More Awesome Than You!

For anyone who may be interested.

Legacy Challenge

The Legacy Challenge is a long, 10-generation challenge where you start out with a single founder and very humble beginnings and try to lead the family to fame, fortune and success over the course of 10 generations.

Starting out
Create a brand new game file. You will be using this file exclusively to play your Legacy Challenge. You may use an existing game file, but your Legacy family must immediately become the "Active Household" and not cease to be active for the duration of the challenge. You may select any neighborhood.

The challenge begins with a single founder. Make this founder in Create A Sim. They may be male or female. They may be any age that can have children (YA, Adult and Elder for males, YA and Adult for females). You have full choice over their look, color and clothing. Custom content may be used if you like, including create-a-style custom patterns and colors.  You may choose all 5 traits as well as their three favorite likes (food, music and color) and a lifetime want. No other sims may be created in the founder's family. Be creative with the family name, you'll be seeing it for quite some time.

Now to place the founder. While you are free to choose either standard town, there is a very specific lot that must be used. If you move into Riverview, you must move into "345 Riverblossom Hills Drive". If you move into Sunset Valley, you will be moving into "15 Summer Hill Court". The common thread between these lots is that they are large, empty and cost $14,700. Yes I know that leaves you with only $1,300 in cash to build a house, that's the point. All legacies start out with very humble beginnings and expect your founder to live like a hobo for awhile. If additional neighborhoods are made available with mods or EPs, or we gain the ability to plop our own lots down, they may be used, as long as the lot in question is completely empty and costs at least $14,700.


Rules:
No cheating. Plain and simple, no money or mood cheats. You may use custom objects, as long as their price and mood effects are in line with similar ‘official' objects. Objects purchased from the Sim Store are considered 'offical' as well as the ones included with the game.
Aging and story progression must be on and lifespans set to the normal level.
You are allowed to play with any Mod that does not give you a signifigant advantage over a player without the mod. The only specific mod I know of at the moment, Awesome Mod, is allowed.
The Legacy family must be the "Active Household" during the entire challenge. You may never switch the active household to another family. If you want to take a break from Legacy play, it is recommended  you play in another saved game slot. 
No Ambrosia! Your sims may learn the recipe for Ambrosia, but may not cook or consume the dish. Nor may ambrosia be used to ressurect ghosts.
You may not ressurect dead sims via the Science lab.

Black Market Restriction:
The used goods market is being monitored by the local police. As a result, it is next to impossible to pawn stolen goods for cash.
Items obtained "Illegally" may not be sold for cash. They may be placed on the family lot and used by the family or kept in inventory, just not sold.
An "Illegally obtained" item is the following:
Any item stolen by a Kleptomaniac
Any item salvaged from another sim's trash can
Any item obtained automatically while a sim is in the criminal career track.




Moving Sims in:
Any sim may be moved into the Legacy Family via marriage or move-in except for the following:
Sims created by the player
Sims/households downloaded and imported from the exchange
Sims that had previously lived in the Legacy household but had since moved out
Sims that are identified by your sim as "Rich'

All other sims are fair game. You are allowed to create/download/import sims and families into your Legacy neighborhood, they just cannot join the family.
No sims/families may ever be merged into the Legacy family. If you wish to add members, they must be done in game.



Challenge concepts
Generation: Order of birth in relation to the family at large. Your founder is generation 1, your founder's son/daughter would be generation 2, the grandchildren of the founder would be generation 3 and so on. The challenge ends the moment generation 10 is born.
Founder: The sim you create in CAS who starts the family.
Heir: The sim belonging to the family bloodline who is slated to bring in the next generation once he/she is old enough and finds a mate.
Spare: A sibling of an heir, who can become an heir should anything happen to the current heir. Spares may be fed to the time stream or kept on the lot if you wish. They are eligible to earn legacy points for the family.
Fed to the time stream: Moving a controllable sim out of the legacy house. A sim fed to the time stream no longer can generate legacy points for the family, but still may be interacted with. Legacy points that have already been earned by this sim still count towards your total, even after you move the sim out.
Legacy Points: Your score for the challenge, earned in a variety of ways described below. The goal of the challenge is to get as many legacy points before the 10th generation.
Legacy House: The lot initially moved into by your founder. You may not move the family to another lot during the entire challenge. All heirs must be born in this house (or rather, born from sims living at this house, even if they use the hospital to give birth)
Bloodline: Any sim who can trace his or her family tree directly to the founder. Adopted sims are NOT part of the bloodline. Sims that are moved in are only considered part of the bloodline when they contribute to the birth of the next generation.
Mate: A sim brought in from outside the family to reproduce with the current generation's heir to produce the next generation. When the next generation is born, the mate becomes part of the family bloodline and eligible to earn points.

Points:
You earn points for your family in the following ways.
Generation: You get 1 legacy point for your founder, and 1 point for every generation born until the 10th. You earn each point at the birth of the first child in each generation. Further births in that generation do not generate more points. Thus you can only earn a maximum of 10 total Generation points by completing the challenge and birthing the 10th generation.
Lifetime wants: You gain 1 point for every  unique lifetime want fulfilled by a family member. The sim in question must be living in the legacy house and be part of the family tree to earn this point. Once a specific liftime wish has been fulfilled by a sim, further sims fulifilling that wish will not earn you a legacy point for doing so. There are 32 unique liftime wishes in the game, meaning you could earn a maximum of 32 points in this category.
Portraits: 1 point for creating a portrait of a family member and keeping it on display after their death. Like above, the sim must be part of the family tree and living in the legacy house to qualify for this point. You earn this point after the portrait is created, you do not have to wait for the sim in the portrait to actually die. Portraits are still worth their points even if the family member pictured is moved out of the house later on. The skill of the artist doing the portrait does not matter, as long as it features the sim in question it counts. Portraits may be of any size or style. Keep in mind that a sim must have a painting skill of at least 5 to get the option of painting a still life (needed to capture a sim's picture).
Legacy House: Earn 1 legacy point for every $100,000 in net worth the house is worth. Use the "Furnished Value" of the house to get this figure. Do not include the net-worths of legacy family members that have been moved out of the house. Round up. Your family's weath in cash does NOT count tword this number.
Aspiration Rewards: If a sim is able to earn 100,000  points worth of aspiration rewards, they earn your family 1 legacy point. You are free to spend aspiration points as you gain them, it is your lifetime total, not your current total, that matters for this point. Like the other sim-based points, this may only be earned by family members. You may earn an additional point in this category from a sim if they somehow earn 200,000 points in their lifetime. .
 
Birth and growing up
Whenever a sim is born or ages up, they will often obtain new traits. Sometimes these traits are randomly assigned by the game. Other times the game lets you pick them. In the Legacy Challenge, all traits are random. If you are given the option to pick traits for any sim, you must hit the random button and accept the trait that is randomly assigned. The only exception is if you are playing with the "Family Trait" optional rule. If you are, and the family trait is one of the options, you may select that trait rather than hitting the random button.
Death
Sims that die on the family lot may be kept around as ghosts, or may be moved to a cemetery. It is up to you. If a sim dies and you forgot to get their portrait, making a portrait of their ghost does not count. If the bloodline is cut short by death, the challenge ends immediately. It is always a good idea to have at least one spare in case the heir perishes. Even if ghosts become playable, they may not earn any further points for the family. Ghost babies are not considered part of any bloodline.

Bringing in the next generation.
In order to bring in the next generation, a new sim must be born. Adoptions do not carry the family bloodline and thus don't count. (You are still allowed to adopt sims if you really want to, but they won't help point wise) If the heir is male, you must move their mate into the legacy family house before having a baby. If the heir is female, she may move her mate in, or simply get pregnant while off the lot. In either case, the heir and their mate don't have to be married. Sims may be born at home or in a hospital, whichever you prefer. The moment the next generation is born, the heir's mate officially becomes part of the family bloodline (and thus can earn lifetime want, aspiration perk and portrait points for you, provided they are living in the Legacy House).

Optional Rules
These are optional rules you may play with if you wish. They don't affect your score in any way, and are merely tools to help establish a theme for your family.

Family Trait
When creating your founder in CAS, choose one of the founder's 5 traits to become the ‘family trait' for your legacy family. There after, every sim born to the legacy family must possess this trait by the time they reach young adulthood. If they do not inherit it at birth, you must choose that trait the moment you are given the option to. The remaining traits still must be rolled for.

Matriarchy/Patriarchy

Whatever gender your founder was, this must be the gender of every heir. Meaning if you started with a female founder, only female children may become the heir to bring in the next generation. Children of the other gender are still counted as part of the family bloodline and may still earn the family points, they simply may not bring in the next generation.
A male dominant family is called a Patriarchy, a female dominant family is a Matriarchy.

Story Teller

A popular practice is to write a story for your Legacy family and upload it in chapters. If you feel the creative energy, why not try uploading your own story? There is no in-game bonus for doing this, but the addition to the community is always welcome!




FAQ

Why do I have to buy such a big lot. I barely have money in the beginning.
   Early poverty is a hallmark of the challenge. A large plot of land not only drains the available cash from your starting funds, it gives you the ability to build some epic sized legacy homes as you play through the generations and get more wealth.

If I'm playing with the family trait option, does my sim's mate have to have that trait too?
   No.

Can I move in/marry sims into the legacy home that aren't going to help bring in the next generation?
   Yes, keep in mind that they don't earn any points for the family. Even sims that are destined to help bring in the next generation won't count as part of the family until the next generation is actually born.

Does the first born have to be the heir?

   No, as long as they are part of the bloodline and born on the legacy house they are eligible to be an heir, regardless of order of birth. They must be the proper gender if playing with the matriarchy/patriarchy option.

Are collection items, such as rocks, insects and seeds subject to the black market restriction?

   No, you are allowed to sell any collection items you find...as long as they weren't stolen out of someone's house or garbage.

Nice :D Quick question though about the "aging at normal levels" comment - does that mean we can't play the game on epic, or if we do start the legacy on epic lifespan, that we can't change it at any other stage?

Well, the idea is that everyone is supposed to play to a unified timescale. This is why there's no Ambrosia, otherwise the fact that there is infinite time means it is trivial to achieve infinite score, as at least one of the scoring criteria is open-ended if time is unlimited.

I'm going to be a pain in the ass and suggest some bolding and spaces between paragraphs because try as I might, I cannot get myself through some of those walls of text.

More relevantly, maybe I'll actually get around to doing a proper legacy this time around, though adjusting to non-epic lifespans will be a challenge in itself. 

If I don't like the traits I get for the heirs while doing randomizing, may I roll again? Or do I have to accept the 1st roll.

I recommend making a brand new game file mandatory.  If I started in my current neighborhood I could harvest all of the money trees and other perfect plants from the lots there.

I like this will get right to setting up my legacy family right now. Hopefully by then I will be able to find a solution to this dang code 13 saving error. I am thinking it may just be as a result of moving lots so manytimes and having bulldosed things too......... hmmm

The only query I have really si about the not moving in a rich sim. Well in Sunset valley this would rule out Stiles McGarth who barely comes with any money when you marry him. As he lives in a big house with like 6 other people. It just seems a little strange is all. As it does not always indicate someone who will move in large funds really.

The other thing is in the original Legacy you had to wait one week to move someone in, is that the same now?

No.

Well, you can, but then you're cheating. It's supposed to be random; if it was just "traits you like", then the rules would let you pick them yourself to begin with.

A sim is rich when their lot is valued at 100,000 or more.  Rich unfortunately has nothing to do with how much money they have on hand.

woot legacy time! I always shoulda done this in the sims 2...but I was a wow addict for years...been clean for 2 months...sad when you were so addicted to an mmo that you have to treat it like a drug addiction...

This is going to restrict you to NPCs after a few generations. At gen 4 of my current neighborhood, absolutely every family in my game is considered rich.

Only if they remain on lot, correct? You may want to clarify that.

Does brought in = moved in, or do sperm donors count? Are actions done before the birth of the next generation eligible for points, or does time only move forward?

This is a mad-crazy exploit. With this, it pays to spawn as many children as possible, paint their picture, and then move them out as soon as you can to make more room for spawn. If that's what you want, okay. But you may want to restrict it to heir line only.

Good. I'm currently waiting for my one indiscretion to die. Ghost babies are so annoying.

Yeah, I would suggest some formatting. Bold headings, bullet point items. Also, more clarification on who counts for points and who doesn't. Because I've played TS2 Legacy challenge several times, I think I know what you are going for, but as it is some sections are unclear or exploitable in ways I don't think you want them to be. As I understand it, all points can only be earned by residents of the One True House who are part of the heir bloodline. And seriously, portrait exploit. Big one.

If you can't marry in rich sims then doesn't that make the Gold Digger LTW impossible?

Maybe there can be a one-time exception if the gold-digger LTW actually rolls.

I like the option to create the founder the way we like and pick the neighborhood. I am also really glad to see that it is LTW-driven.

I am not excited about the portraits as most of those turn out horrible and after a while I'd have to play with walls down to ignore them.

Out of interest, can hidden traits be selected? I'm guessing no since you need a mod to enable them in CAS (although Pyromania would make a great family trait). Although, I'm surprised you haven't included trying to get them into the family as a part of the challenge, as that could potentially make things interesting.

Not technically.  If one of your Legacy sims pops the gold digger LTW, and marrying a rich sim is out of the question, then the LTW is off the table in that instance.

If your Legacy sim marries a mate who has the Golddigger LTW, then the sim joining the fambly would be the one who could earn the LTW point for Golddigger, as long as your Legacy sim would have been considered rich when the pair got married.  (At least, that's how the process seems if you read the game guide entry of the Golddigger LTW.)  Marry rich sim --> see ghost of rich spouse.

