I just patched my game and EA as usual screwed up. View Sims in CAS takes 5 seconds for each Sim portrait to load. I have 14 custom Sims + the normal ones gives me a total of 42, it takes 3 1/2 minutes for them all to load. I figured since the patch "fixed" some no specified issues in CAS I thought maybe it was a one time thing and would be fine after I waited for them all to load. But, NO when you close View Sims and open again it still takes 5 seconds for each to load.

My advice is DON'T PATCH TILL THEY FIX IT!!!!!

**Update 5/24/11**
I finally got a hold of a live person about this problem. I just spent a very frustrating 2 hours on EA's Live Help. I jumped through all the hoops of checking my computer's performance and was told that my graphics card barely met the game requirements. I spent about 20 minutes trying to convince him that the problem is the patch not my game system. I think the tech finally got it when I told him that my son's his new computer, that he just spent $3,000 on, for running Irace (an online driving simulation used by professional race car drivers in the off season), has the same problem. I gave the tech the link in the EA Forums where other people are complaining about the problem. He is escalating the issue to a higher level. Hopefully something will finally get done about this, but I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime I think I'll just uninstall and reinstall with out the crappy patch.

I appreciate that you're sending EA a bug report; however, given the overall improvements provided by the patch vs. the minimal time I spend in CAS creating new Sims, I can't see this as an issue that would prevent me from patching.

It makes it extremely inconvenient if you want to reuse one of the Sims you already created.

so while your waiting you can go grab a drink or go the bathroom.

It's certainly annoying but for me the improvements out weigh the annoyances. I'm not spending a high amount of time adding new heroes. I need to get the RP first.

I'm already patched, but I'm still playing with other kingdoms. I hadn't had a chance to check out this inconvenience as of yet.

Is the blue eyes bug fixed?

I wanted to ask the same.

No its not. Not for me, and not according to several reports at the EA forums.

I'm also finding that the new 360 camera is zooming very erratically, whereas there were no problems at all with Shimrod's version. I'm hoping that reinstalling Shimrod's mod might fix EA's fix.

The patch adds several features, but I don't know what bugs it has actually fixed because EA has not said. Many of the features had already been addressed by community mods, so I don't disagree with Winterhart about waiting for the next release. Personally I don't regret installing it, I guess I'm rather indifferent about it.

I tried the Dangerous minds quest today (post patch) and am having trouble with it. The teacher won't teach the children the lesson..apparently others are having the same problem with this quest after installing the patch.

I did see a few bug fixes in some of the codes I've worked, but they were pretty minor changes. I'm currently testing some updates to my files now.

I went one better, it crashed my whole game and i had to reinstall. Now you cant see any of the pictures of saved sims when try to pick one from the list in
CAS. Still working on it. Don't understand why even the base game pics don't show up. I could understand if it was just my personal saved sims, but none of the pics show up so you have to guess which one is the one you want blindly. AAARRRGG! The lastest patch offers a lot but it sure takes its pound of flesh to get the benefits from it. Needs a lot more work.

Nope. I thought it was. I made three heroes and played through four quests before it showed itself again, but it's back and as annoying as ever.

Can someone, who have installed the new patch tell me what is the difference with the Free Play Ambition which allows you to control up to four
hero's at once and the select cheat, which can enable you to do the same. In fact I have controlled up to eight sims. (You have to use the space bar
to select the extra ones since only four appears on your screen.) The Child Succession, and increased resident count is the only two that I like,
since there is no cheat as of yet that does this, but I have yet to have any kids right now. The other features just don't go in detail enough for me,
game stability improvements, clarity quests adjustments, what are they in detail, what exactly are these additional benefits you get when your sim
increase aspects beyond their maximum capacity? Because I have had problems with patches before, especially patches that have disabled mods,
in some cases permanantlythat I liked, and other features. I remember how angry I was when a patch eniminated a maxis time cheat on Sims2. And
a patch that disabled a mod that I had to wait quite a while, and some expansion paks, for an update. I need better reason to risk installing this
new one.

