Veronavilles great! I really wish the clean subhood worked on my computer because it's probably the second best premade hood after Strangetown. I had to do Romeo and Juliet in school, and that play is amazing and I've been wanting to play Veronaville ever since then, but sadly I don't think it was meant to be...

I decided to replace the "well" at the Monty ranch with the small fountain that came with University. It's a compatible style and looks much better, but I'll probably have to watch the sims closely to keep them from obsessing over putting soap in the damned thing. Maxis might very well have placed a fountain there themselves if the base game had included any. I think one of the biggest sources of problems with base game houses is that the Build Mode tools were so limited until a couple of expansion packs were added to it.

I always thought the Veronaville Market was meant to be a barn with a sort of farmer's market in it. I've seen pictures of antique barns that look a bit like that and it would explain the unfinished look and feel to the upstairs "hayloft."

Real houses that old would be very small by modern standards. Ordinary people (as opposed to royalty, wealthy merchant families, etc.) didn't need as much space since they didn't have as much junk as we modern folks do. Unfortunately, sims aren't real people and have more trouble routing through small living spaces than we would.

I always change Bottom's name to something else (usually "Mab") and treat "Bottom" as a nickname. Either she was really un-coordinated when learning to walk as a toddler and landed on her butt a lot, or she's a brat and her "bottom" has gotten smacked enough times to earn the nickname.

ihate, Veronaville Market isn't a modern building that's never been finished. It's an old historic building that has seen many changes over the hundreds of years that it's stood there. The streets of Veronaville are redolent with history, and nowhere is that truer than Veronaville Market. Merchant Sims have been buying and selling goods on that site since the early middle ages. The "modern" building dates from the late 16th century (probably built between 1550 and 1580). Obviously there have been changes over that period -- Tudor merchants didn't have chill cabinets of freezers! They didn't even have running water.

Something has obviously happened to the upper stories of the building. Andrew, who lives across the road at 19 Chorus Court and is doing Veronaville Market as a school history project, is trying to find out what happened. One possibility is obviously fire. Another is death-watch beetle. Whatever it was, there was obviously originally more than the modern overhead walkway. Veronaville Market is not just a place to do your shopping. It's a place where you can sit and ponder the lives of Sims who traded there in past centuries.

I find it easy to understand the extreme attachment that Veronaville Sims have to their town. It's a beautiful place with a fascinating heritage.

I am minded to start a thread on "Historic Buildings of Old Veronaville".

It is textually supported that Bottom is a brat! I think it is Puck's bio that describes her as "a bratty sister".


And for all our love/hate of Veronaville, I'll do well to remember that I'm in debt to Veronaville for being my first source of Shakespeare (forgetting an episode of Wishbone and other subtle pop culture references) - since Veronaville was the first Sims 2 hood I played, it helped lead the way to my later love of Shakespeare's plays!




Do it!

Personally Veronaville is my least favourite neighbourhood of all Sims neighbourhoods that shipped with the basegame or expansions.

I love the Monty villas and have cleaned versions of them in my current hood (Malcolm Landgraab III lives in one of them) but the Tudor style of the Capp side of town is something I find excruciatingly ugly to look at (it simply goes against my personal aesthetic) and a lot of them are rather impractical.

The Romeo and Juliet parallel is also something I don't really care for, since, imho, it's both not very well done and way too obvious and unimaginative.
If they had done it more like either Westside Story or Romeo+Juliet, properly update everything and throw in a few modern twists I would have liked it better.

And they also left out so many characters that could have given the town more than the 3 family lines it starts with: The Prince (he could have been the mayor!) the Nurse, the Friars, the servants.

And why have the Fairies from Midsummer Night's Dream and Hermia, but not the other 3 youths?

They could have all been less important families aligned with the Monties/Capps

But no, instead we got heaps of Capps and Monties with the names of Shakespear characters slapped onto them at (mostly) random. They could have been more clever with it.

AndrewGloria, I thought no one could love Veronaville more than I do, but here you are.

The characters in Veronaville are inspired by Shakespeare's plays. They're not meant to be direct exact copies of the characters in those plays. They're set up so that you can mostly choose to do what you want with them. If you want to play out "Romeo and Juliet" (or "King Lear" or "Midsummer Night's Dream" etc.), you can. If you don't want to bother with any of that, you don't have to.

Really my only complaint about Veronaville was the lack of expandability until NL and then OFB. Most of the pre-placed houses are much too expensive for new characters to move into and there isn't much room to add new affordable housing.

I barely remember Veronaville so I'm biased, but it's in my top list of neighbourhoods just because I get to give Romeo and Juliet a happy ending. And I'm terrible at building hoods so I just love all pre made hoods far too much and that's probably affecting my opinion.

