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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 27th Feb 2017 at 8:09 PM
Default The Sims 4 Community Challenge
The Sims 4 Community Challenge


Introduction

Starting with only three couples, build a unique community from the ground up! This is a rotational challenge, inspired by the classic Build-a-City challenge, that will test your stamina for legacy play as well as your creativity in building! If you prefer to stick to only one household, don't like to play for generations at a time, or hate building, this is probably not the challenge for you. On the other hand, if all of this sounds like fun, read on!


Getting Started

1. Start a new game, and create a two-sim household in CAS. Their appearance, supernatural status, traits and aspiration can be whatever you'd like, and you should set them to be married.

2. Place them in an empty lot of your choice(but not in San Myshuno), but don't play yet. Save the game, and go to manage neighborhood. Make sure your lifespan is set to normal, empty houses will not be filled, played sims will age only in the active household, and non-played sims will not age.

3. While you're here, clear some of the neighborhood out. At minimum, you will want to evict and bulldoze all lots in the immediate sub-hood your family has moved into. You will eventually clear the entirety of all your neighborhoods in this manner, but there's no need to do so immediately. I recommend clearing out one sub-hood every time you start the game, to break up the monotony.

4. Create two more households as in step 1, and move them into their own empty lots. They can be in the same sub-hood as the first family, or in another area entirely. If you choose to put them in a different area, make sure that area has been cleaned out, as in step 3.

5. Enter each of the three occupied lots and build a house for that family to live in, using your starting funds. I like to theme the house to whatever the name of the lot is, but that's not necessary, and you can even change the lot name if you'd like. You can also get the sims jobs at this point if you'd like.

6. You're all done setting up! Save your game again, load up your first household, and get playing. Good luck, and have fun!


Full Rules

1. Rotations should be one week long, changing every Sunday at a time of your choice. I recommend 4 AM. In the final household of a rotation, change the setting to allow non-played sims to age up, so they will age at the same rate as your played households.

2. Non-played sims may be married into households, but once a sim has been played they must continue as part of the rotations until they die. You may not return them to the non-played sim group, unless they became played as the result of a bug or something like that.

3. You may only visit residential and community lots that have been officially built in your game. For example, to access the hidden lot in Oasis Springs, the Desert Bloom lot must have been built, either commercially or residentially. If you're playing in San Myshuno, you may only visit city districts that have at least one apartment building occupied – see the Building New Apartment Lots section for more information.

4. Hidden lots that do not appear on the neighborhood map(such as the hermit and the alien planet) are considered to be built from the start, and may be visited at any time. The cheapest Granite Falls rental property is also considered to be built from the start, and may be rented.

5. Rules for building new lots are detailed in separate sections below – residential, community, apartment, and vacation properties each have their own rules. In short, you build new residential lots as your population grows, new community lots as you earn achievement awards for your accomplishments, and new vacation properties as your sims make use of existing vacation areas.

6. Sims may not be aged up until their age bars are full. For infants, you must wait until you receive a pop-up saying it's their birthday. Using pregnancy tests is okay.

7. Children born in game should have their traits and aspirations randomized using the Sims 4 Legacy Challenge Randomizer. You may not change aspirations until the current aspiration is complete. Aspirations after the first do not need to be random.

8. Like in the original Build-a-City challenge, careers are initially restricted. You can unlock careers by building appropriate community lots. See the section Unlocking Careers for details.

9. Similarly, skill books are not immediately available for purchase. Skill books are unlocked one at a time, by community sims writing them. To write a skill book, your sim must have a certain skill level(5 for volume 1, 8 for volume 2, and 10 for volume 3) and then write and publish a non-fiction book. For vampire lore, skill level doesn't matter, but volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 should be written by a Minor, Prime, Master and Grand Master vampire respectively. Once the appropriate volume has been written, that book is available for purchase in all households. Skill books rewarded(such as from a party reward, or stolen by kleptomaniacs) are not restricted under this rule, only books purchased through the bookshelf or computer menu.

