I have to admit I’ve been considering my population a fair bit recently in the early days it was important that all my family’s had plenty of baby’s to get Grimstead up and running, however now looking at the age’s spreadsheet i can see that im getting to the point now where i need to consider slowing things down a little or I’m going to have a massive population next generation.

Last round saw the introduction of 10 new baby’s, and the round before had 17 so even if just half the current baby’s/kids survive to reach an age where they are able to start having kids of their own I’d imagine my population will at least triple.

The question is how to slow down the growth while keeping it realistic’ish, im basically given 2 options decrease the pregnancy odd’s or increase the death odds.

My conclusion is a little of both, i have tweaked my death cal to be a little unfairer across the board, in particular on my poor peasants/merchants.

I have also tweeked the Death Calc to be even harsher on Preganant women, in particular on women who have had a lot of baby’s, childbirth in medieval times was RISKY!!!! But my calc still seems to be abit soft on these women and so far in 37 years I’ve only lost 2 women to childbirth (Lia Talon (gen1)) and a couple of rounds ago (Alith Huntsman (gen 2)) so ive increased the death odd’s slightly, increasing it even further for multiple births, I’ll watch how it go’s but ideally I want to be losing one woman per round due to childbirth because right now I think my population can handle it.

Secondly i think it’s time Grimstead lifted it’s bad on birth control. You may think this is a little odd after all it’s a medieval setting however it’s it’s actually the case that there WAS effecting birth control in medieval times.

My research has taught my that there was actually a real life herb available that was reasonably effective and available across Europe, perhaps not effective in comparison to modern medicine, but effective enough that it was so sort after the human population, harvested it right into extinction, by the 15th century.

So for now at least Thomas when he is Crowned King will be lifting the ban in this herb, however herbs do not come without a cost and i will be charging anyone 200g per day for using it (money sent to the grim reaper), meaning it’s use will be more common though my noble royal families, but it’s not so expensive that the peasants can’t afford it if they really set their minds to it.

All in all im pretty happy with the way things are going looking, the ratio split’s of the amount of baby’s being born, it’s just that im getting too many baby’s across the board. Ie im getting few royal babies, a few more noble, I big jump to merchant and an even bigger jump to peasant meaning that in future generations there will be plenty of workers to support my nobles/royals.

So in order to lower the number of baby’s without upsetting the balance which im currently happy with, the effect of the herb will be to halve the risky whoohoo chance pregnancy on the ACR meaning it shouldn’t effect couples in family’s “trying” for baby’s but should slow down my birth rate abit, in particular hopefully in my whorehouse which is quite frankly getting out of control.

Another birth control measure is my barracks/knights/maids/clergy etc, atm because im still looking for population increases many of the people I’ve sent off to do these jobs tend to eventually get married etc even if it’s abit later than they would normally, (therefore having less baby’s) however I can see these marriages happening less and less in the future in an effort to halt population increases, meaning second sons and daughters sent into service will stay in service.

• Estate : Hamdun
• Networth : 98,000
• Home Business – Whorehouse
• Names : Candence Pinel (age: 21) , Autumn Griffin (age: 21)
  • Aubin Griffin (age: 2)
  • Wulfric Pinel (age:2)
  • Vannah Griffin (age:1)
• Tax’s – (10% Indentured Peasant + 2% Homebusiness Tax)
  • (40,000 X 12% = 4,800)

Ok the whore house, this is a fun lot. Essentially its a “pay to visit” lot.. where i spend most of my time trying to pair up my two whore with as many men as possible.

I use a Visitor controller hack which only allows men to to visit the lot which makes life much easier…

There are 2 main reasons i have this lot, the first one is story line driven, whorehouses where very very common in medieval times so it made sense to have one besides they do give me something to use storyline wise… i do restrict certain men, for example there are certain characters i feel wouldn’t visit a whore house, … after all even though visiting a whore was considered fairly normal even most men. some men wouldn’t either they aren’t the type or simply they are very happy with their wives

The second reason is that a whorehouse should provide me with a good diverse peasant stock, many of the babys born with have been the produce of all sorts of pairing from all class’s and most of all its away of getting some of those “interesting” town gene’s in there without having to marry them in.

I have my ACR set to whorehouse mode which means ACR kicks in very frequently. Like all peasants the two girls have a 40% risky pregnancy chance which means i expect to see lots of babys here, eventually i expect the girls are going to have to start dumping babys on the churches doorstep.

So far we only have three boy children, but both women are pregnant and im hoping for at least a girl or two, so there is someone to pass the family business too.

