My Original Build-A-City Challenge Rules
In the beginning...
To begin, create a new, blank, lotless neighborhood using any template of your choosing. It can be one that comes with the game, or one that you custom-create yourself, or one that you download from your favorite downloading places. You may not attach any Downtowns, universities, or business districts. All of those must be earned as you play the neighborhood.
Next, create a founder, a single Sim. You may custom create him/her, carefully choosing his/her personality, aspiration, and appearance, or you may let him/her be randomly generated, as you choose. Once created, move your founder into an empty lot of any size you'd like. However, since you only have the $20,000 the Sim starts with to work with, smaller is generally better.
You may not get your founder a job since, in the beginning, all careers are locked. Career slots, too, must be earned in various ways, which I'll get to. With the money left over from buying the empty lot, build your founder a house. Bear in mind that you can't have a job, so leave yourself enough money to live on until you start making money in other ways. You can make money in any legitimate way (meaning, no "kachings," "motherlodes," or "familyfunds") that your game allows, according to the expansions you have, so long as it's not a standard job. You can paint, write novels, sell fish/produce, dig for treasure, even date townies left and right and then hope that your dates drop off some nice gifts that you can then sell if you need money. You can also meet and move in/marry a townie or two, if you like. Any money they bring with them is yours. (But before you decide to do this, make sure you read #1 in the next section!)
From your lowly single founder, your job is to expand your city into a veritable metropolis and, if you decide to do so, to go about unlocking careers and sub-neighborhoods. But before we get to those details, there are some other initial caveats and restrictions and maybe even a tip or two to get to.
MOAR ANNOYANCES!
1) You MUST play every single Sim you create, every single Sim that is born or adopted in the game, and every single former townie that you make playable from wherever they start in life until they die. This means no sticking adult kids of your households in the Sim Bin once they move out of their parents' house, never to be seen again. They must all start new households of their own or stay in their house of birth and take it over when their parents die. This also means no moving in townies for money only to move them out and never play them again. Any Sim that is or that you make playable for any length of time must remain playable and must be played until that Sim dies. Personally, I also disallow deliberate killing of Sims except on one lot in my neighborhood, but I suppose that's up to you. For me, except on that one lot, all deaths must be of old age or a true accident, not something that I engineer.
2) Each household must be played for an equal number of days to keep ages in sync once breeding starts. I personally play each household for a Sim week, from Monday morning to Monday morning, in the order in which they were established, but you can choose a different schedule, according to your personal attention span. Just make sure you play each household for the same length of time. If you decide you don't like the length of time you initially choose, you may change it only when you return to the beginning of the roster, in order to keep everything in sync.
3) Feel free to do challenges within challenges, if you like. One of your neighborhood lots can be an Asylum. (If you do an Asylum, only your playable counts for your population and against your CAS Sim "points," but on the other hand, you may create the required non-playables without using CAS Sim "points," as they are kind of like townies.) Or you can create an Orphanage, although that would require a hellish amount of CAS Sim points. Or you can make a lot the home of a Black Widow. You could even run a Legacy inside of this neighborhood if you wanted to. It makes things more interesting, I think.
4) No residential or community lot may have smoke detectors or burglar alarms until there is at least one slot opened and filled in the Law Enforcement career. (See below.) If a fire or burglary happens, you also may not call the fire department or the police department because neither of those departments exist yet in your city. You must put the fire out yourself or wait for the burglar to leave on his/her own after taking a bunch of your stuff. (Or, if you have an industrious robot-building Sim, have him/her build a security 'bot.) On the bright side, once you have a burglary, you get an open position in the Law Enforcement career. You have to have three fires to get a Law Enforcement position, though. More details about that career below.
5) At first, you may not use any of the NPC services available on the phone except taxis (although I personally didn't use that, either; I used the "Walk to Lot..." feature), Pet or Sim adoption, and perhaps grocery delivery (See below about groceries). That means no maids, gardeners, repairmen, exterminators, nannies, obedience trainers, garden club, etc. All services except pizza delivery and Chinese food delivery are unlocked when the population reaches 500. Pizza and Chinese food delivery are not unlocked until the population reaches 3,000. There is also a "restriction" of sorts on grocery delivery. Your new city is in the middle of nowhere, so in order to restock fridges you can only do the following:
a) If you have Seasons, have your Sims fish or grow vegetables and keep the fridge stocked with whatever they can catch/grow.
b) Establish a community grocery store, player-owned or otherwise, and send someone from the out-of-food family there to buy groceries. Or, you can have groceries delivered at the regular cost of delivery.
c) If you do not have a grocery store in your city, you can still have groceries delivered, but you must deduct half the price of the groceries from the family's money (using the familyfunds cheat) on top of the regular price of grocery delivery. This is to simulate extra delivery fees to the back of beyond. For this reason, establishing a grocery store early on is a Very Good Idea.
Note: Simply buying a new fridge in order to restock your food is NOT ALLOWED! (Unless there is an appliance store in your city, in which case feel free to go buy a new fridge. But you must actually go to that store and buy a fridge and then bring it home in inventory. Simply buying one from the Buy Catalog isn't allowed.)
6) Servos count toward the population only if they are constructed by a qualified Sim on a robot crafting station. If for some reason you want to do so, you can spawn servos with the boolprop cheat, too, but any servo created that way doesn't count toward the population. Only legitimately-crafted ones do.
7) Pets never count toward the population. You can buy or adopt any number of them at any time, including taking in strays. Pets cannot have careers until the individual pet careers are unlocked, however, and you may not hire a trainer until the population reaches 500.
8) No one may own a car until you have established a car dealership in your city. Sims must either use the carpool, walk, or, if you decide to allow taxis or don't have the "Walk to Lot..." feature in your game, take taxis to get where they're going.
9) No private school is allowed until the population reaches 1,000 and there are at least two Sims in the Education career track.
Calculating your population...
Obviously, when it's said that the goal of this challenge (when played as a challenge) is a population of 50,000, you don't literally have 50,000 Sims or else your game would likely explode. Rather, it's a simulated population. This is calculated using a multiplier. To calculate your population, you multiply the number of playable Sims you have in your city by your current multiplier, which changes as you play.
At the very beginning, your Multiplier is 1 and your number of playable Sims is 1, your founder. 1x1=1, so your population is 1. If your founder marries/moves in a townie, you then have 2 playables and your Multiplier is still 1. 2x1=2, so your population is 2. The key to playing this way is to increase your Multiplier along with your number of playables. Here are the ways to increase your Multiplier:
+1 for the first community lot you place
+1 each time you reach a multiple of 5 community lots (So, you add one to your multiplier when you reach 5 community lots, then one when you reach 10, then 15, then 20, etc.)
+5 for adding a Downtown
+5 for each Business District
+5 for each University
So if your neighborhood has 18 community lots and one business district your Multiplier points would be as follows:
1 for founding your city
1 for the first community lot that was placed
3 total for having 5, then 10, and then 15 community lots
5 for the business district
For a total of 10.
So, if your number of playable sims in your neighborhood and business district combined was 50, your population would be 500 because 50x10=500. Now how do you get community lots and business districts and downtowns and such, you ask...?
Expanding Your City...
Basically, you expand your city by creating new households, which in turn earns you community lots and then the community lots in turn earn you new Sims to create. Households can be created in several ways. Feel free to use any or all of them at the same time.
A) The traditional way. Marry your founder (or any other created Sim) to a townie -- or just have a townie move in and live in sin ;) -- and have them procreate. Eventually, the kids grow up, at which point you can (though you don't have to) move them out to establish their own households.
B) Have any playable Sim earn a gold robotics badge and then have him craft servos. Move the servo(s) out to establish their own households.
C) Place community lots, which earn you Sims to create in Create-A-Sim, who then begin new households.
Some rules concerning expansion:
1) Any Sim you directly create in CAS, from your founder onward, can only move in/marry townies or Sims that were born in the game, not other Sims that you directly create in CAS. The exception to this is if you decide to save up your earned CAS Sims and create a whole family or families at once instead of a bunch of single Sims to "seed" individual households. Then, obviously, you'd have created Sims married to each other. Otherwise, your CAS-created Sims must only move in/marry townies or born-in-game Sims. If you move in someone who has money, you may keep the money they bring and use it as you see fit. However, if a townie comes with a job in a career that isn't unlocked or that doesn't have any positions open, then they must immediately quit their job.
