As many who read my previous threads, I LOVE playing large hood's where there are NO townies (empty template + notownieregen) and where everyone is connected to each other in some way (the only exceptions are NPC's and those townies that generates in a minimal amounts, regardless whether you use townie/npc reducing mods), and as there are simmers who can't handle more than lets say 10 households at the time, I can't handle to ONLY play that amount as I usually add them altogether rather than slowly. Usually, I start a number of approximately 100 playables as my founders but rarely add any more sims than these. So, this is something that I often debate when playing, whether to play a large family by merging smaller once together to reduce the amount of households playing in total OR play them separately but having to play at the least the double amount of households.

In my previous versions of my hood, I usually started with 50 couples/households, but recently started to randomize all of them and as my hoods tends to be medieval, they are randomized based on their hierarchy/feudalism structure, where an example randomized household could be lets say a Lord (duke) with two knight siblings serving them, along with a few relatives with randomized characteristics (gender, aspiration, gender preference, personality etc). Anyways, that's just an example family I randomized, but sometimes, I end up with a full 8 sim household with 3-4 families combined, which is why I keep debating regarding many households or larger families.

With fewer households, it goes relatively quickly to play them through, but with unlimited sims hacks, it can get easily overwhelming or sometimes feel like you don't have time to play all of them. While, playing all of these families separately, you have more time to play through all of the sims lifes, but if you are like me, who like to use spreedsheets and stats tracking it takes alot longer to get through them regardless of how many sims there is in that household.

and to me personally, a large hood is a must, so I don't want to reduce amount of sims playing either. I used to be that kind of simmers who played over 60 households, but after I discovered the Warwickshire Challenge, which require a lot of sim tracking and strategies, but also a larger hood, going through these many sims can get overwhelming. At the SAME TIME, I am a bit hesitated to play a 10+ family as well, so I'm a bit lost in this area of the game. SURE, there is Aging Off cheat, longer lifespans, etc but then those things doesn't really make it go much faster if your actual main purpose was to reduce an unnecessary amount of households but playing many sims, would it? (My own hoods used a custom lifespan that's just a TAD shorter than Vanilla/Maxi, with shorter child/teen stage, college and pregnancy but much longer adult stage).

I have an old neighborhood with over 300 Sims in it, and I find it difficult to really focus attention on them all because households tend to have small number of Sims living there and they all live in separate houses. This causes me to forget about them and focus usually on bigger households. Pro of this is I am able to have a varied population, making community lots more interesting, but negative is I forget about certain Sims existing.

I find for me that doing a smaller number of bigger households and having most of them living in apartments together helps me remember them more and make me want to play them. It also allows for more space for community lots.

I'd probably take the first option play stye and it's what I have done for years in the same neighborhood. The pros are that you get a good genetic diversity and the households can freely intermix for a lot of generations before they hit a far-reaching cousin as a romantic interest. While I can admit I have the same issue as HarVee where if a single sim is left alone there is a risk of forgetting them or being bored by them, the hood is so old that I have become attached to the sims and want to see them through till the end since I was there since they were born.

The solution to this one sim home is to start consolidating them, either in a house lot or into an apartment building.

For example, I have two elder women who were sister-in-laws (married brothers) and now are widows and empty-nesters. Instead of owning two different houses they may as well just become housemates and pull in some extended family get togethers since their children are all cousins.

I rarely do households with six or more sims, because it can get tiresome spacing through all their wants and keeping track. On days I want to feel challenged I would crack open a larger household.

One of the households I randomized consist of 8 sims
A Military "Lord" with his spouse, sister-in-law, a Knight couple (guards) and 3 farmer servants (one couple + 1 gay sibling). and this one of these families I consider splitting up in 2 or 3 families as the extra roommates are they are not blood-related. But hesitate, as I like the idea of playing a Rich family with servants living with them rather than summoning them all the time.

Though this family is 8 sims and NONE of them has kids yet because I rarely add CAS kids as founders, and they are technically Y.A (added extra days to the adult stage), so I fear it would end up being too big when the baby boom is going on. It's through ACR so I don't decide the Number they will have, just when they Try For Baby (which is set on default 30% on any sim that are younger than half of the adult stage. For older couples, its 10%. Used to set it on 50-100% but they get pregnant too easily that way. ).

A household with 8 sims takes a long time to play so I tend to limit the number of large households. I prefer families of about 3 or 4. I don't think I've ever had more than 75 or so households spread over two adjoining neighbourhoods. A rotation takes a long time even with those (I play them all). In contrast my medieval hood is still quite small with about 10 active households. It's quick to load and quick to play which is great for story developments.

I tend to play lots of households rather than really huge families. I have a few families that are really large. One founder couple had four children and another founder couple had six! The orphanage is busy too. One fatherly caregiver, the caregiver's new husband, 3 teens sims, and a YA that couldn't get into college. PLUS, the caregiver is about to have his change of life baby. The large households are fun, but sometimes it's a trial keeping up with everyone and making sure they don't accidentally kill themselves. Still, I'm only on the first generation of both of my main hoods (which is amazing when I think back on it.).