Edited for clarity.

My founder, Adele Windsor:
(http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/4425/screenshot38t.th.jpg) (http://img269.imageshack.us/i/screenshot38t.jpg/)

Is just slightly crazy:
(http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/55/screenshot51b.th.jpg) (http://img188.imageshack.us/i/screenshot51b.jpg/)

Insane-Grumpy-Klepto-Hopeless Romantic-Loves Outdoors
I'd say that Loves Outdoors and Klepto are great starting traits. As a Grumpy sim, the buff from Loves Outdoors doesn't do much because she'll report as pissed off for no good reason, but with a regular sim it's a great mood boost considering that they won't have a traditional house for awhile. Klepto is ultra-powerful, even without the ability to sell items. She has three street lights, a park bench, a lounge chair, two exercise machines, and an overhead light just from lifting on community lots.

The Sunset Valley locale is very convenient as there is a park with fishing and harvestables right across the street. If I was trying harder, allowing her to collect, or didn't have to deal with her Grumpy trait making promotions hell, she'd be raking it in.

The Black Market restriction is going to be a pain to keep track of after a few generations. If a founder generation steals some small item, it has to stay on the lot for all 10 generations? I mean at that point, it will have lost so much value that selling it is pocket change, anyway. Could we get a time restriction on it? Like after the thief dies and the object is inherited, it is no longer considered stolen. If only to make bookkeeping a little easier.

Also, no ghost collecting this time around? I guess with only five colors it becomes too easy.

I think I'll give it a try, though. I'll just put stolen goods in the Family Inventory or something. I don't want to fail just because generation 7 sold a generation 2 stolen fishbowl.

Is there anywhere common to post legacy progress, or do we just use this thread?

The way that it's worded, you just need to avoid having your sim find out whether they are rich.  Since you know, you can make reasonable choices without your sim finding out.

A Sim's wealth is usually one of the first things my Sims learn about others.  I don't know of any way to stop them from finding out - it's not like "Ask about career" or "Ask if Single".

I almost wonder if Riverside is overpowered compared to Sunset Valley in regards to the support it has agriculturally. What with the fisheries and the community gardens.  Not to mention the huge farmer field where you can find tons of seeds.

I created an Outdoor Loving, Green Thumb, Family Oriented, Frugal, Angler going for the Matriarchal scenario and also adding a personal style requirement that the names have to all be simlish in nature.

It's amusing to see her bathing amongst apple groves and sleeping under the stars.    :D

I started in Riverview, and I am already slightly regretting it because of the lack of parks and other sociable areas.  There are like tiny parks that seem like alleyways, but there just isn't much to them.  It is easy to fish though, as that river goes all over the place. 

When I my founder met his future wife, he went to her house and had the option to ask if he could stay over.  Is this allowed?  She had a pretty nice house, he made food without losing money, and he had a nice bed to sleep in.

Also, what is the rule on the birthday cake--you can age up whenever you want, which could help if you don't want to deal with a baby or even a toddler (since they don't have memories, it's not a huge deal if they learn to walk or talk).

Zazazu, I wish I had thought better about my starting traits, yours obviously work out really great!  My first heir was born with the trait Loves the Outdoors and I laughed due to the fact that they were still living on the lawn.  However, that was more due to my laziness then anything else.

You can purchase the "Mid life crisis" perk to reset your traits, but if you do that you must roll randomly again. If you don't like THAT random roll, you can always buy that perk again...


Regarding aging up sims early, you must wait for the "Birthday Message" the game gives you before you use the cake. While yes, you can spawn lots of children to farm portrait points, you need to raise all of them. I may put in rule that says "Portraits must be of them as Young Adults or older" meaning you have to raise them from infant to YA in order to qualify for a portrait point before you can move them out.

Once your Legacy family is wealthy enough to be called "rich" you can marry in a townie with the gold digger LTW. Once the townie and your heir have a few children, you can have the townie whack your heir and earn their gold digger LTW. Since the townie bred with the bloodline, they are counted as part of family and thus earning you the gold digger legacy point without breaking the 'rich sim' rule.

Question regarding Life Fruit - legal or not to have in inventory/consume?

Question regarding mooching:  A-ok or verboten?  Food, cash or both?

Neat.  Since I'm definitely not playing TS3 as a sandbox, I'll probably try this out.  Could be interesting to have Unlucky as the Family Trait.

I never actually got to the point of raising a kid to teen in my game, but I've heard that you actually have some control over their LTW - you can dismiss the first one that comes up and wait for something better.  Should there be a rule that you have to accept the first one that comes up?

Also, is there a way to see Lifetime Aspiration points in-game, or do you have to manually add up all the rewards you bought?

Is there any problem with using deleteallhumans (from Awesomemod) to get rid of all the EAxis sims before starting?

Another question. I wanted to use Ashkitty pregnancy mod; is that usable or not seeing as we are decreasing age some of us are changing from epic life span to normal life span.

You can have LTWs come up as children or teens. If no LTW has been accepted by YA, one is assigned. They are acceptable or deniable just like any other wish, excepting that you can't cancel one once accepted with a wrong-click. Right-click. Left-click. Whatever the fraking alternative is.

Not always just asigned. I had a teen age up to YA and he got the option to pick his LTW from a selection just like you do in CAS once you've set your traits.

Is anyone else having trouble with the Sunset Valley lot? I've not played yet on a lot that big. The only thing on it is a bed. But at night, the time jerks and stops, pausing sometimes for 30 seconds. Nights now take longer than days. The other lots in the neighborhood (parks, work, and the gym) are still acting normally.

Edit: Hmm, I think its the animated night sky. Once dawn began to break, the game sped up to normal.

It's a bug in the current Awesomemod build with story progression.

I have walls. Lots of them. However, almost nothing is inside them as my founder, spouse, probable heir, and fetus continue to enjoy outdoor living until the bedroom areas are built. And no, my founder was not a good mix overall, but I like to go with a random roll on everything. It's been almost three weeks and she's only at level 4 in her career. Her unreasonable grumpiness is a big problem. She's making me grumpy.

grrr, thanks for the info. I should've known. I just updated awesomemod. Inner mind tech support: "Have you changed anything recently?" "Oh, no, it's just like it was this morning!" (other than updates, installations and being run over by a mack truck).

I got a LTW come up as a want for a child at random, and had the option that if I "promised" the wish it would become the LTW so I've had children in my game with an already established LTW before aging up any further, through natural gameplay.

Hmm, I didn't know you were forced to take a LTW upon aging to YA, because I always took one as child or teen when it randomly rolled.  So one post suggested that you just end up with one, and one post suggests you get to choose from a list?  Which one is it?  Or is it based on your performance?

Notes on Legacy:

-Having to random a trait without any rerolls is lame. Do badly and you end up with a random bad trait.  Do well and you end up with a random good trait.  Do great and you end up with... a random trait, good or bad...  If nothing else, we should at least get to random until something "good" comes up (just make a list of what qualifies as "good") or give us one or two chances to reroll.  I do LIKE random, but it doesn't make sense that you should be punished for doing great instead of merely doing well.

-Portraits are just plain broken, as has already been observed.  You say that you "have to raise the child" and yet I see no penalty for having a child taken (which stops you from adopting, but doesn't stop you from breeding them).  At least, I'm still assuming the social worker works like that.  I've never actually seen it happen in TS3.  Otherwise, you specifically allow AwesomeMod, which allows you to move sims out without an adult, regardless of their age.  If you are going to put in a rule or penalty for the portrait scoring, make it clear and official.

-Not very clear on which Sims are eligible for points.  You make a distinction between "heirs" and "spares" but are you implying that there can only be one heir and thus children of spares are not eligible for scoring and might as well be cast aside?  I'm just not really sure on this.  Children of an heir are obviously all eligible to score.  Parents of heirs are obviously eligible to score (even if one of the parents is not an heir).  But I'm just not sure whether children of spares produce spares/eligibles, or whether parents of spares which are not a parent of the heir are eligible.

This question is directed to anyone that may know the answer(s).

Having never played Legacy Challenges, I'm unclear on building. I was going to just make an A-frame roof large enough to be the shell of the house and add walls and furnishing as I can afford. Then I began wondering if that would be considered cheating. Is it cheating?


Also:
>gethane-- I have the most updated Awesome mod (I'm 99.9% sure) and I am having the same problems you mentioned. However they also occur at the gym and the park. It can't be anything on the lot because there's nothing there. I will double check my time stamp to be sure. I did redo my game folder with the Monkey Tool just because I wanted to have sub-folders and was afraid that I would bork everything.

I just downloaded the 11:37 PM Awesomemod. I'll see if this one fixes the problem.

Since the original post does not explicitly forbid this, I would like to assume that we can use something like "editsim" to improve the looks of EA-made sims before adding them to the family.  The post only indicates that you cannot create new sims, but does not preclude editing them.  In my case, I'd like to change a few facial features but not the name, character, etc.  Is this considered cheating?

Also, it was mentioned upthread that you can get rich in the family, then have a townie with the Gold Digger LTW marry in and kill your created sim off.  Is there a way to find out what someone's LTW is before they join your family?  Or are you recommended to have them move in without marrying, then kick them out if they lack this LTW or marry them if they do?

Strictly speaking, that is not really a *BUG*, it's more of an odd side effect. It is not fatal to your game or anything, and the hiccup will stop as soon as the game finishes resolving what it is going to do. It's just that the new algorithms used to make sure the actions generated make SENSE are a bit computationally intensive compared to the previous EAxian stupidity, and some numbers have to be tweaked around as a result.

Since I went through the challenge and formatted it for my own purposes, I figured I might as well share it with anyone else who wants it.  All I've done is add in some formatting, fixed the line breaks and cleaned up a few minor typos.

[Updated to reflect rule changes]

Mooching, in all forms, is in. In testing I didn't find it generated enough money to be broken.

Life fruit is out.


I have updated the rules to balance portraits. Portraits now only count if they are done of a YA or older sim that is living on the Legacy Family lot at the time of painting. this means you have to raise the child from infant to YA at the very least to get a portrait point out of them.

As said before, if you don't like how your rolls turned out, you can purchase the "Mid Life Crisis" perk to get a shot at re-rolling your traits.


Having a shell of a house, especially in the early game, is not only allowed but is good strategy.

If you can somehow edit just the appearance of sims without taking control of their traits, jobs or ages then yes, I suppose a tool like that would be allowed.


As to who is eligable for points: Any sim that is 1: Living on the Legacy Lot AND 2: connected to the bloodline. If you open up a sim's family tree and can trace a solid line up to the founder, they are part of the bloodline. Note that spouses of heirs do not count as part of the bloodline until they actually reproduce with the heir to bring in the next generation.

I have unlucky as the family trait for my Legacy Family. It already saved my founder once when he electrofried himself trying to fix a broken dish washer and got rezzed by the reaper.


If you mouse over the treasure chest icon that says "current aspiration points" the tooltip that pops up will tell you how many points you've earned for this sim over their lifetime. It is that number that you use for aspiration point portion of the Legacy scoring.


There would be nothing against the rules to use 'deleteallhumans' to purge EAxis sims.

Using "destroyallhumans" makes it harder and is therefore fantastic. It was almost a week before another family moved into my neighborhood. It was nearly two more weeks before another one moved in (and now I seem to have a flood, of course). I was basically stuck marrying the very first guy who moved in, not realizing until he was already married in that the two other sims were his daughters. I'd just separated a family-oriented sim from his two teenage daughters in order to enjoy some lawn living with an insane woman.

I'm just a dumbass, going off of something someone had posted in the past.


That's kind of the point. In TS2 Legacy, you had to roll for aspiration and personality was always randomized by the game. You get what you get and you deal with it. Otherwise, you end up with a bunch of super-similar sims over 10 generations.

Indeed.  And the legacy challenge is already far more fun in Sims 3 than it was in 2. The random button for the traits is one of those "small, clever" things that you don't really notice.  But it shows that the developers were paying attention to how we played with their game and to the games that we made up for ourselves. They saw that people were using outside-the-game tools to bring random chance to it, and they gave us a button. A button that I use even for my non-legacy Sims, though with them I will "reclick" if I truly don't like what I was fed.

Zazazu - it sounds like our legacies have started out alike, right down to the pre-game genocide.  I went the Klepto/Outdoorsy/Mooch route and it's fantastic.  She doesn't have walls, but she has everything else she needs.  The library is out of computers though - she stole them all before she grabbed a desk.

Here is something to consider regarding stolen objects.  Since the rules state the you get points for the net worth of the house and not the amount of wealth your family has acquired, then the stolen items that you place around the house are actually contributing to your points.  This seems to be the exact opposite of what you would have if you would sell them, where you would have the cash, but no longer the value to add to the net worth of the house.

Sell them for cash, buy objects with cash... increase value of the house. I think even if you stole everything that wasn't nailed down, at the end of ten generations you will have so much legitimate money that the stolen items will be a small fraction of the total value of your house as compared to purchased items.  However, I can't be sure of that, and I have a non-legacy theif who has come home four times now with a 12K statue in her back pocket, so it's hard to say.  

I know where the developer was going with the rule - it's for the first generation, to make them start slow.  Riverview has a few accessible cars in driveways.  If you started with a klepto Sim, you could be at well over 50K in cash at the end of your first day.