2) Apart from the founder, you may use downloaded and/or Maxis pre-made lots for your newly-created Sims' residences (I highly recommend the Newbie Road series by Plasticbox), or you can build all your own lots, if you want. Community lots can also be downloaded/pre-made or you can build them yourself. It's totally up to you.
3) You may create richer or poorer Sims so that you are not always starting with $20,000. Mostly, this is because always starting with $20,000 gets really boring after a while. Believe me. :) However, you can't create a rich Sim and then have him/her donate a university. (See below for information about earning universities.) I would also limit the number of Sims that are created rich and that buy a community lot outright and that have enough money to keep it well-stocked without having to struggle at all because that gets boring, too. I think poorer Sims are far more fun. :)
4) Methods of Establishing Community Lots:
Method A: With every fourth household you establish in your neighborhood, you automatically earn a community lot of any size or type you choose. Lots earned in this manner may not be purchased by a Sim and may not have player-owned businesses on them at any time, so keep track of how each community lot was earned. For example, you can place a restaurant using this method, but you can never have a Sim purchase and run that particular restaurant as a business, so it will never help you open the Culinary career as a player-owned restaurant will. Community lots earned in this manner must be placed as soon as possible after being earned. You may not "save them up" in order to save space until you have, say, a business district to plop them all in.
Method B: At any time, you may place any community lot, but you must have a playable Sim immediately purchase the new lot and run a business on it. You can have Sims save up money to purchase a lot outright, although this takes a lot of time. You can have a Sim that was created wealthy purchase a community lot outright...
Or, you may do as I do and use the banking features of Monique's Hacked Computer to have Sims take out loans to enable them to quickly purchase the business they want. You may only take out enough money to purchase the Sim's chosen community lot. No extra. You also may not use any of the other extra features of Monique's computer except the career chooser once you start unlocking careers. If you choose to use the hacked computer, be aware that payments on your loans are automatically added to the home lot's bills in $1,000 increments. (i.e., if normally your bills would be $100, they will "now" be $1,100) and interest also accrues, so it's in your best interests to pay off the loan as quickly as possible. Given the above, if you take out a loan and the business you buy doesn't turn an adequate profit to pay the bills, you will find yourself in trouble quickly. (Just like real life! :) ) So choose wisely. If a Sim goes bankrupt and can't pay his/her bills long enough that the Repo Man comes, he/she loses his/her home AND his/her business. You must move them out and play them according to the Poverty Challenge. (Note that this only happens if you CAN'T pay your bills, not if you merely forget to do so.)
(Note that you may also take out a loan to buy a larger house if your Sim and his/her family outgrow their initial one but don't have enough cash on hand to buy a new house outright. The same risk above applies.)
Whichever method is used for establishing community lots, for every community lot you place, you earn one CAS Sim. You may immediately create that Sim and set him/her up in a new household, or you may save up CAS Sims and create entire families when you have enough Sims saved up. I prefer to immediately create new single-Sim households, since it means I earn "Method A" community lots faster, but it's up to you.
5) Earning Business Districts
You earn a business district under the following conditions: You have 5 player-owned businesses (Meaning, "Method B" above) of any rank AND you have a Business Tycoon Sim. (Meaning, he or she has reached the top of the Business career; see further down about opening and unlocking careers.)
You may earn multiple business districts. To earn a second one, you would need 10 player-owned businesses and two Business Tycoons. For three business districts you need 15 player-owned businesses and three Business Tycoons. And so on.
The main advantages of a business district are:
1) More real estate. If you start with a small neighborhood template, you might quickly run out of lots, given that, depending on your strategy, you could be placing both residential and community lots very quickly and all in one 'hood.
2) You earn 5 CAS Sims for each business district you earn.
3) It allows you to have a military base. (See farther down, under the military career.)
You may create or download a blank custom business district, and/or you may use Bluewater Village. If you choose the latter, you DO NOT get to count the pre-made families in your population, and the pre-made community lots DO NOT count as community lots for your city unless you earn them through one of the methods above. The pre-made community lots also MAY NOT be visited until they are earned. If you want to, you can simply package all the lots in BV and leave them in the Lot Bin until they are earned, if you decide you want to use those lots.
6) Earning a Downtown:
You earn a Downtown automatically when your population reaches 25,000. You may only earn a single downtown. You may use the Maxis downtown or create your own. If you use the Maxis one, again the community lots don't count for your city unless you earn them, but in this case you MAY visit them even if they aren't yet earned. The real advantage of a Downtown is that earning one nets you 20 CAS Sims. I suppose it gives you more real estate, too, although if you use the Maxis one, there aren't a lot of open lots available in it.
7) Earning Universities:
There are several methods of earning universities:
Method A: You automatically earn a university, completely free of charge, when your population reaches 50,000. If you're playing this as a challenge, this does you absolutely no good whatsoever since a population of 50,000 signals the end of the game. But if you're not playing this as a challenge or if you find you want to continue on...there you go. Add/build away.
Method B: Collect taxes from your Sims. The easiest way to do this is to use the familyfunds cheat to subtract the amount you decide to collect from each Sim household on a regular basis. You can set this up any way you like. This is the method I'm using, and I haven't earned my university yet, but I'm taking 10% of each household's available funds at the end of each lot's play round. You could also do a flat tax if you don't want to mess with percentages, but that may be too hard on your poor Sims and not hard enough on your wealthy ones. However you decide to collect the taxes, carefully keep track of how much you've collected. When you've reached a total of $1,000,000 collected in taxes, you may add/build one university. For each subsequent university you want, you need another $1,000,000.
Method C: A single household may choose to donate a university if they have a spare $1,000,000 sitting around. Note that this money must have been earned by that household; you can't simply create a rich household for the express purpose of having them donate the $1,000,000 so you can have a university.
You can have multiple universities, as many as you want and can earn. Each one increases your Sim multiplier by 5, and each one also earns you 5 CAS Sims that can be created as uni students or as Sims for the main/sub 'hood or a combination of both. Your choice.
The advantage of universities is that a number of careers require a college degree before a Sim can enter it, so universities are helpful if you choose to play in such a way that opens up careers quickly.
As far as attending college is concerned, every teen who applies is automatically accepted, but tuition isn't free anymore. For each teen who goes off to college, you must deduct $10,000 from his or her family's funds using the familyfunds cheat. (There is only one exception to this, and it's only for military-bound teens. This is explained further down.) If the family doesn't have that much spare money before the teen ages to adult, then the teen doesn't get to go to college, period. No matter how much crying they do. You may not take out loans to pay for college tuition. I know you can do that in the real world, but...
Unlocking Careers for Sims...
Forthcoming are the rules for unlocking each career, in alphabetical order. But first, some notes...
1) Depending on the expansions you have, not all of these careers may be available to you. Some of them came with University, Seasons, and FreeTime, so those will only be available if you have those expansions.
2) Once positions in careers are opened or careers are unlocked, if you've chosen to have hacked computers on your lots for the purpose of taking out loans, you may also use that computer's career chooser feature to immediately place Sims in the career openings you have available. You may also use any other hacked objects out there that are designed to allow you to immediately place a Sim in any job without having to wait for the job to show in the newspaper or on the computer. This is allowed because unlocking careers is hard enough all by itself. If you are a purist and choose not to use any hacked objects, then obviously you will need to wait until appropriate jobs are advertised in the newspaper or on a regular computer.
3) If a Sim retires, dies, quits working without retiring, is fired, or changes jobs, then whatever slot they held reopens in the job pool in that career for a new, qualified (if necessary) Sim. So as your city grows, it behooves you to keep track of which Sims hold positions in which careers and how many positions are open in all the careers.
4) Sims that are fired from their job via chance card (and you may not ignore any chance card you get!) or by simply not going to work may not immediately re-enter that same career. They must wait until their lot's next play round and they also must wait until a position in their ex-career is advertised in the newspaper or on the computer. They may not ever use the career chooser on the hacked computer or any other hacked object to get back into a career from which they've previously been fired. They may, however, immediately take a position in any other career for which they are qualified and in which there are openings, and they may use the hacked computer or other object to get into a completely new career immediately after being fired from another one.
5) Teens and Elders in the teen/elder careers take up positions in the tracks to which those careers correspond. So if you have a career with two positions open and a teen takes a teen job in that career, you only have one position left for an Adult in the adult track of that career or an Elder in the elder track of that career.
