With planning, what did you do first, houses, cas families etc? (Not the stuff about doing a challenge like the legacy challenge, because I already know about those kind of 'idea').

Im trying to create a neighborhood from scratch, but everytime I do that, I always get bored when *creating* the families.
Like, I start a neighborhood and have all of the families planning out but then after I created one family and moved the lot, exit the game, THEN I got bored with the family already and start over again!
I think this is the 20th time Im starting over with the cas families because Im not happy with it.

What I want to create is a neighborhood based on the social class (like the royal kingdom challenge but with a modern twist, no historical outfits and such, just families with social class) with NO townies (cleaned the hoods and use notownieregen so the hood will be empty). It take quiet alot of time to create the families (creating them in cas and then their biography and relationship), about 2 hours. Its start to drive me nuts to waste that time on something and then redo it again.
Sometimes I dont feel motivated enough to even play the game despite Ive been hooked on since it came out.

I'm focusing now on the neighborhood itself, the houses, community lots and the vacation spots first
then I will move onto the sims.
Maybe your spending too much time in CAS and it is tiring you out. 2 hrs and just one family? At this rate it'll take forever

I created both Little Carping and Polgannon as specific places and I definitely had an idea of what I wanted to achieve before I started but I learned from Rummiley (my failed Medieval setting hood) that too much up front planning is generally a bad idea. I got bored trying to get the build complete and downloads found before I played. I want to play the game as well as create a place, people and situations. Therefore, with Little Carping, the build is as long a term project as the playing out of it. I still tweak its appearance and rearrange things - in fact, I replaced all the neighbourhood maps only about 18 months ago and am still rebuilding Sirencester (the downtown). I find it works best for me. I can have sessions when I'm in a building mood or hood decoration and other sessions where I'm playing out a family's story. One of the strengths of TS2 is that you can edit just about everything even after you create the hood.

Im little bit of a control freak and want the families to be perfect I guess, haha. Outfits, appearance, trait etc....

Before when I created the families without any "plan", I end up messing up the families (especially their relationship because too many families end up being related with each other).

Remember that neighborhoods and towns and castles and cathedrals are built over time. They grow. Incorporate that into your design. Start with a small keep on a lot with room to expand, don't try to begin the game with the perfect castle. When you reach perfection - the project is over. There's nothing driving you to go back to it.

I had to do Widespot in a particular order due to the requirements of publication - I had to be able to go back to well-defined stages any time I realized I had to do a major revision, in order to ensure a clean neighborhood. This could have been a problem, because I am not a builder (as anyone who has looked at the Widespot lots knows!) and want to play character. So I built in stages and played around with character stuff on paper while I did it, and I didn't devote all my simming time to it - I'd accomplish something in Widespot and then go play Drama Acres.

I suggest you take a little time away from the game to doodle around and ask yourself what specifically you want from this neighborhood, what will make it fun for you to play, and how to leave yourself room for growth and the inevitable Better Ideas you will get.And be flexible about how you play it. As Maxon says, build a little, play a little is more fun than a long stretch of building, at the end of which you're completely sick of the place and don't want to play it. Pace yourself.

And have another neighborhood to blow off steam in. One of the premades, or Widespot, or one of Marak93's neighborhoods, where all the building's been done; or a custom place called Chaos Junction or something where you slap down a lot of lot bin houses, move in the Family Bin sims, and play according to whim. Variety is the spice, you know!

Exactly, I love that sense of a place developing over time.

I have a similar problem with my attention span. I have learned to take breaks. If I don't I get fed up and bored. Whenever I start to feel slightly bored or annoyed, I stop playing and do something else.

Well, I want to play a neighborhood where a group of families populate the entire neighborhood without breeding with townies/npc because I dont like playing sims which no relation to the playable sims. I used to have a hobby as story script writer (cartoons) so what I think would be fun is that the sims will have story related to them, where only a small group is the "main characters" that I will focus on.

I prefer have larger set of families, mainly because it help to avoid the issue where you need to them suitable spouses. ( Its little bit tricky having only 5 families or so and then each of them have 6+ kids and then find spouses that are not related, doesnt it? Like marrying your inlaw's relatives. ) Having mods that shortening their lifespan, season and college and then playing them in shorter time periods (1-3 days/household in rotation) does help playing a larger amount of households.

