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Scholar
Original Poster
#1 Old 17th Nov 2014 at 11:34 PM Last edited by Florentzina : 20th Nov 2014 at 7:41 PM.
Default Preventing Intermarriage (and not marry your in-laws!)
.,...you dont want marry townies/npc or create additional families in your neighborhood?

Im starting a neighborhood where the reproduction will only occur via the founders. I plan to have 10 founder families with 4-5 sims consist of elders and their adult children + an extension family consist of an elder sibling and his/her family so there will be a couple of 2nd generation cousin. So in total there are 5 main families, 8 cas in each.
The third generation will have about 3 to 6 children each, then it will be just random (or rather I won't plan much further), but these 10 "nuclear" families will be the only sims populate the hood. The hood have rather high morals when it comes to relationships (= they hate awkward family reunions ).
Its feels like I always end up with several 3rd generation 2nd cousins who are related....or end up with double-cousins, which make finding suitable spouses even harder.

This is the picture chart I made below (I didnt wrote down their name, just numbers) and yes, they are sort of traditional family trees....mom-dad + 1-3 siblings + aunt and her wife + cousins because for the CAS, thats how I prefer to create families - 8 sims who are related to eachother by blood or marriage. Shouldnt possible spouses be enough to avoid too many related (2nd) cousins, even if their parents (1st generation) has cousins? Last time i drafted a hood, i end up with 100 sims, but might be a bit excessive for first playing households. (Although, Ive lava's shorter age span, their lifespan is about half as long compared to the default maxis, so timewise, it wouldnt be impossible)

EDIT:, ,wrong image type, will add new one is a few seconds.
EDIT 2: hMMM, the add attachment is gone after I posted the thread (newbie... ) so i add a direct image link, hope its okay to do this way:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd....947884017_o.jpg (although the example isnt very important. its just an example of the family trees I ususally create when starting a new 'hood).

Edit 3: I dont want too close relationships with their relatives, that includes woohoo. No intermarriage and no romance/reproducing with close relatives (parents, elder relatives, in-law siblings, 1st-2nd generation cousins and aunts/uncles- Not a medival setting...).
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Top Secret Researcher
#2 Old 17th Nov 2014 at 11:43 PM
I'm guessing you can use a tool like the InSIMenator to destroy the family ties, so they can marry and WooHoo with each other, from my brief Internet research session.
Mad Poster
#3 Old 18th Nov 2014 at 12:21 AM
I'm not sure I understand what your question is. Do you want help on how to populate a hood from scratch without ending up with people that can't marry (and that you don't want to marry due to relations)?

The game will stop considering Sims relatives after a while. A lot sooner than most people do in real life. I forget when exactly, but I could dig it out tomorrow (I asked at some point in Stupid questions FAQ).
Scholar
Original Poster
#4 Old 18th Nov 2014 at 12:54 AM
Quote: Originally posted by gummilutt
I'm not sure I understand what your question is. Do you want help on how to populate a hood from scratch without ending up with people that can't marry (and that you don't want to marry due to relations)?


Populating the hood w/o ending up where the 3rd generation cannot marry (normally, w/o breaking familly ties) others. I used to play sims in the "Polygamy" style, but Im getting tired of it. Not a fan of sims breeding with their in-laws and elder peeps(has inteen).
But finding suitable spouses to born-in sims can very tricky w/o constanly adding new casĀ“s and townies (i prefer that future spouses have at least parents! ).
Theorist
#5 Old 18th Nov 2014 at 1:33 AM
The game recognizes grandparents/grandchildren, parents/children, siblings, aunts/uncles, and cousins. Anyone outside of those bounds (including first cousins once removed) are fair game according to programming. I go ahead and tangle the family tree right up since the game's okay with it, it keeps the population down, and there are no negative side effects like there could be in real life.

As far as real life goes, computer modelling has calculated that you can't be further than a 100th cousin from any other human being on the planet (and most people are a lot closer than that), so I figure that if you can't put a label to your degree of consanguinity without consulting a genealogist, then you're fine.