6) If you have custom careers in your game, you'll either need to ignore them for this neighborhood or, if you really want to use them, then you must create sensible, reasonable rules for unlocking them and then stick to those rules.
Now, on to the individual Sim careers:
Adventure: The first position in this career opens when a museum community lot is placed in the main neighborhood. (Not in any sub-hoods that you've earned and attached.) It doesn't matter if the museum is player-owned or not. What matters is that it must be placed on the largest lot possible in your game. If you want to use a downloaded museum that isn't built on the largest lot your game offers, you must use the Lot Adjuster to make it that way in order to count for opening this career. The idea is that you are sacrificing valuable real estate in your main 'hood for the sake of opening this career. The career is unlocked for all Sims once the first Sim in the career reaches the top of the career track.
Architecture: A position opens each time there is a multiple of 10 lots -- residential or community, in any combination -- in the main neighborhood. Lots in sub-hoods don't count for this. It is always freely open to any Sim with an Art, Physics, or Mathematics degree. The career is never unlocked.
Artist: This career is only open to Sims with an Art degree. There are no other restrictions, however. The career is never unlocked, but you can have as many Sims in the Artist career as you have Sims with Art degrees.
Athletics: This career is unlocked for all Sims once there is a player-owned sports-themed community lot in place. The sport in question can be just about anything: Bowling, darts, ice/roller skating, basketball, soccer, mini-golf, swimming. Whatever. There must be equipment available to participate in some sort of sport, though. You can't have just a "sports bar."
Business: A new position in this track opens every time a player-owned business of any kind reaches Rank 5. It is unlocked to everyone once someone becomes a Business Tycoon, the top of this track.
Criminal: The first position in this career opens when the population reaches 100. After that, whenever a Sim becomes a Criminal Mastermind, another position in Criminal opens as well as one each in Law Enforcement and Intelligence. The career is never unlocked.
Culinary: The first position opens when a player-owned restaurant reaches Rank 5. The career is unlocked when the first person in the career reaches the top of the career.
Dance: The first position opens when a player-owned dance studio reaches Rank 5. When that first person reaches the top of the career, the career is unlocked for everyone.
Education: One position is opened for each multiple of 250 in the population. (i.e., one position opens at 250, another at 500, another at 750, etc.) Or, regardless of population, it is always open to any Sim with a college degree in any field. The career is never unlocked.
Entertainment: Any Sim who has maxed their Charisma skill may enter this career. It is never unlocked.
Gamer: In order for a Sim to enter the Gamer career, they must personally own at least one of each of the following: an expensive computer, a video game console, a pinball machine, and an arcade game. There can be unlimited Gamers, if you want, but each must personally own all of the above equipment. The career is never unlocked.
Intelligence: A position opens in the Intelligence career whenever a Sim reaches the top of the Military, Criminal, or Science career. The career is never unlocked.
Journalism: A position opens each time the population reaches a multiple of 1,000. It is never unlocked.
Law: The career is only open to Sims with a degree in Political Science, Business, Economics, or Psychology. It is never unlocked.
Law Enforcement: This career is never unlocked, but a position opens whenever one of the following happens:
A burglary
Three Sim-started fires
A playable Sim reaches the top of the Criminal career
The population reaches a multiple of 500
Medical: The first position opens when the population reaches 1,000. A second opens at 2,500, a third opens at 5,000, and then a position opens for every multiple of 5,000 thereafter. Regardless of population, the career is always open to Sims with a degree in Biology. The career is never unlocked.
Military: Military is very special. And, in my opinion, very fun. (Or at least it will be, once I have one. ;) )
The military career is completely unlocked once a military base is established. A military base must be set up as a separate business district attached to the main 'hood, and it must be earned as such according to the rules governing earning a business district. The military base can be your first business district, but it doesn't have to be. It should have both residential housing (communal barracks as well as fully-furnished detached houses and/or apartments if you have Apartment Life) and community lots. The community lots must be earned as usual and those that are player-owned will most likely be owned and operated by civilians. (Because, really, it's quite difficult to successfully run a business AND have a regular job.) Only military Sims may live on the base, however. Civilians who own/operate businesses on the base may only travel to the base. They may not live there.
All adult military-career Sims must live on the base, not in the main 'hood or any other sub-hood of it. Teens and Elders in the elder/teen military career tracks may live off-base with their non-military families or, in the case of Elders, by themselves, but when a teen holding a position in the teen military career track is about to age to adulthood, he or she must do one of the following:
A) Quit the military career altogether and live their subsequent life however they choose, including going to a university, if available, and choosing any major they want. If you want, you can have the Sim re-join the military at a later time. If their skill levels at that time earn them a rank offering in one of higher ranks and those ranks according to the guidelines below are already filled, however, they cannot take the job and must choose a different career path.
B) Transition to adulthood, accept the military adult career track and the rank automatically offered, and then immediately move into the barracks on the military base.
C) Go to a university (if you have one), choose a major that benefits the military career (Those being Political Science and History), and then immediately join the military and move on-base upon graduation.
In this one case of C above, the teen's tuition DOES NOT get deducted from the family's funds, simulating the military paying for your college education in exchange for service upon graduation. You may not drop out of or be expelled from college without penalty if the military is paying for it, however. If you do drop out or get expelled, you may not have the Sim rejoin his or her parents' household and you must deduct $15,000 from the amount that Sim gets when he/she starts a household post-dropout. Good luck buying a lot and building a house on $5,000! On the other hand, if you make it successfully through college, your Sim will join the military at a fairly high rank. If, according to the guidelines below, your higher ranks are already full, this particular Sim may still accept and hold whatever rank they are offered, just by virtue of his/her education.
Although military-career Sims can't live off-base, they may certainly temporarily travel to the main 'hood or other sub-hoods of it for outings and dates and such. If you want them to have a significant other, in fact, then they must travel off-base since civilian dates/guests are not allowed on base at all. Civilians can only be on base if they are married to (or at least engaged to, with the intention of immediately marrying) a military-career Sim. You can't move non-military Sims on to the base without marrying them to a military-career Sim. Repeat: Absolutely NO move-ins without marriage on the military base!
All single Sims, meanwhile, who rank below the fifth rank in the military career (meaning, Junior Officer down to Recruit) MUST live in the barracks, which is communal housing. So, build at least one residential lot with a bunch of beds in it but no private bedrooms. (Functional bunk beds -- as opposed to decorative ones with unusable top bunks -- are good. Download some.) Don't worry about dividing the sexes unless you want to do so with the gender-specific doors or some-such. The barracks should have gender-separated bathrooms, though, with the public toilet stalls and communal showers. It should also have a lounge area for the Sims who live there to relax and/or build skills. It can have dining facilities, if you want, or you can build a separate community mess hall for barracks-living -- and any other -- military Sims to eat in. (Complete with the industrial stove, if you like, so you can have a full-time NPC cook.) If you go that route, your mess hall doesn't count as a community lot, though. Basically, the barracks is a dorm, but this isn't a university campus and there are no separated, private dorm rooms.
Married military-career Sims of any rank, whether they marry civilians or fellow military personnel, and all military-career Sims at the fifth rank (Counter Intelligence) or higher regardless of marital status must live in private, detached housing. (Or in apartment buildings, if you have Apartment Life. I don't have that expansion, so I don't know how you'd work the rent thing and such. That'll be for you to figure out. ;) ) Upon promotion to that rank or on their engagement day immediately prior to moving in their spouse-to-be, their play round ends because when you move them into their new house it will be Monday again and things will get out of whack. Upon playing that household again, if your Sim moved into the house because of impending marriage, the very first thing you must do is move in your Sim's betrothed and then immediately marry them. You can do this privately or you can create a group and go on an outing to a community lot to marry or you can throw a wedding party, which is the ONLY time you may invite civilians to the base.
In any case, build/place some residential lots for married and higher-ranking Sims. They should all be pre-furnished/decorated so that Sims heading to the altar or newly-promoted Sims can just move right in. Don't worry about the price of these houses, since this is military housing provided to military personnel for free. (Meaning, in order to move them in, you add exactly the price of the house to the Sim's account using the familyfunds cheat.) You also need not pay bills. In order to do that without penalty, refund any bills the Sims pay with the familyfunds cheat. Or you can just leave bills be and then replace any objects the Repo Man takes...although then your Sim will have bad Repo Man memories, if such a thing matters to you.
