler with zero-level Charisma, Logic, or Creativity (max -6.)
• -1 For each use of an Aspiration or Career Reward object. See previous challenge for note on skill helmet and smart milk.
• +1 For not fulfilling any Fears.
• +1 If no sim on the lot passes out, toddlers included.

Turn-about is fair play. I just tested under the mini-challenge rules to verify whether this was correct, or whether Gus is correct when he says:


... and I also checked to see if Pescado's strategy of training the evil twin first would work. Would their aspiration level decay enough that they wouldn't grow up well?

It's proper to test, because after all, maybe I did something stupid, fulfilled a social want, and that's what makes the toddlers grow up well.

But as it turns out, there may be a couple more things going on. First, I may have been playing a different way than Gus usually plays. Because check this out:


(http://lh5.google.com/talysman/R_gafnQmEVI/AAAAAAAAAQs/raG0Wr7wK3w/s144/eviltoy.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5185924101333979474)
Tina "Evil" Twiddler wants to buy a toy when they first move in. So does Theresa "Good" Twiddler. That means neither can play with the xylophone, logic puzzle, or rabbit head, since I can't buy the toys until, as Gus suggests, Tina sleeps and rerolls wants when she wakes up.

So maybe Gus was moving people into furnished homes, or otherwise bought the toddler toys before the toddlers arrived. I, on the other hand, started buying items after move in, which almost always fulfills the evil toddler's want and forces a reroll. This may actually make a good additional restriction then: LOT MUST BE UNFURNISHED ON MOVE-IN. No Buy Mode objects may be purchased until after the wants and fears have been rolled.

So what happened was, I delayed buying the toys and started immediately teaching the evil twin how to talk (potty training takes longer, and I didn't want her walking around and getting into trouble right away. Pescado's strategy would have worked, if Gus had been right. However, when Tina woke up, she had both Learn to Walk and Potty Train in her wants, and hung onto them, even though I had locked a lowly social want to avoid. I had to wait until Tina was in the red before I felt I could risk fulfilling even one of the wants, and the aspiration still went platinum and didn't decay enough, even without fulfilling the remaining want. The result?


(http://lh6.google.com/talysman/R_gar3QmEWI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/4dsWmU9G8Dk/s144/snapshot_f503bb45_b503dc34.jpg)
 (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5185924311787376994)

Both twins grow up well. TOTAL FAILURE. There does not seem to be a way to make a toddler grow up badly while still training them. If I had skipped the other two toddler skills for Tina Evil, my score on the mini-challenge would have been 0. Breakdown:

• -1 for Tina not learning to walk
• -1 for not being potty trained
• +1 for no one passing out
• +1 for not fulfilling any fears

The only ways to get a toddler to grow up badly is either to not fulfill all the toddler skills or find some way to fulfill their fears. And that ain't easy: witness an earlier attempt to fulfill a fear of fire:


(http://lh3.google.com/talysman/R_giaHQmEXI/AAAAAAAAARk/JCpSc9r1mEc/s144/snapshot_3501b747_d5025ff6.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5185932802937721202)

Veronica Evil didn't even *care* until I cancelled her skilling on the logic blocks. Then she panicked and thrased around for a while, until the fireman put out the fire and completely left the lot. But it didn't count as a fear; she still grew up well.

You're right about the "Buy a Toy" want, and yes, I generally wait until transition to toddler before buying toys.  If for no other reason to get the free boost, which is somewhat significant for toddlers.

On the other hand, I wouldn't shy away from fulfilling any wants at all.  The points from the toy would decay soon enough, so I'd just suck it up and go straight for training.  And if you don't socialize, pretty often you only have one of the Learn wants up, so you can just concentrate on the other two until the toddler gets tired.

I guess I should really take a stab at doing this.  It seems like it should be easy, but I haven't actually tried it.  Currently I'm still in the process of re-building my neighborhood before actual play.  I had a BBFVFS about 6 months back, and I shelved the Sims until recently I felt like unearthing it again.  Free Time is in the mail, but just creating custom townies and dormies and designing a custom dorm have kept me busy.

 - Gus

You made a HUGE mistake. You *WAITED*. DO NOT WAIT. Do them FIRST, buying all the toys you need, etc, *EVEN* if it fills the wants. Yes, they will go platinum. Who cares? You're not penalized for this, and if you do this early, it will burn off.

After that, you just abandon it alone in a room with a radio, occasionally feeding it to stave off the SS. Let it be stinky and smell like crap: Washing it will restore social without satisfying any wants. Without the ability to sleep, it will rapidly bleed ASP, since sleep locks decay. Once properly reddinated, grow up.

Childhood: Massive skillgrinding time. Make sure you grind the wrong ones that don't coincide with a want, at least past the first days. Between the child and teen stages, it should be easy enough to max out all skills for scholarshipdom. Children naturally go red even if you do nothing special anyway, at least in my game. The only thing which satisfies them is violence through Moar Fight, so this is easy. Children have relatively few and predictable fears, invariably to the effect of passing out and pissing themselves, so this isn't too much help. You can't do either without penalty on the lot, and children can't leave the lot. But since they naturally want to go red anyway, this should be easy.

So I gave it a quick shot... and I suck.  I failed massively.  Leaving aside the point of the challenge, I couldn't manage to train two toddlers fully with just one adult.  John Conjoined bottomed out his Fun motive early and never got it back, didn't have a job, and was constantly either doing things for the twins or taking care of his own basic needs like eating... and yet neither twin learned to talk, and Jesus didn't learn to walk either.  Both Satan and Jesus managed to get potty trained.

Despite that, Satan grew up well.  The aspiration meter just doesn't drain very quickly once it's in the low greens.  I discovered that the "throw up" fear doesn't actually work, even though it's easy to set up.  "See a Ghost" is pretty much impossible, and "fire" isn't easy to do at will, unless of course you use Buyable Fire.  If you're lucky the evil twin will roll the "Have Party" fear, but you can't count on that.

I think the biggest difference between this and my normal play for want-rolling is a single parent.  With two parents, I had toddlers rolling a lot of social Wants instead of learning Wants.  With just one, there are fewer social wants to roll, so they don't end up clogging the Want bar.

First problem: not enough adult time.  I'm not sure coffee is the answer.  John Conjoined did have the best single bed.  The Nanny might help, since basic stuff like feeding and washing ate a lot of time.  Though I have the "more expensive hirelings" mod installed, so there may not be enough left over for an unemployed single parent to pay the nanny for 3.5 days.

Second problem: slow apsiration decay.  Keeping the evil twin awake with the radio might work, though it violates the "pass out" rule, since the toddler will pass out repeatedly.  It seems like an exploit, but it may be the only answer, given how toddler fears seem impossible to fulfill.

 - Gus

But it doesn't burn off enough, is the problem. It seems like if there's any non-red color in the Aspiration Bar, you get "Grow Up Well". And I haven't seen one dip into red yet.

Now, I haven't tried keeping the kid awake. But then, there are a couple problems with this: first, the kid's mood will be too bad, so you won't be able to teach the toddler skills. That's a -5, with an additional -3 if we're just talking about the mini-challenge. Second, you're going to need a door lock, or find some way to get sleep and food for the parent without hiring the nanny. Third, assuming this works, won't the kid bottom out completely on red? That's "-10 For each Aspiration Failure/bottomed-out Aspiration Bar". So for the main challenge, we're talking about taking a -5 penalty for growing up well in the toddler stage or for not learning all toddler skills, versus teaching how to talk (to avoid a -5) then tossing the kid in the room with the radio and taking a -10 for bottoming out.

But since we're trying to make this hard... one of the changes I could make is a -1 penalty for each unlearned toddler skill. Just to add insult to injury.

There's no penalty for peeing/passing out. There's just no bonus if it happens. But I guess you're trying to make up for that -10?

The strategy for this stage looks otherwise reasonable, except I think you're underestimating trying to avoid wants for the evil twin while fulfilling wants for the good one. For example, if you start with just a counter, you're going to get the want "Eat Cereal". Buy a toaster over, they get "Eat Toaster Pasteries". Once the parent gets high enough cooking and gets a job so you can buy a stove, you have some options of feeding the kid whatever it doesn't want at the moment. But you still have to worry about keeping the kid happy enough to keep skilling. Plus, you need to sneak that A+ in there, to avoid a -5 penalty, without having the kid fulfill that huge "Get A+" want. Since child stage is longer than toddler, your aspiration decay suggestion might work at this point: fulfill the A+ early, keep waking the kid up so it only gets enough sleep to not have a red mood so it will keep skilling. Keeping grades from failing should be easy if, like in my game, the good twin keeps rolling the want to Do Homework after she's already done her homework: free boost for the good twin.

Hmmm... so, to make it harder for you, I think I could add a couple penalties, even though you're racking up a few already. -5 for every "friend" the evil twin brings home from school that you don't actually become friends with? -1 for every day the parent doesn't work? (Should I be nice and add "excluding days off"?)

I still stand by my assertion that the champion title for this challenge is impossible. No way to complete this challenge with no penalties at all, as opposed to a mere positive score.

How could you bottom out the parent's fun motive? At the very least, you can just keep tickling the good twin or tossing him in the air. I always put one painting in the house, too. I save the flamingos for when the kids start school.

Job doesn't matter. I get the parent a job when the toddlers age to children. The parent just barely hangs on, but there's no nanny penalty, and even without a nanny, he can sleep, eat, pee and shower while the kids are skilling. Occasionally, the nanny serves a meal, or fixes a meal for herself and abandons it, so you can sometimes even cut out some time. I can consistently raise two toddlers with a single parent and an occasional nanny, getting all three toddler skills for the good twin and two for the evil twin, but the parent rarely gets enough Aspiration points to afford either smart milk or skill helmet, assuming I want to take the -3 penalty and speed up one of the twins. And the real problem, as you can see, is that you just can't raise the evil twin badly without skipping the toddler skills completely.


Not only that, but "Have Party" doesn't seem to work, any more than "Fire" does. Vera and Veronica Twin had a party when Veronica had the party fear, and all that happened was Vera got a "had a disasterous party" memory. No aspiration penalties for either one. I think you can only fulfill the "Have Party" fear if you throw the party yourself, which is DUMB for a toddler to fear, since toddlers can't use phones. I bet that's what's wrong with fire, too. And yeah, Throw Up doesn't even seem possible to achieve; If a parent had enough influence to encourage strangers to toss the evil twin in the air, I think throwing up is the the toddler equivalent of rejecting a play attempt. I don't think I've ever seen a toddler fear you can fulfill deliberately.

There's no pass out rule, though, so Pescado's plan works as far as that goes. He just racks up negatives a different way. If NO sim passes out or pees itself, there's a bonus. No penalty for accidents.

The adult time is hard, but doable with the nanny. I suspect you don't have enough money because you're spending too much. I save about $1,200 to $1,500 after purchasing necessary items. This was my set-up for the Twin family:


(http://lh6.google.com/talysman/R_kWtnQmEYI/AAAAAAAAASI/XCj4JBo-N4U/s144/snapshot_3501b747_55025027.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5186201418782347650)

... which was actually too spacious, maybe. I didn't get a coffee maker until later, and didn't buy the toaster oven until I decided to try to fulfill that Fire fear. Also, I was thinking ahead for the headmaster scenario and spent more on flooring and wall covering for the entryway, living room, and kitchen, because I didn't want to have to redecorate later. TV was sort of a waste, since only the nanny used it before the toddlers grew up to children.

The Twiddler family house layout was similar:

(http://lh6.google.com/talysman/R_kXgnQmEZI/AAAAAAAAASU/jH8jqaomDDw/s144/snapshot_f503bb45_1503cb3e.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5186202294955676050)

I only bought the bookcase to fulfill the parent's want, because he seemed to have less opportunity to fulfill wants. I took a -2 penalty for using the skill helmet to train two toddler skills in the Twin family, but the Twiddler family never even got enough for the smart milk machine.

So I guess the final conclusion is: the toddler stage is hard, but it's still fairly simple to get a positive score on the full challenge. I need to think of ways to make it harder.

I managed it on the second pass.  The only Want I fulfilled for Satan was the Toy want at 8 AM on the first day.  By 7pm on day four - the final day of toddlerhood - Satan went negative, and Grew Up Badly.

I managed the parent time problem by hiring the Nanny 3 times, which cost me a grand total of $1900.  With the Expensive Hirelings hack, nannies are $50 + $90 / hour.

The key thing was noticing the first time around that on the final day, toddlers won't roll Learning wants.  So what I did was prime Satan with almost finishing Walk and Talk early on, and similarly holding off on the last little bit of potty training, though that was trickier.  Then after Satan dumped his Learn wants on day 4, I finished all three skills within a couple of Sim hours.

Thus, final score was +2, + 1 for not passing out, and +1 for not fulfilling fears (which seems to be neigh impossible anyway).