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Test Subject
#6 Old 18th Nov 2014 at 3:26 AM
I think with only five large families you'll get trouble soon with pairing the coming generations. You'll have to eventually add more families if you want to keep it diverse and to balance the gender ratio. I started a neighborhood with about seven unrelated couples and I had to add another family to even out the second generation and make sure each sim had at least one possible pairing. I've had to do the same for the third generation. It becomes even more difficult if you take into consideration attraction/chemistry between sims when pairing them. like I do.
Instructor
#7 Old 18th Nov 2014 at 5:40 AM Last edited by lbsgirl24 : 18th Nov 2014 at 6:10 AM.
It's doable with four families if you're OK with marrying second cousins and are really picky with who you let marry who you shouldn't have a problem. After the third generation marries as long as your population doesn't decrease you should be OK. I'm in the fourth generation of a test of time challenge at the moment and marrying the third generation is quite tricky but it is doable. I've had to marry sims with awful chemistry, ignore some horrendous age differences and still have to nearly wade through every sim in my hood to find matches at times but if you forget the idea that everyone needs to marry their 2/3 bolt match within +/- 3 days from a similar family you can do it.

Here's what I posted in the Test of Time thread a while ago.

Awhile back I did the maths and with four couples, each having 3 surviving children, one of whom marries each of the other families. If a child of each of those couples marry one child from each unrelated couple the fourth generation can marry without any problems. So as long as you don't completely lose more than one family (I had two families nearly completely wiped out early on) and you're careful with marriages it is possible. I've copied my notes from when I worked it out below in case anyone's interested. It can be done but it's quite easy to mess it up, especially if you completely lose a family or two (or have the families that breed like crazy in the second generation also breed like crazy in the third generation, then everyone ends up related/married)

Say we start with four couples, A, B, C and D.
Once the second generation marries we have AB, AC, AD, BA, BC, BD, CA, CB, CD, DA, DB and DC
Each of those families has two families to marry into. When the third generation marry you have ABxCD, ABxDC, ACxBD, ACxDB, ADxBC, ADxCB, BAxCD, BAxDC, BCxAD, BCxDA, BDxAC, BDxAC, BDxCA etc
So who can their children marry?
Let's look at ABxCD. If you look a little closer the children of all the families with AB in their name are cousins, same with all those with CD. However the children of those BA and AB only have the founders from A and B as common ancestors. The founders are actually their great grandparents which makes them unrelated enough to marry.


Gender gaps can be a pain but they're normally not too bad.

Visit my ToT challenge here.
Scholar
#8 Old 18th Nov 2014 at 8:37 AM
It's pretty much impossible once you get the families intertwined. Sooner or later, everyone becomes related and you need to introduce new blood or your whole hood becomes inbred
Lab Assistant
#9 Old 18th Nov 2014 at 1:48 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Lord St.Croix
It's pretty much impossible once you get the families intertwined. Sooner or later, everyone becomes related and you need to introduce new blood or your whole hood becomes inbred


And maybe I'm weird, but I love my Royal Kingdom Challenge neighborhood, in which I started with 10 families, and by the 2nd generation I could get to any playable sim by clicking through the in-game family tree. Now I'm in the 4th generation, and I'm planning a few marriages between sims with the same last name (George Lancaster-Katrina Lancaster, first cousins once removed; Peter Sutton-Tammy Sutton, second cousins; Daniel Sutton-Judith Sutton, also second cousins). There are a few townies in the family tree, mostly out of necessity (sim born without many contemporaries, no playables to match up). I also have a tree set up in Family Echo, and I've sometimes spent an hour just clicking around and seeing how all the families are interlinked. It's deliciously inbred, just the way an RKC hood should be.

