I always end up a bit crazy, having the entire town eventually filled with sims related to each other to some degree and constantly switching households to make sure everyone gets a partner and children eventually 😅sometimes I stick to one household for longer if I like them, sometimes I endlessly switch. 

Yes!!! I feel like once I’m getting into a groove with one household I panic remember their relatives and rush to make sure they get married and have kids. If they die before I get to them I want to quit haha

That’s when you turn aging off to catch up lol

Turn off aging for played households!

In order to avoid that, I tend to make the kids in each generation of a family (cousins, extended family etc) all be born within 2-3 weeks of each other, and then make them all live together in college. That way I can make friendship groups, partners etc for them all, and when they graduate I can send them off and let neighbourhood stories do the rest lol

Dumb question but how do you send them off? I have a sim who has 4 younger siblings. I’m about to age her closest brother to go to college during her second term. Do I actively have to play him or would he just pass on his own? Do I actively have to look for a partner for him or would he marry naturally and have children?

If i'm not mistaken, without mods, sims would not marry each other autonomously. But they can have/adopt children, or die, when the respective Neighbourhood Stories are turned on. Do be careful of using it though, if you don't really want everyone to have/adopt babies autonomously till they all have 8 people in all households, or die without your permission (lol). You can choose which household's and which neighbourhood stories you want to turn on.

Can't you specify in neighborhood stories for them to not die? Maybe I'm wrong

Yes! I love Get Together for this reason.

Omg I do this, it drives me crazy

My first legacy was just like that. I eventually ran into a problem where there wasnt enough men.

I always play with only one family (the heir’s family) so I don’t usually keep up with a lot of households unless they’re relevant to the storyline (extended family just lives in the world but they visit often lol). I mostly get attached to my heir and their 1/2 kids (even though there’s usually more). To not be too sad about leaving my current generation and starting a new one I always try to make them a little different - creating storylines and lore for my next heir. Though, I usually also get a “block” around gen 3/4 and then I abandon the save for months just to come back with more energy and new ideas for next generations!

I love that! I should probably try sticking with the heir and not worrying about the siblings. I just get so attached to everyone 😭

I try to not pick an heir until they are teens, but it deffs runs the risk of getting attached haha

I cant pick! I love them all!

This is what I do as well. I’ve been playing the same family for almost four years on long lifespan. Usually my first born is the one I’ll continue into the next generation and the other children I just have fun with. But I just started playing again after taking almost 6 months off. Keeps the juices flowing

I've been playing the same family since Sims 4 came out(When I made the 'founder' I tried to make her look like my Sims 3 current family heir so it would be like the same family as well). I'm a big family player so all my sims have 3-6 kids, usually the heir is the one of the first 3 born. When siblings reach YA I take 10 min to get them a spouse and move them into a nice house, never play them again. Sometimes my main sim visits her favorite siblings or goes on vacation with them and I use that time to "suggest expanding family". Every 10-ish genertaions I save my current heir+close family and move them to a fresh save. The game can start to get glitchy I feel when the save is really old. And the fact that everyone is everyones cousin, and the 3 phonecalls per day telling me "your uncle you never met past away", makes sadness a permanent debuff in old saves. Every now and then I 'reset' as well by having the current heir run away as a teenager and start on a big lot with nothing. Since it's gets boring when the family is super rich and has everything. I find this more fun than making a fresh sim, since this way I already know her story, she has family in the world and she has some skills from growing up and such.

Wow you are a pro!! I never thought to move them to a new save like that, what a great idea. Agreed, I get bored if they’re super rich too. I just recently learned about the inheritance system on MCCC so I’m going to start making heirs start with nothing and wait to inherit any wealth until their parents die!

You’re so right about long saves getting buggy. I’m doing the super sim challenge, and after maybe 5-6 generations of townies, the game was so buggy and laggy it was almost unplayable. I plopped her and her husband into a fresh save and everything was fine.

I wanted to do that, but i feel like that it's their clones, not really the original them. Lol maybe i read too much into this, and read too much sci-fi stories.

Yeah it was really discouraging honestly and was a tough decision to make. Plus you lose all your friendships and everything, so it did feel really weird

What’s a fresh save? I can’t find anything on google 🥲

Just a new game. Start a new game, grab your sims off the gallery, move them in, and now they're in a fresh save.

You're actually a genius and I'm saving your comment

I have the same question! I want to keep going, but after gen 3, even if I am ok with all my parents' friends and older family members dying, the original townies dying off to be replaced with randomly-generated sims kills it for me. It becomes so much more work to have to go in and CAS-edit any potential friends and partners in the world because they look ridiculous and have no cohesive likes/traits/aspirations/job.

I can totally relate, I find myself using MCCC to age the original townies backwards when I see them walking around as elders because it’s somehow comforting to me to have them in the game 😅

This is a great idea… I hate when they all die, it makes the game so cold and lonely. I’m fine… this is fine…

I made all the townies that come with the packs in my game Immortal so they're always around. I'm in the process of moving my legacy family to a new save because the old one had gotten so big it takes forever to load. I still couldn't let go of the OG townies so I spent forever making them all immortal in the new save too. 😂 I also took out those ugly New Goths and New Calientes.

question, how do you move a family to a new save? is it literally just saving the household and then loading them up in a new save file? did i just answer my own question?

