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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 13th Aug 2014 at 6:50 PM
Default The Growth of the Soil (GOTS) Challenge version 1.0
Introduction
This challenge is really a new financial model to the game. It is about building a thriving city with all values coming from one, single source. No "outside money" must therefore be accepted in any way. Seasons is required, and so is Nightlife due to its useful cheat, familyfunds.

Startup
Select a new, completely empty neighbourhood. Create a sim. This will be the founder of the city. Move him or her into an empty lot of your choice. Build a home. Determine how much money will be your sim's starting sum. Sounds almost too easy, right?

It isn't. Calculate the exact amount of money spent on building and buying. Remember to add your sim's starting sum. This will be your debt, which has to be payed back later. The only thing free on the lot will be ONE dirt tile and a tomatoplant! This one little growing thingy will, if you take good care of it, fund your entire empire! I am sure you already have guessed, where the rest of this challenge will go. Use 'familyfunds' to match the starting sum you have chosen for your sim.

Rules
First of all get used to the idea of NO OUTSIDE MONEY. This means no job, no prize winnings, no money trees, no selling of paintings. You may (and should) have a fish pond, but the fishing is only for entertainment and eating, no selling. All income must come from harvesting of the land.

You are free to add more dirt tiles to add to your farming and income. However, you should first determine how many dirt tiles is allowed per member of the household (more of those will come later). 1 tile per member is playable but extremely difficult. 4 tiles makes a fun and fast gameplay, but many of you experienced farmers will probably think it's too easy. 2 tiles per member fully satifies the needs for most of us.

You will want to add more families to the game, as it progresses. You do that by first allowing them to your home as farm hands. If they chose to stay, and some of them should, you love hungry little you, it is ofcourse ok. If they decide to move on and settle on their own, you will have to give them wages, while they are with you. Assign a number of dirt tiles for them according to your settings, and let them have the money from the sales from their tiles. Be sure to keep record on how much you owe them. IMPORTANT!!! No household member must leave the property unless ALL debt has been repayed! (Sorry guys, I had to make this rule for you to actually pay attention to your debt and to keep spendings at an absolute minimum. You really are poor to begin with.) Once your farmhands want to leave, subtract their salary from your money pile and have them build a new home on their own. Even if the new households may obtain new debt, you will see that they are much better off than you with even a small amount of money.

Taxes. By the end of each year, all households must pay 10 percent of their household value (click to see it from the neighbourhood view). Subtract it from your cash using 'familyfunds'. If you don't have it in cash, add it to your debt. We are not monsters, you know. The taxes from all households go into your community wealth, which you should be recording at all time. Bill payment has nothing to do with community wealth. It's for water and gas plus property maintainance.

Use the community wealth - AND THAT ONLY - to build community lots and to city decorate for your sims. Never use more than you have. You are the mayor of the city. Don't imitate Detroit. I suggest that you start off little by little, first buying land, then decorate as funds comes in. It's much more simple than keeping track of a million-simeleons building project, and the outcome will be the same. Also your sims will get the benefit from the community early on, even if it isn't complete.

After a while you will have a big, beautiful city, and it is actually funny to think that it all came from one tomato plant a long time ago. It's the growth of the soil.

Future
I hope you will like this challenge as much as I do. But I have more plans on the drawing table that are loyal to the GOTS-concept. I am thinking of introducing social classes and class related behaviour into it: slaves, peasants, middle class (community servants) and land owners. Also I will introduce a few jobs that doesn't depend on outside money like artistry, crime, prostitution, proprietary, banking and stuff, which are all jobs that can be offered to the community - some of them against its blessings.

Stay tuned for coming versions (or help me creating them)
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Test Subject
#2 Old 19th Aug 2014 at 3:07 PM
I am loving this idea! And I look forward to knowing about the social classes and jobs. I think it would complement the rest of the challenge. I am just wondering how soon you will reveal it.
Also about adding families to the game, how does that work? Do we grab NPCs from the neighbourhood? Do we create them?
Have you played it this way?
Just let me know
Lab Assistant
#3 Old 19th Aug 2014 at 10:28 PM
This is brilliant, and I plan to make this.
Instructor
#4 Old 22nd Aug 2014 at 1:28 PM
Oh, just the thing to hook me.

Of course I already started a new hood and plunked a poor deserted Sim into an empty plot (she spend a pretty uncomfortable autumn). And of course my mind is already bubbling with questions and ideas of how to structure this.

The money thing: I started her with the usual 20 000 §. Does that mean, to pay all her debts she has to sell enough produce (tomatoes, cucumbers and so on) to add up to 20 000 §? Working with 2 plots and 170 § per crop that'll take 50 seasons, if my Sims manages to garden in winter.

To build a house ...

... I'm using a strategy I came up with in other challenges: a Sim with 5 mechanical points can restore old, derelict stuff. So, stuff dug up using the Bon Voyage "search for treasure" feature can be used: one stone builds one segment of wall, vases and other pottery provides wash basins and other plumbing stuff and so on.

