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Scholar
Original Poster
#1 Old 10th Feb 2018 at 10:03 PM Last edited by Florentzina : 10th Feb 2018 at 10:59 PM.
Default How would you manage the future generations ("empty nesters") when limiting the populations birth rate?
This is a rather specific thread because I know there are many threads regarding "overpopulation" and perhaps, I am one of those rare simmers who find this a problem as I don't like playing "empty nesters" or with single elders - When it comes to families who only had one child or so how would you manage the future generation when their only child is born?

PS: I saw a thread on how simmers play with the actual empty nesters who lives alone, but the issues is not WHAT they do, but when they live with their children. I.e.one only had daughter and lives with their in-law. Four elders in one house may be reasonable, but I'm not sure if you want to push it more than that if several of the younger couples share housing, right? Not all of my families will use this rule though, but inspired to use it for my larger families.

As I love playing with large families (currently my hood has almost 200 couples in the first generation, but many relatives are merged due to plagues, childbirth etc. My founders were 70 couples so rougly 100 families in total. ), this isn't exactly an overpopulation dilemma, but rather being inspired by simmers who limit the child per family and existing real lifes rules such as in china.


Anyways, anybody who can relate with the issue AFTER the outcome of using those 1-2 child per family rules?


(Pardon for an rather bad naming of the thread).
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Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#2 Old 10th Feb 2018 at 10:23 PM
Most of mine have 2 kids but some will have 1 and a few will have 3 or even 4. One family just had twin boys then triplet boys, Thier cup runith over with boys.

I don't worry about it, I pair them off with other playables and if no one is left that they like I look next to dormies or NPC's, occasionally I will make a sim. In 2 1/2 years I have only had the kids of the founders grow and marry although some are still at uni. because I play slowly and don't mind non born-ins I don't have an issue. I think I have about 20 families.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#3 Old 10th Feb 2018 at 10:29 PM
2 kids max - no exceptions. Except they often sneak in twins on the second pregnancy. I will make new sims if I need a mate for someone and there isn't anyone obvious available.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Scholar
#4 Old 10th Feb 2018 at 10:35 PM
i could NEVER let my sims have only two kids,i feel its nice to let (force) them breed

they have a child after getting with somebody or if they seem too old to be childless (around 7 days into the adult stage)
have a child before it's too late (5 days till elder)
having many kids =there will always be an heir
and in the middle-ages do you think they would have had a small number of children? no because at that time there was a high death and birth rate so keep your hood overpopulated but add an element of stillbirths and plague.

I May Be Life Dumb But I'm Sim Smart(mostly).
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Scholar
Original Poster
#5 Old 10th Feb 2018 at 10:35 PM Last edited by Florentzina : 10th Feb 2018 at 10:55 PM.
I was talking about their (grand-) parents though.

Yeah, JoandSarah, I play rather fast so my hood grows rather quickly.
Like one of my families had six sons, now YA-ish , each married daughters from different families. With the "Help" of plagues and childbirth, Its rather easy to merge several sons living in one house, but even if they are only in the beginning of having kids, my fear is when they are having grandchildren or great children. I try to keep the total household number down to max 8 excluding pets, but moving in the elders (or in my case, the middle aged empty nested parents) from in-laws, it feels even with one to two kids its would get rather crowded.

Most of my founders had 4 to 7 children, but ideally for me it's 3 as I like playing with family aspiration the most (although their aspiration are all randomized. I always feel an urge to give them more than 3 when they have family aspiration).

The way I play I wouldn't never be able to play 10-20 or less founders, because I every-time I do, I always end up a huge pool of double and first cousins. My werewolf clan have four sons and two dauthters where three of them has SAME in-law's although they could married into other families. This family going to have a handful of double cousin in the next generation.lol
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#6 Old 10th Feb 2018 at 11:05 PM
That's interesting Emerald because I feel that letting them have too many kids distracts from the stories I'm interested in - for the most part. Sometimes the story is about the kids of course but I still don't like too many. For example, Henry Vaughan's wife Janet snuck in twin boys on her second pregnancy which annoyed me at first but now she's possibly angling to have a fling with Henry's (twin) brother Horace. She met them both at university of course and couldn't decide at first between them. She tried out both brothers and eventually settled on Henry (she got pregnant, tch). Henry and Janet have been happily married since their (double) wedding - Horace married Sarah at the same time and they all went on a honeymoon together. But that old romance has recently reared its head again. Doesn't help that Henry and Horace are identical and she has the hots for both of them and always has. Horace has two kids of his own but he's shown he's not averse to flirting with Janet. I don't know. Janet's first child was also a son and she's always wanted a little girl ...