Eh.  Let's look at those penalties:

-20 For each visit from the social worker, assessed upon arrival. - you have to be an idiot to get the social worker.
-10 For each death (or undeath) in the family. - accidental deaths are very sloppy play as well.
-10 For each Aspiration Failure/bottomed-out Aspiration Bar - if you're just letting the bar decay, rather that using Fears, it's easy enough to stave this off with minor Wants.
-5 Every time the good twin grows up badly or the evil twin grows up well, assessed at beginning of child, teen, and adult/young adult stages. - Toddler -> Child is the only difficult one.
-5 For each zero-level skill, each twin that doesn't Learn to Study, or each twin that fails to learn any toddler skills (walk/talk/potty.) Getting all the toddler skills is rough with one parent.  But Learn to Study and getting 1 point in every skill is trivial.
-5 For failing to enter private school, and for each time the headmaster rejects the family. - mildly difficult with a family that has very little money for a fancy home, and probably low cooking skills, but extensive shmoozing can make up for this.  Probably challenging but hardly impossible.
-5 For each demotion, firing, or failing grade in school, applied when returning home. - unless you use chance cards, the odds of any of these are zero.
-5 For each time a teen runs away. - Doesn't this rely on relationship levels, not aspiration?  It's easy enough to maintain good relationships while still staying in the red for aspiration.
-1 For each use of an Aspiration or Career Reward object. - I never use those anyway.  Though the Smart Milk is tempting with two toddlers and one adult.

So, I'm thinking that if you can get past toddler, "champion" is nearly a slam-dunk.  Children can do most everything they need themselves except cook.

 - Gus

Some of those penalties are just to direct you on what to do. Like social worker and death issues. They could easily be changed to restrictions. Likewise with the headmaster penalty: it's actually not hard to get into private school; both the Twins and the Twiddlers did it on the first try.

"Run away" is just there just in case. I've never seen a teen run away, so I don't know what causes it.

1 point in every skill is trivial only if you keep the moods up. Learn to Study isn't trivial, because you have to avoid the "Ask for Homework Help" want. Probably the best point for the evil twin to learn to study is at the beginning of teen years, to give maximum decay time.

Firing and failing grades, however, are possible without the chance card, by missing work/school. This is possible with low moods. Not too hard, but not completely trivial, either. I could toughen this up with a penalty for each day of work or school missed (work is only required for the parent.) Also, instead of a bonus for an A+, I should make it a penalty: -5 for each twin that fails to get an A+ in both the child and teen stages.

I'm thinking about lowering the pee/pass out bonuses to +1 each and changing skill/grade bonuses to penalties:

• -1 for each non-maxed-out skill (cumulative with 0-point skills.)
• -1 for each missing toddler skill (cumulative with the "no toddler skills" penalty.)
• -5 for each twin that does not get an A+ as a child, or a second A+ as a teen.

Change the death/social worker penalties to a restriction: challenge ends when any sim is removed from the lot. Charge a -10 penalty for each twin that fails to reach child, teen, and young adult/adulthood (cumulative.) Other proposed penalties:

• -1 for each twin that doesn't go to work at least one day.
• -1 for each twin that has no friends outside the family, per lifestage (toddler, child, teen -- different friend for each stage.)
• -1 for each twin that doesn't have first kiss, go out on a date, or go steady (-3 max per teen.)
• -5 if the evil twin fails to make any enemies, per lifestage (child and teen; I don't think toddlers can make enemies.)

I think I also missed a good restriction to have: after buying an object and entering live mode, that object cannot be moved with the hand cursor, except if it causes a bug. All object movement after initial placement must be by the sims themselves. I didn't follow this restriction for the Twin or Twiddler family, but I think it will make it trickier; you have to place the object right the first time.

I'll have to try out your approach. I'll also give Pescado's "shuttered room" strategy a try, to see if it's doable. I will need to use the dorm door for the shuttered room, following that new restriction; otherwise, the evil twin will just go somewhere there isn't a radio and pass out.

Incidentally, what is up with the "Be Lectured" fear? It also seems very difficult to fulfill. I've seen it happen by accident, but I had my evil twin turn the TV on and off repeatedly, and wouldn't you know it, the damn thing won't break when I want it too... so she made a prank call, because I thought maybe it could trigger a lecture. Nope. Neighbor showed up and yelled at the GOOD twin, whom he was friends with. They are now furious at each other, and the evil twin got away scot-free. Which fits with the concept, I suppose.

I think this would be better if they were actively trying to kill each other.

I'm not sure gameplay in TS2 can really support this as a challenge... there isn't a lot you can tie the idea to for the narrative to really work, but it's a neat idea.

I probably overestimated the difficulty of private school because I typically get all the points I need just from the house and the food.  I'm a little fuzzy on how hard it is to get the points just by talking.

I've never had a runaway either, but AFAIK it's caused by the teen disliking (having a negative relationship score) with all family members.  Possibly including siblings, I haven't tested it.

You mention several times things being easy "only if you keep their moods up," but there's absolutely nothing in the rules that requires the Evil twin be unhappy.  You can keep the Evil Twin's mood as high as you like as long as the aspiration meter is red.  And you don't even have to keep that negative all the time, only when they Grow Up.

You don't really need to avoid the "Learn to Study" want, since childhood is long enough that it will definitely decay before becoming a Teenager.  Historically, my Sims have almost always Learned To Study on the first day of school, often the first day of childhood, because it cuts the homework time in half.

Requiring maxed-out skills at transition to adulthood adds more of a challenge, but I don't know that it's all that much fun or really in keeping with the theme.  I don't really know how hard it is personally, because I find the result boring enough that I've never pursued it.  But I understand other players here have done it on a regular basis.

A+ is trivial to acheive unless you screw up the kid's mood for some reason, and there's no reason to do so in the rules.


That would have caught me on the toddler section.  Normally I play that way for trash, but I ended up with a lot of rotten bottles and dishes that I didn't feel I had time to clear, so I moved them outside the house manually.  Not that environment is terribly important, but a big red environment score can lower the parent's mood enough to prevent teaching.

On the other hand, I'm not very fond of this rule as it applies to purchased objects, because you're screwing with user friendliness for little real gain in difficulty.  99% I don't move purchased objects unless I discover an error in my original placement, or I'm remodeling a house.  About the only exploit I can think of that centers on object movement is selling full potties to avoid the time required to empty them.

The challenge really needs more themed challenge in the child and teen stages.  Toddler is rough mainly because two toddlers is really more than a single adult can handle, hence the nanny-assist.  You need more reason to actively try and fulfill the Evil Twin's fears, rather than just avoid Wants, which is neither difficult or very interesting in play.  Requiring low relationship scores might be a good idea as well.  It's hardly Evil if the twin just never gets what he wants in life while remaining friends with everyone around him.  That's more Luckless Loser than Evil.

 - Gus

Don't know about killing, but it might be truer to the concept if there were "no fighting" penalty: "-5 points for every week of childhood and teen years that the evil twin does not get in a fight." If we broaden "fight" to include slapping and poking, it should be -1 per day.

Gus has got some good points, too. The idea behind the challenge is to make two successful adults who had the same opportunities as children and teens, but one turns out just plain wrong. You need to have at least one childhood friend and one teen friend, to prove that the evil teen really isn't a luckless loser, but there needs to be more "bad seed" kind of stuff. Maybe all the current positives should be rephrased as negatives, a few of them culled, and then add a tiny number of bonuses for stuff like number of pranks pulled.

Oh, and I should post pics of that funny moment...


(http://lh3.google.com/talysman/R_lbV3QmEaI/AAAAAAAAAS4/dFQnP1lnXO0/s144/snapshot_f503bb45_55042fd9.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5186276877062771106)
Tina "Evil" Twiddler prank calls the father of the other evil twin family, then nonchalantly starts a conversation with a visitor. Virgil Twin (the bald guy with the huge eyebrows) runs over, bursts in the house, and chews out Tine "Good" Twiddler, who didn't do anything. Amusing part was that she started walking away before he started yelling, and he's poking the air like he's yelling at an invisible person his own height.

I have no idea why he's yelling something about college. He certainly didn't go to college, and his kids aren't even teens yet. Maybe he's threatening the poor kid.


(http://lh3.google.com/talysman/R_lbV3QmEbI/AAAAAAAAATA/U48HToq_kp0/s144/snapshot_f503bb45_15042ffc.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5186276877062771122)

Poor Tina "Good" Twiddler starts bawling. She was actually friends with Virgil. Now they're furious with each other. And her good-for-nothing cowboy daddy just sat on the couch like nothing happened.

Yeah, it includes siblings. They have to have a negative relationship with everyone in the house - that, or not know them at all. The only runaway I've had occurred while I was seeding a playable boarding school, and didn't get my one ex-Townie student on speaking terms with her teacher quickly enough. Even a simple 1/0 was enough to kill it.

A good yardstick is that Lilith Pleasant starts play primed to Run Away ;)

As well as negative relationships with everyone in the household, Run Away also requires free will to be on.  If free will is off, a teen won't run away.

I kept meaning to bring up Lillith and Angela Pleasant.  They fit right into this, with Angela being "good" and Lillith "evil."  IIRC, they are indeed identical twins, though Lillith's hairstyle, makeup, and clothing hide that fact.

 - Gus

Do that FIRST, idiot! How many times do I have to say that?!?

Toddlers and children cannot aspirationally fail, and there is no way to determine when they have actually bottomed out. Also, it is impossible to do so by natural decay. Natural decay will halt short of the minimum value, just as sims cannot go crackers and have a therapist visit without satisfying an actual fear (which, for a toddler with no relatives to kill, is basically impossible).

But since we're trying to make this hard... one of the changes I could make is a -1 penalty for each unlearned toddler skill. Just to add insult to injury.

I don't have a -10. You're stupid and you suck. Also, "no bonus" is the same as "penalty". The fact that you can't see this clearly indicates you truly do not understand how games work. And the wording of the original text is that you were only penalized for it if it occured on the lot, regardless of who did it. Off the lot, there is no rule. Besides, peeing is just one of many options you can exercise, mostly unnecessary. I'm just saying that the rule contains a loophole you can exploit if you want to utilize peeing.

Children cannot make food. And I know EXACTLY how easy it is to make a child go red, because unless you go OUT OF YOUR WAY TO AVOID IT, they generally do it on their own! Children never want anything useful, so it is only by contrivance that you would ever fulfill any want other than the A+.

So fill it. So what? I think you underestimate how easily children bleed ASP.

Torturing children with the sleep trick is counterproductive because they are capable of passing out even in the presence of noise, whereas toddlers can't pass out, period, they just go to sleep. Toddlers don't have accidents or pass out.

I haven't racked up any. I'm describing the strategy for the cleanrun, perfect score, no penalties, all bonii. Your inept failure to implement the strategy correctly sounds like a personal problem to me, soldier.

Work is irrelevant, anyway. It has no effect on the meat of the challenge, since working or not working is entirely superfluous to the challenge. And is the evil twin supposed to even HAVE friends? I thought it was about enemies. Besides, the "friends" thing is strictly controllable, if you know how to manipulate the neighborhood composition.

Pssh. You just suck. Not only is it entirely possible, it doesn't even really represent a major deviation from standard gameplay! You should see what I do with Kewhale. :P

You said it once, and then, when I talked about waiting to buy the toys to avoid fulfilling *that* want and instead doing the evil toddler training first, LIKE YOU SAID, you said "You made a HUGE mistake. You *WAITED*. DO NOT WAIT. Do them FIRST, buying all the toys you need, etc, *EVEN* if it fills the wants. Yes, they will go platinum. Who cares? You're not penalized for this, and if you do this early, it will burn off."

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE "FIRST"!

If a bar is filled completely with red, I call that "bottoming out". However, I can't prove that this can actually happen by natural decay, so I'll take your word for it and consider alternate penalties/scoring for aspiration failure, maybe just setting a restriction "no sim can go into aspiration failure" or setting that as an end state.

I may suck (at least, at sucking,) but where do you get this crazy idea that "no bonus" is the same as a penalty?

If there were two short, stupid, nearly identical challenges, something like "play a single adult sim for three days", and the only difference was that one said "-1 every time anyone on the lot makes or serves a meal" and the other had no bonus or penalty for that at all, you'd play them both the same way?

NO BONUS means IGNORE. It's a waste of time doing it or preventing it. PENALTY means AVOID, if possible. And, for the record, BONUS means CONSIDER TRYING, unless it's risky.