One thing, though: Given that the houses are government-provided, they shouldn't be luxurious at all, except for the General's house and, if you want, some upgraded houses reserved for those Sims in the top three ranks. Whatever the case, the Sims must live with the furniture/decorating they get in their assigned house. They can't change/sell anything in the house, nor should they buy anything for the house unless it's baby/toddler equipment or, say, extra chairs at the dining table for any kids they have. Fortune Sims won't be happy about this but...tough. :) For this reason, you should make sure the houses are completely furnished, including things like lighting and dressers and skill-building objects, and you should probably keep all the houses similar, if not exactly the same, and also keep the decorating and color schemes gender-neutral and basic. The military isn't really a place for individual expression, anyway. You also might want to download the "Stay Things Shrub" on this page
No children of military Sims are allowed to live with their parents once they reach adulthood. Unless they also take a job in the military, they must move off the base and establish their own households and lives in the main 'hood or in one of its sub-hoods. If they take a job in the military, they must immediately move into the barracks or, if they can enter the career with a high enough rank (Say, if they went to college), they move into their own private house. Whatever the case, they cannot live with their parents after they reach adulthood.
Now, I realize that you will have townies wandering around the base where only military personnel should be. As far as I know, this cannot be avoided. To the extent possible, you must ignore these townies when playing on base. Never greet walk-by townies when playing on-base residential lots. (You must have your Sim go off base to meet townies, if you want them to do so.) Don't talk to townie customers if you're visiting an on-base community lot. Business owners, even if civilians themselves, shouldn't do any sales interactions with townies when playing, though you of course can't avoid ringing up their sales. In other words, deliberately interact only with military personnel when playing on-base lots. For the purposes of identifying them, you'd be wise to have military Sims always dressed in military clothing, so download some for as many clothing categories as you can find or create some if you know how to do that.
If any military Sim of any rank or marital status is fired from, retires from, or otherwise quits the Military career, they (and their family, if applicable) must immediately move off-base into a house in the main 'hood or one of its sub-hoods other than the military base and their play round is then over until the next time they reach the top of the roster. When the time comes to move them into their new house, if the family has less than $20,000, you must familyfund them to $20,000. If they have more than $20,000, they may keep the extra. Whatever the case, they must buy a house that they can afford without a loan, even if they have a family of 10 but only $20,000. (Bunk beds are your friends!) Cross your fingers hard on those chance cards! Remember, you can't ignore any of them, with only one exception explained farther down.
If a military-career Sim dies by any means, his/her family (if any) must immediately move off base unless someone else in the household is also military (including any teens in the military career track). If there are no kids, and the surviving spouse is military but does not have a rank to qualify him/her for a private house, they must move back to the barracks. If there are kids, the survivor stays in the private house until all the kids have grown up and moved out. If at that point the spouse has a rank that qualifies for a private house, they can stay there. If not, off to the barracks with them. If the survivors have to move off-base, they receive an extra $30,000 payment from the military to help establish their new household. (Add this via the familyfunds cheat before you buy these Sims their new house.) The grave of the dead military Sim must be taken with the family to avoid haunted houses. If the survivors are staying in the house, the grave stays with them or you may choose to move it to a community cemetery either on- or off-base.
If any single Sim living in a private house gets demoted such that they no longer qualify for the private house (Meaning, they're demoted to Junior Officer or lower), then you must immediately move them back to the barracks and, again, their play round is over. If they're married, they get to stay in their same house and you can finish out their round. The exception to this is if the demoted Sim in question is a high-ranking Sim for whom you've provided upgraded housing according to his/her rank and there is no other Sim in the household that qualifies for the upgraded housing. If the household is no longer of a qualifying rank, they must move back into a "regular" private house and their play round ends.
For your General, once you have one, you should have one luxurious, top-of-the-line house in which he or she will live. As usual, he or she (along with his/her family, of course) gets to move into this house free of charge (again using the familyfunds cheat to adjust his/her available money) immediately upon his/her promotion to General. However, once they are promoted to that rank, their play round ends. Move them into the new house at the start of their next round.
At any point in time, there may only be one General and a maximum of two each of the three ranks directly below General. (Meaning, Senior Officer, Commander, and Astronaut.) You can have as many as you want of the other ranks. Keep track of who holds what rank in this career track, and if the upper ranks are filled, do not allow your military Sims to be promoted to those ranks. Either don't let them gain the skills necessary or don't allow them to have the necessary friends. If they get a chance card while they hold one of these "boundary ranks," this is the only situation in which you may ignore chance cards. In fact, you must ignore them, to avoid the possibility of promotion to a rank that has no open slots. Again, the exception to this is if a college graduate is entering the military after having been in the military career as a teen and then having earned a degree in a field benefiting the military. If he or she is offered a rank that is "full," you can still allow him/her to accept the job. You'll just have one extra of that rank. You can still only ever have one General at a time, however.
Once the current General dies, quits, is fired, is demoted, or retires, another Sim may be promoted from Astronaut to General. (And one Sim may be promoted from Commander to Astronaut, and another one from Senior Officer to Commander and another up to Senior Officer.) The new General may not be the outgoing General's spouse, though it can be his/her child if that child has worked his/her way up the ranks.
If a General is fired, quits, or retires, he or she and his/her family must immediately move out of the General's house and into any house in the main 'hood (since he/she will no longer be military) that he or she can afford. If the General is fired, quits, or retires and is married to a fellow military Sim, then their spouse must leave the military as well, unless you want to break up their marriage instead and have the still-military spouse live on base in appropriate housing according to their rank.
If the General dies and his/her spouse is in the military or if there are any teens in the military track, the family must move to appropriate on-base housing. If the spouse is not military and there are no teens in the teen military career, the family must move off base with the same extra $30,000 to help establish a new household. Whether staying on base or not, the dead General's family must take the general's grave with them, to avoid having a haunted General's house. (You may have a military cemetery on base, if you want, or the grave can be moved to a community cemetery elsewhere.) If the General is demoted, then he/she and his/her family moves into appropriate housing on base and the ex-General can work his/her way back up the ranks but can never be General again.
When the military base is established, you get up to 15 CAS Sims to begin to populate it, as opposed to the usual 5 for a business district. You do not need to use all 15 if you don't want to. However, all of these Sims must take jobs in the military career and so must live on base. If you choose not to use them for the base, they cannot then be used to populate your main 'hood or any other sub-hood of it. If you like, you may select some of these new Sims to become your General and members of the upper ranks (You'll need to cheat to do this, obviously), or you may start them all as recruits and then see who seems most suited to those ranks and get them promoted the "natural" way. In any case, all the Sims living on the base count toward the population of the main 'hood and any community lots count as normal as well.
You may have only one military base.
Music: The career is unlocked when a community lot including a stage and three musical instruments is placed. This lot does not have to be player-owned.
Natural Science: Open only to Sims with a degree in Biology or Mathematics. The career is never unlocked.
Oceanography: Open to any Sim with a gold fishing badge. The career is never unlocked.
Paranormal: Open to Sims with a degree in Philosophy, Physics, or Psychology, but only if you also have a community cemetery lot in your city that has at least two graves in it. This career is never unlocked.
Politics: The career is completely unlocked once the population reaches 1,000. However, there can only be one mayor at a time.
Science: Any Sim who maxes out both their Logic skill and, if you have FreeTime, their science hobby enthusiasm may enter the Science career. If you don't have FreeTime, you must max out the Sim's Logic skill before they go to college or before they transition to adulthood if you don't yet have a university. On the other hand, the career is always open to Sims with a degree in Biology, Mathematics, or Physics. The career is never unlocked.
Show Business: The career is open to any Sim with a degree in Political Science, Drama, Economics, or Literature, so long as there is already either a Prestidigitator (top of the Entertainment career) or Professional Party Guest (top of the Slacker career) residing in the city. The career is never unlocked.
Slacker: A position is opened whenever a "club" community lot is placed. It is unlocked once the city has a Downtown.
Careers for Pets...
Security: This is unlocked for all pets once there are 5 positions filled in Law Enforcement. Or, it is always open to any pet owned by a Sim in Law Enforcement.
Service: Unlocked once the majority of phone services are opened once the population reaches 500.
Show Business: Open only to talented pets. Talented pets are those who have learned all their commands, except toilet training for cats.