I agree.  I started playing a "Legacy" before the official rules came out and am on my sixth generation.  I believe my house is worth right around $100k, but they have $1.5 million in the bank.  This is from jobs, opportunities and selling fruits/veggies/fish.  I have not played a klepto Sim or a thief.  Now, if I were counting points, I COULD wait till the end and buy all kinds of expensive stuff to decorate the house with when I got to the last generation, to up the value of the property.  Personally, I don't like to clutter up my house with useless stuff, and keep the same basic necessities through the entire challenge.

As with all things, those who want to find rules to exploit will do so.  Those who want a genuine challenge will play that way.

There are ways to dump the items without being forced to sell. While you could always just keep it in the family inventory near the top, there are other methods based on how it was stolen. Goods stolen by a klepto can be returned, while you could always engineer it so a maid or someone swipes it themselves. Of course, you can always move them out with spares. Sadly, burnination is out of the question due to the new fire insurance feature.

Have you ever seen a maid swipe? The majority, but not all, have the klepto trait, but I've never seen them act on it.

Oh, I have achieved maximum difficulty. Yay!
(http://i40.tinypic.com/2hn83u1.jpg)

I have not.  One thing I've found of interest, though, is that hidden traits seem to last much longer than they did in TS2.  For instance, my very first generation spawned her offspring from the Burglar.  The "sneak here" trait was seen through the 5th generation (so far).

Nice Zazazu, what professions are they runnign with right now in your 1st generation? I went kinda normal I guess. My founder was a YA male, named Shane Storm, He has the Neat, Lucky, Green Thumb, Excitable, Heavy Sleeper traits. LFT is renaissance  sim.  Um He went into the Medical Career, and let see didnt do anything but garden, and work on his house and concentrate on doctoring all through his YA years. Now finally an adult he woo'd and married River McIrish, now River Storm. Who is currently pregnant from wedding night festivities. She only has the small bump, so its still a couple days away for the baby. So in Short Generation 2 is about to be happening for my family. :) My house so far is worth about 39k, and shane is lvl 9 medical carreer, closing in fast on level 10.

So Thanks for the Legacy challenge for sims 3 pinstar I am having alot of fun with it, and taking lots of screenshots to put up later. hehe.

Yay - right now, I'm just starting and my sim is living in the park.  I figure I'll save up enough to build more then a tiny box for the bed.  She's tired alot, because napping doesn't give much in 3, but she fished up a laptop and a guitar, which helps a bunch.  I suppose I could sell the laptop, but why, since it saves me money later.

Founder Adele Windsor is in Science, level 5. Mate Raphael Windsor is in Criminal, Evil Track, level 7. House worth is $47,701 and they have three girls: Nellie (child), Penny (twin toddler) and Julia (twin toddler). Raphael wanted more for awhile, but with two abandoned daughters and three in the house, I figure he has enough spawn.

The house structure is basically done excepting a few cosmetics, but only the living room is decorated. Everything else is function only. I typically end up with less than $100 in the bank each day as I work on it. They still don't have basics like a bookcase, a stove, or a dining table.

I get that.  It's not the randomness that bothers me, it's the fact that doing "great" is actually worse than doing "okay" simply because of the way it picks.

If you do badly, the game picks a random bad trait for you.
If you do well, the game picks a random good trait for you.
If you do great, the game lets you pick a trait.  If you random it, you are just as likely to end up with a bad trait as a good one.

Do you see the problem here?  You are more likely to end up with a good trait by merely doing well as opposed to doing great.  I think it is stupid for being punished for doing well.  This would actually make sense if the scoring rules gave us some additional incentive to do great as opposed to simply doing well when raising the kids.  Sure, you may fulfill some honor roll wishes and such along the way, but it's probably better to just avoid the honor roll and let it pick a good trait for you so you don't have to random a trait.

Maybe put in a small bonus for actually being prompted to pick a trait, since that indicates that you were doing well.  The score bonus would make up for the fact that being prompted for a trait is more likely to result in a bad trait than simply having the game pick one for you.

I think you are missing the point of it just being a fun way to play the game, while giving the sandbox a bit of direction and goals...besides random kids means a more interesting experience then if you created your "wonder children" which isn't that more realistic in a way anyways? Afterall real parents have no say on the mentaility of their children. All they can do is influence them to the best of their ability and instill right, wrong, etc into their minds. Eventually letting them go out to the world, and hoping they do well, and don't become the next serial killer, drug dealer, etc etc.

I'm not quite sure how what you say is really relevant, and I agree with MasterDinadan.

If the legacy challenge is supposed to be a "challenge", people shouldn't be given a greater reward for performing less well. Simple as that.

I'm not so sure that the game is making a qualitative choice on traits. The first kid I spawned in this family had both traits chosen for her, because the mom is a grump and of course there was never money for a spa visit. She got Friendly and Absent-Minded. Friendly isn't bad by any stretch. In the past, I had a baby with one randomized trait. The trait was Genius. And yes, the dialog was not the "great" one.

There are good points to most of the bad traits. Loners don't drain social and get buffs all the time from being alone, which especially helps when skilling. Insane sims can Talk to Self for fun & social, for which they even roll an easy want. Mean-spirited sims are easily kept happy if you just make them one enemy to treat as a punching bag. Grumpy is the only trait I have nothing good to say about.

Relevant as in due to the type of game it is, there really isn't a need to min/max. This isn't WoW after all...

There should be some sort of 'Murphy's Law' about WoW. One certainly sees people use it a lot in completely irrelevant ways when talking about any game...

Eh, there's about 5 traits that have any real mechanical effect. Amusingly, I pretty much have all of them. :P I am a real life min-maxer. Life is just a problem to be solved.

For some reason I feel certainly sure that it does, but I'm finding it hard to find a reliable source for this... perhaps because I'm also trying to study at the same time, but perhaps I am wrong and just imagined it all. Can anyone confirm/deny the game making this choice? Because obviously if it doesn't, there's no issue.


If you take that angle, why do the legacy challenge at all? Surely there should be no need to maximise your household wealth, or to give points for portraits, or score... I mean, sure, I go nuts with my regular Sims, and I like playing legacy challenges with-extra-challenge, but I also think the basic challenge should be logical. It isn't logical to give incentives to play less well.

Zazazu does have a point that the 'bad' traits often aren't that bad, however. But if you're randomly choosing, something like good or artistic is a lot nicer than never-nude or clumsy, which you'll be more likely to end up with if the choice is purely random... *shrugs*

Is it okay if my sim goes to the gym to take a shower, or to the park to grill or to the library to use a computer? Is this the meaning of "mooching"?

I was wondering a similar thing in terms of using the gym to shower. With my 1300 simoleans left, all I could buy was a bed, a chair, a toilet, a wall to place said toilet and a fridge. So I had my founder bathing at the gym, hope I don't have to start over because of that.

I've started a matriarchy and had my sim marry a guy who turned out to be the social worker. Only three traits unfortunately but he has the neat trait which I found to be more obsessive than the neurotic trait (nothing I do gets him to leave the bed alone). I think my legacy is going to be a little hard in generation one since she wants to be leader of the free world and he wants to raise 5 kids, luckily both have the family-oriented trait. So far just had a twin, I expect many a sleepless night in their shoe box house.

Mooching is something Sims with the Mooch trait can do. They can ask other Sims to give them money or food.

Thank you! I think I have never had or met a sim with that trait.

I thought it would be fun to have the klepto trait passed on, but not actively use it. (I had a klepto child who would suprise me now and then with things she picked up from various places on her own.) I added perfectionist and artistic to my founder in the hopes that some of the portraits will look okay. I also made her friendly so she could get to know others easily and lucky so that she will hopefully survive long enough to fulfill a LTW. With her artistic bend, she is trying to max both the painting and guitar skills.

She got a job in the music profession with Yuri Ivanov as her boss. She immediately called him on her cell to get better aquainted.
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f65/ciane/Kleptos/Screenshot-125-1.jpg)

Then she went to the art gallery and found an easel there. So she set out painting. Then she wondered outside to get to know a few neighbors and got along well with a partner, Jon Lessen. When she got hungry, I directed her to an empty lot with a few apple trees. With almost a dozen apples in her inventory, she snacked and headed back to the gallery.

She never goes to her empty lot. She has pretty much moved into the art gallery. It actually has a full bath complete with tub. She naps on a very nice couch. She paints on the easel there and sells the cheap paintings. She bought a guitar, which she carries around in her inventory, and occassionally she actually has enough energy to play it for awhile.

I understand not wanting someone to consume the recipe, but I had a Sim that received an Opportunity requesting that she make ambrosia for someone else.  Why would this not be allowed?

New to playing a Legacy game and have a few questions.

1. IF your sim is kelpto can they send stuff back in mail or do they have to keep it?

2. What happens if your female sims you have made as your founder seem to like females more then males, can she have kids by someone and not marry them or get a sperm doner and spawn a baby from her that way?

I think that it for now.

Wendy

Did you completely gloss over more than my first sentence? I specifically stated that my first born had both traits chosen for her by the game due to a low-score pregnancy, and that one of the traits assigned was Friendly. I also stated a past child with one trait assigned due to mediocre pregnancy, with that trait being Genius.

Yeah...unless you also have an evil sim in the house. Honestly, I don't get it. The point is to have random traits. That's part of the challenge. Don't like it? Don't do it. What are we all bitching about again?

I am playing in Riverview and my founder has the LTW Celebrity Chef.  I decided to go with the Matriarchy rules, so I made a female founder and right now there isn't anything on her lot.  She eats at work and uses the facilities at the public pool for everything else.  She takes a few naps in the chaise lounges, uses the toilets and showers there, and for fun and social she swims with other residents when they show up.  For a humorous twist I used "disableclothingfilters on" when making her and she started with only two unique outfits.  She has the torn shirt and pants with no shoes for everyday and formal.  She also has a bra and panties with no shoes she uses for sleepwear, activewear and swimwear.   I figured she was on the street and "inherited" the lot with nothing on it... so she still lives on the street right now till she gets enough money to build a house there.

wow just makes a easier comparison for Min/Maxing due to the 12 million players, most people identify with it easier. That being said I could have just as easily refered to D&D. If that somehow makes your hairs stand less on end.

It's interesting to see how differently people are starting out with their founders, and what they set as priorities on which to spend the initial $1300. I've noticed in many of the posts here that it's common for most of us to want to start out with some form of enclosed structure in which to put furniture. I actually tried that on my first attempt at giving my founder something to call home. After the 3x3 room for a bathroom was erected, I had no money to put the actual facilities and a door too. When I realized that all the amenities, save a proper bed, are available throughout town, I decided, instead, to go with this:

(http://i831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/Grumblesnort/Legacy/th_Legacy-Battlesmack-001.jpg) (http://s831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/Grumblesnort/Legacy/?action=view&current=Legacy-Battlesmack-001.jpg)

Turns out that made it far more challenging and fun. The canopy wasn't really even needed, but I liked the aesthetic effect for my story of a runaway carnie with dreams of rock stardom. For my own amusement, I added story-type rules, like restrictions on when she could go to the gym to shower. I reasoned that she couldn't possibly afford a gym membership (the place looks like the swanky type to require one) so she'd be sneaking in during the off-peak hours after dark. She just harvested crops from around town and ate them right out of her backpack, or went to the park and scarfed only the abandoned, half-eaten plates of food, in true hobo fashion. Eventually she ended up with her own 2x2 bathroom, because going all the way to the gym wasted a lot of time, and a small set of crops for food.

(http://i831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/Grumblesnort/Legacy/th_Legacy-Battlesmack-002.jpg) (http://s831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/Grumblesnort/Legacy/?action=view&current=Legacy-Battlesmack-002.jpg)

It wasn't until she got married that I bothered to stick the bed inside a structure, which even still contains only a fridge, one counter, and a sink. Everything else stays outside for now. They'll probably live rough until her husband gets a few more promotions or raises, seeing as she doesn't make much money as a roadie, and soon she'll be having babies.

(http://i831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/Grumblesnort/Legacy/th_Legacy-Battlesmack-003.jpg) (http://s831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/Grumblesnort/Legacy/?action=view&current=Legacy-Battlesmack-003.jpg) (http://i831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/Grumblesnort/Legacy/th_Legacy-Battlesmack-003a.jpg) (http://s831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/Grumblesnort/Legacy/?action=view&current=Legacy-Battlesmack-003a.jpg)

This is the house, structurally done, for at least this generation. I'll need to add on a third bedroom once the heir starts spawning. The bottom floor is completely done, but the top floor still needs finishing. Of course, the yard is completely bare. But hey, they have a pool, which is high priority. The house colors are black, violet, and medium blue. Founder & spouse were violet and black, while the three girls were two blue and one violet.

(http://i40.tinypic.com/dwph5g.jpg)


Roofs? I just had a bed, one wall for the toilet, the toilet & shower for the longest time.

I'm trying not to panic because my founder Ruby is 1 day away from turning to Adulthood and still doesn't have a partner. She/we wasted time on cultivating Beau Andrews only to find out that he is involved. I was more focused on her career and skill grinding to get to the top. She is constantly overworked and stressed, but it's good that she has the neurotic trait because if she freaks out most of her negative moodlets go away.

On the good front I finally got her a little cottage built and she finally made it to the Forensics track, got her a police cruiser and  a laptop.

Break them up!

Or just get pregnant without marrying.

From the way I understood it, bad pregnancy = two completely random traits, average pregnancy = one randomly selected good trait, good pregnancy = no random traits. Again, I could be wrong, I'm just explaining why I didn't think your experience negated what I believed. :P

Will end the derail, anyway... my motherboard's broken, which sucks quite a bit, so all I can do is think/argue about the game, rather than play it.