9. At the start of the game, you're under a set of specific gameplay restrictions, due to the isolated nature of your community. These restrictions cover everything from teen careers to telephone services and even the availability of foods. See the section Growing Your Community for details.

10. You win when every lot in the world has been built.


Building Residential Lots

You may build new residential lots at any time without financial limitation, provided there are no other empty residential lots currently existing in the world. You may not fill residential lots by moving non-played sims in, and you may not delete vacant lots(though you may move a playable sim in and immediately re-model). So, essentially, the way to get more residential lots is to have plenty of babies and be financially successful. Simple to do, for sims!

When building new residential lots, you may choose your lot traits, but you must select a certain combination of good and bad lot traits in accordance with the lot's value. Lot traits may only be changed when the lot changes value tiers. You can compile your own lists of what a good or bad trait is. Most are obvious, but some may change status depending on the type of game you like to play. See the list below:

Tier 1 - $0-$4,999: 3 bad traits
Tier 2 - $5,000-$9,999: 2 bad traits
Tier 3 - $10,000-$24,999: 2 bad traits, 1 good trait
Tier 4 - $25,000-49,999: 1 bad trait, 1 good trait
Tier 5 - $50,000-$99,999: 1 bad trait, 2 good traits
Tier 6 - $100,000-$199,999: 2 good traits
Tier 7 - $200,000+: 3 good traits


Building Community Lots

To build new community lots, you will need to draw from the Community Fund. This fund is managed separately from the simoleons you deal with in the game, and you'll have to keep your own notes. You can earn money for the Community Fund by completing items on the Achievement Awards list, such as completing aspirations, reaching the top of career tracks, and even having your sims die in impressive ways!

If a sim buys a community lot and builds a business(retail or restaurant) on it, their household funds should be used. However, if that lot is sold, or otherwise “returns to the bank,” you must immediately subtract the lot's value from the Community Fund. If you don't have enough to cover the cost of the lot, take the fund into the red – you must pay the debt off and return the fund to the black before you can build anything else. Another sim purchasing the lot counts as far as paying off the debt goes.

Lots don't need to be complete when they're initially built. It's entirely valid to start with basic lots and upgrade them as your community grows. For example, you might initially create a one-room museum valued at $25,000. Later, you might add a second room, and some time later another wing, and so on. In addition, sims are allowed to “donate” craftables and collectables(not things purchasable through buy mode) to community lots as well, with no charge to the Community Fund.

Community lot traits should be assigned by value as with residential lots.


Building Apartment Lots

Building apartment lots can be complex, so bear with me. Each apartment building counts as one lot, for the purposes of being built. When you build it, you should build all units inside it, but only one needs to be occupied by a playable sim for the entire apartment unit to count as being occupied. You may fill the empty apartments with non-playable sims, and even change up which apartment unit contains your playable sims, as long as at least one playable family is living in that apartment building.

Having at least one apartment building in a city's district occupied in this manner unlocks that district for travel, including festivals.

Apartment lot traits should be assigned by value as with residential lots. Lot traits that you can't change, such as Needs TLC and Great View, count against your good and bad trait totals, so certain apartments may not be able to be brought up to a full three good traits regardless of value.


Building Vacation Properties

You begin with the cheapest vacation property already built. To build the other four, you must draw from the Vacation Fund. This works much like the Community Fund, except there is only one way to add to it – having sims go on vacation. Whenever sims pay rent to stay at a vacation property, take the amount they pay, multiply it by 10, and add it to the Vacation Fund. For example, if a family stays for two nights at a property that costs $110/night, you would add $2,200 to the Vacation Fund. Existing vacation properties may be upgraded, as with community lots.

The National Park lot is considered a community lot, not a vacation property, and should therefore be built from the Community Fund rather than the Vacation Fund.

