Let it Play: Taking Advantage of New Powers

UPDATE: An error has been observed here (thanks to Katrina for this!); where I mention that I can switch to half summer and half winter, it should be half spring and half winter; summer is still restricted. I've noted this in the text as well. The rest of the post should still be useful, I hope.

There has been a series of lifts:

• Barbara has lifted Business. This means I am no longer restricted to purchasing 1 item per day, or 14 build mode items a week. I've added another floor to the basement, decorated everywhere, sold off all the reward certificates (at $1000 each, this is an increasingly big contribution to the payments for Criminal), sold off my hamper (no more clothes to clean up), and sold off the old fridge and grill.
• Charles has lifted Education. So Harold can now go to school even as a teenager, and I can choose traits now. Plus I can tutor skills.
• Eleanor has lifted Politics. I am no longer limited to an 8x8 area. I have subsequently significantly expanded the top floor of the basement.
• Francis has lifted Military. I now have considerable freedom to move around town, and can move Sims out.
• Gabrielle has lifted Symphonic. I can now lock wishes.

In addition, Diana has now taken a job in the Science career, and Barbara has married one of her Business colleagues (Elmer) who is now in the Criminal career (from the newspaper; he was allowed to quit, since Business is lifted).

First up:

Changing from all winter to half winter/half summer is a bit of mixed blessing. On the minus side, it means you lose access to Snow Angels which instantly refill Fun. But on the plus side, it means you get less Snow Days which in turn means you can get your grades up more quickly - and of course, you can grow crops when you're ready to tackle Naturalist. I usually choose to restore Summer just because it's thematically appropriate, but it must be noted that it is not compulsory. You can leave it as all winter if you prefer, and change it later.

UPDATE: Yep, the above is wrong. I should have switched to half spring, half winter: not half summer. Make sure you don't make the same mistake I did. Thanks to Katrina for spotting this. It makes no significant difference to the rest of the post.

All of my second generation Sims took a bit more than their 23 days of young adulthood to clear their restriction. Diana started with only 2 days to go until adulthood, and Elmer came into the family only 10 days from Elder. Should I abandon hope?

Of course not! Remember that you may not be able to control elders, but they will usually still go to work on their own. In addition, I can make use of all my new powers to speed things along. As soon as Charles lifted Education I bought Multitasker for both of them, which significantly speeds performance. Ideally I also want to get Midlife Crisis so I can tune their traits, but it was difficult to earn enough LTR points. But now that Gabrielle has lifted Symphonic, it will become all too feasible.

But let's begin by cleaning up a bit. I no longer need Charles, Eleanor, Francis, or Gabrielle, and having lifted Military, I can just get rid of them:

Make sure you tick "Kick Out". They can find their own way in life, they're not getting any of your hard earned cash or items.

I'm using the following new abilities:

• Tutoring to teach skills. This is generally faster than reading books, and can be used on teens even before Entertainment is lifted. (It is inferior to reading books in the library, but until Journalism is lifted, I can't go to the library).
• Locking wishes to earn LTR points.
• Eventually, once I have 20 000 LTR points for Diana and Elmer (Barbara and Harold are of lesser importance), select Midlife Crisis and edit their traits.

On day 81 of the challenge - just after Snowflake Day - Elmer already has 10 Athletics which is the only skill requirement for Master Thief. Diana has Gardening 9 and Handiness 6, plus Science 2 (I'm not sure if that helps with the Science career though after you join it). As long as Diana can get to 10 in each of Gardening and Handiness in the next 15 days she will almost certainly be OK to lift Science as an elder - and that shouldn't be difficult, since Barbara already knows these skills and can teach them.

Barbara is now pregnant, and will be trying for multiples. She has of course quit her job, but I have a comfortable amount of cash now (about $180k and change) so that shouldn't be a problem.Unlike her and her siblings, I will be teaching toddlers all the relevant skills because now that I've lifted Education it is very much worthwhile to do so.

Elmer manages to get this shortly after the new twins are born (Ivy and James). I switch his traits to Ambitious, Bookworm, Family-Oriented (he's going to have at least 4 kids), Schmoozer, and Workaholic. Diana took a bit longer, but then again she has more time, so no great issue there. The real problem is that I have some good news and bad news when Harold becomes a young adult:

The good news is that his alien dad is still alive - he must be really old, but he's still alive. The bad news is that, taking a closer look at The Alien Baby lift for Alien Technology, it's of no use to me. In order to lift this restriction, I need to befriend an alien that can spend 7 days upgrading their spaceship. Since Obgu is an elder, the fact that he's a very long lived Sim is irrelevant - I cannot control him, and therefore he will not serve this purpose.