To begin, create a new, blank, lotless neighborhood using any template of your choosing. It can be one that comes with the game, or one that you custom-create yourself, or one that you download from your favorite downloading places. You may not attach any Downtowns, universities, or business districts. All of those must be earned as you play the neighborhood.
Next, create a founder, a single Sim. You may custom create him/her, carefully choosing his/her personality, aspiration, and appearance, or you may let him/her be randomly generated, as you choose. Once created, move your founder into an empty lot of any size you'd like. However, since you only have the $20,000 the Sim starts with to work with, smaller is generally better.
You may not get your founder a job since, in the beginning, all careers are locked. Career slots, too, must be earned in various ways, which I'll get to. With the money left over from buying the empty lot, build your founder a house. Bear in mind that you can't have a job, so leave yourself enough money to live on until you start making money in other ways. You can make money in any legitimate way (meaning, no "kachings," "motherlodes," or "familyfunds") that your game allows, according to the expansions you have, so long as it's not a standard job. You can paint, write novels, sell fish/produce, dig for treasure, even date townies left and right and then hope that your dates drop off some nice gifts that you can then sell if you need money. You can also meet and move in/marry a townie or two, if you like. Any money they bring with them is yours. (But before you decide to do this, make sure you read #1 in the next section!)
From your lowly single founder, your job is to expand your city into a veritable metropolis and, if you decide to do so, to go about unlocking careers and sub-neighborhoods. But before we get to those details, there are some other initial caveats and restrictions and maybe even a tip or two to get to.
MOAR ANNOYANCES!
1) You MUST play every single Sim you create, every single Sim that is born or adopted in the game, and every single former townie that you make playable from wherever they start in life until they die. This means no sticking adult kids of your households in the Sim Bin once they move out of their parents' house, never to be seen again. They must all start new households of their own or stay in their house of birth and take it over when their parents die. This also means no moving in townies for money only to move them out and never play them again. Any Sim that is or that you make playable for any length of time must remain playable and must be played until that Sim dies. Personally, I also disallow deliberate killing of Sims except on one lot in my neighborhood, but I suppose that's up to you. For me, except on that one lot, all deaths must be of old age or a true accident, not something that I engineer.
2) Each household must be played for an equal number of days to keep ages in sync once breeding starts. I personally play each household for a Sim week, from Monday morning to Monday morning, in the order in which they were established, but you can choose a different schedule, according to your personal attention span. Just make sure you play each household for the same length of time. If you decide you don't like the length of time you initially choose, you may change it only when you return to the beginning of the roster, in order to keep everything in sync.
3) Feel free to do challenges within challenges, if you like. One of your neighborhood lots can be an Asylum. (If you do an Asylum, only your playable counts for your population and against your CAS Sim "points," but on the other hand, you may create the required non-playables without using CAS Sim "points," as they are kind of like townies.) Or you can create an Orphanage, although that would require a hellish amount of CAS Sim points. Or you can make a lot the home of a Black Widow. You could even run a Legacy inside of this neighborhood if you wanted to. It makes things more interesting, I think.
4) No residential or community lot may have smoke detectors or burglar alarms until there is at least one slot opened and filled in the Law Enforcement career. (See below.) If a fire or burglary happens, you also may not call the fire department or the police department because neither of those departments exist yet in your city. You must put the fire out yourself or wait for the burglar to leave on his/her own after taking a bunch of your stuff. (Or, if you have an industrious robot-building Sim, have him/her build a security 'bot.) On the bright side, once you have a burglary, you get an open position in the Law Enforcement career. You have to have three fires to get a Law Enforcement position, though. More details about that career below.
5) At first, you may not use any of the NPC services available on the phone except taxis (although I personally didn't use that, either; I used the "Walk to Lot..." feature), Pet or Sim adoption, and perhaps grocery delivery (See below about groceries). That means no maids, gardeners, repairmen, exterminators, nannies, obedience trainers, garden club, etc. All services except pizza delivery and Chinese food delivery are unlocked when the population reaches 500. Pizza and Chinese food delivery are not unlocked until the population reaches 3,000. There is also a "restriction" of sorts on grocery delivery. Your new city is in the middle of nowhere, so in order to restock fridges you can only do the following:
a) If you have Seasons, have your Sims fish or grow vegetables and keep the fridge stocked with whatever they can catch/grow.
b) Establish a community grocery store, player-owned or otherwise, and send someone from the out-of-food family there to buy groceries. Or, you can have groceries delivered at the regular cost of delivery.
c) If you do not have a grocery store in your city, you can still have groceries delivered, but you must deduct half the price of the groceries from the family's money (using the familyfunds cheat) on top of the regular price of grocery delivery. This is to simulate extra delivery fees to the back of beyond. For this reason, establishing a grocery store early on is a Very Good Idea.
Note: Simply buying a new fridge in order to restock your food is NOT ALLOWED! (Unless there is an appliance store in your city, in which case feel free to go buy a new fridge. But you must actually go to that store and buy a fridge and then bring it home in inventory. Simply buying one from the Buy Catalog isn't allowed.)
6) Servos count toward the population only if they are constructed by a qualified Sim on a robot crafting station. If for some reason you want to do so, you can spawn servos with the boolprop cheat, too, but any servo created that way doesn't count toward the population. Only legitimately-crafted ones do.
7) Pets never count toward the population. You can buy or adopt any number of them at any time, including taking in strays. Pets cannot have careers until the individual pet careers are unlocked, however, and you may not hire a trainer until the population reaches 500.
8) No one may own a car until you have established a car dealership in your city. Sims must either use the carpool, walk, or, if you decide to allow taxis or don't have the "Walk to Lot..." feature in your game, take taxis to get where they're going.
9) No private school is allowed until the population reaches 1,000 and there are at least two Sims in the Education career track.
Calculating your population...
Obviously, when it's said that the goal of this challenge (when played as a challenge) is a population of 50,000, you don't literally have 50,000 Sims or else your game would likely explode. Rather, it's a simulated population. This is calculated using a multiplier. To calculate your population, you multiply the number of playable Sims you have in your city by your current multiplier, which changes as you play.
At the very beginning, your Multiplier is 1 and your number of playable Sims is 1, your founder. 1x1=1, so your population is 1. If your founder marries/moves in a townie, you then have 2 playables and your Multiplier is still 1. 2x1=2, so your population is 2. The key to playing this way is to increase your Multiplier along with your number of playables. Here are the ways to increase your Multiplier:
+1 for the first community lot you place
+1 each time you reach a multiple of 5 community lots (So, you add one to your multiplier when you reach 5 community lots, then one when you reach 10, then 15, then 20, etc.)
+5 for adding a Downtown
+5 for each Business District
+5 for each University
So if your neighborhood has 18 community lots and one business district your Multiplier points would be as follows:
1 for founding your city
1 for the first community lot that was placed
3 total for having 5, then 10, and then 15 community lots
5 for the business district
For a total of 10.
So, if your number of playable sims in your neighborhood and business district combined was 50, your population would be 500 because 50x10=500. Now how do you get community lots and business districts and downtowns and such, you ask...?
Expanding Your City...
Basically, you expand your city by creating new households, which in turn earns you community lots and then the community lots in turn earn you new Sims to create. Households can be created in several ways. Feel free to use any or all of them at the same time.
A) The traditional way. Marry your founder (or any other created Sim) to a townie -- or just have a townie move in and live in sin ;) -- and have them procreate. Eventually, the kids grow up, at which point you can (though you don't have to) move them out to establish their own households.
B) Have any playable Sim earn a gold robotics badge and then have him craft servos. Move the servo(s) out to establish their own households.
C) Place community lots, which earn you Sims to create in Create-A-Sim, who then begin new households.
Some rules concerning expansion:
1) Any Sim you directly create in CAS, from your founder onward, can only move in/marry townies or Sims that were born in the game, not other Sims that you directly create in CAS. The exception to this is if you decide to save up your earned CAS Sims and create a whole family or families at once instead of a bunch of single Sims to "seed" individual households. Then, obviously, you'd have created Sims married to each other. Otherwise, your CAS-created Sims must only move in/marry townies or born-in-game Sims. If you move in someone who has money, you may keep the money they bring and use it as you see fit. However, if a townie comes with a job in a career that isn't unlocked or that doesn't have any positions open, then they must immediately quit their job.
