Sul Sul

Inspired by Vimpse and Jodelie, I want to make over all the in-game neighbourhoods and premades, using this method. And I intend to play this Uberhood the same way I’m playing Pine Lake Valley.

Contrary to Vimpse who wanted to have finished the make-overs before playing, I won’t. It would drive me totally crazy if I did, and I quite like being as sane as I can stay =D

This time, Acacias Creek is a Build a City Challenge. As for Pine Lake Valley, Acacias Creek is a version 2, but I had not posted anything about it before my computer’s death.

So I wanted to just sort of follow Deedee’s set of rules, but in the end I’ve added some little stuff of my own and thought it would be better to write them down.

The beginning

You need to start with an empty, clean neighbourhood. I followed these steps to install mine and uses these hacks to prevent the game to generate its own townies, strays and multiple NPCs (mailman, etc…).

The terrain is your own to choose, but you cannot put building decorations yet. You can only more “natural” hood decoration such as trees, fields and so on.

Now you can start creating your founders. The first family is always the Mayor, with one Sims only.
For the other families, roll a die (1-6) to know how many you will create. Then, roll a second die for each family to get the number of Sims they will contain (1-2 : 1 Sims | 3-4 : 2 Sims | 5-6 : 3 Sims).
Create your Sims. Basically, you are free to choose how you want to proceed. Personally, I only use this random generator for their personalities, aspirations and turn-ons/off. For the rest I did what I wanted.

A little like Deedee, I use traits for fun, to see what it can add to the Sims : I have a list with all the traits found here (except the category “other traits”) and use a list randomizer, picking the 5 first traits (sometimes I make little changes if two traits are opposite). Every child will inherit one trait from each of their parents, and earn a new trait at each transition of age until they become adult.

The first family you need to play is the Mayor. You can (but are not forced to) arrange a meeting for all your settlers to get to know each other.

I highly recommend using Simwardrobe’s Season and Weather controller to synchronise your seasons on the first round (or not, if you are not like me and prefer to play a different season on each family).

Mayor, funds and taxes

I don’t use the original rules regarding skills restrictions, mine only depends on money.

Power is unlocked by buying a power plant (a lot with many solar panels or wind turbines on it). I didn’t do anything to unlock water considering there is a river on the terrain I’m using. Let’s say my Sims were smart enough to install pipes and use this water :)

The mayor is the person who collects taxes, funds community lots, and operates the Town Hall.
The Town Hall can be made into any kind of business.

The town is paying for community lots : the mayor needs to buy the lot and donate it back to the public (using this donate lot mod for that purpose). You can build as many community lots as you want, as long as the town has enough money to pay for them. Community lots are not retail lots: they’re just simple parks, and stuff like that.

No services are available in the beginning, you have to build institutions representing them for that (fire station, police station, school, …)

If you want to add decorative building, the town has to pay for them. I put up a list if you want to use it as a base :

• 5.000 simoleons for a “simple” house
• 10.000 simoleons for bus stop or decoration such as carousel and stuff like that
• 15.000 simoleons for marina decorations
• 20.000 for small apartment buildings
• 25.000 for bus/tramway station
• 30.000 for medium apartment buildings
• 35.000 for a train station/high way
• 40.000 for big apartment buildings
• and so on

I’m starting my BaCC with about 15 townies. As for adding new ones, if you have some “liveable” decorative buildings, you can add the following number :

• 12 Sims for a house
• 16 Sims for a small apartment building
• 20 Sims for a medium apartment building
• 30 Sims for a big apartment building

I don’t have a rule for adding new households, maybe one every 4 rounds for example. Honestly, I’ll just see as I play :) Every household should pay taxes (except the Mayor). The amount is up to you, I’m not really creative and use the same method than Deedee : adding the household funds and the lot price and then calculate its 10%.

Institutions

The institutions are service buildings that helps the town operate. The town can give tax refunds and financial support to these institutions.

The leaders of the institutions can have proper jobs, but they have to operate the institution lot as well. It’s better to use a job blocker (you can’t have an Education Minister if you have a town with only 20 people living there, right ?), but it’s not necessary. The watchword is to have fun. Additional careers are interesting, you can find them here.

Employees of these institutions can have a job, if the lot is not a proper business lot.

Businesses

Besides the institutions and additional careers linked above, no one can have a standard job (EAxis or custom career) : everyone has to run a business, or be employed in another business. Or stay at home.
Even if it has a manager, every business must have been visited by its owner at least once in a round.

The residents can take loans to help them opening a business. I use Monique’s hacked computer for that purpose.

Apartments

Every apartment lot has to be “owned” by the town, or a landlord. Which means, you have to subtract the lot price from their funds. The occupants have to pay their rent to the apartment’s owner.

Schools

There should be a community lot where the kids can learn stuff. They can’t go to school if there’s no school – they have to be homeschooled. If the lot has been built, they can attend school normally. I recommend using Inge’s school hacks.

Connection to sub-hoods

To connect your main hood to sub-hoods, there must be some kid of public transport (like bus or train connection – explained in the funds part above)

The sub-hood connections cost money :

• Downtown : 500.000 simoleons
• University : 500.000 simoleons (and you need a properly working school system)
• Shopping District : 1.000.000 simoleons
• Vacation Destination : 1.000.000 simoleons per vacation destination and not for the 3 of them

And that’s it for the moment, maybe I’ll add more stuff later.