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#7 Old 10th Feb 2018 at 11:08 PM
It still shouldn't make a difference, dealing with 200 or 20. I have even seen a person create a hood successfully from 8 founding sims. What does make a difference is that you don't want NPC's, townies or sims made for the ones who can't find a mate. It creates a situation where you get stuck so the only way out of that is to kill some off or not marry some. You could have a nunnery and a monastery, other single sims living together in maybe a commune, some singles simply sharing a house or flat. You have asked this same thing before and it will be an ongoing issue that you have due to how you play. So either you accept that your play style will create it and deal with it in the ways that have been mentioned before or you change your play style. Since you like your play style you will always have extras. You could also move them all onto a lot and forget about them or kill them all off.

Grandparents, some could live with kids, some alone and some could go live in a retirement village. I would vary it up.

With the boy-girl ratio, I also have no issues with reloading a birth to get a gender that I want. yes, I left the twin and triplet boys but I don't always and most time I give the families one boy and one girl. I never feel that they are running me. I use an extended family mod but if the game allows marriage in that also doesn't bother me. I accidentally married a sister and brother into the same family. I would have rather not but it doesn't overly bother me.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#8 Old 10th Feb 2018 at 11:22 PM
(Doesn't answer your exact question, but I like rambling) Crossing 'when limiting the populations birth rate' off the question, the milestone goal of my currently played neighborhood ("Selemanas") is populated every bin's premade lot with full households and in university every premade dorm with full playable sims.
Scholar
Original Poster
#9 Old 11th Feb 2018 at 12:01 AM Last edited by Florentzina : 11th Feb 2018 at 12:17 AM.
Joandsarah
I guess the thread sounded really similar to my previous one, but I do play the same type of hood only difference the way I play it changes and I kind of feel the tone of thread come out very badly. When you rambling your personal issues/curiosities it feels like people read the same thing but a more survey type are easier to make.

I do not actually worrying about overpopulation and recently read a thread regarding this matter but there were a topic in this thread I was trying to create a thread regarding it - The China One-child per rule effect, where the AGE ratio gets a bit of issues later on, which was what I was trying to address and tryied to ask about.

-------- (not an reply) -----
There were one about regarding what they can when the children are away and ones where you put them in retirement houses. Because there are simmers on here like you do who play in slower styles and those who enjoys having sims living alone or being childless, I wasn't sure if people had (or WOULD have, because I'm just inspired by the idea. It's not an actual problem...yet) the problem where you take the actual "population" in a single household into account. Its certainly not a problem for simmers who are still on first and second generation, but I'm pretty sure there exist player who has great-grandchildren already, but doesn't like create too many more smaller households? Perhaps I should blame my mother language to not being to distinguish the topic better. I did search on MTS and google before asking, but all you seems to get is the "I play with two kids max" types. Well, because I like to think ahead before doing something, that idea is keep bugging me.

> 1. You ended up killing them because you don't want to play more households (I think childbirth, miscarriages, children dying from disease rolls and plauge should do more than be enough mortal rates, already .... )
> 2.You end up with empty nesters who lives alone and play them normally (to each of their own who enjoy playing them).
> 3.You merge the couples and end up with four "grandparents" helping raising kids..

...which is the stage I'm bugged with. Something I find convenient with playing larger families from the scratch is that it allow you to have the extended families merged with different households. But when you have only kid, it's gets a bit tricky, at least to me, for the future generation, there are not many relatives left to merge them with. I've not played so far to have a 4-5 generation in one house but I keep thinking how it is when you starting out with just CAS and struggling where to locate the kids if the parents dies, most of they wont have any uncles or aunts available to go to if you really prefer them to live with blood relatives. TS2 has more than just grandparents, parents and grand children, you know? Which is the future managing I was thinking about.
Top Secret Researcher
#10 Old 11th Feb 2018 at 1:58 AM
For the most part, my elders just stay in their homes until they die. If I have sims who don't end up marrying/having children they'll usually live with a sibling or other family member assuming there's room. For instance Jayne Reyes lives with her brother, sister in law and niece. That way she still gets played but I'm still having fun playing a 'regular' family. However if there isn't room sometimes they do live on their own though I do dread playing them lol. I play three day rotations so its not too bad.


