Loosing overview

[TychoH]

How do you guys keep overview and interest in lager 'hoods?

I lost my overview or interest (don't know which one) every time the 'hood gets bigger than 15/20 Sims... it's really irritating me, because I just want to play with all that Sims and I just don't want to play with so many (for me it is many :P ) Sims. Yes, both feelings at the same time.
I like to make a big family with a lot of kids, but when they are grown up I loose overview. So I start a new 'hood twice a month, I think :(

Anyone tips or help for me?

[lazzybum]

Well, I'm on my 3rd generation now that consists of 16 sims. I still have their parents, so once they go out and get married and have children, its going to double to say the least. I'll also have to play some parents as I don't plan to have them live with their adult kids for EVERY family. So right now it's already feeling like its slow to reach the next generation.

I think the biggest thing you can try is control how many kids families have. I use to always have 4-6 children each family years ago, but I also felt overwhelmed and lost interest in hoods more often. For my hood now, when I felt the total for the town's kids were high (over 10), then I started to just have 1 kid for each family (unless they get twins and up).

I love the genetics in the game and I thought popping out babies like crazy per family was ideal. But having families with 1-3 children now isn't too bad. At least I can go further into the generations and watch genetics with lots of genetic background within the parents is actually funner to see for me.

[katya_stevens]

If you've got so many sims that you lose track of where you're meant to be, either keep notes on household schedules (Galvan family lives at 122 Water Rapids Lane; Martin family lives at 773 Main Street; Drummond Family lives at Main Street Trailer Homes; Hardy family lives 12 Green Lane) and mark off which household you're currently playing. Keep a rotation schedule: 5 or 7 days seem to be the most common.

If you find you get bored of having so many sims: how do you start up your 'hoods? Do you start with a handful of sims, or just one? I tend to use Migamoo's Prosperity Challenge Randomizer (http://www.mangaroo.com/sims2/randomizer_safe.php) to see what families it gives me and what stories I can make from them. A family where the eldest sim is a teen? Orphans where the teen is charged with looking after her siblings. An elder and an adult living together? The elder rolled Pleasure, so a life of doing what he wants right now and not caring for the future means he's had to move in with his daughter. It sometimes takes a couple of rolls to get families I'm interested in, but once that initial idea/story has appeared, I'm invested in them.

I do have households which utterly bore me -- one I have consists of about nine sims child or teen age, and three adults: I just let that household run in the background and plonk down a Flamingo of Contentment (living it up sims, found on the sims 2 graveyard) to ensure their motives don't get too low. While I do let ACR have its way, I do implement population control: the afore-mentioned family may be aiming for ten children, but probably only between 3 and 5 will have families and children of their own, the rest will be live-in aunts/uncles to help their siblings raise the children/keep the house clean/whatever. I also sometimes implement birth control if a household has reached their allowed number of children.

[ForeverCamp]

Um, at last count, I have 312 playable Sims stretched over four generations... I totally get the "OMGSOMANYSIMSWHATDOIDOOOOOOOO?" scenario.

For me, I find that there are always some families that I'm more interested in than others. For example, Callum Gonzaga-Broke and Jessie Hart had a short, secret relationship their freshman year at university. It ended when Jessie wasn't ready to come out to the world about his orientation, and both then went on to marry other people (women). Now, Jessie's unhappy in his marriage and thinking that he might be ready to get back together with Callum, but Callum is occupied with raising his rather large brood and isn't ready to give up on the life he's built with Jennifer.

Callum's brother Korydon, on the other hand, doesn't have a particularly interesting life. He works, she works, their daughter is a well-behaved child.

I keep my households (I go from 56 to 81 at the end of the current rotation) on a strict 7-day rotation. The households that go to university get a little out of sync due to its modified 8-9 day rotation, but it's not big enough to start calculating weird algorithms to fix it. I find that by the end of 7 days in a boring household, I'm ready to move on, and it's long enough to see some progression in the stories I am interested in.