I agree. With the slim pickin's in the male population of Sunset Valley, I say it's every woman for herself!


I'd actually originally had just the bed, but I wanted more a tent-like feel to it. The best I could do was a few columns and a roof that kept disappearing every few days when "auto-roof" would magically re-enable itself.

Yes, and as I'm saying, the game selected the traits, because it was a bad pregnancy. I had no opportunity to roll.

So you don't have to marry the partner? I hope not because errrm there's really not anyone that I want to marry in SV. I did start cultivating a relationship with a mail carrier at the latest cook out.

I have to say, I am surprised at the return to the micromanage-y, over-ruley ruleset as exemplified by Legacy Challenge Rules version 1. As soon as there as even one expansion, this is going to be utter chaos.

The only thing even remotely micro-managey is the bit about illegally obtained objects.  Just don't make a klepto.

Or if you do, make sure you know what they steal. That rule is only in place to prevent the One Fambly from getting too much money in the early parts of the game.

Oh, right, Pinstar is a god, and it doesn't matter if his challenge became utterly unwieldy and he responded to comments by making spazztacular rules that were so complicated and contradictory people just ended up ignoring him. I was making a comment about the fact that the design of Legacy 2 was a lot better thought out, and this is disappointing.

Then what would you change? You never said specifically what you considered "micromanage-y".

It's the list of really specific rules like the "rich" and the "klepto". Those are where it is going to balloon with every single EP, you can tell from the design. At the moment, it is minor annoyance, but unless the framework is right at the start, it's a recipe for the same kind of disaster there was with Apocalypse.

Also, I have to say, given the way TS3 enforces legacy-style play, how necessary is it to articulate these nit picky rules?

I've learned my lesson when it comes to EPs bogging down my challenge. I can promise you that as the EPs come out, the Legacy Challenge will not evolve into some rules-laden monstrosity. Depending on the nature of the EPs, there will most likely be very few changes, if any, to the base challenge as we see it now. That being said, the Legacy Challenge is still evolving and any changes will be made with the maintenance of simplicity and flow in mind.

The Apocalypse Challenge, on the other hand, I make no apologies for. While the Legacy Challenge, at its heart, is supposed to be simple, easy to follow and score, the Apocalypse Challenge is supposed to be monstrously complex. The layers upon layers of specific, nit pickey rules in that challenge are needed to maintain its higher difficulty level (compared to the Legacy Challenge).

Well, that's a nice rewrite of history. Because it only got horrifically complex after you posted it here and people pwnt you.

It didn't really help that new EPs came out and people ended up creating and improvising rules to fit new features until it became almost too complicated.

Personally, I'm not a fan of either rule. Like I said before, at gen four of an established neighborhood, everyone was considered rich. I'm already nearly to that level in my legacy 'hood, which was wiped before I began, and the eldest girl of the second generation is just a teen. As for the klepto rule, I can see what he was thinking, but in the end it's not going to make that much of a difference. The huge money-makers in the game come from one of three things: collecting, farming, and raises (both from promotions and from keeping at a top level job). At this point, my house value is at $70,831 and they have over $10k on hand. This is without doing any exploitive tricks I've learned so far.

This set of rules is unclear, but I don't think it's too restrictive overall. I just don't think he's spent enough time exploring the game to have made intelligent rules. He'll realize it. People will ask questions that point out easy exploits. He'll rewrite the rules, instead of saying "Yay, you, you've figured out an exploit". It's releasing the guidelines before having enough test time that makes things end up a confusing mess. As is, what he intends can be summed up quite simply:

1. Make sim to your own specifications.
2. Place them on a lot and make sure they only have $1300 on hand.
3. Hit random button for all traits of kids born in game.
4. Spawn children. Play game until your family has reached its 10th generation.
5. Don't sell stuff you steal for money (bad rule, see other exploits being just as valid and less time consuming).
6. Don't marry a sim your family has identified as rich (bad rule, see exploding house worth and fail computation of game).
7. Score as such:
    a. One point per generation
    b. One point per LTW fulfilled (no dupes)
    c. One point per sim with portrait painted & displayed
    d. One point per $100k in furnished home value (dumb, encourages hoarding money and adding a bunch of shit at the last minute. Use furnished + cash, maybe increase the $/point, or don't, since there's no cap)
    e. One point per 100k aspiration points earned by any single sim
8. No using modifications that make the game easier, and no extending life through cheat or in-game means.
9. Once you're dead, you're dead. No resurrecting sims, you tree-hugging hippy.
10. Only sims who are part of the family tree kept by the game and reside in the house are eligible to contribute points.
11. You can do optional challenges, but they don't count for points, so why the hell do you care?

Yeah, it's not that much different than gameplay as designed. There's just these points. That don't matter. That don't have a cap. That have no real meaning.

Actually, I can see how selling stolen stuff might be an exploit during the first generation - I had a CAS sim who was Evil and Ambitious, and to whom I gave the multi-tasker perk.  She shot right up through the Criminal-Evil career track and brought home some kind of $12,000 statue at a point when the family funds were not much more than $1,000.  This would have even more effect for a sim who started with a big empty lot and only $1300, assuming they didn't marry rich.  That's another rule that I think it would probably make sense to confine to the first one or two generations.  Personally, I plan to disregard both as soon as my family gets to the point where they have money coming out their ears.

This reaction is exactly why articulating the rules is stupid. How many people actually keep score in Legacy challenges anyway? The reason I made the Beancounters beancounters was because none of the Legacies I read paid attention to the points once they got all complicated.

See, this is why I have challenges that are purely about avoiding negative points. You don't then need to worry about trying to whore your score to win, because you can't. Like in real life, the only thing you can manage is not to fail.

I think to make this more of a challenge, the klepto rule should be extended to all collectibles.  No selling of anything you find.  Also, I'm surprised that there aren't points for collecting one of every kind of butterfly, gem, bug, etc.  That being said, I appreciate the work that went into creating this challenge, so thank you :)

I am really glad that is not the case, actually.  Collecting is a fucking rut.

Pinstar,
Excuse for my bad English, but why rules so short and little bit boring? I expected charge of points for achievements in skills, a collecting, dialogue and work... It seems to Me, not so difficultly to play if corrected such unlimited. And in fact when a little complex - it is not enough and interesting. In fact for each skill there are categories of achievements, you did not think to charge points and on it? ;)

Erm, this question may seem silly, but I wanted to know if it is cheating to change lifetime wants or traits of Founder with lifetime happiness points. I'm pretty sure that even thought it isn't stated clearly changing the traits is verboten, but I decided it wouldn't hurt to ask.


Also, if anyone is interested my founder seems to be a late bloomer. She had twins girls and is pregnant again, still not married but we're ok with that.

ETA: Zazazu, I like the way you've done your family tree, did you use a template or just do it all free hand?

I'd say it's fair game.

I really enjoyed the Legacy Challenge for TS2, even though it did get awfully convoluted and silly. But the new version is really... boring. I know the goal was to simplify the challenge, but... really, where is the fun supposed to be? I think for myself I'm going to adapt the TS2 scoring system, because for TS3 there's nothing that really differs between the 'challenge' gameplay and normal gameplay, other than painting a ridiculous number of portraits.

I use the in-game ones as a template, but have to do heavy tweaking to get all the in-laws in, and of course add names and breeding relationship symbols.

The 1st gen spouse got his LTW, to be Emperor of Evil. Immediately after he got home, all three girls rolled the want to be Leader of the Free World. I had him quit before the harmony was further destroyed.

This issue is what has stopped me from loading my legacy neighborhood since I started it. I started it in Riverview with all the regulars there. Every single person my Sim met she immediately identified as rich. I've thought about starting over in a wiped neighborhood, but just haven't bothered with it. As you say, even in a clean neighborhood, everyone is rich by generation 4, or earlier. Stupid rule is stupid.

ETA: The reason I think the no marrying rich Sims rule is stupid is not because it's hard to find one that isn't rich, it's that just because your Sim identifies another Sim as being rich doesn't mean that Sim will bring in oodles of money when married in. I've married in tons of 'rich' Sims that brought in only 1-2k. It's a pointless rule.

I partially ignored that rule myself. I started in Sunset Valley, where the Roomies household is. Every one of them is "rich", but I managed to have my sim woo and marry Cycl0n3 Sword (with a subsequent number-to-letter name change) without ever finding out that he was rich. That wasn't easy. He brought in only a little over $2k with around $1k in tax breaks and benefits. Hardly a pot of gold. It's silly that a house full of people who aren't related by any means and actually call their household "Roomies" would be considered rich just because they have enough bedrooms to fit everyone.

Stupid question that I suspect everyone but me knows the answer to: how do you get the pictures you use in your family tree diagram? Screenshot + cropping, or something easier?

How about this...
Marry whoever the hell you want and just use the AwesomeMod cheat to subtract all of the money that the newcomer brought in.

My first gen married Lisa Bunch.  I'm not sure whether she is rich or not but my sim didn't identify her as such. Her house was worth 90k when I married her, and she brought 5k (I think when she moved in).

In fact, I tried moving in the entire Bunch family.  Since they weren't rich I figured it was allowed and I could get all that money.  Turns out, even if I sold the bunch house and furniture and moved all of them into my family, I still only got 5k for it.

That might be a glitch that gets patched later. However, for now, it does seem that marriage/move-ins do not bring funds related to the cost of the house and land. Marriage to a single sim living in a 65K house by himself only brought 1.5K to the household funds and the option to bring any furniture with him was grayed out.

Yeah, in short. I put the game in windowed mode to negate the crappy darkening effect. Screenshot with different sims selected on the trees so that I have a normally-sized portrait of all relations, which can take several shots. Paste them in layers on a blank document in Photoshop. Select and delete the game background and blue tree background. Move my layers about so that I can see all the thumbnails at once and merge those transparent layers. Then cut, paste, smoosh around. Fix any inconsistencies with the relation lines. Add name text. Add marriage/friend/etc. relationship icons that I cut from the relationship panels.

Updating portraits is a cinch, but adding in another family tree after a marriage is not.

Here are the three girls. It was nice to have my pick, since I decided to do a matriarchy. The girl on the left, Julia, is the heir. I almost picked Penny, center, but she's Mean-Spirited and after Adele I just don't think I can stand another sim stuck in a crabby expression the majority of the time. Nellie, right, is the eldest and was eliminated from late childhood due to her pissing me off and almost flunking out of school. I left her fishing while I was fixing a messy situation for three days.
(http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/7688/screenshot81.th.jpg) (http://img523.imageshack.us/i/screenshot81.jpg/)

That's absolutely not true!
Some of them changed when I was pwnt on other boards too :)

In all seriousness, your points are well made. I've already revised the money legacy points to include house values AND cash on hand, and I'm currently playtesting a kelpto sim with the intent on abusing the trait just to see if it is as broken as it seems. There is a good chance that at least the klepto rule won't make it, especially as people discover more and more ways to churn money quickly.

Gardening: garlic, bell peppers, and money trees. That's probably the easiest and most consistent money well in the game.

Damn Raphael seems incapable of passing on a Y chromosome. He had two daughters he abandoned to join the gang. He and Adele had three girls, with one about to move out and 1 day left until elder for Adele when I decided to let them try for a baby. She ended up with twins. Girls. Again. No watermelon has been allowed.

Pinstar, have you seen the portraits chugged out in TS3? They are garish.

Klepto is a minor moneymaker, but the game already heavily penalizes the value of stolen objects: A stolen item is reduced to a small fraction of its original value, so unless you are intentionally setting up lots populated with extremely expensive objects that exist solely for the purpose of being stolen, it's not a very big moneymaker.

You know... I never realized that. Thank you for showing me the light!
Now I need to restrict bell peppers, money trees and garlic...(J/K) I'll probably take out the klepto bit pretty soon, especially in light of the value penalty that I didn't realize existed.


And yes Zazazu, I agree the portraits are not the snapshots of the TS2 days. Could someone mod in a 'not suck' option for the 'stylized still life'?
I've found more success with sims in a lot of artifical light. The best one I got to come out was of one of my test family's wife. She was in the cheap shower at the time and I took the picture through the distorted glass at her head and hair. The distortion of the shower glass combined with the natural distortion now ingrained in the portraits actually produced a decent portrait...unlike my founder's portrait which looks like it was painted using a bag of moldy Cheetos.

Thank you for a great laugh Pinstar.  Most people emphatically deny being pwnt, much less admitting having been pwnt elsewhere when there are no witnesses on hand to prove otherwise.
Thanks for being a good sport.

My founder and her husband had 5 children, a set of twins and triplets thanks to his wish to be surrounded by family. While the triplets were still toddlers, and he and my founder were barely sleeping in shifts with less than $1000 in the bank, he rolls a want for 10 children. He must have a hidden insane trait. He also has a tendency for hideous offspring. When the twins aged to teens I had to immediately rule out my initial pick as heiress as she looked too much like a bobble-head doll, every time she ran I was afraid she would topple over. The next one I had to give her a hairstyle to cover her face, she's actually very pretty but she has her dad's nose which makes me want to scream in fright.

I'm waiting till the triplets age up to finally choose an heiress (founder had all girls). At the moment they live in a 3 room house. The bathroom was built after several embarrassing moments and moodlets (with loss of relationship points) from the open bathroom and I had to add on a separate room after the triplets were born so they wouldn't keep waking everyone up.