What do you think of that?

If you think it makes the challenge to easy, it could be restricted - no more than 5 attempts per day, or only for the first season, or treasure digging is only allowed in winter when there's no gardening to be done, or only one person in a household may dig for treasure.


Farmhands

Oh boy, I want to move someone in, but in an empty hood (I used deleteallcharacters because the other ways take hacks I don't have),I'd have to create a new Sim.

The thing about paying the farm-hands: It seems contra-productive to pay them the entire proceeds of "their" crops - that way, the land-owner makes no profit whatsoever. And after all, they get a roof over their heads and food in front of them while they're working, and in an empty hood/world that's worth something. Land-owners usually keep the crops, the farm-hand gets room and board. And in this case, some wages so he/she can start out on their own after a while.


Social classes

That's an interesting one, after all, at the beginning, any-one's very equal: no porsches and no rust-buckets, no in-door swimming pools and no rusted trailers with beer cans in front of the doorstep (because: no beer cans).

I think historically it's land-ownership, money or useful knowledge that creates a social advantage. (Okay, or a huge big army. Not missing that in the Sims.)

So, maybe after a certain number of households are running, the old-established families ("I've been here for five years! I didn't just stumble into this valley!") put up some restriction on immigration? "All the land is ours, you can build a home if you want to, we'll even help you at for the start, but you'll be paying us weekly tithes for... well, for ever." Now you have landlords and tennants.

Another "class" could be merchants or of course craftsmen: having a gold badge makes you master of a trade, and you can take in apprentices who are taught (there's a "transfer skill" option somewhere in the game, right?). What they build while living under your roof does of course belong to you, and at the end of their training, they pay for the knowledge received.

As soon as there are social classes, there might be ways of upward mobility and of sliding down (too lazy, not producing enough, unable to pay duties, sheer bad luck ...) . I've been doing a bit of reading on "walking marriages" and if I get that far in this challege, ...


... okay, you can see, I'm taking a run with this. Pick some ideas if you like them, and please let me know what ideas you come up with!
Instructor
#5 Old 22nd Aug 2014 at 2:35 PM
Quote: Originally posted by alchemist
Oh boy, I want to move someone in, but in an empty hood (I used deleteallcharacters because the other ways take hacks I don't have),I'd have to create a new Sim.


I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your hood is corrupted since you've used deleteallcharacters. This is not a good or safe way to get rid of sims (in fact, there isn't a good or safe way!). It might take a few weeks or it might take months or sometimes even years for signs of corruption to be visible in your neighborhood, but it is there and it's not fixable. If you want to play an empty neighborhood, the only safe way is to use empty templates. There's plenty of people more knowledgable than me on this board who can tell you exactly how to do this.
Scholar
#7 Old 8th Sep 2016 at 3:49 PM
This sounds like a cross between my old Penal Colony and Mortgaged neighbourhoods, but I never thought of having a tax system to build community lots. I haven't put Seasons on the new computer yet (I'm adding EPs slowly, so I can build up Strangetown without having huge numbers of Sims of the same age), but when I do, I think I'll use this for a Pioneer colony.

I plan to allow one plot per Sim initially, but let them add another as they gain Talent Badges, so a Sim with a gold badge will have four plots but a child just starting out will have only one; pre-schoolers won't have one at all because they can't work the land for themselves. I may, however, make the same concession here that I did for my Acadian pioneer colony and grant those living on the waterfront fishing rights, in the form of a pond - it helps build up a class system more quickly.
Lab Assistant
#8 Old 23rd Jan 2017 at 12:01 AM Last edited by Satrina : 27th Jan 2017 at 4:53 AM.
SOCIAL CLASSES
FarmHand = laborer
Leaseholder = in debt w/ land
Freeholder = debt free w/ land
Landholder = debt free w/ their land and own land being used by a leaseholder

PROFIT - I disagree that farmhands should take 100% of the profits. Doesn't seem like a win win situation.

50/50 split of profits
holder must provide items to meet basic needs
holder must provide a bed / chair / dresser for each farm hand

60/40 split of profits
holder must provide items to meet basic needs
holder must provide a bed / chair / dresser for each farmhand
holder must provide walls / roof / room for farmhands (can be a shared room)

70/30 split of profits
holder must provide items to meet basic needs
holder must provide a bed / chair / dresser for each work hand
holder must provide walls / roof / room for work hands (can be a shared room)
holder provides sprinkler & butterflies for the work hands plots.

holder to pay the yearly taxes

NOTES

I have the sim that owns the plot doing the planting then allowing any sim to do the upkeep for all plants all at once to make it easy. But then I just realized that if I allowed one sim to do more upkeep then another, that sim would get further along in receiving their gold badge which would give them a better earnings (since they can have more expensive plants) when it comes to farm hands or on the other hand, one sibling would be better off in life when they marry and move out because they did more gardening. So now I'm going to have to separate my plots and have spots for each sim. gah! I feel like starting over, but no, I will not allow my perfectionism to ruin it. Learning curve, lol.
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