Well, i will wait for better updates then: too insignificant improvemenets and too much problems: it's not a patch, is a disaster.
I will sit near the river waiting for enemy corpse passing by^^

I would say that updating with the patch is mandatory, if only to get the increase from 2 kids per lot to 3 kids. The saved sims problem is annoying, but I tried it, and after the portraits loaded in I clicked on one of my sims, and the sim appeared and I could have used this sim again had I wanted to. This delay in being allowed to see the portait and select the correct sim is not a game-breaker issue.

The new Free Play ambition doesn't just let you use more Sims. You also earn XP, level up and get daily responsibilities, none of which the old Free Play used to do. It makes Free Play worth playing, in my opinion.

I can do all of that when I use the select cheat. All hero's and NPC's. Example, along with my hero knight, I converted five NPC's that come to the town from the village everyday to Knights. Then I select and send them all to hunt. All of them, including my knight hero are at level 10 now. They also get responsibilities as well, which I had to disable after I fulfil the hero's. I don't need the NPC's having responsibilities. I even send one whailing first. And thanks to the InteractionQueues20 cheat, I can keep them hunting the whole day, and boy they clean out that forest! While their there I can tend to
yet another hero. On my Hero knight, I turn the tracking of the NPC's on. When the day is over, I turn to the forest, and see them exiting out, I empty the NPC's inventory, and place everything in the Hero knight's inventory. He then goes and sell it all to the Merchant. So they all are doing quite well financially, no thanks to the king!

Very nice! i have to do same thing someday: thanks for the hint!

the savedsims are annoying, saving a newsim is more
a new save takes times more time to finish, and even cause the CAS fall into a eternal save

Im having a weird problem of not being able to save in any mode (not in the tutorial) I click "save" and it comes up for about two seconds. I quit and go to continue and its not saved at all. Save as does the same thing

If you are using Rick's debugenabler you need to download the current one for this patch. I had game crashes too until I install the new one.