I planned to have about 20 familes (1 royal, 6 nobles, 6 merchants, 7 peasant families) and a couple of extra (small groups of servants, supernatural, relgious, orphanage etc). (Since their ages is almost the half of "regulare" gameplay, playing that many doesnt seems like an issue to me because they will age faster.). Ive already creating the family trees and created a story for about a half (occupation, who they will marry, which order to play them and so on).

Creating and playing a few families at the time is a bit tricky, because the royal family (consist of 6 sons and 1 elder couple) will have relations to many of other families (as I HATE inbreeding or very close breeding).

I might creating the "extra" families first who doesnt have any relationships to the "main characters" first, create a back up and work with the houses (the foundation of it) and back up again.,...and perhaps mod their apperance, clothes and stuff on their lot to speed up creating them in cas....?

Have you taken a look at all my Beginning Hoods, you may find one you like and they can be played your way or follow the families to there now-a-day set up.
http://www.modthesims.info/browse.php?gs=0&u=7749491

May I point out that you can create relationships when a new CAS family enters the hood? Since the game only cares about relationships as far as first cousins, you don't even necessarily have to go in and create the ties in SimPE; just make it a story element that the new guy who breezed into town is the bastard third cousin of the king or whatever, and maybe use the testingcheats to establish a few starting relationships.

I dont create them in SimPE, just their family relationships (elder parents, aunt/uncle and adult children of the elders). What I meant I just have their spouses already planned out on a worksheet, which I will later using the hacked wedding arch and simblender for, not SimPE. :P
Like: Edward (the 5th son of the king), a business man who will marry the noble woman Julia from the Carter family (household 5).

Very general planing on a worksheet on wordpad.

I start from the terrain. I draw it on a piece of paper and I decide where lots go, I name roads and I even divide the city in smaller neighbourhoods (like real cities).
Then I model my city on SimCity4, following my project, and in the game with the cheat 'modifyneighborhoodterrain on'. I also use largely Mootilda's 'Hood Replace'
Families come later to populate the city.
I was never able to finish a project of this kind. Mainly because of my fear to loose the game(CD) XD
Luchily now I have ultimate collection.

My current neighborhood, Evergreen Springs (Aridia terrain from the game)*, has been going on for a year of on/off playing due t being busy with work and school. I made it to be a small little town with a "city district" (using the skyscrapers) surrounded by small, rural neighborhoods. I have the town divided into a few different sections such as:

Farmer Meadows (Section of the town by the farmlands, obviously)
Central City (Includes area around the shopping center)
The Gothic Corner (The loop that includes the cemetery)

Since I've been getting back into the neighborhood, I've been adding in more lots and houses. I'm still in the process of building quite a few homes as well as adding in new families. Creating a neighborhood from scratch takes time. What I do is get in moods for building, decorating, or playing/creating families, and that'll dictate what'll get done in that session. If you don't want to get bored, maybe you can get the basics of the neighborhood set up, and than play some families until you think of adding in new lots/decor.

*May upload some pics of the current look of my 'hood later on.

With my current medieval hood I was feeling like playing quickly so I downloaded most of the buildings full of cc. I tried about 3 different castles first and chose one that wasn't too large but had enough of what i was after then made my King and Queen and played them for a couple of days. I tweaked the castle, getting rid of a separate back tower and turning it into a garden area, changed the left side of the basement into servant quarters and made the basement prison entrance on the right hand side and separated with a wall.

Then I placed who I felt like playing next. It might have been a peasant family and I played them for the full round because they interested me more. A round for me is a season. Any family that I have to struggle with always gives me more satisfaction. After that it might have been the blacksmith. I also hunt down working cc as I go. He has an at home business selling iron objects and he has an anvil robot machine with default robots. This was actually made for me as a Secret Santa type present and it's available on Nixsims. I tried it out once in a test hood with a sim I had given a gold badge to, just to see the robots. because of my slower skilling and crafting badges my blacksmith is still after two rotations making stage one robots. That makes me want to get back to his rotation. Each family has a specific role so playing each one if quite different which helps keep them interesting. The least interesting families would be the two noble families and I will need another peasant family at some point as the children have to have enough in their own class to marry. So think about why you are adding a sim/family and have something unique about them that makes you want to come back to playing them. I also would not create a whole bunch of sims at once as that would bore me. I build when I feel like building and would never set up a whole hood. I have the attention span of a gnat so I also don't mind switching families during a rotation if I feel bored. I just check out on hood view what season the families are in and go back if I see a family I have played wasn't played for the full rotation.