Sometimes the interesting things don't come in until later in life. And let's face it, a real neighbourhood doesn't consist entirely of happy families, but neither does it consist entirely of tragedy-ridden families. We need a mixture to balance the drama.

Also: I second a spreadsheet of some kind to keep track of important information. Mine consists of a "rotation schedule and basic stats" page, along with one page per generation that simply outlines the members of that generation and their ages (with occasional notes, such as "in adoption pool" or "new family" if I had moved in a Maxis family from the Sim Bin for genetic variety).

The rotation schedule and basic stats page pretty outlines the following:
- Rotation order, family name, head of house, address, household size, special notes (mainly used to mark cult families when the Brotherhood was in full swing), and how many of each lifestage in the household.
- Total number of playables, then broken down by life stage.

At the start of each new round, I mark the end of the current round with a line so that I know where to stop and go back to the top. As families get their rotation in, I highlight completed families and update any stats as necessary. New households due to move-outs or household breakups (such as when my polygamist cult community fell apart - each wife was then split into her own household with her children) are added below the "cut-off line". Then at the end of the round, I erase the line, put it at the bottom of the NEW list, and go back to the top to start all over.

It does take a fair amount of RL time to get through an entire round, especially since I don't play every day. I tend to dump all the university students in a round in the same dorm and split them up as I get ideas for their life stories. Sometimes I just marry them off to other playables to reduce the number of households (but it never lasts long - I try to keep a balance between playable-playable marriage and playable-townie/dormie/NPC marriage, to ensure I don't end up with an entire town that's related to each other).

[saskganesh]

I have over 30 households with over 150 sims (I haven't done a census in a while). I keep notes and do short, variable length rotations (usually one day, but can be 6 hours, or 4 days, depending on a whole host of factors.) Whatever is needed to keep in sync.

The key for me is short sessions. This way, interesting houses leave me wanting more while relatively duller houses pass by quickly. Since all these houses influence and relate with each other, I always want to see What Happens Next.

[Babahara]

Just remember your limit and don't have more sims than that in the game simultaneously. Or is it your wish to have more?

I have about 14 families, with about 25 sims overall, and I've got a whole bunch of documents, the most referred to of them is called "game shedule". In that document every household is synchronized, and I make notes of who is going to do what, both the current situation and plans for the future. This way I don't rely on my memory and don't get confused.

Ditto for other stuff, like business. Too many businesses can get written down along with whom they belong to, etc.

I also have a file that is supposed to be queen's plans and that holds a lot of relevant info on future hood plans. Otherwise I'm sure I'd have lost track of everything long ago.

[Amairani]

#offtopic: I really admire players who play households on strict rotation, keep notes and their households are synchronized. In my 'hoods it's common to have a, let's say, Sim mother meeting on community lot a grandchild of one of her long time ago passed away daughter... Or some Sim in Elder stage meeting his/her still adult parent >_<
I like threads and players' advices that encourage me to play with more common sense and be organized; really thankful.

[Lady L.]

You can always delete (safely--not via the sim bin!!) sims you don't find interesting and say they moved away. Just remember to sever their family ties before you do so, or apparently things get messy.

[GEGNER]

The only "big" hood I have is a legacy hood. I only do challenges, and I work this way: I only play the challenge family and every generation I play all other households one week per lot.

It's weird but that's not really the point of, say, a legacy. Example of weirdness: second generation spares are still alive when we're about to have the ninth generation.

*shrug*

[Amairani]

Just like the TS, I get bored once I have too many playables (10 and over households is a sure way to ditch the 'hood...), so I'm thinking now is it safe to set playable Sim(s) as Townie/Downtownie with Sim Blender, taking into account that Sim has family ties to other sims, like he's married/engaged/etc?

[M.M.A.A.]

Well, I'm not sure about how many playables I do have, but I probably have approx. 40 households, and although it can be boring sometimes, I still enjoy playing them, why? Because I don't play them frequently (annoying school stuff). So, when I'm not playing them, I get anxious to do so, because I get tired of all the work.

Also, I will probably need a large number of those families, because, who know? Maybe one of my generation's sizes will get small.