Here’s some Picky’s of the kids.

Aubins father is Brian Turner the townie… as you can see the poor chap got his nose.

Wulfric’s father is Hayden Huntsman, the guy who courted Holly in university and Lynette is trying to set her young adoptive daughter up with. Hayden was a townie but he got promoted to Playable in university it looks like wulfric got away without getting his fathers big lips.

And Lastly Vannah, its abit hard to tell who this little chap looks like as he’s still a baby but for interests sake his father was Randy Londen.

As i said both women are pregnant again this time the father of Autumns baby is Deonte Gawen, and Candences will be Stephan Gothier ( poor old Helena and her 100’s of kids at home and her husbands spending what little money they have in a whorehouse).

In general my total kingdom population is getting quite big now, so im going to start restricting the amount of townie marriages, it doesn’t mean they won’t happen but the most part I’m going to try and keep them for “none-essential” playables ie those that aren’t involved in the Grimstead story, unless of course i come up with a good story which needs a “new” character.

I’ve recently added a hack which means my townies no-longer re-generate… so when they are gone they are gone and it’s also worth noting that i’ve increased the chance of death on my death calc for both of these women after all the life of a whore is full of dangers.

Financially the girls are struggling, they are in a very nice house they simply can’t afford, the whore house makes a tidy income but no-where near the money they need. I’m thinking of moving them into a smaller lot, perhaps one of the little terraced buildings i planned to be a shared accomadation…but ill make my decision before I play them next.

ACR is certainly interesting on this lot, Orrick and Nicole have always had an interesting relationship, based mainly in the bedroom.

However even though neither sim is a family sim, Nicole finds herself yet again pregnant this round despite her age of 37 is starting to go against her.

She miscarried last round and if thought that would be the end of the Vaux family however i was wrong and we welcomed baby Brenna to the house in fall.

Christopher is also threatening to be interesting, having to wait 9 rounds to get married he’s likely to start looking elsewhere. I’ve started to forge a friendship with Muirean Lynette’s daughter, however thats the end of my interfering.

I don’t want to force a romantic interaction, with ACR sims tend to choose for themselves soon enough, so either something will happen or it wont so your guessing as much as I am. The storyline will follow it either way however i will say Muirean is not the only girl his been introduced to.

As a whole when it comes to marriage for peasants I let ACR choose there spouse, as long as the targeted sim is suitable I let them pair up. the only thing I do to influence it, is I bring suitable sims together.

For example with Fransis Gawen and Edmund Beav both are peasants/ merchants how have just reached teenage.

What I’ve done is look though my list of “single peasant/merchant girls” and I’ve invited each of them over and got them chating, after that its totally up to the sims and ACR to do the rest.

As soon as the boy “picks one ie a romantic interaction occurs I consider the decision made, sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes it takes a while, I work it in the same way for girls who come of age.

Nobles and Royals work totally differently, as do certain merchants ( Lynette’s daughter’s for example ), these have arranged marriages and love doesn’t come into it.

For these I let the story line and “genetic need” decide basically I pick partners based on who’s available and who I think their parents would choose, some of these matches end up being fairly compatible and some don’t.

However ACR still plays a big part in these relationships, sometimes ACR ends up picking their spouse as “their one”, sometimes it picks someone else and cheating occur.

These are only guidelines however story line always effects whats going on, sometimes a “autonomous” action on the part of a sim, sparks and idea for a story… and sometimes a story effects how I set up ACR and force my sims to behave.

For example the whole Thomas / Holly story line was sparked because every time I turned around Thomas and holly where “busy” and Thomas didn’t seem interested in Raeann in the slightest.

While the whole Valdemar / Marrisa relationship is something I’ve forced upon them, Valdemar and Marrisa actually have 3 bolts for each other, and if I stop being mean, by making them fight every day they might actually stop looking elsewhere and become happy…. might !!!!

• Estate : Hamdun
• Net Worth $50,465
• Jobs :  None Daisy (16 years old)
  • Kids : Enora (1 years old)
• Taxs :   None 

Please Note : BIG Spoiler Inside.  

I’ve pretty much come to the end of the round now, Daisy is the last peasant / merchant to be played. After her I only have the nobles / royals and the barracks left to play.

 Some storyline decisions had been made and I’ve decided Im pretty safe to play this lot now.  Daisy doesn’t work or pay tax’s money wise she depends on what ever I send over from the Hamdun’s Via money order hack. However as her house is fully furnished she doesn’t need much.  

