Rotational Play - Keeping the population in check!

I always play 7 households in my rotation cos it works out well dividing them between the 28 day seasons.

Therefore it doesn't matter how many kids anyone has, I will always just play 7 homes. I tend to pick a fave child and move to them when I get bored with the parents.

I just go by what I feel like for the particular household. In my current save, some only have two children while others have six. If I want to check on the population, I have a family tree I use; or if I don't want to leave/minimize the game, I just open the "Options" tab and select the next tab where the culling limit is listed (can't remember exactly where that's under right now).

I don't restrict the number of kids they have but I have said that if it gets too large, at a certain point, some sims will have to move away or will switch to mostly unplayed. I don't follow a strict schedule but I do keep everyone roughly generationally in synch so that the older sims age out before the younger ones. If I really get bored with a sim, I'll switch them to unplayed but usually they do become interesting as I play them.

I'm basically playing a "town" comprised of the interconnected worlds. My goal is to keep it all varied but then to see quirky interactions.

In terms of the number of kids that they have, different households do different things. It's kind of fun to go from the chaos of a household with five kids bouncing off the walls to a single sim hacking into the jungle or Brent Hecking spazzing over his cat jumping on his counter.

I flip between the houses depending on what I'm in the mood for but I make sure to play each of the various houses at some point. I will pick some favorites from among all of the households eventually based on what I have time for.

I want to play rotational, but I'm afraid to play in the same save and have something unexpected happen to one of my sims while I play with the other. Do you guys play rotational in different saves or in the same?

I play a town. Most families have 3-6 children. I play each family one simweek.

"Wallsisms4ever;c-17225597" wrote:
I want to play rotational, but I'm afraid to play in the same save and have something unexpected happen to one of my sims while I play with the other. Do you guys play rotational in different saves or in the same?

I don't think it could be classed as rotational if they are not in the same save - that's just playing different saves ;)

Part of the fun of playing a rotational game is seeing sims you have played going about the world and interacting with them whilst you are in a different household.

I keep my population in check as I let some of my Sims have families, others dont. I think to myself whether the sim I'm playing would actually want children or not. If I feel like children would fit in with their traits then they have a small family. If I think they wouldn't want children then they might have a partner but no children. It works for me so far

I tend to have between 1 and 3 children, although the Sinclair-Kim-Lewis family has gotten quite large with 12 members in two households. That's because of the Big Happy Family and Sucessful Linage aspirations of the elders.

I do enjoy going from the chaos there to playing a single Sim or a new couple. I am at a stage now where I am having lots of marriages.

When I play rotationally I don't tend to limit the amount of children my Sims have unless it fits their storyline. I typically am only playing 6-8 families at a time when playing rotationally and I choose the amount of kids they have based on the story I've made up for them. I have many of the kids marry my other rotational families so that kind of keeps the number of Sims in check to a certain point.

"Wallsisms4ever;c-17225597" wrote:
I want to play rotational, but I'm afraid to play in the same save and have something unexpected happen to one of my sims while I play with the other. Do you guys play rotational in different saves or in the same?

I only have the one save. I actually like watching my sims run around the world doing other things. I also find that my families are more connected to each other than they ever used to be. The worst thing I've run into is that pets are always sick when you return back to their family rotation. There is a mod available to fix that, so I have started using it and it no longer seems to be an issue.