To the OP, you can delay it a bit if you're careful in how the families breed early on. Pair up 2 siblings in 1 family with 2 siblings in another family, for example. As long as that's the only limit you have (unlike an RKC where marriages are limited between certain classes), you can probably get a few generations in before inbreeding becomes a factor.
Scholar
Original Poster
#10 Old 18th Nov 2014 at 2:27 PM
Quote: Originally posted by rousseau
And maybe I'm weird, but I love my Royal Kingdom Challenge neighborhood, in which I started with 10 families, and by the 2nd generation I could get to any playable sim by clicking through the in-game family tree. Now I'm in the 4th generation, and I'm planning a few marriages between sims with the same last name (George Lancaster-Katrina Lancaster, first cousins once removed; Peter Sutton-Tammy Sutton, second cousins; Daniel Sutton-Judith Sutton, also second cousins). There are a few townies in the family tree, mostly out of necessity (sim born without many contemporaries, no playables to match up). I also have a tree set up in Family Echo, and I've sometimes spent an hour just clicking around and seeing how all the families are interlinked. It's deliciously inbred, just the way an RKC hood should be.

To the OP, you can delay it a bit if you're careful in how the families breed early on. Pair up 2 siblings in 1 family with 2 siblings in another family, for example. As long as that's the only limit you have (unlike an RKC where marriages are limited between certain classes), you can probably get a few generations in before inbreeding becomes a factor.


Well,I was thinking of creating a neighborhood where the founders live through the land - farms, animal breedings, crafting, sewing, fishing, flower arrangements etc etc and then have the heir of family own a business that are related the reseources they have. Later generation will continue making the town even bigger (maybe introducing some families who control the town and some scientists?).

I like the royal kingdom challenge and those challenge where you create a 'hood from scratch where the sims has to *learn* things before starting careers. So basically they are just peasants with a couple of merchants (so they could marry anyone), but since the hood Im drafting is going to be treated like a rural town (that are very far away from the other cities = no townie visitors), I dont think it make sense to have a major/king controling this very small population. I prefer the sims to create their own city after a couple of generation. Beside, having any other restrictions than no marriage/woohoo with related and in-laws it make its gameplay too hard with playable-restricted sims only. I prefer that sims cant marry (or breed/woohoo) their closet relatives-by-marriage and by blood until about 4th generation and then have a major/king/rich sim selected.

Perhaps I should add another set of families later after-all. A mistake I did in past, I planned over 50 households to avoid intermarriage, but for 1-2 generation, that is a bit excessive.. =P


(Gender gaps and bad chemistry doesnt matter to me. My sims tends to marry sims that are 10-12simdays older than themself. As long as a teen doesnt marrying an middle age adult (about 1 third of the adult days left in my game) and elder, Im OK with it.
Scholar
Original Poster
#11 Old 18th Nov 2014 at 4:48 PM
(this reply is not connected to the one above, if people are wondering about double posting.)

I played around with the family tree on paint, linking families together, but no matter who marry who, I now notice its very hard to find a 3rd generation spouse that are connected to the founders without being someone else in-law or 2nd cousin.
......So yeah, I think I definitly need to add some more families to the hood for the 3rd generation or else there are going to be waaaay too many family reunion memories if having parties.

(Off topic: I know that sims is a virtual game and probably shouldnt be very realistic to the "real world", but in real life Ive around 20 cousins, 6 uncles and 2 aunts and I cant imaging the cousins or even marrying their own in-laws or 2nd cousins. Would be so awkward! Although some of my 2nd cousins are like 10+ years old younger than me and the cousins are in their mid to late 20's or older so it probably wouldnt happen. ------ Unlike in the sims - ive somewhat realistic age on mine and with inteen, a 11 years old could actually marry a 60 years old. Creepy... )
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Field Researcher
#12 Old 19th Nov 2014 at 1:58 PM
With ten families you shouldn't have a problem. Even if each family is related to one other, the children are first cousins which means their children will be allowed by game mechanics to marry each other. As long as you don't mind matches between second cousins, or "he's my cousin's cousin" or things like that. Oh, and it helps if you continue to have multiple children in most families - if each family only has one kid, then the number of families will grow smaller and the marriage options will be fewer.

