I made a new family to 'experience' the interactions of Mom, Dad, and toddler because all my other sims are single.
What a mistake. It's hard trying to get 3 people up to speed and functioning. If I concentrate on the mom, the kid has crashed needs (but I hired a nanny to deal with her). If I work on the guy, the woman is exhausted and goes to bed and needs to recharge.

Game play is too hard. What are you people doing with 8 sims in a house??

I think 1 sim is hard enough... *Hates being a micro manager*

yea i have to agree 1 sim is enough....i had my one sim try for a baby to see how that goes and man its hard stuff to keep them both happy cause when focusing on one the others needs drop so fast but i use the cheat Testingcheatsenabled true to help me out here and there sometimes adn it worked out fine for my single mom with 3 kids lol

I guess we have to be happy we can rename goldfish and stuffed toys...woo hoo..!

I would suggest getting one of them a day job and the other an evening job so a lot of the time one of them will be gone from the house. The medical career has very long hours at the early levels so one of them can be removed for 9 hours a day or so. Use the pause button and queue up orders for them.

My first TS3 game started with a single female Sim straight out of CAS (which is exactly the way I started Sims 1 and 2), but I found that when you're dealing with the skill-less CAS creations and all the gameplay options, it's actually easier to start with a couple straight out of CAS.

I can't believe EA didn't add the ability to assign skills to CAS Sims. The community has complained about these blank slate adults forever, and it just seems logical to hand us a number of skill points to assign for each age group: i.e., 1-2 for a child, 5 for a teen, 10 for a YA, etc. They could even have made it impossible to assign more than 5 points to any skill so nobody would come out of CAS a master gardener or chef.

oh, I've been using the skill cheat books in the mods section. I spent enough time in TSO watching sims skill up. I love that it only takes 1 minute to get to level 10!

I started a family with 2 parents, twin toddlers, and another dude and was fine. the other guy now has a wife and kid, and everything's still manageable. I suppose I have a lot of practice from having an absolutely ridiculously sized family in TS2. I've found that managing large groups is a lot easier on this game then in that one, but that's just my opinion.

I'm working on crushing the micromanagement beneath my shiny black boot. Coming soon: The Sims 3: Supreme Commander. You won't even need to zoom in off the main map. :P

I think they are easier to manage on things like bladder, hunger and energy, as I've noticed that they will drop in the que before any other orders I give them. What bothers me is that the rest of the time they also have a mind of their own and I have to be really quick to give them orders otherwise they will do something else, like go straight home from work when I really want them to remain in central park. That, and my sim is obsessed with key lime pie. I wish she'd change the menu every once in a while.

There are a million mods out there already that make gameplay easier. I won't use em, because I enjoy the challenge (which isn't really that bad once you get the hang of it ). But some of you whiners might enjoy em Carrigon and CyberOps in particular have a ton of mods almost all of which nerf the game massively. http://www.yggsims.com/

Well, I went back to playing my 'one' sim at a time for now and will explore the mods you speak of...

I realize the game is supposed to be challenging-I've played Sims 1 & 2 for years...but still...

Something about Sims 3 is 'just not fun..."

Less addictive than 2 for sure.

Sims 3 is definately an odd thing, but it is surprising me just how attached I am getting to the little fellas..

It is the little things that they do which endear me to them. Lots of nice little things that they do occasionally that really make it worth while. Even when they start doing something i did not want them to do!

But yes I when I first played TS1 I decided to have a 3 person family and it was very difficult getting them to do everything that I needed them to do. After a while it does become easier. But there are so many new things that kids need to do for school. even if there is no private school now.

Even with 8 Sims I think it's too easy I wish it was harder.

Personally i've found that Sims can take care of themselves and the baby/toddler's needs pretty much on their own.
Mostley they'll need a nudge in the right direction, but generaly they do pretty well.

One day I was following a Sim to the park, when I got back home, mommy Sim had started to teach one of the toddlers to walk, witout me telling her too...

I think the only problem I have with a big family is having them deal with stairs. I've been having that problem since TS1 though. I think someone had a hack for TS2 that kept them from freaking out and refusing to use the stairs if someone else was on it. I'm hoping someone comes up with something like that for TS3.

I find it easy to take care of about 5 or 6 at once -- unless there are stairs to deal with. Then it takes forever to do everything and I have to walk them up and down the stairs one by one so they will actually go to work or feed their kids instead of whining about the stairs and then wandering off to read a book.

I play 8 sims and love it I tend to pause if i need to que them up with stuff i wish them do and let em go I played with just one at first and it seemed so slow, now i have big family all teens now and it very neet seeing how they and the world play.

kewpie : yes there is a hack for TS3 for them stairs, head over to moreawesomethanyou.com and grab it. it has a few other things with it , but you can turn the other stuff off if you like

I am playing with 8 sims too. I think it's fairly easier then playing with 8 sims in sim 2. I couldn't believe that I was doing so much in the game with so many sims. I raised four babies to children at once. I had four toddlers running around while there were two children. The two children are now teens, and then the parents. The dad just retired from a medical career, and the mom has a lot of skills in cooking. One of the teens has strong logic skills and the other strong art skills.

I think there is plenty of time in the game for your sims to earn skills.