Two questions: 1. Are identical twins possible? I doubt it, seeing that they don't tell you that you have two babies on the way,only a recurring naming box indicates this occurrence, but I wanted to be sure.
2. Has anyone else noticed that a crying or singing baby will awaken anyone aged child or older in the same room but other babies right next to them continue sleeping sometimes? It doesn't make sense. Sometimes the babies will get a rude awakening moodlet but other times they sleep like nothing has happened.

Have you looked at the "rich sim" part as well?  I have yet to move in a "rich" sim that actually brought very much more than a poor sim...if they were game spawned. 

Thanks for the revision on the house/money.  I was building a monstrosity of a house to make sure I spent every cent that I made.  Why have a gazillion simolians in the bank if it doesn't count?  :D

Would eating apples to get a boy be considered a cheat?

I wouldn't think so, seeing as it's included in the vanilla game.

Just one more quick clarification.  Which "Birthday Message" must I wait for?  The one I get a couple days before, that say's it's almost their birthday, so start thinking about getting a cake (it's not like I have to call up a bakery, to pre-order a silly cake).  Or the one on their actual Birthday, when they have 0 days left of their current life stage?

I absolutely hate the way EAxis did TS3's Larvae/Sprog stages.  With TS2, having them at those ages was a joy.  And with 7 days as a Sprog (toddler), it just drags on and on.  With the 2-day pre-Birthday message, we're at least cutting it down to 5 days.  I still wait till the day-of for the Larvae's (no pre-message).  (I'd kiss the ground they walked on, if someone ever manages to bring the toddler-blanket forward)  :)

Edit"

This confused me for a bit, for when my Founder's Spouse got to skill 5, she still couldn't paint a portrait (which actually comes at skill 7).  It finally hit me that you actually mean a 'painting' showing an eligible family member, not an actual 'portrait' (I was dreading having to waste the time of this generation's kids, getting to skill 7 in order to do one of the starting spouse, now I won't have to)..  Since a still life could be of anything, I could have several eligible family members in the same 'still life', would I still get 1 point for each eligible person in that painting? 

Okay, I've been delving into the code this morning after a search last night for anyone doing work on this gave me nothing. Adding an option on for a "Clear" style, or something of the sort is a VBT. If an option-adding mod is done on an object, it can't be removed without ruining the game code.

If anyone else wants to look at this and try fixing it, go for it. So far, I've been stabbing around but can't seem to get rid of the wavyness.

I always aged my babe's up as soon as I had met any urgent needs and the toddler's were aged as soon as they had learned all their skills. Waiting for their birthday messages will be a pain, especially for the infant. I guess at least their relationship scores with others will improve.

I do hope that painting code is fixed before I paint portraits.

Edit: My Sim married someone with the same LTW, so I got the perk to change LTWs. I didn't see any way to randomize how to select one of the five choices. Do we select based on a die roll? 1-5: pick from order listed from left to right. 6: roll again?

With the lack of normal interactions while in the same house, and the rate their relationship scores plummet, those darn kids wil stilll be strangers to the rest of the family by the time they're teens.  :(


Shhh, don't give him anymore ideas.  ;)

Since I'm going for the points on completing as many of these as I can, I pick one that I haven't already completed.  If you couldn't do that, getting all 32 would be an impossible thing.

I like the way you think! I just didn't want to "cheat" and have to restart.

Wouldn't it be easier to make a default replacement, rather than a new option?

Yeah. Well, I figure it's a filter being applied by default. I've looked at a lot of the XMLs involving painting, and there are instructions for applying certain styles (Somber, Insane, Genius) on a trait basis or forcing it based on moodlets. The string for forcing Insane was empty, so I almost wondered if we were all seeing the Insane look due to bad code. But when I tried just putting the surrounded by people one (can't remember the exact text at the moment) and the stir crazy one, then tested, I had no difference. Then I tried just eliminating the lines regarding forced or unlocked styles to make sure that the package was really loading. That eliminated style choice, but not the wavyness or color change.

There's another XML that might be doing it in the FullBuild0 package, as it seems like it has to do with paintings and manipulations, but it's so involved I just can't decode it. And I really, really suspect that's the one.

This would explain why my Legacy founder has given birth to 5 boys (she has the "surrounded by family" LTW). Apples are practically the only thing they ever eat, as they do not have a fridge or stove yet. Sigh.

I'm looking into a change to the rich sim rules, since that seems to be widely unpopular and annoying.

Here is my proposal, I would like everyone's opinions on it. It is not offical yet, I'm just looking for feedback.


"Your founder, and only your founder, cannot marry a rich sim. All future generations may marry any sim, rich or otherwise.

Money Legacy points capped at 20 total (2 million in net worth)


That opens up the rest of the neighborhood up for marriage, once all the townies have all made themselves rich in later generations. It also keeps Legacy point scores in line by capping the only score that technically was unlimited.


Please let me know what you all think about these two proposed changes.

Sounds good to me. There should be some non-rich sims in both neighborhoods as they default. Two million is achievable but not extremely easy to reach. For your standard BBS-type audience, that should be quite hard.

How about portraits? Are you thinking about capping those? I already have seven points from portraits and my 2nd gen heir hasn't become an adult yet (just one more day).

The thing with 'rich' Sims is that when you marry them, no matter how much money they have or how much their house is worth, they still only bring in 1-2k when you marry them. So the no marrying 'rich' Sims rule is pointless. The new rule is less onerous, but it's still pointless.

I think I'll go as far as the "must grow sim up from infant to YA" rule to prevent people from pumping out babies, painting them and moving them out.
Combined with the "no birthday cake until 1 day to go" rule to prevent rapid-aging. If you put in the effort to raise that many kids, you deserve the extra portrait points. My Legacy family's 2nd gen has 5 kids, partially for the portrait points, and partially because the founder's wife had the "surrounded by family" LTW.

1. Yes, its possible. Not sure if its just for family-oriented Sims or all (I've only played my test family), but there's a moodlet that lasts for 24 hours about "Congrats! New Baby!" In the case of twins, it shows a "2" in the corner, indictating that two children were born at the time, thus making them twins. Identical, my only set was. I had to change their hairstyles and clothes to tell them apart. Could be just random genetics, and my game is nowhere near played enough for me to say all twins are identical, but the only pair of twins I've had were identical.

2. Baby doesn't care. What's it going to? Get up and coo the other crying baby back to sleep? The only motives that induce a crying baby is energy (solved by being in crib), hunger, social, and hygiene. Crying Baby 1 may wake sleeping baby 2 to give it the "rude awakening" but that its in crib to begin with negates the energy motive. Crying Baby 1 doesn't cause a drop in hunger, social, or hygiene to Sleeping Baby 2, so there's no reason for Sleeping Baby 2 to become Crying Baby 2. Sleeping Baby 2 (as well as toddlers) can't get out of crib, and the sleeping pattern for toddlers is the same for babies - if the energy is low enough, they sleep no matter what in the crib. Children and older have different sleeping patterns that allows them to get out of the bed autonomously.

I've never had identical twins.  My 1st generation legacy has 2 sets of twins.  The first set one has his mother's blonde with lighter blonde tips hair and the other has random brown.  With the second set one has the blonde and the other has her daddy's red.

I always saw the legacy challenge threads and was interested, but it felt a little limited within the bounds of TS2, if only in that the townies were fairly static and CAS sims were banned.  With TS3, I've been interested, but I've yet to actually devote any time to it because of the lingering ban on CAS, to be honest.  EA sims are Fuglier than all belief, and the gene pool is far too polluted with monstrous characteristics for me to get all that attached to a single family of them.  Is there any way to work around the fugly problem?

I understand the rule about CAS banning - in this way, you cannot create say, neat/natural cook sims to have a free servant for the family at every generation - but what about CAS Sims with randomized traits/wants?  Really, only the appearance matters to me.  Someone about halfway through the thread asked if "editsim" was a legitimate work around, but I didn't see any replies to it.  What about using the two "replaced" neighborhoods available on MATY that have the EA fuglies replaced?  It's possible that I'm missing the point of the ban entirely, but I'm sure there must be some middle ground.

My first gen had 5 kids - the first has blonde hair like mom, second has brown hair like dad, third has blonde hair like mom, and the last two (twins) both has dad's brown hair. I'm guessing with the way genetics works, the possibility of both babies rolling the same trait for hair is there. I'm not a modder or programmer, so I can't confirm exactly how genetics in the Sims 3 works, but yes - if genetics is based on a blending or rolling of genetic traits from both parents, it is possible for each baby to roll the same trait as the other.

I suppose you could almost guarantee identicals if the parents looked alike. Less diversity in the gene pool.

It's still possible to move a sim in, make a baby with it (thus making the mate eligible to score), painting a portrait of the mate, and then moving the mate out with the baby.  The baby is still part of the bloodline, so it's parent's portrait is worth points even if neither the baby nor the parent stuck around.
This isn't as easy as just popping out babies and painting them, but is still by far the easiest way to earn points.  Frankly, I've always thought the portrait points were kind of stupid.  Why should something that takes practically no effort reward you as much as fulfilling a LTW or earning 100k happiness?

I decided to change the legacy around a bit. Mostly to make it harder for me but also to incorporate the uniqueness of the TS3. Also the huge lot is causing my game to lag horribly and I'm getting to the point where I don't want to play.

I decided to post it for anyone who is interested. Feel free to make suggestions and ask questions. But if it isn't mentioned specifically then I'd go with the original rules.

Amendments to legacy.
 
You may use any life span but if you are going to use long/epic life span.you must use ashkitty's preg mod (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=347778).
Long = 9 Day pregnancy
Epic = 30 Day pregnancy
The only caveat is that time length cannot be changed once legacy starts.

You must start in a fresh unplayed file and with a brand new Sim. All random traits must be chosen from the start of legacy /w the exception of 2nd generation onward may carry one 1 of the founder's traits as a family trait. You may choose to deleteallhumans if you like.

Founder may move into any empty lot as long you have $200 or less at end of the first day. Also you may not change lots for the duration of the challenge.

Parents must be married before child is able to be considered an heir (ess).
The exception to this rule is if the couple is same sex. They may have the child by a donor (lesbian) or surrogate (gay). However they must still marry the partner and the child must be raised in the home. Also the child must be genetically linked to founder.

Also in order be considered heir player must be able to select a trait at each life stage. (Even though it must be rolled)

You may create Sims to be assimilated into family but their traits/LTW must be random as well (Only 1 roll). You must move them in lots that are already occupied but not the family's; they must not have a job or any skills when moved in. Your sim can meet and marry these created Sims. However for each generation that uses this "perk" the next two can not. For example if you do use a created sim for Gen 1 you can't use it again until Gen 4.


Lastly, I threw out scoring for me because I really don't care about the score I just wanted a challenge.  

Yeah, I'm playing without scoring or the rich sim restrictions. I don't really care for the scoring part of the set games, just the fun role-playing part. Even if I am roleplaying a homeless Casanova who has impregnated most sims in town. What, it was fun. :D

So, jaci"rocker", you just essentially plagiarized Pinstar's weaksauce challenge, but without the points? How ironic. I am not seeing any point(s).

Jaccirocker, is there any particular reason a genetic donor has to be married to the line-carrier? It makes sense for female genetic donors to have to live on lot (which doesn't require marriage), but it's actually harder to not move in male genetic donors--no cash bonus, no extra help around the lot. It seems like it's purely an extranenous style rule for people who don't like so-called bastard children.

I think the best part about the Legacy Challenge is everyone can play the flavor they want. No one really needs to lobby Pinstar to change the rules, just play it how you think makes sense! It's not like there's a camera in your house keeping track. I have no intention of keeping score or painting portraits. It doesn't interest me, but the idea and skeletal framework of the Legacy challenge does appeal to me. It's your game, play it how you want :).

I'm not really lobbying Pinstar to change the rules, if I do get around to playing a legacy type game, I'll do it how I want. I just think he should be aware that marrying 'rich' Sims doesn't bring a bunch of money into the household, and his rule about not marrying rich Sims is pointless. Maybe he should play the game a bit more and get a feel for it before making up rules for his challenge.

Dammit, I wish you had told me that before I had 6 kids so I could paint portraits of all of them!

Although seriously, if I am just going to play the game how I want, it's not much of a challenge.  I like to have a goal of some sort, and keeping score gives me a goal.  The problem is that the score-keeping scheme that Pinstar has devised encourages ridiculous things like having a ton of children just so you can paint portraits of them.  Portraits are stupid!

I guess I could make my own scoring criteria, but then it wouldn't be Legacy Challenge.  If I go around telling people what happened to my third generation in Dinadan Challenge, nobody would have any clue what I'm talking about.

I guess the only solution is not to play Legacy.  I don't want to feel pressured to have a house full of sims at all times just so that I can get as many points as possible.

This was the point I was trying to get accross. Some of what the original challenge held didn't interest me but a lot did. I thought some might enjoy my bastardization.

@ Rohina, I am not trying to take credit for somone else's work which "plagarizes" implies. I do believe that I clearly stated that it was an amendment which means add(s) to. Also why the quotes around and deliberate misspelling of my name. Have I offended you in any way?

@ Aquilegia. They don't have to marry the donor they must however marry their life partner.


Again I just really wanted to just offer up my idea as an alternative way to play.This makes it more challenging for me

IMPORTANT.
As a mass money tree farmer in a non-legacy game, this is certainly broken. While I have yet to start a Legacy game, not mandating a fresh game means a previous money tree garden in the neighbour's house can be raped for money instantly. An array of 100 perfect money trees can be harvested in less than a day and net approximately 100K. Money tree's money output completely dominates whatever gardening normal plants can generate (barring perfect deathfish-duplicating omni plants).
+1. This is very important as aforementioned money exploits can result in massive ballooning of money. As the ingame description for money tree states, inflation really occurs, and quickly for that. Capping it solves it pretty much. Over 10 generations it is possible to (with obtaining of more unknown special seeds daily) to get arrays of money trees relatively easily.