What might be a problem is if one family has ten kids (while the others have 1-3 each), and all ten of them get marrried and have kids of their own. Then you'll have a lot of first cousins in the next generation who won't be able to marry each other. But if you avoid having one family take over the whole 'hood, you should be just fine with your ten families.
Mad Poster
#13 Old 19th Nov 2014 at 2:18 PM
I disagree - I think ten families are too few. In real life it's something like 160 people to be a viable population for 200 years (7-10 generations). You're starting with 20 adults, it's not enough.

You'll need to either introduce more CAS families in later generations, or add more families to your start up hood. You could probably get away with 60ish if you don't want to create 160.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Field Researcher
#14 Old 19th Nov 2014 at 2:25 PM
I started my hood with ten families and while I married in a few random pre-mades (Uni students, mostly), I've found intermarriage between the founding families wasn't a problem - I'm now four-five generations in, have a population closing in on two hundred, and while virtually everyone is "related" in one sense, the consanguinity is not sufficiently close to cause game problems (I've not adjusted the default family settings). The game, like most societies, allows marriage and relations between cousins of the second degree and higher; so you'd likely only have a problem if, as others have pointed out, you have one large family that everyone else marries into.

One other thing to (perhaps) watch out for (I'm not sure if this is a default setting or mod-adjusted), but "step" relations don't get a family marker, but seem to be treated as such if the relationship occurs after the "step" situation is created. For instance, say Mike is married to Sue and has a son Chris and Donna is married to George and has a daughter Mary. Mike and Donna get divorced, or widowed, or what-not, and get remarried to each other. Chris and Mary can't get together, even though they don't share blood relations. But if Chris and Mary hook up first, THEN Mike and Donna marry each other, that's OK (at least this is what I have found - although, like I said, not sure if its default behavior)
Mad Poster
#15 Old 19th Nov 2014 at 3:24 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Florentzina
(this reply is not connected to the one above, if people are wondering about double posting.)

I played around with the family tree on paint, linking families together, but no matter who marry who, I now notice its very hard to find a 3rd generation spouse that are connected to the founders without being someone else in-law or 2nd cousin.
......So yeah, I think I definitly need to add some more families to the hood for the 3rd generation or else there are going to be waaaay too many family reunion memories if having parties.


OMG that family tree! I started to write down my Strangetown tree (which throws abductions by various aliens, and some "in vitro" fertilizations into the mix). I'm only at 4th generation and it looks like the same squirrely mess YOURS is.

And egswanso, that's a frustrating thing I've run into too. I had the Gavagins (with a boy) and the Travellers (with a girl) live together. The parents broke up (they loved the OTHER partners much better!) and when they married the other partners, the kids became related. I wanted to have the kids marry, but even breaking the "relationship" connection, they had to "live in sin" and have a baby "artificially" (who gramma Mary Gavagin-Traveller is now raising by herself).

Stand up, speak out. Just not to me..
Scholar
Original Poster
#16 Old 19th Nov 2014 at 5:35 PM Last edited by Florentzina : 19th Nov 2014 at 6:43 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by egswanso
I started my hood with ten families and while I married in a few random pre-mades (Uni students, mostly), I've found intermarriage between the founding families wasn't a problem. The game, like most societies, allows marriage and relations between cousins of the second degree and higher; so you'd likely only have a problem if, as others have pointed out, you have one large family that everyone else marries into.
One other thing to (perhaps) watch out for (I'm not sure if this is a default setting or mod-adjusted), but "step" relations don't get a family marker, but seem to be treated as such if the relationship occurs after the "step" situation is created.)


Its seems like most people on here suggest that you shouldnt create a huge family and marry the other into it, because ironically, thats what I actually did in the past! Had too many founder families having 10+ kids. In the hood Im trying to populate w/o intermarriage and inbreediing, all of the 20 adults will have family aspiration with either knowledge, popularity or fortune. Their children will take the 2nd aspiration (so if ones parents has knowledge as 2ndary aspiration, that sim will focus on knowledge wants rather than family wants). 3The reason why they are family oriented is because Im starting out with a fairly rural town where the population is so small. I wanted the 2nd generation to focusing on breeding and on their hobbies (Ep season/hobby activities such as farms, cooking, sports, pet breeding, music, craft and such) and then when the 3rd generation are in their teens, they will focus on other things, like forming businesses and pleasure. Each generation has a "goal" that will make the town grow to a bigger society.
I think these 10 couples will have an average amount of kids and fairly evenly (3-6 or so? The future generation will have less).