As for the many households, I always keep my households (even the ones in the university hood) in rotation! However, this gives me the chance to decide what type of household I'm up to playing. There are days I'm not in the mood to play with a hoard of children, so I'll play my single sim who's looking to advance his career rather than marry and multiply way too much.

AliaD85. In the past, before I played with Warwickshire rules (which add a childbirth and miscarriages scenarios based on the sim's health). My founders used to have TEN kids EACH. Nowadays, IF they are lucky, they have four. In my first version (as I reboot the same one but altering it), I had almost 150 households ranging between 3 to 10 sims each. The hood is set in an era where birth control didn't exist except in witch crafts, so they can't plan them.

Limited every family to 3-4 sims each would be impossible to me, particularly when they have over 3 kids and the grandpa's and siblings alive living with them, which why I prefer larger hoods. With the aging/pregnancy mods I am using and if I didn't "kick out" the elders and siblings, many of my sim families has 4-5 Generations in same house.

----"Fortunetly", the gramps don't usually live that long in these medieval hoods I am playing.... otherwise, my hood would be exploded with empty nesters.

AliaD85. In the past, before I played with Warwickshire rules (which add a childbirth and miscarriages scenarios based on the sim's health). My founders used to have TEN kids EACH. Nowadays, IF they are lucky, they have four. In my first version (as I reboot the same one but altering it), I had almost 150 households ranging between 3 to 10 sims each. The hood is set in an era where birth control didn't exist except in witch crafts, so they can't plan them.

Limited every family to 3-4 sims each would be impossible to me, particularly when they have over 3 kids and the grandpa's and siblings alive living with them, which why I prefer larger hoods. With the aging/pregnancy mods I am using and if I didn't "kick out" the elders and siblings, many of my sim families would 4-5 Generations in same house.

----"Fortunetly", the gramps don't usually live that long in these medieval hoods I am playing.... otherwise, my hood would be exploded with empty nesters.

Well.... what's the point having that many sims as playables, if you don't play them, then?
This is to everyone, not PPB, who play with "free-roamers". Personally, that wouldn't be no difference than playing with townies IMHO, and if you play with townies, it probably easier to play with LESS sims.

What I meant with that they are similare to Townies is that they never age or keep in sync which can happen if you forget them existing or "can't get bothered with".

One reason I only use Sims I actually playing - keepin them age synced to the rest of the Sims and growing their own families coz I like that sort of realistic touch. :-P Tryied to convert "boring" playables before buT find it gets annoying when their memories are refreshed and when using townie hacks, every Sim get four memories of same kind (won't work in my game).

But not everyone is bothered when these Sims woohoo with the ancestors of their ex, so to each of their own.

You can always load up their house and age them up.

I meant unplayed playables. I use to do that in my legacy, not play all of the family, just cheat some jobs, random skills and age them up when needed. I even gave some children by accelerated pregnancy.

I know the townie up age up trick but when I did play them, I liked that ALL of them would age up, not just friends.

While I know you can age up the unplayed playables but there are simmers who let their idles forever coz they don't they don't "have to". It's up to them of course.

But as for myself I've a large hood coz I don't want to bothered by it,It's too much fuzz for me. In TS2 I like the ability to be able control these stuff, but keep debating back and forth on how to strategy lay it up as my game style has changed since I got inspired by different challenges. (Back to topic ) The household vs families debate are so subjective and just curious on how people think of it coz in the first post I was talking about families you actually play, not skipping or killing.

PlatinumPlumbob:
Yeah. Not sure mine is chronological though. I've just set the "days left" as specific years. My adults start at "39 days left to elder" as 25 years olds and turns elder 64/65. But add a middle age phrase where things like pregnancy and added wrinkles is altered to simulate aging aND play each days as years. There are times where I speed fast forward such as wheN nothing would typically happen (a new couple raising their first kids usually don't have much time partying if the time duration is 24h per year) Pregnancy is 36 hour to simulate pregnancy spacing and college use 24h per 6 month (adding/subtracting das to keep them synched if playing them in main hood).

Having a lot of families as opposed to not: I like an equal balance because it's easier to get a feel for the neighborhood-if you have a lot of families, it becomes disconnected and having a lot of large families becomes statistically a nightmare for playing a neighborhood with any kind of 'backstory'.

It's called integration, and it works best when you have good handle on how the neighborhood developed and why. Too many pixels to control will dilute the backstory, and make it look like one big mess-in my opinion.

I feel it becomes a chore when you're grinding through each family every day just to have done it, and it's not fun playing that way.

Terula8: Basically, I asked whether you would squeeze multiply families together to save yourself playing extra households OR to have them live separately but to play the extra households. The examples was just an generic examples of what I was referring to, Be it 10 households or be 100 or anywhere in between, that doesn't matter. (will update the first post).

One reason I asked this question, was because it often suggested that merge multiply families if you don't to go through too many smaller households, like single parents, empty nesters as they easily adds up in a larger hood over time, but personally as I play with Boiling Oil's full of sims, I often hesitate coz if not cheating, it feel such as hassle to get through families with lots of kids, especially ones with multiply couples.

