Hey guys! Today I'll be starting Spring Valley, which is my very first custom 'hood, that I created ages ago, before I knew anything about legacies or any other challenges. I was really interested in the farming aspects of the game, and I love having huge families, so I created a challenge for myself that is vaguely similar to the Prosperity Challenge in that I started with four couples and populated a whole town. This town is a farming community, with little technology and a strong belief in family. Think Depression Era or Amish, though without the strong religious beliefs. It's not a Decades Challenge though - time will never progress, no matter how many generations we move through. They are frozen in time and space with these customs and rules.
Basically, the rules are something like this:
--Families have as many children as possible.
--They grow a specific crop or fish and sell their produce/fish to the general store owner (at prices set by me, for example tomatoes get them $1 each), who in turn sells them in his shop (at very reduced rates, but still earning a small profit).
--Men and women follow traditional roles, but wives are allowed to craft items to sell as well.
--There is a church and a minister, which are supported by the tithes of the townsfolk, but that's as far into religion as I go. It's more a way to keep income down that anything else.
--There are a few other special households/residents including an innkeeper, a boarding house mistress, and a headmaster for the local school. I'll explain more about those later.
--The town consists of four families (Ford, Johnson, Jefferson, and Adams) that only socialize/marry amongst themselves. All marriages are arranged (by me) more or less from birth. It's getting a little complicated since so many sims are related at this point, but it helps to keep growth in check, despite the large families.
--If you're someone who cares about rotation length and aging, I play each family for one season at a time, cycling through them all, and everyone ages naturally without birthday cakes, except for teens, who I grow up early at 9 days to adult, by sending them to Uni and dropping them out (I give them 3 sips of elixir to add those 9 days back, but as adults).
And that's pretty much the gist. I'll get into more details as we go along. Since I've been playing this 'hood for a long time, the family tress are fairly complicated, but hopefully it'll make sense.
Happy Simming!
