In the past I've struggled creating large families with a large amount of descendants in it. Either I get bored or the game simply corrupts the file. Anyways, I'm quite to find out how far have you gone in creating a historical lineage and what keeps you interested? Also, what's your secret to manage such a large family/lineage/generation?

I don't know what '' lineage '' means, but I guess you talk about generations.
My secret: always do what feels right in the game, if it gets boring, try do something new, but always stick to that/those sims.

Currently playing with 14th generation. Each generation is different and does something new. I also make either male/female or male/male couples, depending on the generation and my mood.

I never had a large lineage. I play it mostly static, but sometimes I do feel like I'm missing a big part of the game. I would say.. Two generations. You know, the parents and the kids. lol

Not exactly the longest I've ever had, but I'm up to gen 5 on my Perfect Genetics/ISBI challenge, and treat each heir as their own "character." The difference being I get to see their backstory unfold before my eyes. I haven't really lost interest because each one has a story to tell, and it's fun to see how the saga continues and how they contribute to it.

Actually, i get bored so easy
so I've never got longer than 1 generation

I've never gotten past Generation 2, but I have some families who I'm intending to become a long, eclectic bloodline.

I think last time I played I got up to my 3rd generation, but I'm not sure. On my current game I'm upto my 2nd generation.

every time i get to a significant generation number my game cannibalizes itself. i think i've gotten to 6? 5?

You play like I do, static. But honestly, you can have more generations without Story Progression. All you do is to age them up manually. This way all other households stay the same while the intended households get to age nicely. In the same world, you can enjoy Sims 3 the way it was made, but at the same time, sims like selfsims, or any favorite sims can stay around forever. I don't see that as "immortality", just different ways of playing different households.

Thank you for the posts so far, I've drawn some valuable tips from your responses and some interesting comments.

Please do continue! Maybe you can help another simmer.

I don't know but my present time household has 2 generations
and in the future those 8 households I know of all have 3 generations in the same building

how many years/generations of decendants are in the lineage in between the 2 situations?
but I know it is my biggest yet (the only one I got future traffel on)

I never last past the second generation. Most of the time I'm playing Epic with my sim-self. It's weird seeing yourself die.

The same secret as ZenGarden's.
I've made 14 generations so far and the family is alive and well so to be continued. 10 of them I played in one town, then I had to move, because the savegame started to become full of glitches. Sims lost their huge family tree and that kind of things, but they took some memory objects (as photos, videos, paintings, books) with them and they bring such a warming feeling! They have music box from 1st generation, the masterpiece made by painter from 2nd generation, books written by family members from different generations, etc. And when it comes to home videos made in 9th generation and being watched by descendants from 14th, it's hard not to be moved! Considering that I'm playing this family for 3 or 4 years already, it kinda means something to me.
All that relatives you meet in town, who make their own life. (EA's story progression is ruthless, but at least it allows them to have dogs. :D) And all that commercial lots named in honor of prominent members of the family. It has become a looong good story.

The closest I've got is a family with two unicorns and triplets all the way into the 3rd generation, I'm still playing though

Highest I ever got was like 5 generations. I usually get bored with my families on legacy play. These days I'll be lucky if I get 3. When I load up my legacy game, I usually let them run amok while I go do chores like vacuum, clean the house, do laundry, make dinner, etc., checking back every so often so I can save it since I don't cheat on legacy games. I can't sit and watch my sims do their thing. I'm such a control freak and I want to intervene in their lives so I need to not be watching when I start this game up.

I think the household I'm playing just produced gen 5, two PlantSim "twins" who just became toddlers.

But another family in Twinbrook that I played for a hecka long time is probably much higher than that.

In Sims 2 I had 7 generations and right now in Sims 3 I have 5, but my towns glitch well before I get the family tree to show that many sims. In Sims 2 my Broke family started to have kids that were almost clones of each other or dopplegangers and that created some chaos. I haven't seen that in Sims 3.

Um... one. So far. Yes, I do the progress thing well.

I've had a 20 long generation back when it was the sims 2. :-) Currently i'm at the seventh of my sims 3 game.

But then I'd miss out on new townies and immigrants for my slutty sims to take to bed.

I'm currently at three and still going. I have little patience so I set the life span to medium to prevent me from getting bored. If you are impatient, I recommend creating using a shorter lifespan to keep things fresh moving generation to generation. I find the generations where my sims don't have rabbithole jobs the most entertaining. It's all about keeping things fresh and very different, do something you haven't done before. If you are getting bored in the middle of a generation, end it as soon as possible and move on.

In one game, I had 6 generations from Connor Frio and 5 from Jared. They each had several children by several women.

But then my game went wonky, and I had to delete that game. I haven't bothered to try it since.

EA sucks.

I'm lucky to reach adulthood with a second generation. My attention span is shit.

My longest generation was the 6th one from a favorite family of mine , The Githons
I don't know why but It was the first time that I played a family with so much passion...
Lucky for me I still have a photo of them.. That was the start of them..


I lost them in an attempt to do a format back then
I tried recreating them in TS3 but it wasn't the same..