Immortal Dynasty help - "Pollinated" families keep leaving town

[peach]

Hello,

I hope this is an appropriate place to put this thread--apologies if not. I recently started an Immortal Dynasty attempt, and I'm trying to use "pollinators" to sustain a population of unique-looking Sims even after the townies are gone (I've been relying heavily on Trip's guide--Trip, if you happen to read this, thanks for all your tips!). However, I'm running into a problem where "pollinated" families keep disappearing

When a family disappears, I get a pop-up message about the family moving or leaving town. The affected Sims, including my pollinators' sons/daughters, immediately disappear from the relationship panel; they do not appear on the list of Sims that can be invited over/invited to parties, and the only place they seem to exist is in the family tree, where each member is frozen at the age they were when the family "moved." I know the game routinely culls Sims/families as a part of EA Story Progression, but I don't understand the mechanics super well. I once read somewhere that the game will try to avoid Sims/families that your active household has close ties to--but it seems like this is not the case

I was wondering if anyone has tips for stopping this from happening to my pollinators' children, or at least how to deal with it. I am on Week 3, Day 6 of the attempt, and I have already lost two families (with seven children between them) to this mechanic. Is this a normal rate of turnover? Is there any (rules-compliant) way to prevent it from happening, or do I just need to plan to lose a certain amount of children every generation?

Thanks in advance for anyone that has advice.

[MrsFlynn]

Hello,

I'm not seeing a sticky thread for Immortal Dynasty Help and Tips in the Stories board and it's fine to post gameplay questions in the gameplay help board.

I've been reading a few reports about the game culling Sims because the population is high or has gone over the population number.  It doesn't seem to matter if it culls part of the active family's extended family. Family outside of the active household.

The game seems to be wanting to keep the population at a certain number or below. I don't understand the culling mechanics of EA story progression either, but that's the gist I get of how it works.

I am not sure what the normal rate of culling is. As it may depend on what your game settings are set for, Sims life span.

[peach]

Thanks for your response, MrsFlynn. I did a little bit of poking around too, and my research returned the same conclusion--inactive Sims and families get culled essentially at random whenever the game feels it needs to balance the population. The reasoning behind this "balancing" seems somewhat nebulous.

For anyone else who is interested: Up until this point, my strategy had been for my pollinator Sims to focus on maximizing the amount of children they each had with a few specific female Sims in town. I'm playing in Appaloosa Plains, and one of my pollinators had children with both of the Bird sisters--I believe five in total. However, this is one of the households that was culled, and when I lost the Birds, I lost a significant number of children I had counted on making it to adulthood for the next generation. I may restart this attempt; I believe my new strategy will be for my pollinators to try and maximize the number of households their children are a part of, to (hopefully) maximize the chances that at least some of their children make it to the next generation.

If anyone else has tips, feel free to post here or PM me.

[MrsFlynn]

Thank you Peach for the update!! I've made note of that information in my population demographics post.

I remember someone asking about demographics and different things about it, so I wrote about what I knew. Added a tip from Trip as well.

Sims 3 ~ Population Demographics
https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=32170.msg510899#msg510899

So I thought your tip would be a great addition.

[Trip]

Hi @peach. I'm still around sometimes!

So here is a big discovery I made in my own current (lol) dynasties: story progression will not move out the boss or coworkers of anyone in your active household and therefore, anyone in their household. I can confirm it for any full-time rabbithole job, and it might be true for kids in school (classmates use a similar logic to coworkers). My first step when I loaded up Moonlight Falls, which seems to have a mass exodus in the first week, was to fill my household with useful people, and get different rabbithole jobs for all of them, especially if an original townie I wanted to keep was part of it. As long as you keep the job, it doesn't matter if you're always taking unpaid vacation, on wedding or maternity leave, whatever.

Since I've been stuck on the end of Generation One since we were still panicking about toilet paper in 2020, I don't know my plan for the future. It's gonna happen and I think I know what to do but this is where we spin out into conjecture. Having immortals stay in their jobs or get new jobs is a good way to keep them out of your hair. In past dynasties, I was lucky with few to no families moving out, and I noticed that as the residential population thins out, there's a smaller pool of potential bosses and coworkers to choose from, and every household you care about will have a better chance of being represented.