I don't know why you're going on about children making food. That wasn't at issue. But as far as children's wants, the ones that pop up a lot are the social ones, usually when they need it, wants to eat specific food items, Learn to Study, earn a skill point, Do Homework, Get A+. Plus a couple easy-to-avoid stuff, like buying things. If you translate your toddler tactic of doing the high-payoff wants to the childhood stage and fulfill Learn to Study/Get A+ first, the aspiration bleed may work. The only real problem is the occasional matching wants for both twins on common stuff, like "eat [specific food item]", or when they get one of the really broad generic wants, like "Play With" and no specific person listed, or "Talk to Relative". Gotta watch'em more carefully then, or keep them busy. Besides, I've found one childhood fear that's easy to fulfill and has a decent penalty, so it's looking much easier at the childhood stage. This means it needs toughening up.

I'm not talking about sleep torture. Notice I said "gets enough sleep". In childhood, you don't want the kid to pass out, you just want to keep the mood hovering in the green so they keep doing what you want, but won't get a good grade. Although it turns out to be much easier to do this: (a) skip homework when evil twin gets home from school, fill needs and jump on couch/bed or in puddles until bedtime. (b) wake up evil twin at 6, eat if necessary, then work out until schoolbus arrives. Twin goes to school slightly stinky and with diminished fun, grade isn't so great. (c) if grade drops too close to D, have good twin do evil twin's homework first, to fulfill the inevitable "Do Homework" want. (d) have evil twin stay home from school at least once (-1000 aspiration.)

That's pretty easy, so in theory it should be restricted... but it's too in-keeping with the theme of the challenge, so I'd probably want a different penalty/restriction that's merely at cross-purposes to this.


Calm your ass down, I'm not saying you're lying. I'm just slightly unconvinced. I'll test it myself and see if you can get all three toddler skills for the evil twin on the first day without aspiration rewards. I'll try Gus' method, too, and see which wins. If it turns out to be possible, I'll harded things up.


Actually, I've rethought the enemies thing and think the friends thing is MUCH more important to the concept. Evil twins do not get enemies. Normal people get enemies: everyone has at least one. But what makes evil twins so evil is that they get away with it. So the evil twin should have at least one friend in each lifestage and no enemies, but should be required to prank, annoy, and irritate people. There should be a penalty for every negative relationship an evil twin ends with; they have to trick people into thinking they are sweetness and light.


Is it recorded in the Awesomehood chronicles? I've started going through those from the beginning. Funny!

But back to re-writing the challenge:

Given that want/fear mongering is kind of boring and makes Pescados whine, Ella and Gus raise some good points about remaining true to the core concept, and I want the challenge to be harder without too much bookkeeping. I'm going to have to re-think some of the scoring. Definitely need to move some things into flat-out restrictions or end-states instead of bonuses/penalties. Get rid of the max skill bonus completely, just have a penalty for no scholarships and one for less than three scholarships, to encourage skilling. Evil twin does not need to be perfect, but needs to have all the same breaks as good twin; that's the whole point of the concept: they're the same, but the evil twin somehow turned out *wrong*.

There should probably be less nickel-and-diming on the bonuses/penalties and in fact fewer bonuses. There should definitely be more *comparisons*, like:

• -5 if evil twin has fewer scholarships than good twin
• -5 if evil twin has fewer skill points than good twin
• -5 if evil twin has fewer friends than good twin

And so on. Still haven't tried OFB+, so I'm not sure how badges work, but I'm sure the same concept applies. The evil twin has to be at least as good as the good twin, on any criteria. There should probably be a +1 bonus for every criteria in which the evil twin is *better* than the good twin. But the evil twin still has to be evil/grow up badly.

Any other suggestions on making this harder and closer to the concept?

Without satisfying fears, the lowest an aspiration bar will go via natural decay is one bar into red (out of two IIRC) - it won't hit rock bottom until you satisfy a fear.

I really don't see why you can't buy toys while skilling a toddler...? Pescado said train their toddler skills first. You said, you needed to buy toys first. I don't see why you can't buy toys AND skill at the same time? The toddlers aren't physically involved in the buying of toys for the lot?

You have to understand that Pescado considers anything less than a perfect score a failure. Perfect scores, in challenges with positive or bonus points, is 100% of the possible points. Therefore, failing to get a bonus means a less than perfect score, which is a PHAIL.

Why do both your twins have to eat the same food all the time? Have the parent make a variety of foods, store them as leftovers in the fridge, let the kids help themselves to whichever food they want/don't want as you see fit.

Pescado just said that. I said I would take his word for it. What exactly are you contributing, here?
First off, Pescado said both things, I only said I would try them. Second, the toddlers are pixels. YOU are the player. There's only one cursor, and it can only be used to do one thing at a time. If you buy the toys first, you haven't skilled the toddlers first. If you skill the toddlers first, you haven't bought the toys first. It's simple logic. You can *start* skilling and then buy the toys, but it's clear which comes first, isn't it?

I'm pretty sure Pescado likes to harass, tease, insult, and poke people, and likes people who can take it and dish it out. It's not a big deal. I'm tormenting him because he's saying silly things, but the real issue is making the challenge better. I don't care if he prefers to believe fanciful things.

Wasn't that added with Seasons or later?

Right now, it's a matter of efficiency. Frequently, the parent can't serve a meal and fulfill the good twin's want without also fulfilling the evil twin's want. That might not matter much as far as aspiration points -- those are minor wants. But you might have a decent string of easily avoidable wants that you want to keep. The only way to prepare two different kinds of foods is to prepare a single meal, cancel the eat, and prepare a different meal and cancel. Either that, or make the evil twin eat nothing but chips and cookies.

It's a minor thing, but it's actually painfully easy for the evil twin to get up into gold when you least expect it, so you *have* to pay attention to stuff like this. I just got the evil twin from the second challenge family to grow up badly as a child, but the evil twin from the first challenge grew up well again. I haven't created families to test Gus's strategy (the Dopple family) or Pescado's "shuttered room" strategy (the Whately family) yet. We'll see if those work better, and if it's too easy, toughen it up.

Here's a tentative second draft of the rules. I didn't provide full details on the restrictions, because they're pretty much identical to the first version; just check for changes. This time, almost everything is a penalty.

The Setup: Create a family of three sims in CAS:

• Parent: adult sim with Family aspiration, any mix of personality or turn-ons/turn-offs.
• Good Twin: toddler with 10 Nice, 10 Neat, other points distributed any way desired.
• Evil Twin: toddler with 0 Nice, 0 Neat, other points distributed any way desired.

Twins can be identical or fraternal, as desired.

Create a house for the family on any size lot, but the family only starts with the standard $20,000.

Restrictions: no hacks that change gameplay, no cheats except to fix broken lots/objects, no money except through a career, no leaving lot under your control except via school bus/carpool, no inviting sims over with another playable family, no off-lot skilling except through chance cards/school. Rewards, if earned through normal play, are allowed, but penalized per use. No other sims may move onto lot. No turning into supernaturals (vampires, zombies, plant sims, werewolves.) Twins must grow up together (age transition on the same day between 6pm and midnight.) When they age to teens, they must choose the same aspiration.

Game Ends: when one of the twins dies, moves out, runs away and doesn't return, or is taken by social worker, or when both twins age to adult or young adult. If a twin dies, or the parent dies before the twins are teens (summoning social worker,) YOU FAIL. Otherwise, calculate your score.

The Scoring:

The family life should not be too extreme:

• -10 parent or twin suffers aspiration failure (per instance)
• -5  house is filthy, as determined by roach infestation, one time penalty
• -5  Family has no friends
• -5  per zero-level skill (parent or teen)
• -1  Anyone pees or passes out on lot (family or visitor)
• -1  For each use of an Aspiration or Career Reward object.

The parent must provide a decent home environment for both twins.

• -10 parent never earns any money
• -5 parent is fired or demoted (per event)
• -5 parent ages to elder and grows up badly, or dies before twins are teens
• -5 parent isn't friends with both children
• -5 parent doesn't get kids into private school
• -1 each time headmaster rejects private school application

The twins should have equal opportunities:

• -5 per twin that doesn't learn all three toddler skills, learn to study, have a best friend outside the family, have a first kiss (cumulative)
• -5 per twin that doesn't get an A+ in grade school
• -5 per twin that doesn't get an A+ in high school
• -5 per failing grade (D or F)
• -5 per twin that doesn't earn a scholarship
• -5 if evil twin has fewer friends, skill points, talent badges, or scholarships than good twin (cumulative, per category)
• -5 if evil twin has more enemies than the good twin

The good twin must be good, the evil twin must be evil:

• -5 good twin grows up badly from toddler to child, from child to teen, or from teen to (young) adult (cumulative)
• -5 evil twin grows up well from toddler to child, from child to teen, or from teen to (young) adult (cumulative)
• -5 good twin has no best friends outside family
• -1 good twin does not make friends with each person met (cumulative, per person)
• -1 evil twin does not pull a prank, irritate, or fight each person met (cumulative, only needs to be done once per person)

There is only one bonus:

• +1 For each LTW fulfilled.

Any gamer implicitly understands this. If there is something that gives "50% bonus damage", the de-facto STANDARD for damage immediately includes this. If you DON'T have it, you are therefore SUBSTANDARD. The maximum defines the standard. Any gamer understands this. You are just as nerfed if everyone else but you is increased as you are if you alone are decreased. Achievement is always relative, not absolute. An unavoidable penalty represents the same as a zero score because everyone has it. It is the baseline null score.

No, no score means no score. If there's no score for ANYTHING, then you cannot succeed or fail.

Penalty means AVOID. Bonus means that it is MANDATORY and you MUST do it, or you will fail because you did not achieve the standard score. If there are +50 points worth of possible bonii and -50 points of penalties, the standard score is 50: You must avoid all penalties, and get all the possible bonii. Otherwise you have failed to beat it A bonus is just a penalty framed in a different way: Instead of "you are penalized for doing this action", it instead says "you are penalized for not doing it". If there is a +50% damage item and you do not have this item, when you could, then you are operating below spec, and this is a penalty. That which is not forbidden is mandatory.

And social wants are entirely avoidable, since there is no reason you ever have to do any of them. The social meter can be filled by passive actions, and this is actually my PREFERRED method anyway, so it represents no deviation from the standard. To actually fill a social want requires a deliberate and directed effort, as you have to disrupt the entire family to do it.

Since, as I mentioned earlier, children cannot cook, there is no way they can actually fill the "eat specific item" want. Besides, why would I give it to them? Sims eat the standard-issue meal. To specifically fill such a want requires a deviation from the standard-issue ration. Therefore, this want is basically never filled in my game anyway, and making NOT doing so part of the challenge strategy does not require ANY deviation from my standard play. Same story with Play With, Talk To, etc: Doing them requires that you deviate from the standard activity and disrupt household functioning by interrupting the other sims. Obviously, such an unnecessary disruption must represent a DELIBERATE effort to fill those wants. Otherwise they'd never fill!

Watch them carefully for WHAT? Sims are always busy anyway. I somehow think you're doing this entirely wrong. Do you even understand how to play this?

That's even easier than you imagine. I hate food. Therefore, kids only receive free school food. Therefore, they always wake up hungry anyway. And because I'm a cheap-ass bastard, I refuse to feed them. If I have intentionally refused them platinum mood, they are never happy anyway. Too easy. No deviation from standard play at all.

So first you argue this is hard, then you admit it's easy? Make up your mind.

My method works and leaves nothing to chance. I rule over technology with a 42-pound, allegedly portable fist. Show no mercy.

Children cannot prank and annoy people, and it is, in fact, practically impossible to get children to negrel without SERIOUS work, ESPECIALLY if you're reliant on "bring home from school" as your only source of contact (there are other ways, but they pretty much require a lot of chicanery and manipulation). Therefore, this description involves no deviation from even naive core gameplay. Making enemies with children is *HARD AS HELL*. It is literally one of the hardest single exercises in the game.

Some of it is.

No it doesn't. I'm just saying *I* say it's TRIVIAL, but you refuse to believe me and imagine this to be a dificult exercise. Why, I don't know. Most sim wants are not incidental and can only be fulfilled with immense effort. For instance, to fulfill those child social wants you worry about requires that I either find a way to meet and invite someone over for the task, which is no easy feat for a sim that is incapable of leaving the lot, or that I disrupt the functioning of the rest of the family. This is not something that happens by accident. You have to deliberately take extreme action to fulfill them, and honestly, for 250-500 lousy points, it's not worth it even in normal play!

If you reduce it to a comparison, then 0 == 0, so this becomes a non-challenge. Otherwise, you define a standard and that becomes the de-facto rule. If a penalty exists for failure to get all the relevant scholarships, then getting them all for both again becomes the de facto standard. The perfect score *IS* the standard score. You may as well just say you fail the challenge anytime you fail to achieve the perfect score. Unless your objective is to crash the challenge for lulz, the perfect score is the ONLY score that matters.