2) Apart from the founder, you may use downloaded and/or Maxis pre-made lots for your newly-created Sims' residences (I highly recommend the Newbie Road series by Plasticbox), or you can build all your own lots, if you want. Community lots can also be downloaded/pre-made or you can build them yourself. It's totally up to you.
3) You may create richer or poorer Sims so that you are not always starting with $20,000. Mostly, this is because always starting with $20,000 gets really boring after a while. Believe me. :) However, you can't create a rich Sim and then have him/her donate a university. (See below for information about earning universities.) I would also limit the number of Sims that are created rich and that buy a community lot outright and that have enough money to keep it well-stocked without having to struggle at all because that gets boring, too. I think poorer Sims are far more fun. :)
4) Methods of Establishing Community Lots:
Method A: With every fourth household you establish in your neighborhood, you automatically earn a community lot of any size or type you choose. Lots earned in this manner may not be purchased by a Sim and may not have player-owned businesses on them at any time, so keep track of how each community lot was earned. For example, you can place a restaurant using this method, but you can never have a Sim purchase and run that particular restaurant as a business, so it will never help you open the Culinary career as a player-owned restaurant will. Community lots earned in this manner must be placed as soon as possible after being earned. You may not "save them up" in order to save space until you have, say, a business district to plop them all in.
Method B: At any time, you may place any community lot, but you must have a playable Sim immediately purchase the new lot and run a business on it. You can have Sims save up money to purchase a lot outright, although this takes a lot of time. You can have a Sim that was created wealthy purchase a community lot outright...
Or, you may do as I do and use the banking features of Monique's Hacked Computer to have Sims take out loans to enable them to quickly purchase the business they want. You may only take out enough money to purchase the Sim's chosen community lot. No extra. You also may not use any of the other extra features of Monique's computer except the career chooser once you start unlocking careers. If you choose to use the hacked computer, be aware that payments on your loans are automatically added to the home lot's bills in $1,000 increments. (i.e., if normally your bills would be $100, they will "now" be $1,100) and interest also accrues, so it's in your best interests to pay off the loan as quickly as possible. Given the above, if you take out a loan and the business you buy doesn't turn an adequate profit to pay the bills, you will find yourself in trouble quickly. (Just like real life! :) ) So choose wisely. If a Sim goes bankrupt and can't pay his/her bills long enough that the Repo Man comes, he/she loses his/her home AND his/her business. You must move them out and play them according to the Poverty Challenge. (Note that this only happens if you CAN'T pay your bills, not if you merely forget to do so.)
(Note that you may also take out a loan to buy a larger house if your Sim and his/her family outgrow their initial one but don't have enough cash on hand to buy a new house outright. The same risk above applies.)
Whichever method is used for establishing community lots, for every community lot you place, you earn one CAS Sim. You may immediately create that Sim and set him/her up in a new household, or you may save up CAS Sims and create entire families when you have enough Sims saved up. I prefer to immediately create new single-Sim households, since it means I earn "Method A" community lots faster, but it's up to you.
5) Earning Business Districts
You earn a business district under the following conditions: You have 5 player-owned businesses (Meaning, "Method B" above) of any rank AND you have a Business Tycoon Sim. (Meaning, he or she has reached the top of the Business career; see further down about opening and unlocking careers.)
You may earn multiple business districts. To earn a second one, you would need 10 player-owned businesses and two Business Tycoons. For three business districts you need 15 player-owned businesses and three Business Tycoons. And so on.
The main advantages of a business district are:
1) More real estate. If you start with a small neighborhood template, you might quickly run out of lots, given that, depending on your strategy, you could be placing both residential and community lots very quickly and all in one 'hood.
2) You earn 5 CAS Sims for each business district you earn.
3) It allows you to have a military base. (See farther down, under the military career.)
You may create or download a blank custom business district, and/or you may use Bluewater Village. If you choose the latter, you DO NOT get to count the pre-made families in your population, and the pre-made community lots DO NOT count as community lots for your city unless you earn them through one of the methods above. The pre-made community lots also MAY NOT be visited until they are earned. If you want to, you can simply package all the lots in BV and leave them in the Lot Bin until they are earned, if you decide you want to use those lots.
6) Earning a Downtown:
You earn a Downtown automatically when your population reaches 25,000. You may only earn a single downtown. You may use the Maxis downtown or create your own. If you use the Maxis one, again the community lots don't count for your city unless you earn them, but in this case you MAY visit them even if they aren't yet earned. The real advantage of a Downtown is that earning one nets you 20 CAS Sims. I suppose it gives you more real estate, too, although if you use the Maxis one, there aren't a lot of open lots available in it.
7) Earning Universities:
There are several methods of earning universities:
Method A: You automatically earn a university, completely free of charge, when your population reaches 50,000. If you're playing this as a challenge, this does you absolutely no good whatsoever since a population of 50,000 signals the end of the game. But if you're not playing this as a challenge or if you find you want to continue on...there you go. Add/build away.
Method B: Collect taxes from your Sims. The easiest way to do this is to use the familyfunds cheat to subtract the amount you decide to collect from each Sim household on a regular basis. You can set this up any way you like. This is the method I'm using, and I haven't earned my university yet, but I'm taking 10% of each household's available funds at the end of each lot's play round. You could also do a flat tax if you don't want to mess with percentages, but that may be too hard on your poor Sims and not hard enough on your wealthy ones. However you decide to collect the taxes, carefully keep track of how much you've collected. When you've reached a total of $1,000,000 collected in taxes, you may add/build one university. For each subsequent university you want, you need another $1,000,000.
Method C: A single household may choose to donate a university if they have a spare $1,000,000 sitting around. Note that this money must have been earned by that household; you can't simply create a rich household for the express purpose of having them donate the $1,000,000 so you can have a university.
You can have multiple universities, as many as you want and can earn. Each one increases your Sim multiplier by 5, and each one also earns you 5 CAS Sims that can be created as uni students or as Sims for the main/sub 'hood or a combination of both. Your choice.
The advantage of universities is that a number of careers require a college degree before a Sim can enter it, so universities are helpful if you choose to play in such a way that opens up careers quickly.
As far as attending college is concerned, every teen who applies is automatically accepted, but tuition isn't free anymore. For each teen who goes off to college, you must deduct $10,000 from his or her family's funds using the familyfunds cheat. (There is only one exception to this, and it's only for military-bound teens. This is explained further down.) If the family doesn't have that much spare money before the teen ages to adult, then the teen doesn't get to go to college, period. No matter how much crying they do. You may not take out loans to pay for college tuition. I know you can do that in the real world, but...
Unlocking Careers for Sims...
Forthcoming are the rules for unlocking each career, in alphabetical order. But first, some notes...
1) Depending on the expansions you have, not all of these careers may be available to you. Some of them came with University, Seasons, and FreeTime, so those will only be available if you have those expansions.
2) Once positions in careers are opened or careers are unlocked, if you've chosen to have hacked computers on your lots for the purpose of taking out loans, you may also use that computer's career chooser feature to immediately place Sims in the career openings you have available. You may also use any other hacked objects out there that are designed to allow you to immediately place a Sim in any job without having to wait for the job to show in the newspaper or on the computer. This is allowed because unlocking careers is hard enough all by itself. If you are a purist and choose not to use any hacked objects, then obviously you will need to wait until appropriate jobs are advertised in the newspaper or on a regular computer.
3) If a Sim retires, dies, quits working without retiring, is fired, or changes jobs, then whatever slot they held reopens in the job pool in that career for a new, qualified (if necessary) Sim. So as your city grows, it behooves you to keep track of which Sims hold positions in which careers and how many positions are open in all the careers.
4) Sims that are fired from their job via chance card (and you may not ignore any chance card you get!) or by simply not going to work may not immediately re-enter that same career. They must wait until their lot's next play round and they also must wait until a position in their ex-career is advertised in the newspaper or on the computer. They may not ever use the career chooser on the hacked computer or any other hacked object to get back into a career from which they've previously been fired. They may, however, immediately take a position in any other career for which they are qualified and in which there are openings, and they may use the hacked computer or other object to get into a completely new career immediately after being fired from another one.
5) Teens and Elders in the teen/elder careers take up positions in the tracks to which those careers correspond. So if you have a career with two positions open and a teen takes a teen job in that career, you only have one position left for an Adult in the adult track of that career or an Elder in the elder track of that career.