Also what I found useful was this guide on Mod The Sims about populating worlds in Create A World. Most of it is irrelevant to this conversation but there is a table showing the minimum and maximum number of coworkers your sims' jobs will generate. On that note, think about which jobs are already assigned when you load a town. Only Twinbrook will have original townies start in the Education career, only Bridgeport will have original townies that start in Film, and no one starts as a Fortune Teller in Moonlight Falls (crazy right?) And story progression doesn't assign random jobs that well. It basically just fills up what's relevant to your played sims.

This doesn't apply to the Immortal Dynasty at all but I figured I would end with it: story progression will not touch sims who used to live in your household after they move out.

[MrsFlynn]

Thank you Trip for the clarification of story progression will not touch sims who used to live in your household after they move out.

[peach]

Thank you MrsFlynn! And thank you @Trip!

Trip, your tip is a godsend! I ended up restarting my dynasty after starting this thread but prior to seeing your post. This time around, I've gotten far fewer "leaving town" notifications, which I pinned down to luck--and maybe a pinch of that has been involved--but in retrospect, I think it might also be because I happened to tweak my strategy and had my founder/helpers start in their rabbithole careers far sooner!

I will definitely (purposefully) put this tip to use for the rest of the Dynasty. The fact that your Sims don't actually have to ever spend a day in the office for their coworkers to be protected is really excellent, too--I have a few helpers that I do need around the house, but I've had all of them pick up open rabbithole careers and just call to take endless time off. I even had one of my spare teens take up a part-time job, just to maximize the amount of townies that might hopefully get pulled in as coworkers.

[MrsFlynn]

Sounds like your ID is going better this time around. That is great news!!

[peach]

Sounds like your ID is going better this time around. That is great news!!

I definitely think so! I tried to plan carefully my first run, but employing a "pollination" strategy ultimately required some tinkering that could only be done after I'd actually gone through some in-game trial and error. But no shame in a test run.

Another note! I just wrapped up a play session for today, and I had my founder purchase her building (or property--I always get these mixed up!--whichever is the rabbithole). It's the combination culinary and business rabbithole in Appaloosa Plains, where she works as a chef. I was reminded that the owner of a business can choose to fire any employees! I'm going to experiment with firing her EA clone coworker to see if the game will push a new/different one, and if I can potentially snag a townie descendent this way. Three of her coworkers are currently townies, but two are elders and I'm nervous that the game might sweep their households away after they pass. I will report back on whether or not I'm able to get the game to push a new coworker through firing.

[Deklitch]

Ok ... so maybe I should have kept Morgana in her medical career and gave Christopher a rabbit hole job as well. Thornton remained in his job and is currently the father of 6 children (or maybe 7) to 6 or 7 different mothers, including Morgana, Jamie, Aggie, Emma, Ms Van Watson and Illiana. Morgana is trying to go around and befriend the other mothers and spend time with the kids ... she hates Thornton, not the other ladies and definitely not the kids. Chris is a one sim (and dragon) guy.

So far none of these families has been culled by game mechanics, but I think I am only at week 3.

[peach]

@Deklitch

Yes--based on what I understand, I think it would be wise to put your Sims in rabbithole careers. As far as I understand, and based on what others have said in this thread, the game only takes a handful of things into account when deciding what households to cull: (1) if the household contains a coworker of a Sim in your active household; (2) if the household contains a Sim who used to live in your active household, and was moved out; and (3) if the household has been your active household at some point before (this applies more to rotational games). If any of these are true, then the household is safe from emigration. If not, the game may decide, at any moment, to cull this household--regardless of whether it contains close friends, romantic partners, or biological relatives of your active Sims.

In my test game, I got my first notice about a household "leaving town" on Week 3, Day 1. All the sources I've been able to find imply there is very little rhyme or reason to when the game decides it needs to "balance" the town's population; it is essentially just a broken mechanic, unfortunately. I did get the notices at the same time every night--I can't remember the exact hour, but it was some point between 12:00–3:00 AM.