Getting Townies to have babies?

[eachna]

I have created a number of townies with interesting hair colors and seeded them around assorted worlds.

Almost none of them have babies, if any do the babies do not inherit the hair. Even if I put a custom-haired male and female together into the same starter home.

Meanwhile, if a sim I control breeds with one, the hair is often passed down.

Is there something special I have to do to get wild hair colors into a world? Also, is there something I have to do to get my townies to breed at all?

[Hosfac]

I find EA story progression to be a bit lacking after playing the game this long.  I honestly wonder if the townies actually breed at all.  It seems that it's more along the lines of adoption.  I have seen pregnant townies on occasion, but this is rare.

I use NRaas Story Progression mod now, and townies actually breed.  I see pregnant townies quite a bit...especially vampires.  A female vampire is a veritable baby factory lol.

[Pam]

Welcome to our Forum, eachna.

If you have Story Progression turned on, you're probably not doing anything wrong.  It can be quite random when townies have children on their own, but it does happen.  One thing you might try is giving them the Family Oriented trait when you seed a town.  This can make them more likely to have children.  As for hair colors, the game has the genetics programmed in ways that are beyond my understanding.  But sooner or later, you should see the unique colors.  Another thing to do is make sure you save the colors when you're in Create-A-Sim.  The game will pull from your saved colors for new townies.

I hope this is helpful. 

[eachna]

Thanks for both answers.

Yes, the colors are saved and come up randomly in CAS. Yes, I have story mode on. The longer time goes on the less children and teens there are till things get so dire I have trouble finding Young Adults for marriage. From poking around the topic on Google this seems pretty normal. Yet more Maxis short-sighted programming.

I loaded up the story progression mod and wild things are happening. People are falling in love and getting married left and right. They're popping from one house to another. That's all part of the mod but it's sure exciting to get all the updates. I am hoping things will slow down a little bit once some time has passed.

I saw one of my punk-haired ladies in the park with a toddler so I'm hoping this means the baby-making has begun.

I'm also playing with Union Cove for the first time. It's a nice town, a little confusing (many of the homes don't indicate the number of bedrooms). But it has a great layout and I'm looking forward to the eventual Showtime updates. In the meantime I'm hoping to get used to the map.

[Noodles]

My gut feeling is that lately (since Pets maybe), the amount of babies has decreased a lot.
I got so annoyed with not having almost any babies in town, that I went and got Nraas Story Progression. It works like a dream. There'll never be going back for me.
So, I think you made a good choice trying it.

EA's storyprogression made many townie families move away, then replaced them with CAS generated families. I didn't like that. I rather want my existing townies to have a kid or two, than have them move out and add some CAS sims to fill the population. Nraas storyprogression does just that.

The amount of new relationships etc indeed felt a bit overwhelming when starting a new game, but it has slowed down over time when the townies have found their place, so to speak. There are occasional breakups and new relationships, but not so many it would feel "unrealistic". Also note you can choose which notifications are displayed. I chose not to display any career or skill related things (only romantic and moves) and it made the amount a lot more easier to handle.

[KirbyAndKat]

I heard a flimsy rumor that placing cribs in townie homes seems to help. I don't think so..