[AlexandraSpears]

I've had second cousins marry each other.

In Riverblossom Hills, Gabe and Alexandra O'Mackey had twins Evan and Ian, and Jason O'Mackey and his wife had twins, Alexander and Gabrielle.

All four of them had children.

*looks up family tree file*

Alexander's daughter Darlene married Evan's son Jason, her second cousin. Darlene's first cousin Kenneth McGreggor (son of Scott and Gabrielle) married their second cousin Cheri, who was Ian's daughter.

So I got it narrowed down a bit, and I'm sure everyone's head is spinning....

Currently in Desiderata Valley, Cyd and Tara (Kat) Roseland's four children have grown up and married, as have John and Roseanne Mole's two daughters.

Cyd and Tara had two girls, then two boys (no twins, even with Super Fertility on for Tara). The two girls each had boy/girl twins, and the two boys each have one daughter. Then there's another family I created, the Llewellyns, mom, dad, and boy.

John Mole's younger daughter Rebecca is married to Cyd and Tara's youngest son, Richard. And on top of that, Richard's nephew Ashley Pitts Jr. is going steady with Rebecca's niece Jeanette Nova.

So now your heads are asplodin'.... :cool: :giggler:

[TychoH]

Thanks everybody for the helpful tips :D

I already keep schedule-notes, family trees, I plan who's gonna marry/have a relationship with who (I marry cousins a lot, in my hood which lasted for 7 generations they were, at generation 6, all looking the same xD since it was all original bloodlines from the first generation. The family ties were more confusing than the ones from AlexandraSpears. The names were also confusing, since I name them after their grandparents).
I think the best thing for me to do is reducing the number of children. And for the 'extra' children I roll a die, if it is a good number they die; or I let them live with their siblings.
So that's what I try in my new 'hood.

[maxon]

This is an interesting thread - good question OP.

For myself, the way I keep everything together is not keep everything together. Each family I have created has a specific story line, starting situation or point to their existence - or any combination of those. What I'm aiming to do is tell that story. Some stories are intertwined with other families. The stories are usually vague enough to allow for changes because what actually happens is often that the story gets derailed by the game itself (or developed if you prefer) when sims decide to go off and do something by themselves but the idea of the family remains. I'm very fond of stories and can keep them all in my head. I do one-day rotations and basically what happens when I open up a lot is think about that family's story and then play out another chapter. Playing one day rotations means the story goes very slowly but then I always find that if I'm really enjoying a story, I don't want it to end. I find that with books anyway. The only book I've ever read in one sitting is The Great Gatsby (and that's a brilliant book) and I've read that more slowly several times since.* Anyway, stories. That's my method. And because they're all different, it stays interesting to play. I do limit the number of children born into a family (two at the moment) because born-in-game sims don't necessarily come with a story of their own. I either make a new one for them or marry them off to someone new who does have a story or link them to their parent's story. For example, both Bill Cox and Erik Olufssohn inherited their parents' business. With Bill, he is the youngest and adopted son of Amelia (and Kennedy Cox). Amelia had a long and very eventful life (she was married to Mercer Vaughan for a start) but she had always been a good cook and worked as a chef. When she retired, peacefully at last with Kennedy, she decided what she really wanted to do was have her own bakery (OFB had just come out). So Cox's Confections was born. Bill was also adopted when Amelia retired and so he grew up with going to the shop as it was being developed. All Amelia's other children left home for marriage or university (she was exceptional and had six all together). Most came back later, including Bill after university, but he was the natural candidate when it came to taking over Cox's Confections when Amelia died. Now Bill is having some fun of his own. Here's Amelia in her bakery:

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/Maxon/AmeliasBakery1.jpg

*now I'm thinking about it, I find I want to read it again.

[DasRabennest]

To me it helped a lot to shorten the rotations. I mean the time played in each family. Like, in the beginning of a hood I play each family for one season, when there's more families to play I'll shorten that time to three days per house and finally I reside to 24 sim hour-rotations. That way the game doesn't become boring and IF it does in one family, it's only a very short time I'm with it. Works for me. ;)