I got this idea from someone else. I'm always searching for gameplay idea's. I like to find out how to manipulate the gameplay of Sim games. Its good to get creative, and imaginative too. This way of playing, along with mods and cheats have made this game a lot of fun to play for me. I wish I had the Dynamic Profession cheat before I created my knights. It enables you to add or remove professions and abilities without the game altering the NPC's appearence. Its a gret cheat. I like making my sims interactive, meaning they rely on each other to earn a living. This cheat, and others such as the sim select cheat makes it easier to do this. My spy, (along with my Knight) I gave the ability to trade, so the merchant sends them with supplies to trade abroad, earning for themselves $1000 per day their gone. This the merchant pays. I created a companion NPC spy for my hero spy. They both go and pickpocket NPC's. This is my version of tax collection for the King. Those NPC's should pay their fair share too. They give the money to the king, he pays them of course. And when the king purposed taxes on a territory during a edict, or when a villager petitions him to invest in something, why he don't get any profits from this I thought. Well thats when I got creative. I give him those profits. Fortunately someone had the same idea and created a edict mod which pays cash bonus for adding benefits to territories. I made a mod request for someone to edit that gold bar that can be purchased. It depreciates when you buy it like other objects, I think the value should increase daily after purchase like the paintings in Sims2. Taxes the hero sims pays, I make sure this reflects on the kings treasury. The king's cook, I send him to buy supplies, fill kegs I placed in the castle, and fix meals for the reception hall. The Peteran priest's friar, I gave the ability to hunt, fish, and even to collect leeches to sell to the physician. Because of this I rarely have to send the physician leech collecting. The Acolyte, I gave the ability to write documents. Then I added a NPC to the household, and gave this one the bard ability and made her the cook. She cooks, purchase groceries, sings around the monastery, and collects inspirations. She doesn't write poems or plays, she just sells the inspirations she collects to the bard. When I'm playing the bard, I use the monastery cook to fill in entertaing the bard's customers, which gives the bard free time to create poems and plays. On saturdays, the cook and the peteran prest enjoy the day collecting flowers to sell to the physician, seeds to the merchant, while the other two assistants sit and whittle. Sunday the prest leaves to try to gain converts. The tithing that the game charges religious sims, I want to add to the priest's income later. So the peteran monastery is doing quite well financially. I plan on enabling the Jacoban monastery to do the same. And when a sim donate to the poor, I make sure this shows up in the Peteran's purse. The bard's NPC assistant, fills up the kegs, I also have him prepare bread and a meal for the inn customers. I give the bard $10 per plate, and $20 per mug of beer or wine that is consumed. (Im hoping for a mod that will charge customers.) She of course pays the NPC from her earnings. The merchant and the physician, makes the most money, and I have the most fun with. I have the merchant place very expensive objects in the stall that she gets from the village shop, and trading, and she gets the NPC's, who aren't that bright, to buy them! On average she makes $20,000 a day. All sims go through her when sending trading supplies, she gets 10% of their earnings. She herself makes money trading objects herself. Buying plenty of rabbit meat to trade, enables her to keep a supply of gastrosausages, for the villagers. I pretend the merchant is like an extension of the village shop, she enables the shop to provide food supply locally. She gets a flat fee, for it though. Lets say using the money cheat, I give the knight $15,000, he purchases the supplies, then using the money cheat, then I replace his origional income amount. I empty his inventory into the merchant's. When villagers go to purchase from her, I extract what they want from her inventory. They pay village shop prices. Using the money cheat again, I deduct the cost from them, but I do not add this to the merchant. This was just my way of not having to send my sims to the village, thus avoiding those chance encounters, which I was getting tired of, (and the robbers, thus the reason for sending the knight.) The merchant does pay out of her pocket those things she will sell in her stall like the maps, boat, armor, though. Selling lettus for example, just doesn't earn a lot. The knight has the merchant ability, so he can get the good deals for her too, and he is paid for the errand. My blacksmith is catching up to the physician and the merchant in earning money as his skills increase. I use him and his assistant to create weapons and armor all day, the make what takes fastest to make and earns the most in money, then he gives this supply to the merchant to trade. His assistand does the digging of minerals, on some days, (I placed mineral piles right on his property) which they use to trade as well as use to make weapons and armor. They dig up a good supply of Phosphorus, which in trading yeilds unicorn meat, for the merchants inventory. The wizzard, well I'm not that into playing, so I made her an assistant of the physicians. They eventually married. So she picks flowers daily (I planted more flowers on the physicians property.) And she makes potions that they send for trading. The nurse NPC, when I selected her I noticed she can use the operating table, without any cheats! So she helps the physician when they get too many patients in, this enables me to send the physician on his quest or other errands such as leech collecting too. I deduct from the physician, the nurse's pay. With both the nurse and the physician working the operating table, the physician makes on average $8,000 to $11,000 a day. That's not counting profits for the medicine and flowers they sell or trade. For those patiens who wander in and out but are not sick I charge them $10 per visit. The physician examines them, gives them medicine if needed, then send them home. They also keep the knights supplied with salves which the kings pays for. Since the physician sleeps where the wizzard lives, I placed scribe tables, in the upper room of the clinic, so while I'm playing the physician, I bring in others hero's to earn xp, and cash. One day I had the bard write poems and plays, another day I had the peteran priest go up and write documents to sell. They give the physician a small fee of course. One day while on the kings lot, I had the king and the knights go hunting together. I've send the spy and the knight on a boat trip trading for the merchant, while PLAYING THE KING. And while playing the Bard, I had the spy go and beat her up for having a fling with the knight. (That's her man!!) Yes I got great storylines developing too. So as you can see, I've got a lot of ways that keep me busy on the game, and this isn't all!! Some of these ideas are mine, some I got from others. So until I'm ready to bring in children, I don't have much interest in the patch right now. I'll think on it for a while. I haven't created any other kingdoms, this one I enjoy playing alone, plus I play my sims with future expansions in mind. Who knows what EA will release. There's a reason that there is a file named "InstalledWorlds" hopefully it will be a sub neighborhood! Where we can extend our hero's options, like purchasing better houses!!! Or actual territories for the king to extend his kingdom. I'm excited to see what's next.

Err, yeah... Seems everyone is... busy.

What the... bezo, there´s no way I will even try to read your post...