Wow! I am still in shock.
My only ideas for strategy, before I started my test file, were to use the "Set Club Vibe" to manage the emotions of my Sims and to find out how long each of the parties lasted and then to repeat the party with the shortest time over and over until time ran out. I also was planning to set the lot trait to "Party Place", but I forgot. I thought that the layout of the house might play a part in the success and management of the parties so I choose a single floor, open space design.
I learned a few things from my short time testing:
- each party seemed to last 6 hours
- the House Party required both Playful and Flirty emotions
- the House Party required Sims to Kiss and therefore a Romantic Interest would be required
- one of the requirements for the Birthday Party was to be able to Compliment the Birthday Sim 4 times
- being a Snob does not allow you to compliment yourself (I thought there was a trait that allowed it, maybe Insane, but I was too lazy and a little short on time to look any further)
- it didn't seem to matter what traits the guests had or if they were employed
When I completed my testing, I reread the rules, probably for the fourth time. I did some quick math. 10 days, 4 parties per day, 40 possible parties to score. Or so I thought until I saw the leaderboard and a score of 201. I didn't understand how that was even possible. Even so, I knew I probably wouldn't earn gold on the Birthday Party.
Order of Gameplay:
- Select an empty lot in Newcrest to build my house.
- Start placing predesigned rooms.
- Use "Money" cheat to become a millionaire.
- Continue building house.
- Create a club with Eating, Drinking, Dancing, Be Friendly, and Play Chess as activities. (Play chess was removed later.)
- Disallow Be Mean, Fighting, and Sabotage actions.
- Invite 5 Sims to join the club.
- Immediately start a club gathering.
- Immediately start a Dinner Party. (I chose Dinner Party first so that I could acquire a Romantic Interest and have a First Kiss before throwing a House Party.)
- Have First Kiss.
- Made sure to have nothing in my action queue when the party ended so that I could queue up the next party immediately.
- Throw a House Party.
- Throw a Birthday Party and hope I wouldn’t need to Compliment the Birthday Sim.
- Throw Dinner parties until the end of the challenge except for party number 36 in which I selected House Party by mistake.
I recorded the start time and end time of every party. I noticed that, at a minimum, it took 7 minutes from the time one party ended until the next party started. The largest gap time between parties that I had was 12 minutes.
My Sim would earn the Gold Medal with 1-3 hours remaining in the party. She used this time to sleep, use the toilet, and bathe. On occasion, she showed off her dance skills or led a Group Dance.
I played the first half of the challenge on Speed 1.
After losing 3 hours of gameplay due to a headache, I started to Speed 3 through some of the party goals being careful to not speed past the end of the party.
The piece of information I was missing when I did my quick math earlier was the fact that my Sim would age up around 8 pm on the last day. That allowed 12 more hours of party time minus the time between parties (7 x 40 = 280 minutes = 4 hours 40 minutes).
I guess that is how I managed to squeak in that 41st party.