Daisy has the raise 20 puppies or kittens LTW. I’ve also started breeding dog’s with her.. Granted they are mongrel’s but the peasants love them so that should let a trickle of money in and as the new house is decorated with everything she could possibly need there’s not really any reason to worry about her not bringing in tons of money.  

Enora Grew into a toddler this round here she is …..  

Im not sure where her nose went im sure both Gabriel and Daisy both have noses  … hopefully that will correct it’s self as transitions into the next life stage.  

Not much else to say about this lot really… other than getting back to ACR… after all … all roads lead back to this hack.  

Daisy / Jaedyn and Gabriel all work in a slightly differently to everyone else… ever wondered about the truth of what’s going on with Jaedyn and Gabriel’s baby problems… well I decided that using ACR I was going to give Gabriel a little problem.. He’s not 100% sterile however I think its safe to say his sperm count is on the lower side of average.  

Enora came about completely naturally despite me evilly plotting against poor Gabriel he did manage to get Daisy pregnant… will it happen again??? Who knows?? I’m not holding my breath though … mwhhhhaa haaaa. 

Translating this into actual figures what I’ve done is …as follows…  ACR works out pregnancy based on the woman’s fertility … which sucks… typical people always assume it’s the woman’s fault… grrr..  

So ive had to tune Daisy’s and Jaedyn’s rates rather than Gabriels.. ACR determines fertility based on a woman’s age, however there is an option to set an override. Which is what I’ve done, setting both women’s fertility to a mear 2% it will be set back to normal if and when either woman finds a new man.

• Estate : Vaux

• Net Worth $36,570

• Jobs :  None

• Business : Farmers Market

• Jed (38 years old), Maria (26 years old)

  • Kids : Rose (6 years old), Twins : Sarah & Gregory (3 years old)

• Taxs :   5% Free Peasant Tax,+ 5% Business Tax = 10%

  • (22,000 @ 10 % = $2,200 Daily)

 OK first thing to notice is that Maria and the kids are still there, the reason for this is that I make all the major changes to the lot at the end of the round, if someone’s dying , moving etc they move on the very last day.  

Other things to note with this lot is that ive fiddled with ACR, jed and Maria have very low autonomy when it comes to heading to the bedroom, both of their fertility’s are normal (unlike some of my Sims ) however they don’t get on so they head to the bedroom very very rarely. 

Also note that this pair only ever tries for a baby when they get there. The reason for this is because Maria doesn’t see the her time with Jed in any other respect, if she and he go to the bedroom its to try for a baby… fun doesn’t come into it.  

Personally I think he needs to try harder to show her how much fun going to the bedroom can be, but as she scares the hell out of him I doubt that’s happening anytime soon.   

AAlthough this family are peasants, ‘ive allowed them to own a business, Jed is by FAR the largest farmer and in order to keep the whole kingdom fed he really needed to have a separate shop. ( as ive said before rules are made to be broken ) 

AAs a whole this lot is fairly self sufficient, Orrick’s not a tyrant and his tax’s are fairly affordable, the whole family helps out with the farming and Jed and Maria run the business so atm things are going well for the couple…. but oh how fast things can change, especially when your wife steals your children and runs off into demon infested mountains chasing another man…. mwhhhhaaaaa haaaa haaa

This round has been full of pleasant surprised for the Bendett’s, Vince came home from work with $50,000 this morning … well done Vince, and in celebration he’s upgraded his sons education to prep-school ( A hack from www.simlogical.com ) which costs him 1000 per day and has sent both daughters to private school.

 Nancy finally gave birth to their 5^th child a little girl called Melisant, and I have to admit Im starting to wonder if my ACR ( autonomous casual romance ) hack needs tweaking again.  

 I’ve customised my ACR  hack quite a bit messing around with the numbers to get the results I wanted, I boosted the “accidental” % quite a lot to represent the lack of birth control but as I ve not got about of 5-6 children families so for them from very young parents I have to wonder what Im going to have in a generation or two.  

Saying that I only tweaked it last round so perhaps its still a bit early too tell, looking at my ages spreadsheet I can see a definite decrease in births this round so perhaps it is working fine I’ll wait another couple of rounds and see how it pans out.

 My other consideration is that perhaps its not my birth control that needs tweaking, I purposely wanted a lot of births because that’s what people did in medieval times … perhaps in fact the problem lies with my Death Calculator.  Although it can be quite evil sometimes I’m still not sure its killing off enough people to keep the balance.. Certainly not enough birthing women / children and babies.