That's why I specified a fresh unplayed file. Meaning a brand new file that has never been played at all, not just a new household in a "played" nhood.

If you have Awesomemod, you can use the commands dresser <sim> and mirror <sim> on anyone in your neighboorhood. I used editsim on the worst of the fuglies, but I didn't look at the panel with the traits/LTWs just because doing that felt like cheating to me.

I would say making it so they have to marry is unfair to the sim's with commitment issues.

I had a sims try For baby with her lover , Was hoping to move him in with her yet do it her commitment issues, I could not get them to move in or other wise. Then the day when she had the baby he grew old, and died 3 days later. I will not give up my Heir Just because his mom is not married.

As for marrying a rich sim's , maybe it can be made that by gen 2  when you have over 150,000+ in wealth your self, you can then marry any listed as rich.
Also if you not lazy you can for each gen edit the xml so that rich sims are listed who have more wealth then you. I do believe i saw somewhere around the forums a way to change what counted as a rich sim.

As for the life span , I have played both parts and noted that skills/job raise slower in the longer ones then it does in 90d. My Epic sims took just as long to master something life time wise as my 90 day , yet it did not seem like such a short rush or time to do it.  IF others would test this also and let me know what you think on it , I would be thankful.

The thing is it doesn't make a difference if you marry a rich Sim, they don't bring in any more money than non-rich Sims. It would only matter if you were going to move into the rich Sim's house, which is already against Legacy rules.

Wendylady you don't have to play my rules or really any else's rules. My version certainly is quite a twist on the original rules. Feel free to disregard them.

Keep in mind (because I didn't) that in order to get 33 LTW, you need 33 sims. I suppose that could break down as 2 in the first generation, then probably 4 each generation since the legacy ends at the birth of the tenth. I should have kept all five sisters of the second generation in the house and had them reach their LTW, using one of the youngest twins as heir. Instead, my next family-oriented sim gets to be a baby factory. I'm truly tempted to restart the Tests, my Sims 1 & 2 family. They had 11 children in Sims 2.

I actually have a feeling we'll need more than 4 each gen to get all 33 LTW's.  Even with waiting until YA to get the 5 LTW options to pick from, I'm sure there'll be alot of repeats (unless one gets really, really lucky).  Are those 5 choices at YA purely random or do their traits and/or skills learned influence it? 

I think both. But I'm not sure...there's always the Change LTW reward object, but I've never used it and suspect it would restrict to the magic five choices for their personality.

It does go back to the original choices. The only other option that could possibly work is changing the traits first (20,000 Mid-Life Crisis Award) then using up another 10,000 points to change the LTW.

Quote:
Damsel   
   Re: The Legacy Challenge for TS3
« Reply #150 on: Today at 20:45:19 »
I have had an issue with the rule about accepting the first lifetime wish that comes along. I understand why this exists, it's definitely much more fun and interesting to play with Sims of varying interests and personalities, but the problem with this is, all my Sims keep wanting is to become professional athletes due to the fact that my Sims all enjoy playing with the football and baseball together. There's nothing random or varying about that! I have since banned the use of said objects, but it's disappointing not being able to let my Sims play with them. It's a good way to increase fun and build relationships without having to micromanage them.  End Quote

I saw you deleted this post, maybe you figured out that there is no such rule yet, or mis-read a previous post about YA's being forced to accept a random LTW (if no LTW has previously been accepted).  YA's still get the 5 LTW's to choose from, if one hasn't been chosen yet, and there is yet no such rule about accepting the first LTW to pop up for children (or how to pick one for your Founder in CAS).

I must have read that rule somewhere else for another challenge or misinterpreted something I read when first starting this challenge, though for the life of me I can't imagine what or where. I've only read three challenges for TS3 (including this one) and I just reread the rules for the other two (haven't played them yet) and didn't find it there either. If there was such a rule it'd make achieving all 32 LTW's impossible, now that I think about it so it should have been obvious that I was remembering things wrong.

I started fiddling around with this a couple of days ago, most likely I will end up restarting because there are a few things that are bugging me.

My Sim's oldest son just turned into a child.  He has a younger son a few days behind him.  In all of the population of Legacy Island, there is not one female that will still be of child-bearing age by the time one of these boys take over unless per chance they run into an NPC of a proper age.

And that brings to mind another thought.  Why on earth aren't points awarded for the marriage of NPCs in this challenge?  They aren't always easy to find and they usually have only half of a personality, as in they might have four or five traits but more times than not they only have one or two.  Talk about a handicap.

Sooo, BACK to my original question:  what is everyone doing to assure there is a ready population of marriagables available?  Creating families?  Leaving the "feature" available for any and all Sims to pull larva from their sofas?  I use awesomemod and have Story Progression on, but I don't have parthogenesis enabled because it's so annoying, and I really, really don't want to have to be creating a bunch of families every generation just to make sure my heir has a spouse.

I'm on generation four now, they just hit their teen years and so far I haven't had too bad a time finding a mate for my Sims, even the spares. When your Sims are at work or school there's an option in the drop down menu to meet new friends and to chat with friends. This is a great way to make loads of friends, and when your Sims are children, those children will age up right along with your children, so you'll know what age they are. Or, on the other hand, if your Sim meets a teen that you wish they could be with and they are a young adult already you can invite them over and click on the birthday cake and chose to have them blow out the candles, aging them up. AFAIK there isn't any rule against aging townies up before their time.

In this new save for the legacy challenge I'm not finding a problem with age appropriateness but maybe because when in doubt they marry an NPC like the policeman or social worker. It works better that way for me because since they aren't playables, they have no previous baggage. I also find that the game will age people to suit any age group that is lacking in members even if the aging makes no sense whatsoever.

I've noticed something strange. Holly Alto was a teenager when this game started and Vita was an adult and my founder and her spouse were young adults in the early stage. My founder is now an elder, her spouse is dead, Vita is still an elder alive and kicking and Holly is also an elder. It just doesn't seem right.

This challenge is forcing me to play several different types of LTW's (ones I wasn't normally playing in TS3), but I'm currently having problems getting the "Super Popular" one fulfilled.  She's showing 22 current friends in her panel (and Charisma info page is showing 22 friends).  She got the "Super Friendly" reward, but has yet to get her LTW fulfilled.  Any info out there, do household members still count against that 20 total?

Update:  She finally fulfilled the wish when she got her 24th friend (the 24th was a ghost).  5 of her friends are household members, so that makes me wonder if once again, Sims start with an Mystery friend?

Points for marrying NPCs were taken away from the TS2 Legacy Challenge a few EP ago. NPCs are ridiculously easy to find. My SV has 62 NPCs to my 100+ townies. I see them walking around all the time, plus you can still get them by calling for services. Babysitters and Newspaper Delivers are met a lot of times by my schoolkids.

Story Progression should start creating new families once the elder population gets higher. It's not ideal...odds on romancing and spawning on townies needs to be raised. Either way, you're only marrying off one sim per generation. You shouldn't have any problem finding a mate.

In TS2, yes, the NPCs got ridiculously easy to snag with each expansion.  I've found in TS3 while they are easy to find, the service worker types aren't easy for building relationships because trying to build relationship via the phone is a huge pain in the rear.  Even if a Sim meets them on a community lot and strikes up a conversation, it won't be long before the NPC takes off because they have some motive that needs attention, and after that building the relationship pretty much relies on phone calls until they can be invited over.  It's much, much easier to develop a relationship with a Sim that lives in a house, because if all else fails, your Sim can go visit them.  There's always the chance I am doing something really wrong that is making it harder than it really is. It wouldn't be the first time.

Okay, thanks!  A few of the older Sims in that town have already passed on and once in a while I go into Edit Town mode and just click the buttons on their houses to see physical changes in those households.  So far I haven't noticed any discrepancies in aging but that's probably because it's so early.  (Come to think of it, that would explain something I heard of happening in one person's game, completely unrelated to Legacy Challenge but seemingly relevant, where they had switched to play another family, then went back to their original to find that several of the kids' ages were completely off, as in older siblings were now younger, and vice versa).

I think I am going to start over.  I have made so many mistakes and one very bad mistake I made was not thinking things through far enough.  I started out with a male Sim, which was my preferred method for TS2 since if my founder didn't find a mate right away it didn't matter because he could still produce children in his elderhood (although it never took that long to find one).  Starting with a male for TS3 makes absolutely no sense at all because you have no idea how old the woman might be that he ends up with. LOL  My current founder married the one that made the most sense for his lifestyle and lack of house, which was Claire Ursine.  They had several traits in common, one of them being Loves the Outdoors.  What I didn't realize was that poor Claire only had 13 days from the time she moved in to becoming an elder.  I seriously thought about just keeping her around as a housemate and money earner (I decided not to develop the romantic relationship until she had already moved in), but it seemed to me none of the other potentials were made of the right stuff for the founding generation.  They had to hustle to get their family started and with maternity leave she never got to go back to work until the day before she turned into an elder.  It added a fun aspect to the story, though, that she came with her own little bundle of joy from a former relationship. LOL

On the idea of starting fresh, would you all recommend starting in a clean neighborhood where the Sims have been gassed, or start out with the default families in place?  A while back I was having a problem with awesomemod where new families would be reported to move into town but never take up residency.  I'll probably be upgrading to the latest version of awesomemod today.

How did you get her to move in without marriage? I haven't been able to get that social to come up, and frankly I'd just figured that they left it out of TS3. Is there a level of relationship the two must have, and is it romantic or platonic?

It was under friendly interactions after they reached friend level.  Darius had a wish to become friends with Claire, and I wanted him to be able to fulfill that wish, so I held off on romantic interactions.  I had another Sim roll that wish as well only to find that they will go straight from acquaintances to romantic interests and completely skip the friend thing, not fulfilling the wish so this time I just worked on the friendship.

I also have run into problems getting Sims to move in otherwise.  If two Sims have a romantic interest in each other I've not been able to find a move-in option, which seems completely ridiculous. The only way I was able to get a romantic interest to move in has been through marriage.

Just forgo the romantic interactions for a bit and concentrate on the friendly ones.  Move In will eventually pop up after several exchanges.  At least, this has always worked for me.  Doesn't make much sense, but there you have it.

This is actually what made the Sims 2 Legacy so much fun for me.  The pairing of my Legacy sim and her townie mate produced hideous offspring, and my personal challenge was to see how many generations it would take to beautify them!

It is kind of disappointing how identical children tend to be to their parents in Sims 3.  I have a pair of CAS in my main (non-Legacy obviously) neighborhood that had 6 kids and the boys all have nearly identical faces.


(Second topic to avoid double post)
Re jaccirocker's "must be married" rule - it makes more sense to me thematically to say that you may only pick an "illegitimate" heir if no legitimate heir exists.   For legal reasons the illegitimate heir cannot inherit over a legitimate one, but if no child of marriage exists then the illegitimate child can be heir. 

I agree about the ugly offspring. My legacy sim married a NPC social worker and come of the children inherited his horrific seemingly broken nose. I ruled them all out as heir.

I would like to know how you got identical looking children because none of my sim offspring look identical, not even twins or triplets. They have similar features obviously coming from the same parents but none of them look anywhere near identical.

I didn't do anything special, I just have two CAS sims that reproduced a lot.  The first 2 children were spawned inside CAS and the other 4 in game.  They aren't perfectly identical but very, very similar.  When I change their hairstyle and/or color they look a little more distinguishable.

Ironically enough the two that look least alike are the twins.  Twin #1 was the only one who didn't get the parents' hair color (black).  He's a redhead.

Hmmm that does make sense. However, would people take the easy way out? If that rule is to be adapted in the amended legacy I would do it something like the create a sim rule. It can be done but only every other generation or so. What do you think?

I'm purposefully trying to make it very challenging so that I won't lose interst in the game.
Part of the challenge for me was to find a mate, woo them, etc all while I'm trying to learn skills and maintain my career. 

All of my Sims will be married before they start producing offspring, but that's my choice. Why should it be enforced on all players?  One thing I always loved about Legacy Challenges is that even though there are rules to follow, there is much freedom in how each player accomplishes their goals. This makes it way more interesting for all players involved.  If people like to torture themselves with single parent families, they can do it.  In the end, that play style will actually penalize them, but it's their choice to play that way.  This is, after all, a Legacy Challenge, not a "Keep the Throne" challenge.

Also keep in mind that not everyone makes their LTW.  I had a spouse that ended up being near elder when the heir married her (poor planning on my part, but it took him forever to woo her...)  She died at only level 6 of her career.

2nd gen's husband made his LTW one night, then woke up the next morning and died. I was crossing my fingers every day that he wouldn't die yet. In my second 'hood, she married the second day to a brand-new YA.

I started my legacy, and when my founder married his sweetie, he discovered she had a teen daughter.  Well .. I couldn't just leave the girl over at the other house.  She took the founder's name and everything.  So I moved her in, which brough about an extra $1000.  Turns out she's one day away from becoming a YA -- d'oh, my timing sucked.  Anyway, when she moves out she'll take money with her, so I'm not going to worry about it.  They need to have a "do you have any kids" question in addition to the "are you single" question.

I agree with you with you as far the freedom goes. I think everyone should play it the way they want to. Which is the reason I posted my ideas; some people like to have a set of rules or guidelines, if you will. I'm one of those types. Others can do with out the rules and still enjoy the game. I really think it's all about having fun and sharing ideas, experiences and of course good pictures. :)

First, kids don't fully express features very well. Second, part of this is because sims in TS3 have a more uniform appearance of puddingyness, and aren't quite as distinctive in appearance as their TS2 counterparts.