I honestly can't get past Beatrice and Benedick being siblings. As a long-time fan of "Much Ado About Nothing," seeing that squicked me so much I had to just exit out of the hood. I've never actually tried to play it.

I turned Veronaville into vampires (Capps) vs werewolves (Montys). The Summerdreams are witches. Makes things a bit more interesting.

. . . You. . . Genius.

I will be back.

I come to post about my discovery of the 'devil' snowman (I'd never seen a Sim make one before!) ... and instead get all this backstory about Veronaville that I had no knowledge of. (I mean, I get the Shakespeare references, although I didn't know the depth of them; I think every time I load that town I just get tired thinking of all the redecorating I'd need to do. I remember houses with really abysmal layouts. Maybe I'd better give it another try.)

(Edit: And skimming the thread, I see I'm not alone in hating some of the lots.)

So, uh, yeah, GUYS I FOUND A DEVIL SNOWMAN.

O_O I've played with no or snowless winter for so long I've forgotten that they can build devil snowmen... What makes them do it? Do they need a mean personality (low nice points) or does their aspiration have to be in the red?

It's a Grouchy effect, so kids (and adults) who build snowmen will build them with devil horns. I believe the important thing is who starts the snowman - if a Grouchy adult helped a Nice kid build a snowman that the kid had started, it would be a normal snowman, but if the Grouchy adult starts, it will be an Evil one.

I'm afraid I find most Veronaville lots completely unplayable without complete renovation. I admire people who can make it work - especially people with Seasons and without Perfect Gardens. The last time I tried to play Capp Manor the gardener would just go around in circles of despair and the only way to keep it from becoming an absolute wilderness was to influence visitors to do yardwork.

It's these little details that are the reason I'm still playing TS2.

Imagine if Maxis designers were still given enough time/money/latitude to make quality games.

Pregnant Sims can't change cat litter. Another of those lovely little details. I'd forgotten Jane Stacks was pregnant, and this was my first clue.

Contessa Capp has a marked resemblance to Miss Jane Hathaway. It makes me inclined to like her, which is completely unexpected.

Took one of my families to Three Lakes and they are staying in a cabin that has a hammock; I discovered that there is a WooHoo option for it! I just about died laughing at the animation.

I discovered that EA completely screwed up the wall masks on their Empire round window diagonal...
I think I will make a default replacement to fix this monstrosity.
EDIT:
Done! Not only the wall mask was off, but the meshes toO!
All fixed & better.

Try looking at it this way then. The people of Veronaville are not Shakespearean characters themselves, but they are all great fans of Shakespeare and name their kids after the characters in the plays. Antonio Monty and his wife must have also been great fans of "Much Ado About Nothing."

Or you could simply rename the sims. There are lots of easy ways to do that.

If we dare play Strangetown with PT9's odd family tree, this whole Beatrice and Benedick issue is a piece of cake. And mind you, I am starving.

I found a new keyboard short cut. When using the rise terrain tool, if I push 'shift' it automatically changes to the 'lower terrain' function. Never knew it did that all these years.

But that's the thing, I'm a great fan of "Much Ado About Nothing." And that's why I know Beatrice and Benedick shouldn't be siblings! That would be like a Harry Potter fan naming their children Ron and Hermione! Or a fan of Greek Myth naming their children Helen and Paris. Or a fan of the Lion King naming their children Simba and Nala. Or a Star Wars fan naming their children Han and Leia. Or a Superman fan naming their children Clark and Lois. I don't know if people do these things, but they shouldn't. It's squicky and falls into the "what the hell are you trying to say?" category. Might as well just name a brother and sister Jamie and Cersei and be done with it!

Yes, if I ever did get around to actually attempting to play Varonaville, I'd be changing those names. Not sure if I'd change others, but Beatrice and Benedick would be changed before I did anything else. Probably to Ophelia and Laertes

And it wouldn't even be impossible, Song of Ice and Fire was already 8 years old by the time Sims 2 was released. And the thing is still not finished. By now I don't even care anymore.



If I ever got around to attempting to play Veronaville, I'd remake the whole town + inhabitants. I'm interested in the idea to recreate it according to my plans, but regrettably not enough to put serious effort into it. But sometimes I play around in CAS, creating the Capulets and Montagues and the various other families I'd populate the town with.

That's something I'd really love to have CAST in Sims 2, because it would allow me to dress the Capulets in Blue (and their allies in Green and Purple) and the Montagues in Red (and their allies in Orange and Yellow) It would add to the theme nicely.

This is only slightly relevant and sure to not make you feel better, but Simba and Nala are most definitely blood related to each other. There are only two males in Mufasa's pride in The Lion King, meaning Nala and Simba are either brother and sister or cousins. So naming your kids Nala and Simba is still very gross, yes, but not inaccurate.