I don't play the way Pescado does, since I see the Wants as a set of goals to acheive.  I need a set of demands to fulfill to make the Sims 2 into a game rather than an elaborate fishbowl, so I'll pursue them regardless of how difficult they are.  Actually, the more difficult they are to fulfill, the better.  The actual reward (+250 or +500 points) is unimportant, since I never spend them anyway, and I'd just as soon Platinum mood didn't exist.

That said, Pescado is spot on with all his points.  Not that he needs me to tell him that, but I think it's good that you hear it from another source.

If you define winning as "acheiving the maximum score," then there's no real difference between a positive score for performing an action, or a negative score for not doing it.  The effect is the same, you miss that many points.  You only see them as different because you've defined winning as "having a score of zero or more."  If the possible score is finite, many players - including myself - see acheiving less than the maximum score as a failure of sorts.

I don't agree with your definition of "evil."  It isn't whether they get away with it.  It's whether they intentionally try and harm other Sims in the first place.  If the Evil twin is caught every single time he steals, or starts a fight, or makes another Sim cry (and that is common enough), that doesn't make him less evil.  It makes him inept.  By the same token, if the Good twin does any of those things, it's still a bad thing for him to do whether he's caught or not.

Measuring "evil" objectively in the Sims is difficult, and one of the few ways I can think of to do so is negative relationship scores.  Even that's iffy, since you can get a negative relationship by doing good or harmless things that turn out badly, like trying to hug a stranger.

As for "grow up badly," I think that's reversing cause and effect.  The Evil twin doesn't grow up badly because he's evil; he's evil because he grew up badly.  It's in character, but the nature of Wants and Fears make negative aspiration makes it a poor model for Evilness.

Leaving the theme aside for a moment, the main thing that makes something interesting is if it's difficult and requires decision making.  Avoiding Wants isn't difficult, and requires few decisions.  Fulfilling Wants and Fears is more interesting because it requires intervention on the player's part.  Avoiding Wants in the Toddler phase is only interesting because you're requiring actions which are almost certain to fulfill Wants.  Children and Teenagers have complex enough Want trees that it's unlikely that they'll roll specific Wants that you'll fulfill incidentally.

To make this genuinely interesting, you need goals that require real effort.  Like getting X enemies, or acheiving negative X total aspiration points.  Though I don't know if the game tracks negative total scores in the Rewards window, where you can see your total so far.

 - Gus

Naturally. I don't think there's anyone in the entire sims community anywhere that has a better understanding of the game. While some people may know of esoteric features that I do not, I know pretty much everything of any value or anti-value in the game.

You know the drill: Accept no Kewian-based substitutes!

Heh, getting enemies is like the gameplay goal of Ugly Butt in Awesomeland. But it is not enough for the Butt to have enemies. Her goal is also to make them cry. I am pondering the creation of a custom LTW, like "Make X Sims Cry".

It does not.

Crap.  One of the possible goals would have been "score -100,000 Aspiration Points."  Keeping track of that by hand is too much beancounting.

Edit: I just thought of a workaround, though a very painful one.  Open the Evil Twin's character file with simPE.  Give him a ton of total aspiration points - it appears to be field 150 ("Aspiration Score, Raw.")  Say, 150,000.  Now require that to win the challenge, the Evil Twin must have 50,000 or less points showing in the Reward window, and must have never spent any on actual rewards.

 - Gus

Well, fuck you too  ::)


Oh, I see, so we're quibbling about a difference of 0 seconds game-time, because you can both buy the toys and que up the skill interactions while on pause. And you can't seem to figure that out. So you're inept, as well as rude.


If you don't care, stop bitching about it. Every time I click this thread you're failing to get anything Pescado says, I figured there must be some underlying miscommunication here.


Yes, it was Seasons or later to store leftovers, but I think you're overestimating the amount of time it takes to pour cereal. Heck, have them make one using OFB, or even in base game you can have breakfast and then cancel it, leaving the food for the chillun's. What is your adult doing that's so important to the challenge that they can't make food for their kids? You've already got very contrived circumstances via the rules set you're introducing - did you not expect to have contrived gameplay?

I think you're trying to do this and still maintain some level of "realistic" or "normal" gameplay - if you optimize your efficiency you can easily beat the challenge. I don't usually play that way, hence, I don't usually do challenges like this.

Eh, you can believe in such things as actions that take zero time if you want. If you don't understand the concept of "first", that's your problem.

Well, DUH. Did you read the first page? The point of the challenge is to recreate a fictional archetype; something similar to sitcom evil twins. The scoring is meant to prevent you from taking the most efficient route towards having one twin grow up well while the other grows up badly.

Pescado obviously doesn't play that way; he runs a tight barracks. My challenge, then, is to make this challenge seem hard for him while still making the outcome resemble a somewhat realistic (in a sitcom sense) life. If Pescado says "you suck, this is too easy", that means I have to try harder. If you barge in and say, "you're trying to be too realistic," I just look at you like you're nuts.


"Evil" here means in the sense of the evil twin trope (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilTwin) from sitcoms (well, actually, the evil counterpart (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilCounterpart).) Science fiction and fantasy, of course, are blunter about good and evil, but in sitcoms or soap operas, the evil twin/evil counterpart is usually not recognized as evil until late in the plot. Thus, the evil twin in the challenge needs to get away with negative actions.

You're right when you say "The Evil twin doesn't grow up badly because he's evil; he's evil because he grew up badly." Growing up badly is a goal because it influences the sim's behavior later in life. It's not meant to be a consequence of the evil actions; the evil actions are just to reinforce the concept and give an additional requirement to fulfill. The only problem I see is finding an objective way to indicate that the evil twin is acting in character throughout life.

I'll take your suggestion about focusing more on real goals, although negative aspiration points, even if it were possible, isn't quite right, either. I'm sure children don't roll the "See the Ghost of X" or similar wants, but do teens? That might be something to shoot for.

As for the discussion of whether a bonus is actually a penalty, I'm skipping this, because it's giving me some ideas, but not for this challenge. I'm going to think of a challenge where you *can't* get all the bonus points. That'll larn Pescado!


Ah, then, I need to write that into the rules. I've already got some in the v2 rules, requiring the evil twin to have at least as many friends as the good twin, but I'll need some more rules that prevent you from having the evil twin daydream.

I could force you to have the evil twin make friends with every child they bring home from school. You'd like that, wouldn't you?


Sims are *not* always busy. Sometimes, they have nothing that needs doing, or only one or two things to do that you want another sim to do instead, or they only need to do one thing but are unable to do it yet, so you have to find something for them to do. You're not playing with freewill off, are you? I better write that into the restrictions.

I should also add "must eat one home-cooked meal a day" into the "normal home life" section, to make you deal with the food.

Children *can* prank, or at least prank call, and I'm sure I've seen "Gross out" as an option, too, although I'll have to confirm that, and irritate and annoy as well, which I'm sure I've seen. But I just had an evil twin prank call someone, and posted the pics of the result above, so I know *that* is possible. They can definitely fight, I've seen it happen spontaneously. And don't forget, you have to play the teen stage, too. Teens can prank, irritate, and annoy.

There's now a requirement for the parent to be friends with both children, so at the very least, you're going to have to socialize the parent and the evil twin without fulfilling any major social wants for the evil twin.

It's not *solely* a comparison, but there's a section based on comparison. The good twin must succeed in life, the evil twin must do as well as the good twin, but grow up badly and perform evil actions. The real problem is finding evil actions to require. Prank/irritate is a good start; I wish we could go "bad seed" and have the evil twin kill a friend. Hmmm, I was about to say I can't see a way for a sim to do that, since the cow plant is the only non-hacked way for a *sim* to kill a sim, but I just thought of a couple ways. I'll have to see how easy they are to accomplish, though. I'm guessing one is possible with repetition, the other requires some random events, but becomes easier with a later expansion pack I haven't installed yet.

Any other suggestions?

That sort of thing is inherently more interesting anyway, because there's a choice involved in which points you pursue.  To be really sure it's impossible, though, two things have to be mutually exclusive in some way, rather than just requiring too much Sim time.  I can't think of many examples in the Sims 2, since almost all Sims choices can be repeated.  I.e. reaching the top of the Law Enforcement career does not prevent  you from quitting and getting a job as a criminal.

 - Gus

?

(http://pics.livejournal.com/quinctia/pic/005dhbkd)

Ironically appropriate, that's her twin that she wanted to see dead.

The problem is that there's a basic conflict in your challenge between storyline, scoring, and efficient gameplay.  You are trying to use the storyline to force players away from maximum efficiency to maintain your sitcom feel, but that's not going to work.  When faced with a choice between efficient gameplay, storyline & scoring, many challenge players are going to choose to go for efficient gameplay & scoring, with the storyline coming way behind in 3rd place.

Personally, I tend to think of a challenge as being the rules, restrictions and scoring, and I tend to ignore the storyline unless it is sufficiently interesting to me to play in it's own right.  When I'm playing a challenge my perfectionist gamer side takes over, and I tend to ignore anything that gets in the way of finishing the challenge with a decent score, even if that means ignoring potential storylines I might have followed if it wasn't a challenge.

Trivial again. This is again within the parameters of my standard gameplay behavior.

Then this is basically irrelevant and is the same as a penalty for lack of achievement. The comparative factor is irrelevant, there is only The Bar.

Deliberate acts of homicide are simply not in the game. You can do the ladderless pool, the cowplant, the Cask of Amontillado, etc., but none of those have an "actor". You perform these actions as the player, no SIM performs them. About the only way a sim can kill another sim is to fuck him to death.

You can't. That's like saying you can deter drivers from taking the most efficient route by building the road network as a maze of one-way streets and no-left-turns. There's STILL a most-efficient route, and the more ridiculous you make finding *ANY* route, the more likely that someone, having committed to finding any route at all, will necessarily discover the most efficient one, up to the point where it becomes unreasonable to find a route at all, which nobody plays your challenge because it has become a nightmare of bean-counting and obscure rules no one can keep track of. If you build a road network consisting of a bizarre set of arcane traffic laws and one-ways, pretty soon everyone simply ignores your rules.

Well, fucking them to death would be only possible with the elevator, from my understanding. But yeah, I've thought of four ways where a sim can take an action that leads to the death of another sim, without cheats like changing the house layout or moving items with the hand cursor. The only real question is: did EAxis put in any code to prevent you from doing this to visitors?

In rare cases it is possible for the hunger hit from woohoo to kill a sim, thus resulting in death by woohoo.

Which 4 ways? I can't think of any real ways a sim can DIRECTLY cause the death of another sim, although it's possible to create situations where sims are likely to die, like causing them to be attracted to a cowplant, dive into a ladderless pool, get in a hot tub during a rainstorm, etc. Otherwise, without hacks that specifically restrict the ability to leave before motive death, or outright kill, I can't think of any direct way a sim specifically kills another sim that is directly attributable to an individual sim and not due to the lame-brainedness of sims in general or Acts of God.

Nah, you can keep a sim woohooing pretty close to motive failure. It takes some balancing, as there's a point where they recognize that it will kill them, but you can basically screw them to the point where they are so low on multiple motives that they'll go into a constant motive failure that keeps them from satisfying hunger.

Doesn't work with visitors. when visitors go into multi-motive, or even single-motive failure, they just bug out and leave the lot. You have to insta-kill them using the woohoo, hunger hit, before their abort routine can fire. Residents, of course, are trivial to kill simply by neglect, as they cannot bug out.

I haven't tested ways #1 and #2 with visitors yet, but it *might* work. They're both versions of the Cask of Amontillado, but without any "removing a door in build mode" chicanery. Include a room in your house with the dormie door in it, pointing *inwards*. Claim the door, call over another sim, then lock the door. The door owner can leave, but not the other sim. This makes deliberate murder by starvation possible. #2 was the idea of doing the same thing, but putting the Maxis scissors in the room and hoping they get so bored that they kill themselves before starving to death. However, after testing, unless there's something I'm missing, sims won't spontaneously run with the scissors, so that looks like it's out.

Now, as I said, I haven't tested the shuttered room technique on visitors; maybe they gain the mysterious ability to walk through walls when starving to death. Maxis has been known to do worse. Also, the dormie doors have an actual sim animation for claiming and locking a door. I don't know if the other lockable doors have this or not. If not, you specifically need the dormie door.; otherwise, it's user chicanery.

I'll reveal the secrets to #3 and #4 when I've tested them, different modes of death, and one of them may or may not need the dormie door, but it's a similar idea: the murderous sim does something that the victim is unable to escape from.

I've been following the discussion on this challenge, and it motivated me enough to try it. I succeded within about 4 hours playing time.