6) If you have custom careers in your game, you'll either need to ignore them for this neighborhood or, if you really want to use them, then you must create sensible, reasonable rules for unlocking them and then stick to those rules.
Now, on to the individual Sim careers:
Adventure: The first position in this career opens when a museum community lot is placed in the main neighborhood. (Not in any sub-hoods that you've earned and attached.) It doesn't matter if the museum is player-owned or not. What matters is that it must be placed on the largest lot possible in your game. If you want to use a downloaded museum that isn't built on the largest lot your game offers, you must use the Lot Adjuster to make it that way in order to count for opening this career. The idea is that you are sacrificing valuable real estate in your main 'hood for the sake of opening this career. The career is unlocked for all Sims once the first Sim in the career reaches the top of the career track.
Architecture: A position opens each time there is a multiple of 10 lots -- residential or community, in any combination -- in the main neighborhood. Lots in sub-hoods don't count for this. It is always freely open to any Sim with an Art, Physics, or Mathematics degree. The career is never unlocked.
Artist: This career is only open to Sims with an Art degree. There are no other restrictions, however. The career is never unlocked, but you can have as many Sims in the Artist career as you have Sims with Art degrees.
Athletics: This career is unlocked for all Sims once there is a player-owned sports-themed community lot in place. The sport in question can be just about anything: Bowling, darts, ice/roller skating, basketball, soccer, mini-golf, swimming. Whatever. There must be equipment available to participate in some sort of sport, though. You can't have just a "sports bar."
Business: A new position in this track opens every time a player-owned business of any kind reaches Rank 5. It is unlocked to everyone once someone becomes a Business Tycoon, the top of this track.
Criminal: The first position in this career opens when the population reaches 100. After that, whenever a Sim becomes a Criminal Mastermind, another position in Criminal opens as well as one each in Law Enforcement and Intelligence. The career is never unlocked.
Culinary: The first position opens when a player-owned restaurant reaches Rank 5. The career is unlocked when the first person in the career reaches the top of the career.
Dance: The first position opens when a player-owned dance studio reaches Rank 5. When that first person reaches the top of the career, the career is unlocked for everyone.
Education: One position is opened for each multiple of 250 in the population. (i.e., one position opens at 250, another at 500, another at 750, etc.) Or, regardless of population, it is always open to any Sim with a college degree in any field. The career is never unlocked.
Entertainment: Any Sim who has maxed their Charisma skill may enter this career. It is never unlocked.
Gamer: In order for a Sim to enter the Gamer career, they must personally own at least one of each of the following: an expensive computer, a video game console, a pinball machine, and an arcade game. There can be unlimited Gamers, if you want, but each must personally own all of the above equipment. The career is never unlocked.
Intelligence: A position opens in the Intelligence career whenever a Sim reaches the top of the Military, Criminal, or Science career. The career is never unlocked.
Journalism: A position opens each time the population reaches a multiple of 1,000. It is never unlocked.
Law: The career is only open to Sims with a degree in Political Science, Business, Economics, or Psychology. It is never unlocked.
Law Enforcement: This career is never unlocked, but a position opens whenever one of the following happens:
A burglary
Three Sim-started fires
A playable Sim reaches the top of the Criminal career
The population reaches a multiple of 500
Medical: The first position opens when the population reaches 1,000. A second opens at 2,500, a third opens at 5,000, and then a position opens for every multiple of 5,000 thereafter. Regardless of population, the career is always open to Sims with a degree in Biology. The career is never unlocked.
Military: Military is very special. And, in my opinion, very fun. (Or at least it will be, once I have one. ;) )
The military career is completely unlocked once a military base is established. A military base must be set up as a separate business district attached to the main 'hood, and it must be earned as such according to the rules governing earning a business district. The military base can be your first business district, but it doesn't have to be. It should have both residential housing (communal barracks as well as fully-furnished detached houses and/or apartments if you have Apartment Life) and community lots. The community lots must be earned as usual and those that are player-owned will most likely be owned and operated by civilians. (Because, really, it's quite difficult to successfully run a business AND have a regular job.) Only military Sims may live on the base, however. Civilians who own/operate businesses on the base may only travel to the base. They may not live there.
All adult military-career Sims must live on the base, not in the main 'hood or any other sub-hood of it. Teens and Elders in the elder/teen military career tracks may live off-base with their non-military families or, in the case of Elders, by themselves, but when a teen holding a position in the teen military career track is about to age to adulthood, he or she must do one of the following:
A) Quit the military career altogether and live their subsequent life however they choose, including going to a university, if available, and choosing any major they want. If you want, you can have the Sim re-join the military at a later time. If their skill levels at that time earn them a rank offering in one of higher ranks and those ranks according to the guidelines below are already filled, however, they cannot take the job and must choose a different career path.
B) Transition to adulthood, accept the military adult career track and the rank automatically offered, and then immediately move into the barracks on the military base.
C) Go to a university (if you have one), choose a major that benefits the military career (Those being Political Science and History), and then immediately join the military and move on-base upon graduation.
In this one case of C above, the teen's tuition DOES NOT get deducted from the family's funds, simulating the military paying for your college education in exchange for service upon graduation. You may not drop out of or be expelled from college without penalty if the military is paying for it, however. If you do drop out or get expelled, you may not have the Sim rejoin his or her parents' household and you must deduct $15,000 from the amount that Sim gets when he/she starts a household post-dropout. Good luck buying a lot and building a house on $5,000! On the other hand, if you make it successfully through college, your Sim will join the military at a fairly high rank. If, according to the guidelines below, your higher ranks are already full, this particular Sim may still accept and hold whatever rank they are offered, just by virtue of his/her education.
Although military-career Sims can't live off-base, they may certainly temporarily travel to the main 'hood or other sub-hoods of it for outings and dates and such. If you want them to have a significant other, in fact, then they must travel off-base since civilian dates/guests are not allowed on base at all. Civilians can only be on base if they are married to (or at least engaged to, with the intention of immediately marrying) a military-career Sim. You can't move non-military Sims on to the base without marrying them to a military-career Sim. Repeat: Absolutely NO move-ins without marriage on the military base!
All single Sims, meanwhile, who rank below the fifth rank in the military career (meaning, Junior Officer down to Recruit) MUST live in the barracks, which is communal housing. So, build at least one residential lot with a bunch of beds in it but no private bedrooms. (Functional bunk beds -- as opposed to decorative ones with unusable top bunks -- are good. Download some.) Don't worry about dividing the sexes unless you want to do so with the gender-specific doors or some-such. The barracks should have gender-separated bathrooms, though, with the public toilet stalls and communal showers. It should also have a lounge area for the Sims who live there to relax and/or build skills. It can have dining facilities, if you want, or you can build a separate community mess hall for barracks-living -- and any other -- military Sims to eat in. (Complete with the industrial stove, if you like, so you can have a full-time NPC cook.) If you go that route, your mess hall doesn't count as a community lot, though. Basically, the barracks is a dorm, but this isn't a university campus and there are no separated, private dorm rooms.
Married military-career Sims of any rank, whether they marry civilians or fellow military personnel, and all military-career Sims at the fifth rank (Counter Intelligence) or higher regardless of marital status must live in private, detached housing. (Or in apartment buildings, if you have Apartment Life. I don't have that expansion, so I don't know how you'd work the rent thing and such. That'll be for you to figure out. ;) ) Upon promotion to that rank or on their engagement day immediately prior to moving in their spouse-to-be, their play round ends because when you move them into their new house it will be Monday again and things will get out of whack. Upon playing that household again, if your Sim moved into the house because of impending marriage, the very first thing you must do is move in your Sim's betrothed and then immediately marry them. You can do this privately or you can create a group and go on an outing to a community lot to marry or you can throw a wedding party, which is the ONLY time you may invite civilians to the base.
In any case, build/place some residential lots for married and higher-ranking Sims. They should all be pre-furnished/decorated so that Sims heading to the altar or newly-promoted Sims can just move right in. Don't worry about the price of these houses, since this is military housing provided to military personnel for free. (Meaning, in order to move them in, you add exactly the price of the house to the Sim's account using the familyfunds cheat.) You also need not pay bills. In order to do that without penalty, refund any bills the Sims pay with the familyfunds cheat. Or you can just leave bills be and then replace any objects the Repo Man takes...although then your Sim will have bad Repo Man memories, if such a thing matters to you.