Which leaves me in a bit of a bind. I need to find another alien. On the plus side I have Military unlocked, so as long as I take an escort, I can wander around and try to find one. On the minus side, I'm by no means optimistic I will be successful - it has already been a long time since the last alien visitation (which resulted in Harold's birth).

Here's a little trick. Zoom out to the map view, and you'll see little orange houses where there are Sims living. By hovering on one of these houses, you can see who lives there:

By hovering on each house in turn, I can tell if there are any aliens living in town. A quick inspection shows that the answer is no, there aren't.  Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that there are no aliens anywhere - but they're not residents. Which means I cannot just hang around near a house with aliens in it and then introduce myself.

So, I'm probably going to have to hope that an alien visits. To maximise the chance, I'm going to see if I can find some rocks. Now, the problem with that is that it's difficult to find rocks without a Collection Helper (and in the classic catch 22 situation, you can't get a Collection Helper until you lift Alien Technology). It's never easy. :)

I start by zooming around my immediate vicinity (ie the area that I am allowed to walk to without an escort). Note that without having lifting Athletics I can't carry more than 3, but that's not a big problem; as soon as you have 3, pause the game, and drag the rock out on to the lot. After looking carefully in the immediate area, I manage to find 8 rocks. They're all tiny, but I don't know if that matters.

There is little else to do but hope that attracts the appropriate attention; I just have Harold continue to churn out books.

Continuing with Diana's education, she gets to the 20k LTR points needed, and I switch her traits to Ambitious, Bookworm, Handy, Over-Emotional, Workaholic. In anything but an Apocalypse you'd want Angler in there, but since she can't fish anyway, it's largely pointless.

That very night, we have a mixed success:

Diana gets abducted. It's nice that aliens apparently are attracted to the rocks, but I would rather they were a little less ... invasive.

A few days later Elmer became an elder:

He's currently at level 8 of Master Thief. What with the promotion after midnight bug, I'd say he's probably somewhere around 5 work days left to clear - a little over a week. Certainly he will live that long. Can he be kept focussed?

Well, Woo Hoo can fill the fun metre, and with Medical cleared Barbara can haul him into the shower for that. By dragging a meal out of the fridge and clicking on "Call Household To Meal", and then cancelling it for all the adults, I can make sure he eats. The rest is basically up to autonomous activity, but he has a Steel Bladder so it's really only Hygiene that is likely to tank.

However, Barbara herself is only 4 days from being an elder, and I will be moving her out before that happens. I basically have 3 days and change before Woo Hoo is no longer an option, but I can still ask him to play chess, so Fun can still be sorted (albeit less efficiently).

With Harold in for the long haul (until he meets another alien, or until he becomes an elder, whichever is first) I can safely get rid of Barbara and Diana (8 days from elder, at Science 7) before they become a problem. Ideally, Diana will lift Science before becoming an elder, and Elmer will lift Master Thief before that, so that Diana can move out and take Elmer with her. I have a feeling it's not going to work out that neatly.

Harold will be left with the toddlers Ivy and James and the new twins Karen and Lilandra. I might as well get some use out of him, after all.

Note that I could easily have avoided all this if I had wanted to. You are allowed up to 10 days aging off. Had I done that before Elmer's birthday, I would easily have lifted the restrictions before they became elders. I didn't do this for two reasons:

1. I always feel if I have to turn aging off that I'm admitting defeat. Some Apocalypses are harder than others, but this one has gone pretty well - Military as an early lift, plus Education and Symphonic, means that I really have nothing to complain about.
2. For illustrative purposes it allows me to demonstrate that Artist need not be a high priority.

You really shouldn't be dealing with elders much except for spouses. Diana is a special case (and she may not be - there's still a bit of time) because I delayed her entry into the workforce in (what appears to be) a futile attempt at lifting Alien Technology. Since you have only 1 spouse per generation, and you can have 4-6 kids, it shouldn't affect enough Sims to be a high priority (though again, it is not useless; had I lifted Artist, then I could have controlled Harold's father and finished Alien Technology already - so judge for yourself whether I was just unlucky or not).