Do you have your sims live really long lives or something? How do you manage to have 4-5 generations at once?!
Forum Resident
#11 Old 11th Feb 2018 at 2:04 AM
I have a flexible 1 or 2 kid policy. But I play with a smaller amount of sims and I've not reached past grandchildren before I bork something with mods and find myself starting again. I try to stay as close to Maxis logic as I can, which means sometimes things aren't optimal. When I first get a sim I set up their ACR. Family sims get more than 2 kids. Pleasure sims get more because they're irresponsible with contraception. I play to the needs of the sims. No re-rolling to get the gender I want. Whatever they get is what they get. If this means a world full of elderly, single men, that's what we'll play. The story becomes different as all of a sudden monastery's and army bases spring up all over the place. The few children left lose their childhood and get pushed into working constantly instead. No schools because not enough kids. But badges and the ability to run business gets favoured instead. In real life situations like this can occur, a house full of elders, with one unmarried child at home looking after them all. Will that child stay or run away, so they die out without anymore kin and their line is broken. What happens when everyone you meet is family. Well in many parts of the world this causes them to intermarry. It also causes fights and jealously, as the many males fight over the one girl (a cousin) who is still available. I wouldn't change anything, that's the story for the set up that's been created.

Just like for the first time ever I have no downtown. I'm playing Riverblossom Hills and it's a small town where everyone just gardens and fishes. No point in a downtown when their favourite hobbies seem to books. There's so much interesting in the story your telling. I would let it run to it's natural conclusion, and the population would naturally decline (no children) or explode (pleasure sims and family sims take over) For me, your set up would produce wonderful stories, that might not include children, or love, but might make one strong dynasty just due to their ability to produce all the kids to marry.

In a real life situation like china, it becomes unbalanced as little girls are not wanted (cultural costs of dowry systems) and therefore if gender is chosen they don't get to live. This has created imbalances, now the girls left don't want to marry, boys give up on love and the birth rate drops rapidly. In far off villages, they force marriage because they need new kids. I'd go with the rules as you've set them up and just see what happens. If the population sinks to low, foreigners (new CAS sims) would seize the opportunity and want to move in. I wouldn't play them all if they got to big. I'd stick them on the end of a rotation and just go in to age them up like everybody else, they'd get one play rotation for everyone else 7. The unmarried, the elderly would be the shop owners, the teachers, the doctors and would work until they are too old too move. China's 80 year olds are still working hard jobs. It's not necessary that there would be an increase in disease, but likely more children would die at childbirth as the list of available doctors would shrink, their would be food shortages, so people would die of that instead. Just my take on the scenario you seem to have going in your neighbourhood. It's likely you'd have a population explosion coming up, as all women are encouraged to have children, and morality (don't marry relatives) or loyalty (don't have affairs) would come under attack.

i think your running a nobility. Eventually when the kids run out, they'd look to the commoners and start intermarring them. A natural decline in population levels, but your graveyard would probably be mighty big.
Mad Poster
#12 Old 11th Feb 2018 at 2:39 AM
I give single sims pets. That keeps them busy.
Mad Poster
#13 Old 11th Feb 2018 at 6:51 AM
In my megahood, I always have a retirement home. I put it in Pleasantview, which has a Florida-like climate, warm, sunny, easy on old bones. That house that uses all the Moroccan collection, I remodel that to make a bunch of suites for the elders. I have them hire a butler to take care of the work, and add a card table in so they can play poker all day if they like. Then I move in the elders who don't have or wouldn't want to live with their children (if you were Coral Oldie, would you want to live with Mary-Sue's family?) to live out their lives.
Since it is a regular house, there are no problems with graves. They play like normal, but only have children around if they invite some over. Which one or another often does: just because they don't want to live with them doesn't mean they don't love their grandchildren. Skill, date, play poker, swim, soak in the hot tub . . . the butler takes care of serving some meals and does the housework and gardening so they can just relax and enjoy.

