Congratulations to Rainbow Dash once again! Your enthusiasm for the supernatural is so evident in your write-up, so it's no wonder you're so proficient with vampires...
The very first strategy I came up with was the one I eventually used for the bulk of the turning - using Fan Meet And Greet events to bring sims to Radu. It seems like, when your sim becomes a two-star celebrity for the first time, every sim they've been properly introduced themselves to becomes a fan of theirs. So many sims were involved that I can't say this with complete certainty, and it differed slightly in practice to the proper run; in practice, some of the criminals at the police station became fans, but in the real run they didn't, and neither did George Cahill for some utterly unknowable reason. Most importantly, Selvadoradans and folks from Granite Falls can and will become fans, making them actually accessible! Admittedly, I didn't end up going to Granite Falls 'cause it didn't seem super efficient in practice, whereas Selvadorada spat out 22 sims in under half a day. But yeah, Radu spent six-and-a-bit days running round meeting as many sims as possible with a streaming drone in tow (well, I say "a" - I did lose the first one at some point...), then had another couple where he hosted meet-and-greets at night and kept meeting sims during the day before finally switching to constant events when I figured I had a large enough pool. Oh, and "Offer To Turn" absolutely counts as socialisation for the main goal, so for the first few events when I still needed the money I was racking up gold medal after gold medal - as time passed, though, I gave that up and just force-turned everyone in attendance...
I've already confessed to being a spreadsheet fiend in the previous challenge, so it should come as no surprise that I leaned heavily on one here - like Nandarelle, I started with a list of all the potential townies, and in practice I assembled a separate list of all the roles I could think of that the game would be forced to fill, with timings where applicable. For instance, each venue with a bar will have three mixologists, working in shifts from 6am-2pm, 2pm-10pm and 10pm-6am; if I could arrange for Radu's visit to a venue to overlap with one of those change-over times, then I could snag two sims instead of one! Yep, I micromanaged that thoroughly... but it gets worse. I checked that Radu was allowed to move lots for a reason, after all. He started in San Myshuno (19 Culpepper House), forcing the game to spawn a landlord but also giving him a slightly better chance of meeting any buskers/human statues/fashion victims/raccoons, before moving to Strangerville (Slip 42) in order to get the (un)Welcome Wagon to spawn an extra neighbour and two "secret agents"... who immediately lose their special role once they've left the lot, but hey. Finally, he planted roots at Pebble Burrow in Oasis Springs - it's a cheap lot in a compact neighbourhood that's good for walk-bys, partygoers spawn nice and close to it, and it gets gardeners and fisherfolk (though I saw none of the latter, actually).
I don't have Realm Of Magic or Discover University, so I knew I was down a couple of townies - I hadn't actually thought about how many sims would spawn in Britechester just to fill roles, but I'm well aware of how it happens in Strangerville. That was part of the reason I wanted to have Radu live there for a while, in fact, and I milked it for all I could. Beyond that, Radu spent a day as a detective and a day as an actor (no other active careers seemed worthwhile to me), hit up all the stores on Magnolia Promenade and the Brindleton Pawspital (their staff all spawn/come to work 24-7, though new "pet owner" sims don't start showing until 6am so I only got one), snagged every librarian and gym trainer (they both have two shifts!), a whole raft of mixologists and bar regulars (the game says bar regulars work 4pm-8pm, but that's untrue - they seem to dip in and out between 4pm and a touch past midnight), and fewer service sims than I would have liked (the game kept throwing the same ones back at me, though I did manage two mail carriers, two pizza delivery specialists and two butlers, the latter as a result of having turned the first butler and
the game her deciding that excused her from her duties).
My question about non-critical EA lots was based on wanting spas, bowling alleys and restaurants, but I only visited one of each in the real run as I all found them to be problematic. Spas are proper townie sponges, but (a) in practice they started taking premades out of their careers rather than generating new sims, and who here honestly wants a foot massage from Geoffrey Landgraab? & (b) sims assigned spa jobs don't seem to be taken out of the pool of unemployed townies until you've had the chance to "Ask About Career" and thus lock their employment in place - this is not ideal in an environment where sims are very easily distracted! Restaurants had sort of the opposite problem, in that their staff were too focused on their jobs to pay Radu any proper heed, and bowling alleys... well, the Oasis Springs Dust Bowl and I did not get on, so I didn't fancy trying my luck with Bowl More...
Uh, what else? I did use clubs like Nandarelle on occasion. I had an A-Club for folks Radu met whose names were at the beginning of the alphabet, a B-Club for the butler, boyfriend and
blood plasma supply, and a C-Club with a variable filter that was mostly used to drag celebrities to him - I did consider using the skill filter (especially when I just couldn't track down Miko Ojo...) but there was never really the time to do any more than the most necessary skilling. Oh, that's a point - along with being Outgoing (so much time spent talking to (mostly new) people!) and an Insider (constant club gatherings!), Radu was also a Dance Machine, because you can absolutely Disco Nap in a coffin. I did a little experimentation with the new "bed" upgrades and found it made no statistically significant difference to the energy regeneration rate of the top-tier coffin... which makes sense, given that it's the best already, so no Handiness for Radu. No painting either, 'cause it turned out the streaming drone was entirely sufficient for Radu's fame needs... bar the uploading of a couple of selfies right at the end, I'll admit, but like had I not lost the drone I would have definitely been on schedule!
(oh yeah, the boyfriend - it was an utterly perfunctory relationship. In the first week, Radu hit up The Shrieking Llama partly for the Good Timers gathering but mainly for Aliens Night - though they can't be turned, aliens can be drunk from! The ones generated specifically for the bar night show up sans disguise, but those already generated (there's always at least one) are slightly harder to spot... unless you make them glow. And hey, Very Flirty's a pretty quick Very emotion to achieve, and I couldn't say no to the aspiration points and moodlets. So, when I got suspicious of Hank Langford's multicolour dreads...)
Last, but by no means least, the evening of Monday, Week 2. I called in a meet-and-greet that saw Radu turn the sims from Clement Frost (I started in Winter for a reason!) to Dina Caliente. In the middle of that range lies Dennis Kim, who was dutifully turned between Darling Walsh and restaurant hostess Desiree Guerra. I wrapped up the event at about 2am, just as Radu started turning Dina, having unlocked all the doors of Radu's
castle house a few minutes beforehand to ensure that everyone else could exit swiftly. Technically, this is what happened - after all, "exit swiftly" is just what Dennis Kim did:
I should have mentioned - Radu developed a tendency to just not change out of outfits. After his spa break, he kept that robe on for almost three days. I, ahem, used this to great effect when I remembered to start scheduling my own holidays so that people wouldn't stop trying to go to work/school (an idea shamelessly stolen from Vesper's strategy in the last challenge) and was thus able to have him turn folks whilst wearing various ridiculous costumes. As if I really needed to make things even more absurd than they already were... anyway, that's what prompted me to ask that question. Jacques Villareal ened up dying shortly after being turned too, but at least he had the decency to snuff it
after he'd left the neighbourhood...
