I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, I'm just assuming that a lot of the people who play the Sims 3 have played the Sims 2 also and might have some insight since there doesn't seem to be just a general sims forum.
I'm planning to create an interconnected series of subhoods, which will function as "countries", and play them through a long span of time, starting in the age of agriculture and continuing into the future, building cultures and waging wars and fun shit like that. Basically something like the test of time challenge, but with my own rules. I've been completely torn as to whether to use the sims 2 or 3 for this. On one hand, I have always much preferred the Sims 2, what with the more alive looking sims, a lot of the items, and just the general playful, sandboxy, unpretentious character that it has. But the open world of the sims 3 is a huge aspect in contributing to the immersion of my world (if you ignore the people talking on their cell phones during the Renaissance.) The architecture is also a great improvement over the sims 2, allowing me to build huge castles and great wonders, as well as the ability to build away from the jarring grid structure of the modern concrete roads. It would also be nice to have steeds that aren't just finitely posable statues of disappointment. But just one major drawback to the Sims 3 is the fact that you can't have sub-hoods. If I did this, I would have to have a different save for every one of my countries, constantly switching between what may as well be different dimensions. This would be a pain in the ass for a lot of little reasons, especially since I want to make immigration a factor, and I like looking at family trees and dislike my sims having to undergo a lobotomy every time they travel abroad.
What would you personally do if you were doing a project like this? Would you sacrifice the ease of traveling within the neighborhood for the ability to leave it? Which would you prefer: expressive sims or wide landscapes? Diverse body types and skin colors or diverse gameplay options?

You could use Nraas Traveler to connect your hoods in Sims 3.

I just looked it up. I'm a little bit confused, does it allow your sims to live in vacation destinations or something? I haven't actually played the sims 3 in a long time ha

Traveller basically allows you to add any sim world (custom or EA) to become a travel destination. You can also make any travel destination into the "main hood" so when you play, the rest of the worlds will be the travel destinations. You can also select which worlds your sim sees when he travels, so you don't have to see all the worlds you install.

Only problem with Traveller that I've heard of (or any sub hood for that matter) is that they essentially add a world to your savedata rather than connect your savedata together. Too many worlds-> longer load times and higher chances of corruption.

I personally do separate worlds for each save game, and only move them like they're moving from one city to another.

Kind of wish there was an option to export and import relationship data.

Sub hoods do add to your total file size for each game save, but only one hood loads at a time (either the home world, a vacation world, or uni).

But then you can used the Save Cleaner

Agreed. My years old ongoing main legacy style game is currently carrying 15 worlds; "my" sims live in 5 of them while the rest are the WA worlds, Uni, and some custom vacation worlds where my sims have visited or own vacation homes. The entire save folder is over 2 GB, but each individual nhd file, which is the important metric, stays well under control courtesy of Save Cleaner. Connections are made and preserved by way of the TravelDB file. That one can get huge as well, but can also be Save Cleaned. I'm sure my startup and save times are longer than they would be without all this overhead, but only by like a minute or so.

http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Traveler+FAQ

Does it allow you to switch to a different town so that you can be playing multiple households across different countries? Or can you only play the one you have set as your "hometown"?

You can only have one world active at any given time, but yes you can transition active play between the different homeworlds. It's the equivalent of traveling with no one on board; when you transition from World A to World B and "arrive," you are asked which household you would like to play.

I play the worlds in which "my" sims actually live in rotation so that at the end of a complete cycle, they all more or less age and progress evenly. They can also travel between the worlds for visits and pull other sims in to visit them. Family reunions are a blast, cousins whose households I've moved to other worlds get to bond with each other, grown siblings get to catch up, etc.

The vacation worlds where I have no households to play actively do tend to get neglected a bit, so if it's one where my sims haven't visited for a very long time I have to decide what, if anything, to do with the natives to make things appear more realistic.

That sounds good. The sims 3 is looking like the better choice at the moment. The game will have to be modded heavily either way, but the Sims 3 much more so. Not the least of issues will be replacing those pudding faces. Bleh.
Do you know of a way to remove the cell phone implanted in each sim's brain? At least replace it with like, semaphore flags or something?

*Pops in* You can use default dirt roads in sims 2 *pops back to sims 2 board*

This I am afraid I don't know how to do. It's something about simbiology, I think they regard modern cell phones as crucial as we would an internal organ or something.

That would be an option, but then I might want different kinds of roads for different places. I might want a dirt road for a more agricultural, less developed country and maybe a cobblestone road for somewhere else. And maybe I'd want a sand road instead of a dirt road for a different terrain.

hahaha sort of ruins the vibe when your cell goes off during a tourney. You would be crucified at a ren faire. I hold my sims to the same standard.

It's kind of a shame that I'm not getting as many responses here as I might in the sims 2 discussions. People on modthesims seem to prefer the Sims 2, if you compare the post counts of the different forums. Not that I don't think the sims 2 isn't a far superior game overall, despite their prudent decision to avoid trying to make it play strictly like a "game". I feel like there are a lot of things about the sims series that the sims 3 team just never understood.

There are some no autonomous phone mods, for example this one.
You could try if it's enough to stop all phone actions for sims.

How effective is it? Will it stop phone calls all together?
Also, what should I do about randomly generated townies? They'll probably spawn with modern clothing along with their usual hideousness. Can I change the way they look? Can I change their names? What about NPCs?
Sorry for all the questions ha

If you are familiar with using the tools from sims 2, this may be a breeze for you. Blacklisting helps you eliminate unwanted clothing from inactives: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Blackli...asy+CASP+Editor

I don't know. I don't have a need to use this in game so I don't use this mod. I just googled for it when you asked for something like this. A lot of what you are looking for, you will have to just try and see how it works in game.

You should probably stalk more players, who do play a specific time period, like sims 3 medieval who plays a lot of old time periods. And she's not the only one who plays like this.

Thanks for the link! I'll have to look into her.

Oh, WCIF a mod that makes it so that taxis don't appear into existence whenever someone wants to travel a long distance?

NRaas GoHere has a setting that disallows routing by cars entirely. Unfortunately I think that would also preclude bicycles, but would that be of any use? Another approach would be to play in a custom world that has no roads.

Is it possible to create a world with no roads, and add roads later on?

Well..only if you decide to further edit this world in CAW...and then add some maybe? Because roads aren't INGAME to use.

Yes, that's what I meant. I was just wondering if you could edit your world while there were sims living in it, without having to create a whole other save or something.