Remember: the rule with elders is that you cannot issue them any orders. But there are a bunch of things you can still do:

• Select what action they take at work. Or to put it simply, you can still have them Work Hard.
• Accept opportunities. Most opportunities cannot be actually accomplished, but some can. For example, if there is an opportunity that requires you to fix something, or to wash dishes, you can drag the offending items out of the inventory of the elder, have some other Sim fix the object/wash the dishes, and if necessary put the result back into inventory of the elder. This is all legal. If it completes an opportunity, all the better.
• Tutor them in skills.
• Have them help you procreate. (Assuming they are male of course).
• Act as an escort for Espionage, assuming they have a 10 Athletics.
• Lock wishes for them (assuming you've lifted Symphonic of course). Whether they can complete those wishes is another matter, but often they can (for example, "Kiss X" is fulfilled no matter whether he kisses X, or X kisses him - so if you control one but not the other, you can still fulfil the wish).

They are most definitely "second class Sims", but they are not completely useless. Proper use of elders will allow you to master the Apocalypse Challenge, as you will be able to assign (hopefully more useful) careers to your Sims than Artist. It's not that Artist is bad per se, it's just that it is not among the more powerful restrictions. My own, admittedly biased list, can be found on the wiki. For new players, I suspect you could do a lot worse than to treat that list as definitive. Of course as you get more experienced, you may decide that I am misjudging the value of some restrictions, or overlooking something - or maybe your own play style is such that some restrictions are more valuable to you. That's fine - there is always a level of subjectivity. Most experienced players agree that Military and Master Thief are probably the two most powerful restrictions - if you get either of those with your founder, you have very little excuse for losing. But the rest certainly vary from player to player.

It's important to remember that you have some level of discretion over the order. While you cannot outright select your careers until you lift Journalism, Science, Military, and Master Thief, lifting any one of these opens a few doors (see here) - but more to the point, you have a choice on who to marry. One of the reasons it's important for founders to make as many contacts as possible is because you should always be spouse hunting - not only for the founder, but for his kids and potentially his grand kids.

Your founder cannot choose her career. But she can choose her spouse. Your founder should probably clear their restriction while still a young adult, because even on a Prestige Start they can front load a bunch of skills at University and select appropriate traits (Ambitious, for example). 

For a female founder, using the radio to work out and then switching it to the kids station, you can reliably get twins; assuming you want 6 kids, that should take around 12-18 days. That leaves you about half a dozen days to comfortably go spouse hunting. If you know enough male Sims, you can pick whichever one is in a good career - a soldier, or a crook, ideally.

For a male founder, it is both better and worse. You can in principle take right up until your elder birthday to find the right spouse - that's the good news. The bad news is that if you are unlucky, you'll end up marrying someone that is too close to being an elder to give you any kids (in the extreme case, no kids at all - if that happens, you can divorce them and indeed arguably must do so, since you aren't technically allowed to marry if you can't produce kids; however, you're still down time, and if you cut it too close you'll be in trouble). I recommend with a male founder not being too picky; with at least 10 more days till elder, look for a spouse with at least a tier 2 career, but after that pick anyone that looks young (though be warned that can be very difficult to judge; I'm hoping that Sims 4 will have a clearer graphical distinction between young adults and adults).

With 1 day to go before she became an elder, Diana lifted Science. Elmer lifted Master Thief a bit earlier. Time to get rid of the elders and Diana, and leave it to the alien and the kids.

It is day 96. Time to take stock:

• Business has been lifted
• Culinary has been lifted
• Education has been lifted
• Master Thief has been lifted
• Medical has been lifted
• Military has been lifted
• Politics has been lifted
• Science has been lifted
• Symphonic has been lifted

Master Thief is especially important - from now on, I can choose to not take the job that I see. With Science and Military lifted as well, I can either roll a die or check the computer for jobs instead of the newspaper (but I can't check multiple places in any 24 hour period). In effect, I can now choose what restrictions I want to lift.

There's another important factor to consider. Having lifted Military, Science, and Symphonic, I have unlocked the possibility of time travel. Science allows me to purchase an inventor bench; as soon as I invent a time machine we can investigate that interesting looking portal that has been around since day 1.

Next time, I'll cover the planning for the next generation, and we'll see if we can track down one of those pesky aliens.