First, Congratulations
@reggikko ! That's an amazing strategy. Didn't even occur to me.
Second, I finally finished in the top half! Which I'm going to enjoy because based on my play testing that will not happen for the next challenge.
I had so much fun with this one, even though I didn't quite figure it out. I did notice the automatic depreciation when you move onto a lot (it's between 10% & 15%), but when I did the math, the losses were outweighed by the higher sale price for the more expensive houses. I also had a spreadsheet that showed how much I'd need to earn to move into every house more expensive than the one I was in. So the strategy was to move into the most expensive house I could afford
and ensure that I could do so the next day so that I wouldn't get stranded early or end up topping out before the end of the challenge.
I also did the painting club thing. Alice, Amaya, and Ulrike for their art skills and then 3 more who were nice. Because these people would be with each other for 23ish hours/day, they needed to not have hotheads running around. (I couldn't keep track of two clubs, I just got confused in the trial). The club also had cooking and cleaning (and when needed "repair objects") as activities, so there was always food around and so that they'd keep the house(s) in good enough condition to keep the other sims from being uncomfortable so they could keep painting. I would also remove everything interesting from the house (no computers, no tv), set up a few beds so they could sleep (until I figured out "rally the troops"), and made one room in the house the "studio" where all of the easels would go. There were times where I couldn't herd them as well as I would have liked to, but as I'd just finished with the toddler challenge, I was used to trying to indirectly influence sims that I couldn't control
My sims were a married couple. They were both painters (so either could sell to the art gallery). She got Connections so that they could get the better easel. Neither actually ever went to work, they just vacationed, quit, and re-upped at appropriate intervals. They went around painting and selling paintings (I had this idea early the first Monday to do something with bonsais. It didn't work. Luckily, it also didn't take that much time while it wasn't working). Because there is no art gallery advantage to Masterpieces, those went on the walls to raise the value of the house. (same with the initial poor paintings).
For the final house, I tried to figure out how to up the price as much as possible (again, putting masterpieces on the walls, and using Mansion Baron to buy things). It is an unearthly shade of blue and has the most expensive flooring that I could find.
Could someone explain to me why you'd start and quit all of the professions? What does that do?
Like I said, I had a lot of fun. Thank you! Between the test files and the final file, I saw houses that I don't think I've ever seen before and it was fun trying to keep ahead of everything.