Pics from my game: Sunbee's Simblr Sunbee's Livejournal
"English is a marvelous edged weapon if you know how to wield it." C.J. Cherryh
Scholar
#14 Old 11th Feb 2018 at 7:07 AM
I tend to play nuclear households, and the grandparents only move in when one is widowed or when both are about to die. If the hood doesn't have room for empty nesters, I build a retirement home.

I don't really see that having a one-child rule would make a difference to me. Unless you have the 'bigger households' mod, which I don't, then four grandparents, two parents and a child would pretty much be a full household anyway. There would be room for one unmarried sister from before the law was passed, but that would be it. I had one hood where I set up monasteries for single Sims, who were almost always Knowledge aspiration (too busy studying to form a relationship!); they would each bring in a little bit of money when they arrived, so it didn't matter that they spent all their time pursuing knowledge instead of getting jobs.

So I think my solution would be either Retirement Homes for elders or some form of communal living for unmarried Sims, to reduce the number of Sims needing to move in with a married couple. Or, instead of a one child rule, you could have a one son rule. Elders and unmarried sisters live with their son/brother - that way you only get the elders from one side of the family needing to move in with the young couple.
Scholar
Original Poster
#15 Old 11th Feb 2018 at 10:44 AM Last edited by Florentzina : 11th Feb 2018 at 10:57 AM.
Gcdgb5391
As I wrote in the spoiler, I allow teen pregnancy and has a modded lifespan and use shorter pregnancy. With ACR2 I also set the try for baby for everyone, so my teens get knocked up very easily if they are very fertilite (randomizing the TFB and set it on static). My sims lives in a approximately 60 to 80 "years" (1 day = 1 year, pregnancy is 36hour to simulate spacing), and if a sim had their child at 15-20 that would be somewhere around 3 to 5 generation. My founders are in realistic age in their 40's and already have grandchildren on the way.

Diovanlestat
Yes, I play with rather restricted hierarchy system and have a group of families for each type (1 Royal, 10 Nobles, 10 Gentry (Rich Sims), 10 Bourgeoisie (Mercenary),17 Peasants/Commoners, 6 Homeless & Criminals and 12 supernaturals, two of each type) and one reason why I started out with a large hood at the scratch and I try to have them marrying in their own social classes.In the first generation I did end up with having a shortcut of females and ended up adding a couple of families with just daughtersand have the parents live with their in-law. So now I have the majority of the population married. Although I favor patriarch system, I had wish I had more baby girls without having to create more sims, but they are more important due with birth rates as many dies in childbirth.

My current graveyard population is around 80, as I recently allowed children to be affected by the rolls a well (before it was teenager so they could have had romance before dying, which realistically doesn't make sense),and had done a roll system where every 12 days (2-4 rotations, I vary it to 3 or 6 days and use shorter season), each family will deal with a death roll, that's like 70 graves each time. The only thing I dont allow is stillbirth and toddler death as they are so tricky to kill with the Boolprop Death Urn. The graves remain until you reload the lot, so I ignoring those death and use miscarriages and wait until they are children. (Only had a few kids dying though, mostly rolled a disease or they died in a fire accident).

Small adjustment and random rolls does give the hood some interesting stories.

Blue Alien.
Yes I've the mod that allow you to have more than 8 sims but I mostly use it to merge sims and allow pregnancies when its full. The "Crap, I can't pregnant because the house is full" of the vanilla logic doesn't make sense to me.

Before the babies are born, I've a poverty family consist of 6 couples (15-26 age), where their father died early and the wife ran away (after they were teen) with a new husband, and labeled as homeless people (or at the very end of poverty), so they won't get much support by the relatives as the daughters are frowned upon wooing someone below their status. I will consider limit the amount of babies in this family so I don't have to add too many more households, which my long term goal is keep the household count relatively to the same, but allow bigger birth rates for families who don't have many siblings/children/sons.

Actually, focusing on the gender ratio in a household might be a great idea. I read some challenge where they suggested the sims to stop having kids when they had a son,but increase the girl rate by allowing them have more girls. I had this situation happen in some of my families, one of them is is the royalty. The founders had one son, two daughters but this son has a low ACR fertility and his crown princess will dye from childbirth. (Love those random occurrences) So next time I play this family, I have to hold my thumbs I get a boy.
Top Secret Researcher
#16 Old 11th Feb 2018 at 4:40 PM
Oh okay! That makes sense, I think the most I've had was 4 and it was because as you said a very young teen got pregnant lol.
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