PlatinumPlumbbob:

But IF you actually manage to play the families a few generations and don't micromanage births, how would you deal with that situation IF you don't want to kill them off and IF you don't want to ignore them?

That's my concern actually is REGARDLESS of how many sims you play. Eventually the hood grows and not everyone likes killing or ignoring their sims out of convenience, you know? That can even happen if your sims have 2 kids each and have the entire family living together. Sooner or later, you wont have the mere 3-4 sims starting sims living there.

....Urghhh... It feels like people keep misunderstand the POINT of the question and take it too personal.
---But of course, there are people who might play their one little sims or small amount of sims with aging off and then start a new one. But if that's your play-style, its a bit irrelevant the topic Im trying to ask. I wanted to this thread to be more specific of this specific dilemma.

That's what I meant. I don't think it matter how many or the way you start adding sims, it can become very large in either way. I prefer to start with a large hood simply because there is SO many kind of sims I want to play from the scratch and want to play them all as I don't feel connected with townies and "free-loaders".

When I created the thread, I wasn't asked about the founders you add from the scratch but dilemmas where you *might* up having this sort of situation at some point later on. Those was example of the situation I experienced myself.

So I wondering, What CON and PRO's do you find with these two types of play-styles - Larger Families w. fewer households , versus Many households w. fewer Sims?

In terms of my own preferences I have no real preference one way or another. I am quite happy playing larger families or small families, and if I have an idea for a 'hood which I really want to play I will play however many households that entails! For me the balance between family size and number of households isn't based on my own personal preferences (although if pushed I would admit that I prefer playing small families as I find it easier to really "get to know" each individual sim but I also prefer to have a relatively low number of households in a 'hood so that each rotation doesn't take ages!) but rather on what works best story-wise and also what is possible resources-wise as my families grow and live their lives. I do like to have a mixture of family sizes and structures.

I use ACR and my sims choose for themselves when to try for baby, though they may only woohoo if they both have a want to do so. I do set each sim's ideal family size using ACR, according to a set formula based on personality and primary and secondary aspiration. Some sims have fertility problems (determined using a random number generator). This means that some sims have large families, other have one or two kids or none at all. As I don't use money cheats, have mods to half wages and remove the 20k handout and charge tuition fees for sims who attend college, I do sometimes end up playing large families as nobody can afford to move out. I don't particularly like playing 1-sim households, or households with 6-8+ sims, but if those households make sense story-wise then I will happily play them. I play 'hoods in rotation, using 1-day rotations, so 'hoods tend to feel very connected and most households/families are very much a part of the 'hood so I wouldn't want to not play anyone.

My current 'hood has 17 households, each of which has between 1-10 sims. The number of households and the size of the families fluctuates based on what my sims get up to and whether or not sims can afford to move out when they become adults/graduate from college/start a family/break up with a partner. I started with 8-10 households, I think, and the 'hood is (slowly) growing. By limiting my sims' funds I get some interesting households, too - for example, when Samantha Ottomas caught her husband Peter cheating, Peter had to take out a fairly substantial loan in order to move out of the family home into a rented house (which was necessary as he and Samantha kept fighting and soon became enemies). When Sara Bellum caught Hi Thyme cheating, however, she had nowhere else to go and didn't want to take out a loan to get her own place, so she and Hi still live together and are co-parenting their son, Stitchin Thyme, despite being on really bad terms with each other and basically ignoring each other most of the time.

As far as pros and cons are concerned: for larger families/fewer households I would say that playing the families could be more stressful as they are large and potentially hectic, and it could be difficult to really get to know individual sims and to feel like you're getting to spend proper time with them. Rotations within the 'hood would be quicker as there would be fewer households, and it's likely/possible that there would be some interesting/unusual family dynamics within the different households. I do like the idea of having households with live-in servants, especially in historical 'hoods. For smaller families/more households playing the families may feel more manageable and there would be more opportunity to get to know individual sims, but rotations would take longer and some households may feel boring or slow as there isn't much going on.

Terula8:
Yeah, I know everyone has very subjective opinions how they play, and I actually find opinions more helpful than "you should do this and that" response, but sometimes when you try to start a more specific themed thread, many people often tends to wandering off of the topic to something else OR get offended by the topic because it doesn't relate to them and that's where I feel I got misunderstood sometimes. Particularly when you give examples of your own situations, like example of 50 or 25 households if feels like people was offended by the numbers as it doesn't related to them, but you were just talking about the situation of how you deal with the households part.

On the other hand, I haven't been on forums THAT long so I'm not sure if its even possible to have threads that's more specific and I tends to be more a concrete person who take things -word-by-word, I might overthinking/explaining. Miss understanding is one my biggest fear. Ha ha.

PlatinumPlumbbob: In most of my families, most have an own garden to get their food from- and actually one reason I intrigued by having live in servants who take care of it. A very wealthy family focusing all of their time to prepare food on the table while they should engage in social affairs feels a bit silly....