and I DO notice that step (and in-law) relationships doesnt allow marriage/romance. They get that "friendly kiss/hug" interaction and thats an reason why I dont want siblings/cousins marry their inlaw and 2nd cousin eachother (the 2nd generation has 1st cousins so born in game will be 2nd cousins).I can alter their relation flags but I rather dont do that for the 2nd and 3rd generation.


@ Simfreq
I did try to create over 50 families from scratch in the past. I lost my motivation and end up deleting the hood , because there were too many households to play through. I think I mentioned it in an older thread where I had around 50 households with 6-8 families of each social class (royal kingdom). That hood I got too tired off, because creating all the sims in CAS require alot of time if following a spreedsheet where I had to consider all of the traits in order to make the storyline works. Creating cas without a plan, I end up with families I wasnt happy with.

With the paint family tree image I attached before, I do notice that If I dont add any more families, the 2nd generation can only have 3-6 or less children because the other ones would be 1st and 2nd cousins and I dont want double cousins (two siblings marrying another family's sibling). So I might add a couple of extra smaller families if these families have more children than that. (My goal is that is 2nd cousins and in-law are not allowed to marry or romance with eachother).
Scholar
Original Poster
#17 Old 20th Nov 2014 at 7:32 PM Last edited by Florentzina : 20th Nov 2014 at 8:01 PM.
Note, the thread might move in a different but very similare direction, so I added another comment. Hope its okay to do this, because i know why my families get too related too quickly but not much about how to prevent it from happened.. )

After I played around with the family tree a little more, I can answer myself the question: "Is 10 families enough to avoid intermarriage?".
Well, yes it is. More or Less. I calcuated the families connect with eachother, here are four of the "test subjects" of the family tree I drafted.
#M1's connection towards the other families: M1 has 2 siblings, 1 cousin. His spouse (F3) has 1 sibling,
Bad: M7 (Sibling-Inlaw), M9 (Sibling-Inlaw), M2 (Cousin), M3 (Spouse-Inlaw),
Neutral: M4+M5 (Spouse-cousin)
Good: M8-M6+M10 (No close relations = Your spouse's cousin's inlaw? lmfao,,, )

In conclusion, starting out with 10 families - all or most of them would be related somehow before the born-in-game children are born but it IS possible with 10 families. Sims with more siblings seems to the victim. So now at least, I know now why that 10kids want is so difficult to maintain in a non-polygame/incest sim-hood. With this family treee, each family will have 3 to 5 families to breed with. Sounds bearable, I think! I definitly need some strict marriage-rules to my simmies, but thats all. AND IF taking realism into consideration: If one of your children married your spouse's cousin's children or your spouse's cousin in-law's children, THAT shouldnt be a too awkward family reunion or too close, or would it? Now this is the sims, so I probably dont need to push it that far regarding intermarriage/inbreeder. Because marriage between your kids and the kids of your spouse'cousin-in-laws isnt even inbreeding/intermarriage or is it?

Anyway, moving to more about other player's playstyle if YOU werent allowed intermariage/inbreeding (NOR sever their family trees),other than starting off with 10 kids, are other things you notice, that borked out "finding a suitable spouse" from your playable families (not townies/npc or sever family trees)? Because thats the main problem I seems to struggling with when playing families. Without a plan/strategy they (the offsprings) end up getting too related before the 4th generation.
Screenshots
Mad Poster
#18 Old 20th Nov 2014 at 10:01 PM
Ah, well my playstyle must be very different I love creating families in CAS and when I set up my last hood I started with 100 sims which worked out to about 30 households, if I remember rightly. And I still felt it was underpopulated and added more!

I have an apocalypse hood with 9 households, 42 sims and it feels impossibly small (but just right for that challenge.)

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
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