I moved the family to a 2x2 lot, leaving them with $18,400 to play with. This was used on building a tiny house, with two seperate bedrooms for the twins of 2x3 squares to keep them from waking each other up, a 2x3 bathroom with expensive toilet and cheap shower, and a 2x3 bedroom for the mother. The central room was a square of about 7-8 squares on one side, which served as kitchen, living room and training room. I carpeted the place in cheap carpet, but left walls bare. This left plenty of money for the few pieces of furniture and for the mother to not need to get a job until the twins were half way through child stage. Food was also grown, which meant paying for a delivery once.


Ran into a couple of problems with these restrictions, but they were due to my stupidity. Eg, twins became friends with Sharla Ottomas but couldn't phone her because she hadn't moved into a house yet. The "no money except through a career" ensured that the mother got a job in the end, and meant that the evil twin had plenty of chances to ruin the good twin's artwork before selling it off for $0.


I actually had my first in-game born plantsim during this challenge, due to the mother using too much bug spray. Was very surprised, but called up the garden club and got her fixed. Now the challenge is over she's happily a plantsim again!


I let the first and second age transitions happen naturally, but the third (teen to adult) I chose to do ASAP due to the way the aspiration levels were looking. I chose knowledge for the aspiration, which was a mistake due to the skill matching between the twins. This meant very early on in the teen stage I clicked that I could skill the evil twin beyond the good twin without consequence - however if I skilled the good twin beyond the evil twin, the evil twin was usually satisfying skill wants when I skilled her up to her sister's level. In this challenge, most skilling was done through normal gameplay, not by my direction to read books. The exception to this was skilling the evil twin in charisma for the headmaster mini-game.


No aspiration failure through-out the challenge, but was interested to see the good twin fall into aspiration failure straight after aging to adult due to the 10,000 asp hit for growing up uneducated. However, that was outside the challenge time-frame and she grew up well.


I had one passing out, by the mother near the end of the toddler stage. My own stupidity. I was wondering, though, about whether toddlers "pass out"? Or is it just sleep when they do it? Otherwise how would the "keep in a room with a radio on" strategy work?


Not needed. I rarely use these in normal game play anyway.


She was demoted once, due to my taking a chance card. I guess pressing "ignore" would solve that, but I prefer not to. I didn't see anything about ignoring chance cards in the rules?


I was wondering if you knew that if played without aspiration rewards, the parent still has three days left before turning to elder when the challenge finishes? I guess this is just an extra penulty for anyone who (mis)uses aspiration rewards?


It was very trivial for the parent to reach BBF status with her two children.


There was no penalty for days of not being in private school, so I didn't do this until half way through the teen stage. By this time, there was more than $20,000 saved, which allowed me to buy expensive wallpaper and an expensive statue. I trained the evil twin in charisma to schmooze, while the mother was around a level 8 in cooking skill. Evil twin did the house tour (moving the statue from room to room - nothing against that exploit in the rules), while mother made the dinner. Easily passed first time. Managed to time it so that the want triggered for the good twin, while the evil twin did not receive any benefit.


This was indeed the hardest part of the challenge. The evil twin rolled wants to learn to walk and talk on the first day, and so I trained her in the potty first. Trained her in the other two skills most of the way, but didn't complete them until 4pm of the last day of being toddler, when the wants finally went away. Training both toddlers in all three skills took some doing, but three of the four days were Autumn and so the seasonal boost was very helpful (Nothing in the rules about setting all four seasons to the same. In this case, autumn autumn spring spring is probably optimal - first two for skilling when younger, then romancing when teens)

Learn to study was done in no time, with little want benefit for the evil twin - the aspiration drainage of children is surprisingly high, as JMP suggested above. It really took me by surprise. Have first kiss was a funny one, and I managed to hit the evil twin with two rejected first kisses before giving it to her when she didn't have a want for it any more.


The wording of the first two of these confused me, until I realised you meant get an A+ both as a child and as a teen. This was achieved, however I was cheated by this as the game threw three (!!) snow days my way - stopping the evil twin from getting this requirement until the day of age transition to teen. This also trigged the want she had for an A+, throwing her into marginal green aspiration. The aspirational decay just wasn't fast enough to counteract this and she aged to teen automatically in green aspiration. No failing grades - in fact the one scholarship both twins got was the "A- or better grade" scholarship.


This was no problem. In fact my stragtegy to this was to make sure it was the evil twin who got the skill points, badges and scholarships. She ended the challenge with almost twice as many skill points than the good twin. Does this rule mean the same total number of skill points or the same pattern of skill points? (Ie would the penulty be given if the good twin had 10 cooking points, but the evil twin had 5 logic and 5 cleaning points?)  With regards to friends, because the good twin has to befriend everyone she meets and the evil twin has to have the same friends I made sure the good twin met as least Sims as possible. In fact, the only people she met were the nanny and people she brought home from school. It was simple to keep her from meeting the mother's boyfriend, for example. She didn't have the "met X" memory or his picture in her friend panel, yet the evil twin knew him quite well in the end. The evil twin knew more people, and I think had one more friend than the good twin.


Only one problem with this, the evil twin grew up good once due to the snow day thing referred to above.


Not too much of a problem, given the long time-frame for this challenge. It was hard to remember which people the evil twin had irritated, but by the time her relationship was up with them she could do it and "get away with it".


Sadly not gotten, due to the mother's LTW being "graduate 3 children". Silly mother.

So my overall score was -11, mostly due to my own stupidity. I don't think that's too bad, however far below what I was expecting.

I hope this is helpful to you. This was my first play through, and I may do it again. I found it quite fun and refreshing from my normal game play. Is there any point I've missed that you want feed back on?

Eh, you can believe that the game clock keeps ticking while on pause if you want, and keep on pursuing that endless red herring of "first" all you like. If you don't understand the concept of "irrelevant", that's your problem.

I believe sims which have decided to go home and leave are able to pass through locked doors on their way out, so no.

Tricks which depend on the target sim subsequently doing something on its own don't count: the death has to be directly caused by the sim.

So...what would cause a toddler not to ever roll any toddler skill wants?

I had a kid in one of my legacy houses that was cared for as an infant pretty much exclusively by her great-grandfather, and she aged up wanting nothing more than simple social interactions from her parents.  She stayed that way, without any post-sleep rerolls, until 6pm on the third day--transition day--where she rolled a grow up well want, a generic interact want, and some skill wants.

Her fears were also a little different from the normal toddler fears--one was to have someone kick the tombstone of the previously mentioned great-grandfather, who died when she was still an infant.

If you could work it so you could afford it, I suppose if you were able to have things arranged so the evil twin's primary caretaker was the nanny (the only other person besides the one parent that would be allowed), then the evil twin might never roll those initial skill wants.  My toddler got all her toddler skills, and about 8-9 various skill points and hadn't gained a drop of aspiration.

It's to do with the want trees, isn't it? If you're always fulfilling social wants, the toddler will roll more and will never roll the skill wants. Also, wants that don't get fulfilled will eventually go away.

Usually, my toddlers will roll a specific skill want after getting one skill point in the area, ala adults & teens. You can use that to switch up which skilling toy you are using, so that they are never skilling towards a skill they want. I almost never see the general "Gain a Skill Point" want on a toddler. I've just been through three toddlers last night, and none of them rolled that want.

In FT, or pre-FT? In FT, it's very unusual for them not to roll up skilling wants if you're seeding things right. In pre-FT, this was pretty common (and extremely annoying).

Pre-FT.  She's my first that I can remember that NEVER rolled one.  Usually, they'll have at least one on age-up.

I wasn't ever fulfilling any wants, because her parents were too busy (drinking and banging each other) to pay any attention to her.  And she wanted their specific attention.

I just wonder if it was sado-randomness or parents ignoring her at the baby stage that did it.  The latter, you could possibly rig it for the challenge.

It's certainly not the latter. I always ignore babies as I find that stage extremely boring, but still, only some of my toddlers are needy little whiners, whereas others are happy skilling machines. Maybe it depends on the personality.

Babies are boring, but I had the impression that playing / cuddling adds personality points to playfulness and niceness respectively.  Of course, you may not want that, depending on how you play.  And there's always the possibility I could be mistaken about that - it's been a while since I ran a proper test on it.

 - Gus

I've always found that the personality a baby has when I make them selectable matches what they have as a toddler. The only way to change a personality (barring werewolfism or zombiism) is to encourage traits, IIRC, and that's only possible with children & teens.

Pure and utter bollocks. Doesn't happen.

Who said? Who's writing the challenge, anyways?

The idea is to cause the death of the visitor without using cheats, the magic hand, or hacked items. Everything must be accomplished using actions and objects available in the game + expansions. The "call over/lock door/leave visitor inside" sequence is a perfectly valid way to cause a death. No special memories gained, but then EAxis didn't intend murder to be an in-game goal.

I avoided responding to this until I could actually test it with a visitors. And now... SUCCESS! Goopy bites it!

(http://lh4.ggpht.com/talysman/SAAGAITHvwI/AAAAAAAAAT0/wzPxDZkZJHo/s144/snapshot_f508c0cf_750bc308.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5188153370028261122)


(http://lh3.ggpht.com/talysman/SAAGD4THvxI/AAAAAAAAAT8/RLLLHKfDyo4/s144/snapshot_f508c0cf_950bc420.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5188153434452770578)

I used a test household here, not one of the evil twin households. And of course, this might be fixed in later expansion packs, or might not work with other locked doors. (Do the other locked doors even have locking animations?) But Charlie Closet offed Goopy, without hacks, cheats, or my moving stuff around for him. Didn't need to move Goopy in, make him selectable, or for that matter even make friends with him; just greeted him, called him over, locked the door, and left him there. It was a little harsher than killing off Charlie's brother, because Goopy seemed to bawl more. Also, he paced. Edward just stood in one spot until he passed out.

Speaking of later expansions, jemjie reminded me that I need to explore how the later stuff affects the challenge. Maybe this is why toddler skilling seems so easy for you guys; maybe I need add a rule about which season to start in, as well as a "free will must be on" rule. I'm thinking it should start in spring or summer, but until I try Seasons, I can't be sure.

I still need to test the other death possibilities as well. There's a certain amount of randomness involved in those, but they may become easier with later expansions.

Another update: I had tried Pescado's method of training the evil twin first, then locking it in a room with just a radio so that its aspiration would decay. I delayed reporting on it until I tried Gus's method as well: training the evil twin *almost* all the way on all three skills, then finishing them off on the last day when the toddler rolls nothing but social wants.

Gus's method worked, Pescado's didn't. Here's the breakdown:

The Pescado "shuttered room" method had one immediately apparent flaw: it was impossible to train all three toddler skills before the first sleep cycle, and if the toddler gets no sleep, you can't train it anymore after that because of the bad mood. This may be because of the pre-OFB status of my game; maybe if you have Seasons and select the season that boosts skilling (fall?) or make use of other late-expansion pack items I am unaware of, you can do it. There was a second flaw in that the toddler won't stay in the room if there's just a radio; you need a crib, too. Otherwise, the toddler tries to sleep, wakes up because of the noise, and gets a tiny energy boost that lets it crawl out of the room. And I discovered that the only pre-OFB door lock available, the dormie door, doesn't seem to stop a toddler. It *might* stop the toddler if it's turned the other way, facing inwards: it's thinking about this that enabled me to adapt the shuttered room technique to killing visitors.

Gus's method did work, although properly speaking, I *did* go ahead and train the evil twin to walk on the first day and didn't wait completely until the last day, so I sort of combined Pescado's *original* suggestion, part way, with Gus's. I also did a couple other tricks: not always letting the toddler sleep the full amount, for example, and not buying a dining table and chair so that the parent ate standing up instead of falling asleep in her food, when she was almost drained. It's mainly a matter of interrupting things, not letting the parent get fully rested, not taking a full shower. And when the evil twin was obviously going to get potty trained on Day 3, triggering that want, I canceled the potty at the last second. To build up social for the evil twin, I used the family kiss, which *never* rolls a want, as well as the standard bathing action. I did have to trigger the "buy a toy" want after teaching the evil twin to walk, though, so that the kid had a way to keep Fun up without being played with.

End result:


(http://lh6.ggpht.com/talysman/SABQDoTHvyI/AAAAAAAAAVE/cH-sTy-4Hkw/s144/eviltwin.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/talysman/Goofy/photo#5188234794018258722)

All three toddler skills, Grow Up Well for the good twin, Grow Up Badly for the evil twin, and three charisma each.

1: No one said it was necessary to make it so the toddler NEVER gets any sleep.
2: Unless this was changed recently, train to talk is energy-ignoring like the Medical Dummy, so you can keep forcing them to skill even when their energy has bottomed out.

Why would it crawl out of the room? Sims don't move significantly unless ordered to do so by a queued action. Since you're not queuing any actions, the toddler will only perform static shuffle, which does not generally leave the room unless the room is exceptionally tiny. No door lock is required.

I didn't check carefully, but I keep having all three skilling activities interrupted unless I was careful about moods. So, train to talk might ignore energy, but it doesn't seem to ignore the mood drop from low energy.