Baker family runs the bakery
Stone mason digs and has the new ore 'work stations' from Plumb Bob Keep
Blacksmith sells iron items and uses the robot anvil bench
Seamstress now runs a community lot clothing business with the aim to change the townies into medieval garb.
The Hunter is now married to the Seamstress and has a rabbit hutch for pelts, chickens he can kill and otherwise runs a butcher shop and fishes
Florist have the new pickable flowers from Affinity sims, sells flowers and uses the flower crafting bench.
Farmers have the new fruit tree crafting stations and sell buckets of fruit each Friday. They also garden and fish.
Monastery have monastery jobs and take care of the vineyard including the stomping the grapes set. They will also in time sell wine.
The Dr has a replacement medieval medical career plus just opened his at home clinic. His wife is making bowls of comfort soup to sell at the clinic. I'm currently looking for other items that they can use or sell.

So my suggestion is don't plan out the whole thing too much. Do it bit by bit but make each family different. Swap from one family to another or to building as the mood strikes.

My witches are my latest two.

@>>Florentzina>> The Most important thing to have within your "self" is Patience. Plan your ideas, know exactly what you want and stick with it, take breaks. ( meaning when you start building )
I have a Custom neighborhood and it took me many months to complete the whole neighborhood ( I did not rush myself, but took my time ) I knew what I wanted and no matter how long it would take me I kept at it, until it all became visible before my eyes and completed.
1. Choose the terrain you want and size ( think about beforehand about how many family you may want, which will bring you back to thinking how many home lots you want. ) that where the size of the custom terrain comes in, to be sure the terrain have enough space on the ground to build all your home lots as well as community centers, etc. Have your list or plan names of your streets, ( for example if you create 4 or 5 home lots and place them on the terrain near each other, then name that street for the group of them. ) I did "all" my building first ( again take your time building and please take breaks and don't be hard on yourself. ) I did not create in Body Shop or download any Sims until last, when the new neighborhood was completed, so all I had to do was add the Sims.

2. Create or downloads Sims last and just add to your finish neighborhood ( take your time, no stress ) start off with one or two family or Sims at a time, just add Sims add each day if like. ( there is a place in the game to create their stories ) That can be done last if like.

Planning each steps take "patience" from building to creating Sims ( and if you make a mistake in building a lot or a Sims it's no big deal just start again ) That one reason why I said add your Sims "last" because while creating the Sims if you don't like how they look you can start over. But not once they are already in the neighborhoods you can't ( never delete a Sims once they have enter a neighborhood. ) the key word is "Patience" and after it is all done you will feel that all the time spend creating your idea neighborhood and Sims was well "Worth It" you will feel very happy.

NOTE: Also take some of the advice from member Peni Griffin she created a neighborhood called "Wide Spot" with Sims already in it, and members seem to love it that neighborhood is here on MTS.

Everyone to their own, but I would be bored in a minute if I did that.

Personally I work in stages when it comes to building a new hood.
In Melodia the first hood I built to anything near completion was built in stages. It was a medieval kingdom challenge hood and I decided I would start with 1 royal family, 2 noble families, 2 merchant families and 4 peasant families. To start I made the royal family. Then I built them a very basic castle. I didn't worry about making it pretty or landscaping the lot I just built the shell of a castle and moved them in. I played them for a day and then went back to CAS to create a noble family. Built a basic manor. Played for a day. I then repeated this for all of the families until I built all the sims I needed to start with. I began making the houses pretty room by room. My royal family moved twice before I found a castle I liked and didn't lag. I really disliked one peasant house so I had it 'burnt down' and built them a new lot. When it came to marriages my peasants had plenty of peasants and younger merchant children to marry. When the second generation grew into adults I placed a few new peasant households to keep the sims having plenty of marriage prospects. With my merchants I created CAS sims to marry in (children of trade partners, things like that) and eventually had two more merchant families settle in Melodia. With the Nobles I had one child of each family marry a foreign noble to keep them from marrying too close relatives. I started small and was still building the hood up when I lost it to corruption.

My tot hood started from 5 families. I have yet to marry in a CAS sim and it is a little tricky to find spouses at the moment but it will pass. You don't need to start big to get anywhere.

If I were you I would start with a small number of families, create the family, build them a basic house (you can decorate later) play them for awhile and then create a new family. It might be 4 seasons before you get to your ideal number of families but you will get there eventually.