I like the idea of this challenge.

Think I'm going to make a matriarchy with the 'Insane' family trait :]

bwaha, behold the founder of my legacy family!

(http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/3008/screenshotbpw.th.jpg) (http://img179.imageshack.us/i/screenshotbpw.jpg/)
Her name is Eiko Shacklebolt.

She is an Insane, Charismatic, Family Oriented Virtuoso who Loves the Outdoors :0

Her first day in town went well. She's opted to use her money to buy a guitar and become a vagrant bard till she saves up enough to build a house and start her family. She went to art gallery (playing in Riverview) where she met the Brokes, who liked her amateur guitar playing though, being Broke, gave her to tips... Later she met Hunter Cottonwhateverhislastnameis, the big muscular dude with a reputation for being very hard to get along with. But they got along great! They even bonded over having a shared trait of Insane. They stayed up till 2am talking and became great friends, at which point poor Eiko was so tired she just fell asleep right on a park bench. The next day was a bit rougher...she was tired and smelly and hungry when she went to work at the music career...not a great first impression. But after work she took a shower at the gymnasium and then decided to see if her new friend would let her crash at his place. Turns out he lives in....a bunker all the way at the edge of town. A legit bunker. See, most people would be put off by this but Eiko? Well hell, she's as crazy as he is! She went over his house in a very formal dress that she changed into when she showered at the gym! And he conveniently has two single beds in his bedroom so...Eiko got a nice restful night's sleep ;]

Character: Morrighan la Fey

Traits:
1. EVIL!!!!!!!!!!!!
2. Lucky
3. Ambicious
4. Athletic
5. Hopeless Romantic

Career:
Criminal, Evil

Life goal:
Become Emperess of Evil!!!

Optional stuff:
1. If offspring are not EVIL they cannot be heirs.
2. Matriarchy... I hope my sims like the taste of watermelon!

Beware, Riverview! There is a witch living in your midst!

A mysterious woman has set up a makeshift home in an empty field on Riverblossom Hills Drive. The other townfolk see her as a strange eccentric and

pay her no mind.

Little do they know of her SINISTER PLAN!!!

Morrighan carries the EVIL Gene, and plans to breed with the townsfolk. Within 10 generations, if her plan works... everyone in town will be

EVIL!!!

(http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/1234/mor1.jpg)

(http://img102.imageshack.us/img102/8619/mor4.jpg)

Morrighan searching for food.

As a member of the Criminal Career path, Morrighan has no qualms about stealing from other's trash bins. Or from their homes.

(I found a $8500 item on my first foraging trip... curses that I cannot sell it!)

(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/1395/mor5.jpg)

Morrighan heading to the crypt to perform a mysterious ritual.

(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/8229/mor6.jpg)

Morrighan loves to work out. Here she is at the gym, where she meets a medical student named Shirley Lin.

(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/9697/mor2z.jpg)

Morrighan learns that Shirley has the Friendly, Unflirty and Hopeless Romantic traits.

Shirley learns that Morrighan has an eye for other women!

But what's this? How can Morrighan succeed in her diabolical plan to produce EVIL offspring if she craves her own sex?

Find out next week! Same bat time, same bat channel!

FFS, who let the 12 in?

SQUISH IT!

This place is turning into the BBS, I swear.

(http://i43.tinypic.com/2vjzsbk.jpg)


Interested in posting a legacy story? Try livejournal (http://livejournal.com).

Oh yes, just what I was hoping for. Where's the teen raped and pregnant with twinz (angst optional)? I MISS HER SO MUCH!!!!!!!111EVIL!!!!!

I'm just curious. With all this ability to do with modding, why not just do a mod for the legacy challenge to install rules and restrictions? It's tough enough playing through 10 generations. Having to manually watch out not to accidentally violate any of the rules adds quite a burden.

Besides, it's no fun knowing that I might make an accidental mistake violating the rules once in a while throughout the long 10 generations.

What rules? What restrictions? I swear, all these little kiddies are whining about how TS3 Legacy is just like TS2 Apocalypse. Have you seen TS2 Legacy rules? They were ridiculous. This one has pretty much no rules past the initial setup, which is exactly the same as TS2 Legacy's rules. Pick a lot. Familyfund down to $1,300. Spawn sims. Don't cheat.

It's so damn hard, isn't it?

It seems to me a lot of people just heard the basic gist of TS2 legacy (spawn 10 generations, don't cheat, maybe a few other details) and didn't notice the enormous list of rules that were included...even in the base game. TS3 legacy is quite simplified in comparison, but I suppose if you only thought there were 2-5 details in the original it seems more complex.

This sounds pretty fun, actually.

I'm not sure if this was asked already, but is it allowed to make the life span longer than normal? I play with Very Long, I think it's called.
Pretty sure It's 180 days.

Well, there's the life fruit, the ambrosia. Once we get access to those, sims live perpetual lives. Sort of like some "Actuarial Escape Velocity", where the rate of increase in life expectancy (from improvements in life sciences) outpace the time-cost (time taken) to bring about said rate of increase.

A simple mod that removes all those lifetime rewards would be great. There's no way to "sell away" a lifetime reward that we might accidentally buy!

I never play with life fruits or ambrosia. I think it makes the game terribly trivial.

Given how a typical career path would take a sim from 20 years of age (young adult) to maybe about 50 (adult) under the "normal lifespan" setting, I'd say that's the thing to play for most realism. Of course, everyone wants more time to fulfill whatever lifetime wishes they have. Sticking to the normal lifespan setting makes the game more engaging. We need to carefully consider trade-offs in life.

Take the Martinez couple for example. As adults, they have just 21 days (less actually) to reach the top of their careers, and then have kids. If I run a real tight ship, I would JUST make it. The mid-life crisis reward is necessary. I'd say the Martinez couple decided they needed to give up some traits and become ambitious workaholics to get any chance at all at fulfilling their lifetime wishes. Fun. :) Maybe almost as fun as the legacy challenge.

Having kids early will put them out of work for about 6-8 days. Then they would have settle for gray hair when at the top of their careers.

Please don't double-post. You can insert another quote simply by scrolling down and clicking the "Insert Quote" button. Also, a quick gander through the FAQ might help you. You seem to be a decent one.

There aren't any lifetime rewards that are disallowed. Are you thinking that reward points used count against the 100k/200k reward point points? They don't. You can purchase whatever you'd like, whenever. By mousing over the chest in the LTR tab, you can see your earned total for the sim. That's what you count for points.

As for ambrosia and life fruit, I'm not sure that I like the rule against them, though I am playing with it. In TS2 legacy, you weren't restricted from using elixir. You could choose not to for an extra point, but you weren't kept from it. Life fruit and ambrosia are harder to obtain (much harder, in the case of ambrosia) than elixir in TS2. You pay more for the advantage. Yeah, sure, a sim can be immortal off of life fruit. They could off of elixir, too, and it wasn't hard to earn. It was ridiculously easy, actually, after NL introduced dating.

I've heard that work performance grows more slowly under the longer lifespans. I don't intend to ever test that myself. The 90-day span is a bit longer than I'd like it as it is.

There is an exploit that many don't realize. You can get a female pregnant at any time before they become elder. So if you have one day, zero days left until age transition, they can still breed. Also, Awesomemod doesn't enforce maternity leave and Awesomemod is expressly allowed. Saish Test had her last three kids after she'd reached 2 days to elder (twins and a singleton). If you want to wait until the last possible second to breed, you can. The Tests did the opposite...Saish was pregnant on Day 2. Chuck didn't even move in until she was in her third pregnancy. They currently have eleven children, six living at home and five living next door.

Of course, Saish didn't work. She has a sizable garden with the standard harvestables (no flame fruit, life fruit, death flowers, etc), and she breeds. Chuck brought home the bacon (quite literally from Culinary career) and they both spent spare time rock collecting. Right now, I'm sitting on a fully-furnished five bedroom, five bathroom home with playground and pool valued at over $76k with $13k in the bank account.

Actually, now that I think about it this sounds stupid. I barely get by with one generation, because it's the same thing everyday. Go to work, raise motives, raise skill, raise motives, rinse and repeat.

Without expansions, there's hardly anything to do. Think about it, take away the skills and the jobs, what do you have? Loafing around your house, or running around town like a released schizophrenic picking up rocks. EA gave us sticks and expect us to build Rome with it. There is almost nothing to do, and this shows it. Try and make a ton of money, and follow guidelines? I don't know about anybody else, but that sounds exasperatingly boring.

I was replying to 2 different posters. But I didn't realize the topic discussed may be similar. Where's the FAQ? Nice to be on a forum that's so neat. :) Why is the official Sims 3 forum so unpolished?

If ambrosia and life fruits are so difficult to get (so much that I haven't been able to get them at all!), then yeah, no point disabling them. I just thought that it might be nice to have Sims 3 actually mirror real life to some good extent. I like the legacy challenge for making me run through Sims 3 gameplay like I'm considering actual trade-offs for real life.

Aside from getting a kick out of realism in the game, gameplay balance and mechanics is another thing. Ambrosia and life fruit may have gameplay usefulness somehow.

As for lifetime rewards, I like the idea of upgrading cars for better speed, not the teleportation device.

Oh, it does? Yeah, I don't intend to test it either. :P The 90-day span feels right, given how I actually have to rush hard to fulfill a career lifetime wish if I start at middle-age (Adult). And I don't have all that much real-life time to devote to Sims 3 too. I have lifetime wishes myself. :P

Yeah, I knew that. Hmm. I guess I was unconsciously hoping that my Martinez couple can play with their kids while still not elders yet. I hear that energy motive decays faster when in Elder life stage.

That's realistic. It'll also be nice if we can call in to take leave or something. Then we have the option to turn up for work or not.

Maybe allow 1 sim-day leave per week? Assuming the YA and Adult life stages are 20 years each (20-40, 40-60), that would mean that 1 sim-day is about 1 year in real life. A 14-day leave package per year would give about 0.32 sim-days (7.84 sim-hours) of leave per sim-week. If we take more leave than that, then yeah sure, hit our work performance. To make it more realistic, maybe we need to call in to apply for leave, say, 6 sim-hours before work starts?

This keeps bugging me. Why is EA not adopting Awesomemod? If I were working on Sims 3, I wouldn't mind paying Pescado and company to improve Sims 3. It's not like EA can earn any extra from updates that ship these fixes in Awesomemod, right?? Awesomemod's very existence already means that area of revenue is already lost. Why not just let Pescado make Sims 3 better?

Updates that ship fixes should really not have to be paid for by customers.

That's why we stick with a time limit. Playing with normal lifespans, I actually had to choose which skills to improve. My sims do die of old age before they can master many skills. Often, I would take a high-logic sim off of work permanently, just so she can tutor the next generation well. Having a level 10 (career or logic skill, etc) sim die is a big blow, but a natural one.

In short, playing with normal lifespans, there almost always seems to be never enough time to get everything (that I wanna do) done before my life is over. Much like how busy you might have felt reading that gratuitously long last sentence I just wrote. :) Life's like that. Busy busy busy.

Which was precisely why I asked: why don't we just come up with a specific mod that automatically keeps track of those rules and restrictions for us?

Because. there. are. hardly. any. rules.

As far as klepto's stealing stuff goes, EVERY time you click on the mailbox with the klepto sim selected, you get an option to send back the stolen stuff that is in your family inventory. The stolen stuff comes up in a little list if you do this, you don't have to even remember what it is. Not only is this free, but your sim gets a buff from doing it.

If you have sims in the criminal track who bring home decor items, put the items in a secret attic storeroom or something.

I don't know why people are rushing off and getting their sims jobs, anyway. There are so many easier ways of surviving in this game. I gave my founder the "raise 5 children" LTW, her spouse had the "earn royalties writing books" one, my 2nd gen heir rolled "max writing and painting" and his spouse had the "13 perfect fish". If they roll wants for careers, I tend to let my sims get jobs only when they are well on their way to achieving their LTWs. Because they have more skills by then, they get promotions much faster which makes it more worthwhile.

Because we're F's and we want those 32 little Gold Stars for getting all the Career LTW's.  :)

But seriously, it is true that the game was much easier if the Founder (and hopefully spouse) has a stay at home "NYAH NYAH NYAH" LTW to fulfill (for me, it was the Gardening one).  They had enough money to fulfill all their needs on the home-lot plus pay for a 100k home before the first sproglette hit teen.

Okay, now you are triple-posting. I take back what I said.

STOP IT. Use the "Insert Quote" button. Double-and-triple posting is frowned upon on this forum. And before you get smart, quadruple-posting is just double-posting doubly.

Here is the fucking FAQ (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7437.0.html). Read it. Abide by it. The only reason no one else has jumped down your throat is because the hardcore ones here think the Legacy Challenge is for 12s.

This has been my experience, yes, and it doesn't restrict you at all from getting all 33 (note: there are actually 33 LTW, not 32).