At least it seems to ignore the nanny, unlike potty training, which is interrupted by absolutely any queued action.


I don't know why they crawl out of the room, but Lolita Whately certainly crawled out repeatedly. Specific autonomous actions were play with toy, play with toilet, ask for attention, ask to be read to, and suck on old horrible rotten baby bottle. Didn't see "Follow" on that run at all, but I'm sure it would do it, too.

The crib stops it, though... but then you have the annoying problem with nannies mixing up the babies. Caffeinating wasn't working out very well, so I kept having to hire nannies just to give the parent a break. As an aside, the latest evil twin, David Dopple, somehow got out of his crib once. It must have been a glitch, because I couldn't repeat it.

But the most important part of that experiment was: keeping the kid awake did not drain aspiration fast enough. Avoiding fulfilling any wants other than "buy a toy" worked better than fulfilling a big want early and trying to bleed off the aspiration.

But, now that this part seems pretty doable, I'm rethinking the challenge. I don't want that much nickle-and-diming, so I may add a few flat-out restrictions instead. But I would prefer a set of restrictions that cause interesting things to happen, as opposed to a mere set of barriers to find the most efficient pathway through. I do think I need to add a "-1 every time the parent has a fear fulfilled" though. The whole point of requiring the parent to be Family is to force an interaction between trying to raise one child badly and trying to keep the parent from suffering. This is why there's an aspiration failure penalty: not for the twins, for the parent. But the parent's not failing completely, so I should probably change that to -1 for every day the parent is in the red and ignore aspiration level for the twins. Combined with the penalty per fear, that should make it a little trickier.

Toddlers that have learned to walk are able to get themselves out of the crib if their energy bar is in the green.

Stop letting your sims do things. No wonder you can't manage to accomplish anything. If you expect to beat anything, you have to TAKE COMMAND. BE IN CHARGE.

I suggest not hiring them. They are counterproductive.

You suck at this, you know.

Consider this to be a two-pronged attack. Focus on trying to do both, but not necessarily to the exclusion of the other. Don't, however, waffle.

ALL challenges are a set of barriers to find the most efficient pathway through. That is the essence of LIFE. LIFE is a series of obstacles, the objective of which is to find the most efficient pathway through. Life exists to be solved. There is no way to create a challenge that you can actually play that does not involve this, because this is how REAL LIFE works. The only way to do this is to create an unplayable challenge where the player does not actually participate in the challenge. And that's just stupid, because it defeats the point of having a game and turns your "challenge" into a brute force statistical attack. Without human involvement in gameplay, the challenge is nothing more than installing it on a few hundred computers and running the results over and over until you get maximum score. How is that fun? Good challenges are puzzles to be solved. Puzzles like "How can you keep Emma from pissing herself in a house with NO BATHROOM?". Yet you have to be careful not to restrict TOO many options or you've created a railroad.

Definitely nickel and dime material. You can't often even tell if a parent has a fear fulfilled if the fear does not produce an immediately obvious response in the form of a large ASP hit. 500-point things like "Bad Conversation" are rarely even visible unless you are specifically watching for it. Also, aspiration trees are entirely manipulable, so this is not a real challenge. If you know how to manipulate the tree seedings, you can easily make the trees bend to your will when necessary. I generally don't bother because I don't *CARE* if they suffer, but if you're going to make it point-rewarding, I DO know how to do this.

I wouldn't suggest that until you've actually tried to do the toddler part of this challenge.

It's true that Nannies are very inefficient.  But "counterproductive" is an exaggeration.  They do certain time-consuming actions such as bathing the toddlers and some less time-consuming ones like feeding them.  Getting all three toddler skills on both toddlers is close enough to the edge with just a single adult that the nannies can make a difference.  The aspiration issues are irrelevant, it's simply the amount of time required absent time savers like the smart milk or helmet or energy boosters like the Energizer.

 - Gus

You say that like Pescado's a newb who's never raised toddlers in-game.

I say that like I think Pescado hasn't actually tried to raise two toddlers with a single parent and none of the common shortcuts.  I was hardly a newbie at Sim child raising either, and it proved more difficult than I thought.

 - Gus

This supposedly happened in Sims 1, which could be the source of the confusion. Playing with them was supposed to give the baby playful points, but there was nothing for nice.

You say that like Pescado doesn't love to sneak cheesecake to all his pregnant sims.

A safe assumption is that if it can be done, Pescado knows how to do it better and more efficiently than you've even imagined, and if it sucks, Pescado has an unreleased shiny to fix it.

Considering there's a challenge out there with one adult raising seven or six toddlers that people have completed successfully, the prevalence of the trips and quads mod, and the fact that a lot of people manage 10+ sim households, one adult with two toddlers isn't exceptionally hard in itself.  You just have to actually pay attention to them a bit.

I disagree, after having actually done it.

One adult raising 6-7 toddlers - sure, if he doesn't have to teach them any skills.  One adult teaching 6-7 toddlers all three toddler skills - only possible with major cheatage.  I.e. smart milk combined with the teaching cap and the energizer.

10+ sim households doesn't mean 1 sim with 9 toddlers.  Or, generally, even having more than 1 toddler per adult.  Even having 2 adults in the household gives you some economies of scale, because you can offload some things like cooking on to just one of the adults.

If you haven't actually tried raising 2 toddlers with all 3 skills with one CAS adult on no shortcuts, don't speculate about how easy it is to do without nannies until you have.

 - Gus

Because one adult for two toddlers with all skills is harder than one adult with seven toddlers, or two adults with four toddlers  ::)

I'll take you up on that in the morning when I have some time.

It isn't Pescado! It's that darned, sneaky Mrs Pescado.

I just did it.  Not too hard--finished early Thursday afternoon, without changing my style of play one bit, being nice and waking the parent back up to get screaming toddlers, cleaning up after the mess, etc.  Came up with all sorts of ways to streamline things as well.  For one, I left way too big of a "nest egg."  We weren't hardly getting any bills, and I could probably near raise the children completely without getting parent a job the entire time.

My twins rolled up strange wants, so I'm wondering how to finangle the one twin not getting any asp.  Ironically, the "evil" twin had toddler skill wants way before the "good" twin did. XD

It's still not as bad as having a couple of twin kids who need to be kept on their homework and off the podiums while I've got triplet toddlers to train up, even if I had two parents then.  I mean come on, I just fed mommy gelatin, no one needs to cook here.

Not all of them. Just EMMA.

So, no nannies, but the adult ate jello exclusively?

EDIT: I forgot to ask, what about Free Time and Seasons effects?  Did you purchase reduced motivation decay with lifetime acheivement points, or set the challenge in Autumn?

That doesn't make any sense at all to me.  Since when does keeping children on homework or off podiums require any effort at all on the part on an adult Sim?  Sure, it requires more pausing and clicking on the part of the player, but the adults should be able to completely neglect the children beyond leaving out food platters with no penalties.

She ate a sandwich once or twice by getting to the fridge before I could do it myself, but she mostly ate jello.  I probably didn't need to buy her the stove, expensive counter and fire detector, but it's not like we were strapped for cash.  I put them down in one of my hoods that is ONLY summer, so there was no fall skilling bonus or anything.

It's harder to have multiple kids AND multiple toddlers ecause it takes some micromanagement on the player's part to handle multiples.  Therefore it's harder for ME to have sets of kids--especially since, in my last example, mom was pregnant again when I had the triplet toddlers.  I don't doubt the adult caretakers in my case were a little happier, being in an established household and leaving occasionally to go to work, but that doesn't make it less difficult for me.

Unlike most people around here (who are probably smarter for it), I don't use the macrotastics hacks or the baby controller.  I don't lobotomize my nannies because I very very rarely use them.  (And when I do, they are really only "allowed" to mess with infants--a potty trained toddler is oddly self-sufficient.)  A nanny is just going to lead to more stinky bottles lying around, can't get them food or in and out of bed anywhere near as efficiently as a sim under my control, and "bathing" is a moot point because that only NEEDS to be done once or twice in an entire toddlerhood, if you keep them out of the toilet.

Even though kids can get their own food to a certain extent, they've got a "skill" like the toddlers, since teaching them how to study is never an option in my game and must be done as soon as possible.

...I should've given the toddlers separate sleeping rooms so they didn't wake each other up, though.  Damn, I don't know what I was thinking.

I have pictures, but they are terribly boring and I was an idiot and took most of them in camerman mode so they look nice, but don't tell you what the exact time was, because no UI.

I did the toddler stage without the nanny. She just gets in the way and takes the toddlers to the crib / gets them out / bathes them / makes dinner when you don't want her to - and that's just in a usual household. As I knew I'd have at least one toddler in a rubbish mood most of the time, hiring the nanny just wasn't an option. So instead I moved the household to the smallest lot I can comfortably play in (2x2 rather than 1x3) - coupled with growing food (which adds lots of green to the parent's fun bar, and once she was a gold badge she could get her social up by talking to the plants - so she was in a pretty good mood most of the time) I had plenty of cash to spend without having to get the parent a job until the twins were half way through child stage.

The mother, by the way, didn't eat gelatin all the time - one sparkly meal of pork chops a day kept her going fine, and she could make it when the twins were asleep. Getting both toddlers all three skills was tough, especially when avoiding triggering the wants, but that's why this is called a challenge! And, besides, playing the toddler stage in Autumn helped a lot.

I found bathing to be a major time suck.  I couldn't just ignore bad hygiene because then the toddlers refuse to learn anything when dirty.  The changing table is a lot faster, but you can only use it with a full diaper, and you generally can't let the toddlers do that because you need the full bladders for potty training.

Oh, definitely because you have to split your attention more ways.  Which is generally far more fun.  But the kids don't impose any theoretical limitations on the adults other than "learn to study," which you could postpone if you're having a toddler crisis.  So by "harder" in this case I mean the kids don't really don't factor at all into whether it's possible, just how often you have to pause the game.

Neither do I.  I don't like either one, because I'm handing off decisions - albeit very simple ones - to an AI player.  I'd rather play the game myself rather than let a hack do it for me.

I generally only avoid them as well.  It was some reluctance that I hired them for this challenge because I was having trouble finding enough adult Sim-hours.

 - Gus

There's something screwy here.  By the time you've raised your first crop of fresh food, the toddlers should be children.  A CAS Adult can't plant anything but Tomatoes, and it takes ~5 days from planting to harvest.

Did you start the twins as infants?  The challenge specifies that they start as toddlers.

 - Gus

Also, it should be a CAS family. How on earth did a CAS sim have time to learn how to cook pork chops, skill two toddlers, and grow a crop of food? I'm also leery of the reference to using talk to plants to keep social up. Why on earth would you be worried about the parent's Social needs? Bladder, Energy and Hunger are the only ones I worry about, because if you're trying to make the good twin grow up platinum, you're probably doing some tickles and snuggles, anyways, so there's no need to worry about Social, and Comfort gets filled with Energy. If Fun isn't being filled enough by tickling the kid, it only takes a moment at a painting, or kicking a flamingo a couple times, to get that back up. Hygiene can almost be ignored (one, maybe two showers in four days) and Environment *can* be ignored.

I'm interested in Quinctia's streamlining and, for that matter, normal style of play. What, exactly, did you do?

Also, I'm beginning to wonder if toddler stage was lengthened or something. I get four days, although there's a trick to get a little extra time on the last day (put the kid to sleep at 5:30pm, wake 'em after 6pm, you get a couple more hours.)


So, how did you avoid the aspiration bonus? Did you use Gus's "sprint for the last mile" technique? Did the toddler roll all social wants on the last day?


Why are you keeping kids off the podiums? Assuming I'm playing normally and not avoiding career rewards for the challenge, I would have them skilling on the podiums. Homework is easy, as long as you keep their mood positive.

Children aren't a problem. They can do practically everything themselves, except learn to study. Sure, they can't cook, except with the toy oven, but why would they need to? They can eat snacks or order pizza. Increasing the number of sims doesn't really raise the difficulty, just the time it takes to play and the amount of planning. You've got a pause key, so you can queue up actions or study options. I played one household once where the adult had a death wish LTW for ten kids going to college, or something like that, and had her churning out babies while also trying to make it to the top of the law enforcement career, so there was always at least four, sometimes five or six, sims in the house. It was a major time suck, but not hard, especially since most of the kids turned out as neatniks. One of the main reasons I let sims have kids is because, even if the toddler stage can be rough, the child stage is like having little slaves at your beck and call.

Incidentally, I found out I have to redo the challenge. Even though I'm certain I set the evil twin's personality properly according to the rules, I noticed that when the Dopple twins woke up, they both autonomously decided to make their beds and cheered about it. I thought "why would a kid with zero Neat enjoy making his bed?" Turns out, he somehow got 8 Neat. Technically, that shouldn't have affected the toddler stage difficulty, but it ruins the rest of the challenge.