Often I put in a few lots, and of course a park and a legacy-style lot. I also make a Uni hood with the necessities and a park for fishing. Uni hoods with places for beach lots are hella fun because with beach lots you can find pretty things in the sand to wear or sell, and you can earn body points by swimming, which even lazy sims won't balk at doing.

It can be easy to get bored. Sometimes you just have to push yourself to play through the boring parts because once you get to a certain point, the hood will be much more lively and interesting. What I find helps, is to think of each family as very different. Sure they may live in the same hood, but maybe one family is going to be full of discord while another will get along just wonderfully. One will struggle with money, while the other spends too much money on frivolous things that don't last very long. Creativity is a must to make this game (and most other games) fun in the long run.

I think I will creating the foundation of the neighborhood and building first and then do a back up, since Ive already planned out most of the families "stories" already. (so its little bit hard to start with 5 families and go from there. My main family, the royals, has 6 male adults who going to have at several wives using the hacking wedding arch and their spouses is already planned If Im created the rich families first, they would have to wait a *long* time before they can find their spouses. Ive been trying to scrap this idea several times, but everytime I start something new, I end up missing the orginal idea. xD).

because what you said is true, I would just have to start over the families by reloading the finished neighbood (and I dont think I would get bored with their houses, because when creating a CAS, I often "accidently" messing it up, by playing getting "new ideas" that Im not happy with...and thats the main victim in my gameplay and want to start over again. XD)

Edit: Yes, I know about Wide Spot! Ive been trying playing it before actually. But I find it difficult to play other's stories because I dont know the characters well. Same with the maxi made hoods. I stop playing them them because for some reason, I want the families to have a "perfect" life (not the typical perfect kind, but a perfect-to-me storyline). Im too much into stories I guess...

Edit 2: Oh, Im actually deleting the entire neighboor and either create a new hood or reload a back up. I know about the corruptions that may happen by deleting the families in the sim bin or moving the family with a lot in the lot bin (learned the hard way... -_-).

Oh, I must thank everyone who taking part of this thread, because it actully made me more motivated.
I'm definitly going to build the neighboor and building first, one session at the time and only build the "basics" on the lots (mostly the room and simple furnitures so I can reconize what they will be when adding the families and waiting with decorating for last,) and then create a back up, that I re-load if I get bored with the characters again.

I found a camera mod (thanks to a user on WCIF) that allowed me to take a snapshot on the entire hood, that Im currently drafting the 'hood:
(the attached pic: R: royality, N: Nobles, CL = Community Lots, M = Merchants, R = Church/Relgious sims, SN = Supernaturals, P = Peasants, B = Brothels and M/C = Mistress/Concubines to the rich sims. )
Now, I just have to figure out what building and what I should name everything before starting crafting the lots to the hood's.

Yes definitely bit by bit. If I want to plan out relationships in advance then I use a spreadsheet, then I decide which of the sims who are related will be in CAS together. If there are common relations spread over several 8-sim households, I usually make the "master" parents in bodyshop first so they are accessible as templates to pull into CAS temporarily to make children from.

When I'm setting up a new hood I have other hoods to play at the same time so if I want to create, I go and create. If I want to jump in and play, I play a different hood.

With some hoods I've started with one family and one lot and built up from there, but that's not the only way to do it.

yeah, that is what Ive done with the social class based hood Im planning - created a spreadsheat that summarize the "essential" stuff, I want to add to each family (...such as their aspiration, general appearance and traits, who they are going to marry, their occupation and some major events (one of the royal son will have several lover. the lover who wont get married to him will revenge him in the future, creating a huge mess for both families XD.).
but no "excessive" planning because I dont plan the actual gameplay, just the overview of the families.

Many of the families are "breeders" (which is what I prefer instead random cas or that "lost cousin") with mainly female spouses that will married to the main families to create a more versatile family trees for the next generation. Excluding the royal family, all of the other social classes has "only" 3 major families.Also there is a little idea that I had for month and the reason I prefer to start with several families rather than 1-5 is because when the founders dies of old age, there is going to be an epedemics that will kill 50% of the population (but sparing pregnants and younger heirs. The 'hood is inspired by the 15 centuary but with a modern "simlish" twist ).
Now, I just have to make sure my brain doesnt "wandering away" for new ideas and ruining the neighborhood. Ruining the overall idea is little bit like making mistake in a challenge, I want to start over them......

JMO, but I think it's really impossible to ruin a neighbourhood. Almost anything can be explained away with a story, or you can re-calibrate and pretend it never happened. It's your hood and your game - make it work for you.