One thing, though: Given that the houses are government-provided, they shouldn't be luxurious at all, except for the General's house and, if you want, some upgraded houses reserved for those Sims in the top three ranks. Whatever the case, the Sims must live with the furniture/decorating they get in their assigned house. They can't change/sell anything in the house, nor should they buy anything for the house unless it's baby/toddler equipment or, say, extra chairs at the dining table for any kids they have. Fortune Sims won't be happy about this but...tough. :) For this reason, you should make sure the houses are completely furnished, including things like lighting and dressers and skill-building objects, and you should probably keep all the houses similar, if not exactly the same, and also keep the decorating and color schemes gender-neutral and basic. The military isn't really a place for individual expression, anyway. You also might want to download the "Stay Things Shrub" on this page
No children of military Sims are allowed to live with their parents once they reach adulthood. Unless they also take a job in the military, they must move off the base and establish their own households and lives in the main 'hood or in one of its sub-hoods. If they take a job in the military, they must immediately move into the barracks or, if they can enter the career with a high enough rank (Say, if they went to college), they move into their own private house. Whatever the case, they cannot live with their parents after they reach adulthood.
Now, I realize that you will have townies wandering around the base where only military personnel should be. As far as I know, this cannot be avoided. To the extent possible, you must ignore these townies when playing on base. Never greet walk-by townies when playing on-base residential lots. (You must have your Sim go off base to meet townies, if you want them to do so.) Don't talk to townie customers if you're visiting an on-base community lot. Business owners, even if civilians themselves, shouldn't do any sales interactions with townies when playing, though you of course can't avoid ringing up their sales. In other words, deliberately interact only with military personnel when playing on-base lots. For the purposes of identifying them, you'd be wise to have military Sims always dressed in military clothing, so download some for as many clothing categories as you can find or create some if you know how to do that.
If any military Sim of any rank or marital status is fired from, retires from, or otherwise quits the Military career, they (and their family, if applicable) must immediately move off-base into a house in the main 'hood or one of its sub-hoods other than the military base and their play round is then over until the next time they reach the top of the roster. When the time comes to move them into their new house, if the family has less than $20,000, you must familyfund them to $20,000. If they have more than $20,000, they may keep the extra. Whatever the case, they must buy a house that they can afford without a loan, even if they have a family of 10 but only $20,000. (Bunk beds are your friends!) Cross your fingers hard on those chance cards! Remember, you can't ignore any of them, with only one exception explained farther down.
If a military-career Sim dies by any means, his/her family (if any) must immediately move off base unless someone else in the household is also military (including any teens in the military career track). If there are no kids, and the surviving spouse is military but does not have a rank to qualify him/her for a private house, they must move back to the barracks. If there are kids, the survivor stays in the private house until all the kids have grown up and moved out. If at that point the spouse has a rank that qualifies for a private house, they can stay there. If not, off to the barracks with them. If the survivors have to move off-base, they receive an extra $30,000 payment from the military to help establish their new household. (Add this via the familyfunds cheat before you buy these Sims their new house.) The grave of the dead military Sim must be taken with the family to avoid haunted houses. If the survivors are staying in the house, the grave stays with them or you may choose to move it to a community cemetery either on- or off-base.
If any single Sim living in a private house gets demoted such that they no longer qualify for the private house (Meaning, they're demoted to Junior Officer or lower), then you must immediately move them back to the barracks and, again, their play round is over. If they're married, they get to stay in their same house and you can finish out their round. The exception to this is if the demoted Sim in question is a high-ranking Sim for whom you've provided upgraded housing according to his/her rank and there is no other Sim in the household that qualifies for the upgraded housing. If the household is no longer of a qualifying rank, they must move back into a "regular" private house and their play round ends.
For your General, once you have one, you should have one luxurious, top-of-the-line house in which he or she will live. As usual, he or she (along with his/her family, of course) gets to move into this house free of charge (again using the familyfunds cheat to adjust his/her available money) immediately upon his/her promotion to General. However, once they are promoted to that rank, their play round ends. Move them into the new house at the start of their next round.
At any point in time, there may only be one General and a maximum of two each of the three ranks directly below General. (Meaning, Senior Officer, Commander, and Astronaut.) You can have as many as you want of the other ranks. Keep track of who holds what rank in this career track, and if the upper ranks are filled, do not allow your military Sims to be promoted to those ranks. Either don't let them gain the skills necessary or don't allow them to have the necessary friends. If they get a chance card while they hold one of these "boundary ranks," this is the only situation in which you may ignore chance cards. In fact, you must ignore them, to avoid the possibility of promotion to a rank that has no open slots. Again, the exception to this is if a college graduate is entering the military after having been in the military career as a teen and then having earned a degree in a field benefiting the military. If he or she is offered a rank that is "full," you can still allow him/her to accept the job. You'll just have one extra of that rank. You can still only ever have one General at a time, however.
Once the current General dies, quits, is fired, is demoted, or retires, another Sim may be promoted from Astronaut to General. (And one Sim may be promoted from Commander to Astronaut, and another one from Senior Officer to Commander and another up to Senior Officer.) The new General may not be the outgoing General's spouse, though it can be his/her child if that child has worked his/her way up the ranks.
If a General is fired, quits, or retires, he or she and his/her family must immediately move out of the General's house and into any house in the main 'hood (since he/she will no longer be military) that he or she can afford. If the General is fired, quits, or retires and is married to a fellow military Sim, then their spouse must leave the military as well, unless you want to break up their marriage instead and have the still-military spouse live on base in appropriate housing according to their rank.
If the General dies and his/her spouse is in the military or if there are any teens in the military track, the family must move to appropriate on-base housing. If the spouse is not military and there are no teens in the teen military career, the family must move off base with the same extra $30,000 to help establish a new household. Whether staying on base or not, the dead General's family must take the general's grave with them, to avoid having a haunted General's house. (You may have a military cemetery on base, if you want, or the grave can be moved to a community cemetery elsewhere.) If the General is demoted, then he/she and his/her family moves into appropriate housing on base and the ex-General can work his/her way back up the ranks but can never be General again.
When the military base is established, you get up to 15 CAS Sims to begin to populate it, as opposed to the usual 5 for a business district. You do not need to use all 15 if you don't want to. However, all of these Sims must take jobs in the military career and so must live on base. If you choose not to use them for the base, they cannot then be used to populate your main 'hood or any other sub-hood of it. If you like, you may select some of these new Sims to become your General and members of the upper ranks (You'll need to cheat to do this, obviously), or you may start them all as recruits and then see who seems most suited to those ranks and get them promoted the "natural" way. In any case, all the Sims living on the base count toward the population of the main 'hood and any community lots count as normal as well.
You may have only one military base.
Music: The career is unlocked when a community lot including a stage and three musical instruments is placed. This lot does not have to be player-owned.
Natural Science: Open only to Sims with a degree in Biology or Mathematics. The career is never unlocked.
Oceanography: Open to any Sim with a gold fishing badge. The career is never unlocked.
Paranormal: Open to Sims with a degree in Philosophy, Physics, or Psychology, but only if you also have a community cemetery lot in your city that has at least two graves in it. This career is never unlocked.
Politics: The career is completely unlocked once the population reaches 1,000. However, there can only be one mayor at a time.
Science: Any Sim who maxes out both their Logic skill and, if you have FreeTime, their science hobby enthusiasm may enter the Science career. If you don't have FreeTime, you must max out the Sim's Logic skill before they go to college or before they transition to adulthood if you don't yet have a university. On the other hand, the career is always open to Sims with a degree in Biology, Mathematics, or Physics. The career is never unlocked.
Show Business: The career is open to any Sim with a degree in Political Science, Drama, Economics, or Literature, so long as there is already either a Prestidigitator (top of the Entertainment career) or Professional Party Guest (top of the Slacker career) residing in the city. The career is never unlocked.
Slacker: A position is opened whenever a "club" community lot is placed. It is unlocked once the city has a Downtown.
Careers for Pets...
Security: This is unlocked for all pets once there are 5 positions filled in Law Enforcement. Or, it is always open to any pet owned by a Sim in Law Enforcement.
Service: Unlocked once the majority of phone services are opened once the population reaches 500.
Show Business: Open only to talented pets. Talented pets are those who have learned all their commands, except toilet training for cats.