Eh, they're not needed.  Get any of the skills done on good twin just before they grow up and that's automatic platinum.

 - Gus

No idea. Plus, I find having the parent "Play With..." while a toddler is on a skilling toy a much better way to fill social in a single-parent house. Fills parent's social and fun, fills toddler's social and fun (without fulfilling any social wants) and builds skill.

Kid + podium = major annoyance. They grate on my nerves. I just don't allow podiums in my sim homes. Of course, I almost never use career rewards or aspiration objects at all.

The only real challenge with having a bunch of children in a house is with jumping on the bed. Such an annoying energy drain and temperature raiser. I have a no-autonomy hack for that, as I'd finally had enough about a month ago.

Anyways, the LTW you are thinking of is "graduate three kids from college". Not hard, I just hate Uni. If I roll that and roll to have the LTW fulfilled, I usually will kind of cheat my odds on trips & quads or make a cheesecake to get more than one through at a time. And seriously...6 sims is difficult for you? Try 22. Free Love cult leader, Queen's Cove. Three of 'em were babies, two toddlers, and I can't remember the other ten kids' lifestages.

Nah, I think I just thought it had something to do with college. Whatever it was, it definitely involved lots of kids. She started as an unwed mother of three, and she sent five or six k of her kids to college before I got bored with that neighborhood, so I know it wasn't just "send three kids to college".

(Note: while composing this, I noticed I somehow got an extra "k" in that paragraph. But it's now unintentionally amusing, so I'm leaving it in.)

Are six sims difficult? I never said that. I said it took a lot of time, but was NOT hard. I hate delays, hate the grind. That's why I refuse to play legacy-style challenges. I generally don't mind making a game *harder*, but I sure as hell don't want to make it *longer*. However, if the challenge is a hard one, it had better result in some interesting events. This is why I never play with free will off, and I avoid "no autonomy" hacks. Hacks to prevent autonomous queue-stomping are OK, though.

I should note that, for this challenge, "no autonomy" or anything like that is forbidden, because it changes game play. Even "don't wave at me" is kind of borderline, because it gives you a few extra seconds of control, but since I haven't taken it out for my own play, I guess I'm OK with that. The reason Macrotastics is allowed is because you can do anything Macrotastics does manually. Same with BUY.

Since I don't have Seasons and don't care if kids drain their energy, as long as all their work for the day is done, I don't worry about bed-jumping. In fact, it's a good way for the evil twin to keep Fun up.

Assuming you're on your toes about keeping the kids out of the toilet, evil twin has no neat points and will probably need two baths.  (And inevitably manage to get into the toilet a bit.)  Nice twin has ten neat points and will probably need one bath.  Buy the most expensive tub you can (it should have the highest hygeine score).  Plus it ups everyone's social bar without fulfilling asp.  This all assumes you manage to get them on the toilet on time everytime before they can do it themselves.


We do sort of have two simultaneous discussions going on.  Gus was saying that simply getting the toddler skills taught in the first place was nearly impossible, and a few of us were saying it wasn't really that hard.  So I'm not 100% that's not what was being referred to.  But yes, someone cooking porkchops with fresh food is not going to happen at that stage of your challenge unless parent hired a nanny, went to a business lot to buy produce, and nanny cooked the food.


Well, first I built the house.  2x2 lot, flattened.  One room for the parent with the single bed with the highest energy count.  Though next time, I probably would ignore my feelings of silliness and cave and buy the vampire coffin, which has higher energy.  Bathroom with the cheap bath/shower.  I'd probably buy the expensive one next time.  I had one bedroom for the toddlers (2 cribs, 1 changing table, two potties)...mistake.  Next time, I'd follow Awesomespec and have the cribs in their own little cubicles so the kids don't wake each other.  One room for the fridge, table and chairs, and toddler toys (all three).  I bought a mid-high range priced counter and the best stove, but I wouldn't do that the next time--I'd just get something to put the gelatin on.  I bought the cheap dishwasher.  And next time, I'd use the compactor instead of a garbage can.  I'd also forego the smoke detector.  Midrange chair, cheap card table.  If I was actually playing the challenge, I'd get three cheaper chairs.

I also bought the cheapest television and the cheapest bookcase.  Next time, I'd add in a video game system.  My biggest annoyance, after kids waking each other up, was the entertainment score on the parent.

My normal style of play includes feeding smart milk exclusively (because I can a) keep the dispenser in the nursery and b) pull out a few bottles and leave them out without spoiling) and I like toddler blankets.  I have a no-empty potty hack, but I used non-Maxis potties that aren't affected by the hack to do this little trial run.

A few little "tricks" that help.  If you cancel the potty train action just as you set one kid down, the kid will train and you can have the parent do something else--put the other kid on the pot, empty the other pot, do something else entirely.  I do the same sort of thing to pull out bottles faster.


I got four days, but in a normal game I age them up as soon as they hit 6pm on the third day.

Frankly, I didn't.  I just wanted some visceral evidence that raising toddlers wasn't that difficult--I wasn't planning to run through the whole challenge, though I did make give them the "right personalities" so the evil twin was a pain in the ass when her motives got low.  The difficulty of actually raising them really depends on how you do the house.  It would probably be impossible to train two toddlers with one parent/no help if they started with 20,000 on a 5x5.


Podiums are high advertising for kids to "play" on.  Which I wouldn't have a problem with, if play didn't consist entirely of belching.  Which all other sims want to stop and react to.  The putt-putt reward is much better.  Teaching the kids to study is an annoyance when you want your adults paying attention to toddlers is all I meant.


Once you have a toddler potty trained, as long as you've deposited plenty of smart milk bottles around, the toddlers are nearly self-sufficient!  The main difficulty is keeping them from doing things like skilling themselves half to death on objects.  You think six sims is hard?  try fourteen (http://pics.livejournal.com/quinctia/pic/004zw1wf).  Still not hard, it just made playing take a lot longer.

I like legacies, but I don't see them as a challenge.  I see it as some nice guidelines to get a family and a storyline going, and a good excuse to experiment with GENETICS, my favorite part of the game.  I don't really like "challenges," actually.  Though I'd like to do an asylum at some point.

Well, he does mean "in the challenge". Or just in the mini-challenge. Gus originally thought skilling the toddlers would be easy, because it's easy under normal circumstances. Then he realized that, when you start with the conditions specified for the challenge, skilling the toddlers was doable, but not exactly easy. Also, since leaving the lot is forbidden under the challenge and the parent starts with no skills/aspiration points, there's basically not going to happen at the toddler stage. If the parent starts gardening in the child stage, it eventually becomes possible.


For my fourth attempt, I did buy a high-end single bed. Previously, I only bought the cheap bed; that's because I'm using a bigger lot, mainly because I pre-laid a lot of empty lots with street names to identify what I would be using them for (the twins live on Evil Street.) I've been using 2x3, 2x4, 3x3 and 3x4 lots for most of my residential spaces, so the house usually winds up costing $12,000 to $14,000 before buying furniture and appliances. Otherwise, for that attempt, I had a similar strategy, except cheap counters, no stove, no table/chairs (make 'em stand until the toddlers grow up) and only two toys, both rabbit heads, because charisma isn't trainable again until the teen years. There's a small room for one crib and a larger room for the bed and second crib. I *wanted* the kid to wake the parent up.

I did have more rooms than you, because I was thinking ahead. 3x3 Entry way, for the phone, with high-value floor and wall coverings, plus a ceiling lamp, to act as the first room for headmaster tours. Living room/skilling room, which was mostly empty on attempt four, but lots of ceiling lamps and again good-value walls and floors. Kitchen/dining area, where toddler potties are located, and doors to the nursery, bedroom, bathroom, and pantry. The pantry was an aftert thought for future testing purposes.

I went with dishwasher and trash can, but I should have skipped the washer and went with a trash compactor instead. If there's no sink or dish washer, they will throw away plates. No TV, no couch. Bookcase, but didn't even let the sim use that yet; all Fun was through the use of one cheap kid's painting.

See, Gus and I skipped the smart milk, because of the hefty score penalty: -1 for every use under the influence. So, if you smart milk one toddler, once, and manage to train all three skills, that's a -3. If the toddler is still glowing and gains a Charisma point from the wabbit head, that's another -1. Besides, it's hard to get the smart milk that early, since the parent has to build up aspiration points to buy it.

I've done that with bottles, but it seems like toddlers will autonomously cancel potty training over the slightest provocation, so I don't do that with potty training. Maybe something changed post-NL.

No, not impossible, not even if you don't smart milk. But it's not easy.

Can you clarify the smart milk rule for me.  If I were to give the toddlers smart milk somehow, how is the penalty calculated?  Does the penalty wear off when the glow wears off, or does it apply as long as the child has a higher IQ (i.e. for the rest of the challenge, since smart milk always sticks in my game)?

It's not unusual for even a CAS parent to have teach walk/talk/potty train wants, and satisfying those would give enough aspiration to buy smart milk.  Then it would be possible to smart milk the evil toddler before they age up to child.

It seems the secret of this challenge (apart from the toddler stage) is to make the evil twin work harder.  Make sure they have more skills, in case the good twin gains a skill point from school or a chance card on the last day of the challenge.  Make sure they have more friends, in case the good twin brings a sim home from school/work on the last day (since good twin has to befriend everyone they meet).  Smart milking the evil toddler just before aging him/her up to child would certainly reduce the time needed to keep their skill points ahead of the good twin.


Last time I looked turning free will off was possible in a hackfree game, so it is part of non-hacked game play.

Well, I did say with no aspiration rewards, didn't I?  Of course cutting the training time in half with Smart Milk makes it not terrible difficult.

 - Gus

Aspiration rewards have a -1 penalty per use. Because things like smart milk, the skill helmet, the cool shades, and the love tub (not that you'll need it) have a duration instead of a cut-and-dried "one action produces one change" effect, they have a -1 for each action performed under the influence of the reward. For smart milk, the duration ends when you hear the tone that indicates the effect is over. I forget if the glow goes away before you hear the tone or not. The sticky IQ bit is not reproducible at will, without cheating, so if you luck out and get it, that's great.


More or less, that's part of the idea. The evil twin has to be just as successful as the good twin. Smart milking the toddler would put you at a penalty on the scoring, unless you didn't have the toddler skill or otherwise improve during the duration of the effect, AND you just happened to luck out and get the permanent IQ boost.


This quote is about a hack that disables autonomous jumping on the bed, or similar one-or-two-behavior hacks. Turning off free will turns off lots of behaviors; these hacks only turn off specific behaviors, which is not achievable under normal game play.

Turning off free will, period, is also against the challenge. I just added that recently, because Pescado said the challenge was too easy. I'm now considering outlawing all reward objects, period, to eliminate the question of how to calculate the smart milk penalty, and to close off that loophole you just found (smart milking, not skilling/training, and hoping for a permanent IQ boost.)

Well, it's been ages since I raised toddlers, but I didn't have much trouble. I was only nominally keeping to the challenge rules - I realized partway through that letting the little buggers sleep on the ground probably counts as passing out, and they wet themselves a good deal because i usually don't care if they do or not, so I failed the challenge part miserably scoring-wise, but the one twin grew up well and the other grew up badly; furthermore, i used one adult, no nanny, no baby controller, and no aspiration rewards and it was perfectly fine.

my strategy is: focus on the bad twin first. It may seem counter-productive, but with free will on the good twin can look after herself just fine. My bad twin rolled social wants exclusively the first day or so, so it was cake to get her walking and talking. The only want she satisfied was buying a toy the first day, and that wore off by the time she was ready to grow up. The only adult motive I had trouble with was comfort, because i bought cheap things with low comfort scores; a lawn gnome took care of fun, macro->eat had her full, and I bought a coffin to sleep in. I eventually had her lounging between child feedings to take care of that.

I forgot about the compactor thing.  If you were going to attempt gardening, it'd be even better to get a composter.  2x2 is more than big enough for the needs of three sims, and I had over 3000 in the kitty when the kids aged up--plus, that was where I would have the adult get a job in something like the Education career, so I could use all of the money, have some left for bills, and still not have to pay a nanny.  Long term, I would've been fine, but the house build was a quickie.  I had to work this morning, so I wanted to hurry up and do all that and go to bed.


I think you misunderstood me.  I didn't use the smart milk here, either.  But I normally do because it's there and doesn't spoil, not for making them smart.  I don't bother to see if their smartness becomes "fixed"...if it does, I don't bother to put it back if something resets them.  It's more fun in regular play to let them run amok instead of micromanaging their every last skills.

I had one potty training "battle" with the evil twin.  I upped her social with interactions that weren't in her want panel (since that was mainly the need she was lacking), fed her a bottle, and put her back on the pot.

