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moppy14w's avatar
moppy14w
Seasoned Ace
2 years ago

“Normal” versus Long Custom Aging.

As a long time Simmer I have many aspects of the game tweaked to my liking by now.
The one thing I still haven’t quite gotten right is aging while incorporating seasons/holidays, university and even pregnancy.
I have figured out by now that adults need more time as adults than given by EA defaults and I like the idea of following a semi-realistic flow of aging that reflects reality. Children are around 5-12, young adults in their twenties etc etc.


I’m stuck between a nearly EA Normal which equates one week to a year (but then holidays/seasons are a mess)
OR a really long four weeks equals a single year meaning toddlers stay that way for a staggering 84 days! And slogging through university for even longer.


How do you solve this dilemma? (or perhaps you ignore it). Maybe you’re one that plays super long, with the same Sims for extended periods? Looking for ideas…

5 Replies

  • I have a modified normal, which puts me between normal and long - it's about double the normal lifespan. Other than newborns, there was no reason to change that one lol. But I don't really play anything "realistically", so it may not work for you. I do 28 day seasons as well, and 24 day lunar cycles.
  • I have always played with aging off. I'm a stickler for aging up my Sims in my own time not when the game tells me to. I'm such a rebel. :D I also use MCCC so I can play each 28-day long season three times before moving on to the next season which kind of equates to playing for an entire year. It just makes the game feel more real, plus I play rotationally through several households. The longer seasons allow all my Sims the opportunity to take part in the holidays without making me feel overwhelmed.
  • I play with aging off, and age them up "when I feel like it": which basically equates to whenever I feel like they've experienced everything I want them to in a life stage, with a loose goal of aging up friends/peer groups together*, or at close to the same time, and keeping families balanced. (E.g., if I start a family with an infant and a teen who are siblings, they shouldn't both end up being teens at the same time.)

    That being said, you could definitely use aging off to stick to a stricter schedule than I do. You would probably just need to set the non-standard number of days you want per sim per specific life stage before manually aging up, identify any exceptions you are willing to permit, and then track it in an Excel sheet or something.

    *Let's say, for example, I'm playing Elsa Bjernsen and Lucas Munch as childhood best friends, and I want them to eventually be high school sweethearts. So I want them to age up at the same time. But I don't keep a strict rotation, and I enjoy playing some households more than others. So Lucas might get only one WinterFest, and speed through learning to ride a bike, while Elsa experiences three or four WinterFests and takes her time to skill up, because I enjoy playing her family more often. In theory, that means she could argue that she's lived more sim days than he has, but really they are just actively observed days; he's still out there somewhere on WinterFest. (Is he skating in the public ice skating rink? Or is he collapsed on his living room floor? Who can say?)
  • Stay as close to EA normal if you play the game for the time management aspect, otherwise I'd recommend going aging off and aging up the sims when it feels right. I play short, normal and off in different saves (main save is set to aging off), depending on how much I want to challenge myself. It may be a hot take, but once you've left EA normal territory, the game's difficulty is non existent, so there's no reason to restrict yourself to anything between normal aging and aging off.

    A problem I wasn't able to solve is the gradual change of seasons. In the beginning of winter it is warmer, with less snow, and it rains a lot when winter turns into spring. However, for my main save I need to set the season to several 28 day winters in a row, what leads to regular temperature spikes.
  • I don't try to mess with the seasons making sense. I think my sims age about 4 years each rotation, and so I just imagine that I'm playing the different households at different points during that 4 year period and they all celebrate different holidays. I use the 4 week seasons so I can have a wide variety of holidays as well as some weeks without.

    I use MCCC to give me custom age spans that are closer to EAs normal than long. My motivation was to make it mostly match up that if you had a baby in your mid 20s you'd hit your 40s about the same time they hit their teens, and then make comparable adult and elder stages. I'm about to change them all to accommodate for infants, as well as Growing Together and HSY making me want more time with the child and teen stages. They will mostly age 2 years per week in my head after I make the change, instead of 4.

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