Of the Tests, founder had the "raise five sprogs" want. She had eleven (four boys, seven girls). Before I moved five out, one of them, Lela had rolled the want for a perfect aquarium in early childhood. I was able to get her to that LTW a couple of days before she became an adult. At that point, I moved her out with four of her siblings who had rolled nothing but career wants. It was important to me that they had eleven kids, as these are a remake of my TS2 Tests, who had eleven kids with elixir. Now there are six other kids in the house. The eldest is getting close to her LTW of topping the Medical career, at which point she'll be shipped off, and one half of the many sets of twins is also getting close to the Art/Music one. Her fellow twin shouldn't take too terribly long with Jack of All Trades. Unfortunately, I have a big age gap between them and the three youngest (a set of boy twins, Jay and Walter, and a singleton girl named Jana who will be heir). The founder's spouse did Culinary. In the first and second generations, I should have ten LTW taken care of (Chuck, Saish, Lela, Katie, Emma, Hadley, Jay, Walter, Jana, and unknown spouse).

I think it's more of a completionist thing than an F thing. I'm one of those who will play a game over and over to get all the medals, or one of every object in a MMORPG.

Alright, I think I need to get this straight once and for all. The FAQ says:

"If you want to quote multiple people, you can use the "insert quote" function"

Ok, got it.

If we're responding to 2 different persons, we would expect 2 different replies, right? Bundling responses to multiple persons would certainly make it difficult for the multiple addressees to see which parts are addressed to them.

Socially speaking, I would rather people respond to my posts in a single response post dedicated to feedback to me. Would be tough finding replies to my posts within a bundle. On other forums, it's either a ban for bundling replies like that (because it's socially rude), or we at least risk our addressees not finding relevant feedback.

Personally, I like the space savings.

Yeah, I can understand that. A perfectionist thing too, maybe. If I married a rich real person, and have more time, maybe I can still stick to my obssession with completing games. :P

I make do by trying for quick and intense challenges. I'm thinking how I can do this legacy challenge (or any challenge at all) within a short time.

I did create a simple short challenge by modding the GameplayData.package, if anyone is interested. Certainly removes all (or at least most) book-keeping required to keep score.

Or if any challenge designers are interested in doing away with book-keeping, we can work together.

What are "12s"? 12 year-olds and younger?

EDIT: No. 12-18. Thanks FAQ.

If challenges actually come with consistently and easily/automatically enforced rules, they might appeal to a much wider audience?

EDIT: Please do consider moving the FAQ to a more global location. It's currently nested at least 2 levels deep inside the "The Sims 2" forum.

Nope. Multiple replies per post are preferred. You can see your name at the top of the quote. See, here's another:


See?

What forums do you frequent? I've never been on one which favours double posting. Bundling responses doesn't make it any harder for people to read feedback and replies, as long as they're not complete idiots. We all manage it, and so do all the other forums I've ever been on. Also, you clearly need to go back to the drawing board and LURK MOAR if you think MATY is going to avoid something because it's 'socially rude'.

Zazazu politely told you to stop double posting and yet you proceeded to triple post straight away. You are swiftly plummeting from noob status to tard status. Congratulations. It's not as if MATY's rules on double posting are particularly difficult to comprehend. Just stop it.

My third generation have now reached teenagers and my second generation heir has finally fulfilled her lifetime wish. Her husband's lifetime wish is golddigger so I was planning to kill her to fulfill his wish and then banish him from the household, but she won't die. I had her tinker with the TV at low handiness skill; once it just increased her skill and the second time it caught on fire. She won't die by fire because she keeps putting it out as she has the brave trait.

The dishwasher broke and I had her fix it but it only increased the skill and now she's at level 5. I don't want to drown her because it'll take too long and I'd rather it be more accidental. Should I just keep getting a technophobe to break things until she croaks? He's already an elder and I don't have much time until he dies.

I'd suggest having her repair something in a puddle of water, that seemed to make my sim get electrocuted easier.

Subscribe to mailing lists like Qt-interest@trolltech.com .

Try dispensing with social niceties as simple as a "Hi everybody". Let me know how long you lasted. :)

Like I said. I personally prefer the space savings brought about by the MATY policies.

Things are tighter and more information-dense in other forums or lists, esp for hardcore coders like Linux lists.

But yes, we all have to learn different rules for different forums or communities. When in Rome... it's good to learn Roman (or Latin?).

When in Rome it's good to learn Italian.

Actually, I am subscribed to that list, and while I admit that I don't read it religiously (it's way to high volume for that), people seem perfectly happy to dispense with salutations and the like, and while they are reasonably polite and helpful, they aren't overly so.  Every time I've asked for help, I've just posted "Hey, I can't figure this out, does anyone else know how it works?" with no salutations or any extraneous politenesses, and everyone has been perfectly reasonable to me.

Also, double-posting doesn't really mean a whole lot in the context of an email list, so I'm not sure how that's relevant.

On hardcore technical lists, we don't even say "Hey". I got lambasted for omitting things like that. And yes, for bundling posts as well.

I even received a reprimand for top-posting. Usually, top-posting is required on other lists because people just wanna read the latest info, not the most recent history.

I'm with you on this.  My Legacy family has over 1M simoleans in the bank.  The house has enough of what they need.  The money trees net $20k a day, so I've stopped planting more.  They don't NEED a job and the jobs take too much of their day away that they can be fulfilling their LTW.  Unless sims have a LTW that is job related, they aren't going to work any more.

I haven't found drowning to take very long at all. Sims seem to only be able to swim for about 45 minutes before they drown. In fact, the drowning timer starts the moment they get in the pool. I haven't actually DROWNED them this way, since I wasn't trying to do so, but that was the timer. It USED to take awhile, unless you waited for their energy to already be low, but now it seems to work rather quickly regardless of energy.

Hi there,

I was looking for something about the life duration ... without success.
So what, is it up to me/you/everyone ?  ;)

I think that the normal life duration (90 days) should be an obligation otherwise I'm sure that some dummies will say "I pick epic, Legacy's too long, blablabla, I'm rich after 1 generation, blablabla, boring"  :-\
Do you agree ?

From the rules:

Ah, yes, I see why it would work. This forum software, however, resets the "new" icon whenever you edit your post, so it's handy and doesn't need to double post. In fact, it's even better: the edited post will not be bumped up in the list, but it wil show the new icon anyway, so it's easier to understand what's going on at first sight.

Thanks, after double checking here, I got the idea to fool around on the official forum ^^
There is some other modification ^^

All right, I'll bite. I've lurk MATY, Sims3, etc and haven't seen this mentioned. I've searched but haven't found. Which one am I missing?

I have some questions on a part of the rules that isn't clearly defined. I didn't notice it until my current generation where I have the heir's brother living in the house and his wife just gave birth.

1. Would the offspring of spares count for points?
2. Would the mate of a spare count for points as the rule says mates count as soon as they bring in the next generation? (This is generation 4 it just isn't from the heir).

I've seen differing views so I'm just asking for clarity.

From my understanding of the rules, offspring and mates of spares do NOT count for points.
Sims must be directly related to the founder through birth or adoption, though adopted Sims cannot be heirs, to be eligible for points. The one and only exception to this is the spouse of the heir, and he/she only counts if he/she produces the next generation.

So, hypothetical situation:
Sim A is heir and married to spouse Sim B. Sim A has a child with Sim C, unrelated to legacy family and living off-lot. If the child of Sim A and Sim C is the heir, does Sim B count for points?
I think he/she does, assuming he/she also produced a child with the heir. Right?
That's the only way it would be "fair", i.e. you wouldn't be sacrificing possible points for better genetics.

No idea, since I don't know your list. This is mine:
Astronaut
Celebrated Five-Star Chef
CEO of a Mega-Corporation
Chess Legend
Creature-Robot Cross Breeder
Culinary Librarian
Emperor of Evil
Forensic Specialist: Dynamic DNA Profiler
Gold Digger
Golden Tongue, Golden Fingers
Heartbreaker
Hit Movie Composer
Illustrious Author
International Super Spy
Jack of All Trades
Leader of the Free World
Living in the Lap of Luxury
Master Thief
Master of the Arts
Perfect Garden
Perfect Mind, Perfect Body
Perfect Private Aquarium
Professional Author
Renaissance Sim
Rock Star
Star News Anchor
Super Popular
Superstar Athlete
Surrounded by Family
Swimming in Cash
Star News Anchor
Tinkerer
World Renowned Surgeon

Maybe a misprint on your end, Star News Anchor twice.  Is there another one?

I just counted them up from the Prima Guide .pdf and there are, in fact, 32. Of course, that means fuck-all; it is Prima.

Anyway, here is my list. It's nearly the same as Zazazu's, if we don't include the second instance of Star News Anchor.

There are 15 career-related lifetime wishes:
- Athletics (Superstar Athlete)
- Business (CEO of a Mega-Corporation)
- Criminal - Evil (Emperor of Evil)
- Criminal - Thief (Master Thief)
- Culinary (Celebrated Five-Star Chef)
- Journalism (Sims News Anchor)
- Law Enforcement - Forensics (Dynamic DNA Profiler)
- Law Enforcement - Special Agent (International Super Spy)
- Medicine (World-Renowned Surgeon)
- Military (Astronaut)
- Music - Rock (Rock Star)
- Music - Symphonic (Hit Movie Composer)
- Politics (Leader of the Free World)
- Science (Creature-Robot Cross Breeder)

- Jack of All Trades (Reach Level 5 in 4 Different Careers)


There are 11 lifetime wishes based on skills:
- Illustrious Author (Writing and Painting)
- Perfect Mind, Perfect Body (Athletic and Logic)
- Master of the Arts (Guitar and Painting)
- The Tinkerer (Logic and Handiness)
- Golden Tongue, Golden Fingers (Guitar and Charisma)

- The Perfect Garden (Grow Perfect Plants of 8 Species)*
- Professional Author (Make $4,000 a Week in Royalties)*
- The Culinary Librarian (Know Every Recipe)
- Become a Grand Master in Chess (Reach Chess Legend and Have Logic 10)
- Renaissance Sim (Reach Level 10 in 3 Skills)
- Presenting the Perfect Private Aquarium (Have 13 Different Species of Perfect Fish in Fishbowls)*


There are 4 lifetime wishes based off of relationships with other sims:
- Super Popular (Have 20 Friends)*
- Gold Digger (See Ghost of Wealthy Spouse)
- Surrounded by Family (Raise 5 Children from Baby to Teenager)*
- Heartbreaker (Be the Girlfriend/Boyfriend of 10 Sims)*


There are 2 wealth-related lifetime wishes that I didn't have any place for elsewhere:
- Swimming in Cash (Have $200,000 in Family Funds)*
- Living in the Lap of Luxury (Have Household Net Worth of $200,000)




Wishes marked with * have variables which supposedly change. I included the variables that I have experienced through playing, but my memory isn't always perfect.
tl;dr: YMMV.


If you add all of those up, it's 32. I've looked around a number of sites, including this one, and I have no idea what the mysterious 33rd lifetime wish is.
In conclusion, there are probably only 32.

The fishing one could probably be counted as a "skill"-related LTW, couldn't it?  I think your success in it is almost invariably tied to your level of fishing skill (but perhaps there are the lucky few who can catch X amount of perfect fish without getting a single fishing skill point).  In my game, the number was 13, not 8, so it's definitely a variable if that's the number you had.

This would leave the other two to be counted as financial/wealth LTWs.

For some reason I had forgotten completely that there was a Fishing skill in the game. My Sims never fish.

I've edited my list to reflect your changes. I'm not entirely sure I ever saw 8 for the fishbowl one. I think I had that confused with 8 plants. I try to ignore that fishbowl one; it just seems unbelievably tedious.
You're probably right. I've changed it to 13, at least for now.

I've found it not to be tedious if you have a few generations of fishers.  When one of my sims finally rolled that one, we already had perfect fish in inventory from previous generations and they were able to get that one rather quickly.  If I remember correctly, the sim didn't have to catch the perfect fish himself.  I just gave them to him and he put them in the bowls.  Then we sold the bowls and used the fish for fertilizer.  :D

I thought the perfect fish would be tedious as well, but in a family of eight (the first gen rolled the 5 kids wish), there was enough money for my fishing sim not to have to work.  So he just fished all day and night, stopping for food and sleep and hygiene needs, but he skilled up to the top fairly quickly.  The nearer you are to the top, the easier it seems to be to catch perfect fish.

In addition, having a perfect piece of bait for a fish seemed to always produce a perfect fish when it was caught, although this is not a necessity.  My sim fulfilled this LTW a few days ago, but still only knows about four of the baits for all of the fish in the game.

I agree my sim teen has this LTW and she's only at fishing level 4 but with the outstanding fruit in the family garden she's already catching outstanding fish. Point being, just have a perfect garden and this can be completed before young adulthood.

No. Apparently, when I was messing around with the spreadsheet, I not only duplicated rows, but I failed at alphabetizing. That was during a bad insomnia streak. I'm really, truly, not usually that stupid.

And here we all were hoping you had found a hidden one...like the grilled cheese aspiration in Sims 2.

Thanks, that's the best laugh I've had all week. I'll still rely on your posts for information - you have some very well-written and easy to understand posts about gameplay that have made my learning this much easier. I played Sims 1 without any expansion packs for about a month, never touched Sims 2. This is all new to me.

Eh. It appears that Pinstar doesn't care to update the rules in here? Or is it that only BBSers are allowed to e.g. sell what they steal? :P

You know what's annoying? When you have an elder who has somehow reached 105 days of age, is about 1k LTA away from 200k, yet dies holding onto the "Have 5 grandkids" wish when his one son's spouse is incubating number five and less than 24 hours from labor.

Anyone try using Loner as a legacy trait? Should be interesting.

My current legacy heir rolled the loner trait. The most effect its had is that she's gotten a +15 or s boost when alone and a -15 or so when she's in a crowd. I plan for her to have maybe 6 or more children since her LTW can be fulfilled when she's old, so it'll be interesting to see how it works out.