I've done Toddlermania (and another similar challenge) several times. Since you get points for each skill trained, and obviously the idea of any challenge is to max points, training all 7 toddlers in all 3 skills is a big deal, and although I didn't quite make it, I did respectably (2 with all 3, and the others with 2) and have seen people do it. Learning to talk is *much* faster than potty training and even walking, btw. The point is specifically to grow them up platinum, rather than make sure one isn't, so that part would take some consideration for this challenge. BTW, you can change diapers a good number of times and still have time to potty train them - every time I've played, all the toddlers were potty trained and I lost a number of points for diapers.

Neither version I've played disallows aspiration rewards but they all require starting with a CAS sim and 7 toddlers (not infants) so getting enough points for smart milk (much less an energizer) is difficult. Most don't get there until the last day (and actually a Family sim is not a good start if you want early aspiration rewards - some of the others are easier. My family got points for buying toilet, fridge, and shower, then rolled 2 wants to potty train (got to finish doing that before you get points for them), a want to fall in love and a want to marry - and since he didn't sleep, they didn't ever roll.) The best (hardest) version also takes away points for every diaper change needed, any time the kid falls asleep on the floor, and any social worker *warning* which includes the one for low social. It's really a difficult challenge.

Nannies are useless - don't bother with one. If you really feel a need to hire someone, hire a maid and let her pick up the bottles, wasth the dishes, pick up dirty diapers if there are any (or if you've run out of time and dumped the potty chair on the floor) etc. She's useful, a nanny isn't. Your parent/caretaker sim should never sleep. Don't bother to buy a bed at all. Instead buy a bunch of caffination stations and serve espresso and leave it there for whenever it's needed. Don't let the sim get all the way down in energy, if energy starts to go yellow, drink caffeine. It comes up faster if you don't let it go into the red.

A toddler won't play in the community lot bathroom stalls, so use those. You can also put the bathroom up on a stage/half platform so the kid can't get to it, but then they'll complain they can't. They won't complain about the stall.

I didn't see, on a quick second run through, anything disallowing the parent from opening a business. If you open a home business, the shoppers will help take care of the kids and pay you for the pleasure. They'll get them in and out of bed, play with them (you'd need to watch the evil twin that one of the visitors didn't solve a social want), and even bathe them.

I played this prior to season's so there was no fall reward.  I made my caretaker group meals and kept them in inventory - that involves the hand and wouldn't be allowed in this challenge, I guess, but group meals of gelatin laying around would work fine. Room dividers keep toddler sims from waking each other up, so you don't need walls. Put the toddler on the potty and just as the sim turns around to walk away, click on cancel on the caretaker and you can use let the parent do something else. If you click at the wrong time (or happen to have the toddler selected) you'll cancel the action and have to empty the potty before you can start again (a pain). Also cancel the potty emptying action and it'll turn into trash. That's faster to clean up. And if you cancel the fed bottle after you get the bottle out, they'll put bottles on the floor and the kids can get them themselves. Since Seasons (or FT maybe) bottles spoil faster though, so you can't leave as many around for extras.

If you need a little extra time, make sure the kid is asleep at the hour marker, and then get the training started. The 'help grow up' thing won't interrupt a skill session.

I've done the toddler mania challenge a couple times. Those rules allow unlimited wealth cheats and a hacked energy maximizer object, so "don't ever sleep", "buy lots of caffeine objects", "put toilet or bathroom on a pedestal" and stuff like that makes sense.

In this challenge, you have $20,000 and no hacks. Very different conditions, even without the restrictions on growing up well.

On another note: bother kuronue and Quinctia mention the vampire coffin, an option that didn't occur to me since non-vampires can't buy or use that in NL. I forget which expansion pack made it usable by all. I should probably outlaw that, then, to make the challenge more equal between different expansions.

Those very different conditions have no influence on what Sagana said. You don't need to sleep if you caffeinate (which fills the energy bar way faster than sleeping anyway), so you don't need to buy a bed or build a bedroom. For a house just big enough for one adult and two toddlers, one caffeinating station should be enough. Also, stages aren't expensive (nor are toilet stalls). You really don't need hacks or extended funds for that.

Well you're not very good at it, are you? You lose points for using a hack and why bother when you can caffeinate? And you don't need unlimited funds to buy that stuff - it's cheaper than an expensive coffin by far. 7 Todders (the other Toddler one I've personally played) doesn't allow either of those things anyway. There's plenty of money, especially when you use room dividers instead of walls. And the home business brings in money if you need more.

The same strategies work just fine. Pescado seems to have been trying to tell you, you're not doing it right.

Are you sure about that?  I had the impression the limit was 2, maybe 3 tops before you lost too much potty time.  If you're dealing with 7 toddlers, that can translate to 14-21 diapers, which is a "good number of times" without being a lot for each toddler.

I didn't even think about that.  I wasn't looking at the rewards area at all, so I wasn't checking how many points were available.  Normally by the time my Sims have a kid, they have more points than they can ever spend.

Someone needs to make a hack that multiplies the cost of those rewards by 50 or so.

Crap, I used a bed because the regular coffee machine doesn't give enough energy.  I didn't think to try espresso.  Since the major bottleneck is the adult's energy, that makes a big difference in the difficulty.

That's a cute idea.  I wonder if you can get the same effects by inviting random strangers in?  The first time I let the welcome wagon in, but they didn't really help so I didn't bother again.

The Leftovers introduced with Seasons will give you nearly the same effect.

That feels pretty cheaty, though I can understand why you'd need it for 7 toddlers.  Waiting for potty is a major timesuck, and it's fairly clear that it's intended that the adult must spend the time on it, but there's a loophole that allows you to get the benefit without paying the time cost.

 - Gus

1. It's not a hacked energy maximizer. It's the game's aspiration reward. Big important difference.
2. "don't sleep", "buy lots of caffeine objects", etc. don't only apply because you have 7 toddlers in a house with a single sim. They are challenge strategies.

Challenges teach you how to look at the game differently, in a way where efficiency trumps story. You don't seem to be able to deal with this. Perhaps challenges shouldn't be your thing, and you should keep to story-driven play (speaking as someone who generally finds challenges boring as hell).

Yes, but they of course wouldn't pay you. Inviting passers-by off the street has long been something I've done in single-sim homes. I'm tempted to start a toddler petting zoo now.

And if you are almost completely story driven, like me, your sims end up doing all kinds of interesting things without ever gaining skills, badges, enthusiasm, or anything else that a challenge might give points for.  This is why Jelenedra continues to be the french-fry girl of Matysdoorp.

It might be just 2 or 3 tops per kid, but that should be all you need to get hygiene high enough to let them potty train again. You usually only need to bathe toddlers once or twice during the time period - at least if their space is fairly clean. I haven't done real testing, but just from playing I'm convinced their hygiene scores go down faster if there's a lot of trash around (like you empty the potties on the floor). Changing their diaper maxes hygiene back out (or somewhere close to max), so it's a great strategy if there's an issue and no time for a bath.

Mine too so I was pretty surprised to discover it can be difficult :) A family sim truely is harder than some of the others. I did use smart milk and the energizer, but not until the very end of the challenge any of the times I played. The hack would be nice, though honestly I don't use aspiration rewards at all in regular game play.

I dunno about visitors - it takes time to go and greet them (you have more time in this challenge of course) and there are a lot less - with 3+ on the lot all the time a couple of them are bound to be handy even if the rest are just useless (just tell them to leave). An acquaintance happen to have servos in the hood she played the challenge in and they came as shoppers and basically just took care of the kids for her. That felt a bit too cheaty to me, especially as I didn't already have any servos and would have had to make them specifically for that, so I didn't try it.

Yep, is that allowed in this one? I'm not clear on the higher EP rules for it.


I dunno, if you're trying to simulate life, seems to me like you could put both kids on a potty one after another without standing around whistling inbetween. How about, cancelling only to put the 2nd one on as well and then waiting for it for both? Anyway, it's an in-game strategy - the kind of loophole JM uses without thinking, so if you're competing on scores... you need it for 7 toddlers, probably don't for just 2, but in that case it wouldn't change your score either.

Actually Toddlermania does allow an energy hack, but you lose points for using it... *shrug*. 7 Toddlers doesn't. People on a list I was on claimed 7 Toddlers is harder for that reason - it's not. Toddlermania's scoring (especially the advanced scoring rules) make it a lot harder. And, of course, if I'm going to do a challenge, I do play to win as well. Losing points does not == winning.

I don't usually play challenges either. My hoods are very story-driven... but I like toddlers and enjoyed the toddler ones. They're short so I can go right back to my story after.

Skilling, badges, and enthusiasm are pretty boring in themselves.

I'm not creative enough to come up with stories that I'd enjoy.  Rather, I tend to let things evolve, and if I happen to come up with a story-type idea I want to pursue I'll do so.  But most of the time I don't have any ideas, so I'll just run around filling Wants until something presents itself.

 - Gus

I did 7 Toddlers ages ago, just for a distraction. I was doing a psuedo-alphabet legacy mixed with regular legacy and apocalypse. No rules strictly adhered to and plenty of restrictions changed to make more sense to me. Ended up working the 7 toddlers in (in my head if not on paper) as I decided that they were the orphans of all those zombified Romance sims the Oversoul released its wrath on. The Oversoul doesn't kill kids, and Romance sims are such skanks they would of course have a bunch of ankle-biters on the sly. Risky woohoo, and all that.

Half the time, anymore, I don't even pay attention to wants until I notice that they are starting to worry about their aspiration level. My sims have roles to fulfill (Teardrop Isle) or I'm just letting them run amok and amuse me (Prospect Beach) so that I can later make sense of their antics. How else do you get a gramma who moves in, later loses her mind and wanders about the 'hood, practically burning down the house and risking the youngest child being taken by the social worker?*  Heck, even Teardrop Isle (which is kind of scripted) only got that way after I noticed that two of the brothers wanted to make the moves on the same girl, and how fugly the custom child outfit from the sewing machine was.


*Tombstone of L&D move-ins are now borked. Noticed with FreeTime. If you use it, immediately save, moveobjects on, and delete new sim, then leave lot and return. Otherwise they wander off until the next time you load the lot.

I should have modified - I don't actually consider either Legacy or Prosperity challenges. I love to start hoods using the prosperity system (roll for # of families, # of members of each, ages, aspirations, etc.) and then think up stories to fit what I've rolled and whatever I feel like doing (currently 1920s-ish film noir or neo noir or some combination thereof).

I also managed to get 1 of the toddlermania sets into the hood with a backstory (for myself, I never really get around to blogging and I tell myself stories truly just because I enjoy it) and just townified another, but I did Toddlermania 3 times and 7 Toddlers twice so some of them just got dumped. Too many sims.

Roles to fulfill.. that's a great way to put it. I have backstories and what I've been thinking of as simlife goals (not game goals, the sims have goals) but I like your phrase better. Do you post yours in Made-up Animals? I'll have to actually look in there sometime.


I gave up and put insim back in to set up my hood. I know I can do everything with testing cheats really, but it's tooooo frustrating to find the parts I need and then use them in ways they work (like don't, for example, teleport in a bunch of sims that are in the bin and then turn them into townies with the in-game cheats. You get dupes and if you aren't careful crash the game because one wasn't moved the way the game wants them to be. I'm very glad insim is being updated. I really need it for that kind of hood.

Update on the challenge:

I waited until I could upgrade a couple EPs before continuing testing. I now have the EPs through OFB, plus BV, plus a couple stuff packs. I then tried a couple more tests. Haven't noticed anything substantially different about the mechanics of raising the twins, but then the mechanics were never in question; it was raising twins within the aspiration restrictions that was tricky.

I've come to the conclusion that the toddler stage of the challenge is seriously broken. For one, although it's easy to raise the toddlers to children with all three skills, getting the right aspiration level is just too random. It turns out the evil twin doesn't always get social-only wants on the last day, although sometimes you can force an extra reroll by using the trick of putting the evil twin to bed about 5pm Thursday to delay the age up and get one more sleep cycle in.

But even when doing this, it turns out the aspiration meter is BROKEN. My last evil toddler aged up with no color showing at all, green or red, and triggered the "grew up badly" fear, dropping into the red after age-up ... but got the "grew up well" memory, even though the message said the kid grew up "so-so".

Since this means aspiration isn't reliable as a scoring criteria, the entire challenge has to be done differently. Which is a shame: I had high hopes for adding a couple restrictions to make it harder, like "parent must get job out of paper or computer on first day" and adding the nursery rhyme as a required toddler skill for Freetime.

wow sounds fun but i need a cheat to have twins

Ladysh. Hi. Please to read the FAQ. Big scary lich guy should have deterred you from posting in a thread that has seen no action since April with a contribution of absolutely no substance. Also, this challenge fails.