I agree that there is a need for a late adult stage, somewhere between "wants more kids-adult" and "ready for the grave-elders". What I do, is that I use MCCC to set how long I want each stage to be, and for me, the adult stage is the huge long one. Then I use the in game CAS option to gradually age my sims. Give them wrinkles, lines by their mouths, bags under their eyes, change their posture or figure to better match their ages, change their hairstyle or hair color to better reflect their age, use clothing options to better reflect an older look. Some I give glasses..
I do eventually age them up to elders, but fairly late in their life, and when I do I again go over their body figure in CA= 1 S because it's just off. Raise their chests (give those elders a good bra!), fix their waistline to be more natural, fix their posture. Generally by doing that I feel aging is more natural and feels okay in my game.
For me, I go with 1 sim year = 5 "real" years, and then set ages after that. So baby, infant + toddler = 1 sim year, Child = 2 sim years, Teen = 1 (to be fair child and teen should be 1,5 each, but I like birthdays to be the same day every year), young adults = 2 sim years, and adulthood is a whopping 7 sim years, elder is 2 or 3 I think. I play historical gameplay so my sims have rather short lives, I intend to make adulthood longer as I get further in history.
Wow, I am impressed with what you do. I write about my Sims, so I perceive how old they are at a certain time in which the story I've written takes place. I also use RL as a guideline. Here in the USA, 18-year-olds are considered adults (obviously YAs) since they can sign contracts. They are also allowed to get married without parental consent. In my mind YA stage is from 18-35, or thereabouts. Middle age is Adults from 40-65. Elders are 65+, then you have the ancient ones . . . (who would possibly be bent over) as those who have reached 80+. I play on Long, always. I really miss Epic from Sims 3. I still have yet to figure out how to get the same effect using MCCC. I think what I was doing wrong was I tried to set it while set on Long. Can't do that I'm told. I've yet to try again.
With MCC you can be on any livespan, they recommend normal, but I've used long, then you go into settings - set life span duration. You set the number of days. So with 2 week seasons, a sim year is 56 days.
In Sweden too YA would start at 18, but with my way of counting years, there is no way to do that and keep the same birthday (which I really like to do, I make it a holiday so I remember birthdays even between their aging up birthdays). That's why I start YA at 20, I figure in the sim world, that's when you finish HS.
For me I need to make elders a lot later than 65, as I think they look ancient. But then I use CAS to make adults look older after 50 (and make sure they can't have kids), and then I use it again to keep elders looking younger.
Oh, I really love your idea! Making the birthday a Holiday, way cool. That way it rolls around, same day, every year. All one would have to do is make a mark on a list for each Sim, to keep track of their 'age, as it were. I'm learning so much in this thread.
Since I play an historic game, I have an unpublished blogpost with all the years, birthdays, important historical events and inventions. That makes it so much easier to keep track. The best part of making the birthday a holiday is that I remember all birthdays even if I play rotationally.
