“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 ...
Forum Discussion
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?)
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?)