Community lot traits should be assigned by value as with residential lots, except when calculating the lot tier you should multiply your lot's value by 2. For example, a $120,000 residential lot would be Tier 5, but that same lot on a vacation property would be Tier 6.


Unlocking Careers

To unlock careers, you must build community lots. The lot type you use for each is up to you and depends on your expansions installed, but you must pick one and have all its requirements fulfilled. If a career calls for a restaurant, for example, and you don't have Dine Out, you should build something that resembles a restaurant the best you can, and give it a different lot type.

Lots may be combined, for example a single office building that unlocks the business career, tech guru entrepreneur track, and the writer journalist track. However, each career must have a substantial portion of the lot dedicated to it. In the example above, an entire floor or wing of the building should be dedicated to each of the three unlocks, not just a single cubical. An exception is any careers that are listed together in one entry, such as both tracks of the astronaut career or the critic art critic track and the painter patron of the arts track, which don't require separate wings.

Unlocks for each of the adult and teen career tracks are listed below. As for the Get to Work careers(Detective, Doctor and Scientist), you don't need to build anything to unlock them. The first is unlocked after 4 individual non-GTW career tracks(for example, both business tracks, the culinary mixologist track, and the teen retail track) have been unlocked, the second after 8, and the third after 16. You may choose the order in which they are unlocked.

Astronaut – Interstellar Smuggler / Space Ranger: Both tracks unlocked by a science center containing a telescope and rocket pad.
Athlete – Bodybuilder: Track unlocked by a gym.
Athlete – Professional Athlete: Track unlocked by a sports(swimming, basketball, etc) center.
Business – Investor / Management: Both tracks unlocked by an office building.
Criminal – Boss: Track unlocked by a den of thievery.
Criminal – Oracle: Track unlocked by a high-tech crime den.
Critic – Art Critic / Painter – Patron of the Arts: Both career tracks unlocked by an art gallery.
Critic – Food Critic / Culinary – Chef: Both career tracks unlocked by a fancy restaurant.
Culinary – Chef: Track unlocked by a restaurant.
Culinary – Mixologist / Teen – Barista: Track unlocked by a bar or cafe.
Entertainer – Comedian: Track unlocked by a performance space with a microphone.
Entertainer – Musician: Track unlocked by a performance space with musical instruments.
Painter – Master of the Real: Track unlocked by an art studio.
Politician – Charity Organizer / Politician: Both tracks unlocked by a city hall.
Secret Agent – Diamond Agent / Villain: Both tracks unlocked by a spy lab.
Social Media – Internet Personality / Public Relations: Both tracks unlocked by a public-access computer lab.
Tech Guru – eSport Gamer: Track unlocked by an arcade or gaming center.
Tech Guru – Start Up Entrepreneur: Track unlocked by a high-tech office.
Teen – Babysitter: N/A, track unlocks elsewhere.
Teen – Fast Food / Culinary – Chef: Both career tracks unlocked by a fast food restaurant.
Teen – Manual Labor: N/A, track unlocks elsewhere.
Teen – Retail Employee: Track unlocked by a retail store.


Growing Your Community

Your community will advance through six levels as it grows from a Settlement to a Metropolis. Determine the size of your community by adding together the number of residential, community and apartment buildings(not individual apartment units) you have built.

1-3: Settlement
Child and teen sims are not allowed to attend school.
No phone services may be used, either recurring or single-use.
Sims may only cook recipes for which they possess all ingredients.
You may not build lots in San Myshuno.

4-10: Hamlet
Child and teen sims may attend school.

11-24: Village
The Babysitter and Manual Labor career tracks are unlocked for teens.

25-39: Town
All phone services are now available.

40-54: City
You may now build in San Myshuno.

55+: Metropolis
Sims may cook recipes without possessing all ingredients.

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Test Subject
#2 Old 28th Apr 2017 at 6:02 AM
Hi I'd like to do this challenge but I don't know what the Achievement Awards are. I'm hoping you can add on to your post because this sounds very well thought out and fun
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