Of course it all comes down to balance I need too remember killing off to many of peoples favourite characters in my story is going cause problems of a different kind, readers can cope with the odd favourite character dying but I don’t want it getting too depressing.  

After having a good look at it and randomly rolling a few rounds worth of deaths I’m not sure that is the problem either it seems to be killing off plenty of people, perhaps I’ve just got off easy the last few rounds, this one in particular is very light on the deaths.

However despite it being weighed fairly heavily against the very young and very old it seems to like killing off my main characters more than I’d like.  I recently added a new column to it, allowing me to chose certain characters to give a large boost too, because for various reasons I didn’t want them to die at this point, it doesn’t make the immune it just makes it very hard for them to wind up on my death list.   

Mostly I use it for Bellari and her family because obviously they are gonna have to get really unlucky to die, or character Im in the middle of something with, when I’ve got a story line all panned out I don’t want it ruined because one of my characters falls down dead in the middle of it. 

That doesn’t mean however anyone who’s currently being written about is safe, often ill write about a character surrounding their death so don’t think that the people in my story are safe just because Im writing about them. 

Perhaps I’ll tweak this field some more instead of it being a simple are they a candidate yes / no … ( no’s getting a big boost ) ill round it up some more keeping the yes and no’s as they are  but adding a 3^rd value of “main character” … giving all main characters a smaller boost so I can tweak the rest of the spreadsheet to be a bit more ruthless, allowing more of my less important characters to die more frequently…. decisions decisions …. Getting the birth / death balance is certainly the biggest challenge in my game.  

2. Second piece of God kit . ACR – Autonomous Casual Romance

http://box156.bluehost.com/~aestudi1/forums/inteenimater/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=2

Basically this hack allows my Sims to decide for themselves when to have a baby. Basically it allows them to Autonomously try for a baby dependent on aspirations, age number of kids etc.

This hack gets me into A LOT of trouble… Im still in the process of tweaking it.. I’ve been messing around with my version in simPE its probably nothing like the original anymore … sorry twojeffs.

In the standard version they choose to either “try for a baby” or “whoohoo”… although there is a 5% default chance for getting pregnant with whooohooo… I didn’t feel this correctly “represented a medieval world”I played for quite a while with “only try for a baby” switched on… which is why I had a “MAJOR” baby boom.. but it got silly.. My poor women where popping out babies back to back.

Anyway I switched it back on… So they get to choose but I modified the chances of “whoohooo” accidentally getting the woman pregnant…. after all there was birth control in the medieval days …. hey don’t look at me like that there was… honest … never heard of the withdrawal technique….. Ok I never said it was “ reliable” … :p …

Seriously though there was a plant there could be used back in the day that “ apparently was VERY reliable but was so expensive only the rich could afford it… but it was so reliable that we harvested it too extinction in the mid 12^th century … go humans.. 

Anyway back to the point….  Now my “risky” chances are set as follows. Peasants have a 40% chance, Merchants 20%, Nobles 10% and Royal’s 5%. of accidentally getting pregnant. Baring in mind these values alter “the woman’s” normal % chance of getting Pregnant … which is based on age.

So for example a fit 20 old noble woman has a base chance of 70%. if she “tries for a baby” … if she is just whoohooo’ing … its 10% of 70% … which is 7% of having an “accident”.

My logic behind these figures is not exactly “historically accurate” but as I want my peasants breeding faster than my merchant… and my merchants having more kids than my nobles … it suits my purpose.. After all I have a strict economy to keep in balance… hehe.

I’ve also twiddled with the % of them “trying” … I didn’t like the way it was set-up as default… I still found a lot of my Sims where popping out like 4 babies all at once and then never trying for another.

The “trying” are based on aspiration and number of current kids… I won’t bore you with the detail specific’s as Im still in “testing” but Im hoping my current set up will allow women have at least 1-2 years between kids after all every woman in medieval times breastfed so that gives limited “birth control”. So Im hoping to start see the baby’s space out a bit in the future.

Anyway with this all set-up I never “send” my sims to the bedroom.. if they want to go I let them. if they try for a baby its upto them.  Only exception is couples I deem “not talking” in story line… for example Jaedyn and Gabriel, Maria and Jed … as these marriages in game aren’t going well… I try and “stop them” going to bed…

If they wander off in that direction I tend to click off them and send them to do something else… however they do occasionally sneak in a quickie without me noticing. If that happens I roll with it…. after all we all have the occasional moment of weakness.

Phewww….. I think that covers my two most basic and important gadgets covered… not to say these are the only ones I use but they are the ones I deem the most crucial to my kingdom. Others will be discussed as we go along.