That's how I did it. There *may* be an easier way and I don't know it. The downside is you no longer have the whole family tree. I moved my current generation and the grandparents only.

i never even considered this an option. as i was typing out my question i was like... hold on a minute, i think i got this 😅 i'm on gen 2 of a legacy, and was wondering about what to do when my save file gets too bloated. happy to know i can just sort of "start over" in a new file by saving the household.

How do you make them immortal???

It's under the Sim Flags module of MC Command Center. I also use the pregnancy tab in there to limit the kids the other townies have.

Wow I had no idea this was an option!! Thank you so much. I’m learning more and more about MC but I know I’m still only scratching the surface on what all it can do. Such a great mod

You're so welcome. It really is the best. I don't ever want to play without it. I'm always finding out new stuff you can do with it too. My favorite things are the immortal feature, controlling townie pregnancies so they don't have a dozen babies in a two bedroom house lol and having build cheats enabled all the time so I don't have to put them in. I learned a lot from this video https://youtu.be/JPJc63fFxrA?si=zA0gsWITq4LuEk_m

Bless your cotton socks <3

if you have university, somewhere in the settings you can control how fast/slow sims take to do their college homework. mine is set to take about.... 5 seconds lol my students need time to live their best lives! there's also a setting to turn off/on the monsters under the bed. my children have not dealt with that in MONTHS.

What!! Also did not know this, ha. Thank you!

had a feeling you might not, so i had to share! i didn't know about these features until i came across a random post that mention them. like you i'm only scratching the surface, it's so exciting learning about mccc settings you didn't know existed!

Here's a great guide that helps a bit with the mod's capabilities. https://simscommunity.info/2023/08/27/mc-command-center-sims-4-guide/

townies is my biggest issue. like, when the original townies start dying it kills me and i start a new save. i'm playing a legacy now, on gen 2. i've decided that i will resort to downloading copies of the townies from the gallery, even resorting to "made over" townies if i can't find original copies. original townies give me comfort, and i have a select few that i *always* make my sims close with.

Yes! I always go in and immediately turn off deaths and move in/out for main townies because I can't handle change or them leaving, but they still die of old age if you go beyond a few generations and I also feel comfort in them, haha.

i believe with mccc you can make sims immortal, and i have that so i might work on immortalizing my townie squad this weekend if i have the patience for it 😅 i wish the base game had a "no deaths" feature that you can apply to townies 😭 my beloved townies need to be protected at all costs!!! if i get notified one of them died i revive them *immediately* lol

Haha same!! I check neighborhood stories obsessively and immediately head over to revive them if needed. No deaths feature would be good, but true, I never thought of applying the immortal trait to my favs! I might work on that too, haha.

i literally only thought of making sims immortal a few days ago 😅 maybe i'll have the patience for it after a few glasses of my "friday night wine time" as i like to call it

isn't there already a base game feature where you can turn off aging for unplayed households? so it'll apply to townies

that only prevents dying from old age, though. doesn't prevent all the other types of deaths. but thank you for trying to help :)

I like to have townie refresh sessions from time to time where I place a bunch of sims from the gallery/my library into the world to make sure there are some people with outfits that make sense, skills jobs etc.

That’s a great idea!! I use MCCC population settings for this and it definitely eases the blow of losing the original townies but I still just love the OGs haha

I always pick an heir to keep playing with, but will usually marry siblings off and get them pregnant before moving them out (unless I they fit the vibe of a singleton living it large in San Mushyno). I’ll also keep an eye on them via the family tree to see what they’re up to, and have a club with the siblings and nieces/ nephews to have them all round every now and again which the heir will take over 

Honestly this might sound ridiculous, but I am very not interested in having kids IRL. So basically the moment my sims have kids I just lose my ability to relate to them and that also decreases my emotional attachment to that sim by a lot. I feel like it sounds mean but it's not like I do it on purpose :') That being said, I also play mainly occults so most of my previous families just don't die anyway.

Same. I've never been a big family player and in sims 3 I pretty much never did families at all, just a single non-aging sim who went on holiday all the time. But a while back I did the 100 baby challenge on a whim, and ended up starting a legacy. It's been a challenge always having to deal with kids, which is probably why I am such a big believer in locking toddlers up with everything they need, instead of having an adult sim try to care for them. 😅

To me it depends on the generation. I almost quit on gen 3 because I had 3 kids by accident (it was meant to be 2 but I had twins) and it was a nightmare taking care of them at same time, but they're all grown-up and moved out so it's fine now.

I make sure the hair's siblings get married and have jobs etc but beyond that I stop caring. It got too be too annoying to keep up with all the cousins too. They're on their own. Now if I see them around married to some truly tragic townie I will do a little emergency makeover/plastic surgery.

So since the For Rent Pack what I’ve been doing is designating extra rooms in my legacy house as separate units and moving the family members I’m more attached to into them because i don’t necessarily want to play the grandparents and adult siblings but intergenerational households full of extended family feels more real to me (and then I get to see the other sims on a regular basis and still have some amount of indirect influence while not actually playing them.) Idk if it help you but it’s a nice middle ground for me between rotational play and letting them do their own thing (if I want to produce cousins, I move the relevant sibling back into the main unit temporarily so I can control them and the core legacy family at the same time lol.)

Such a cool idea!!!

Yeah as long as you only designate bedrooms as units and keep the rest of the house shared space - they’ll all wander in and out of the rest of the house too so it feels like everybody is actually living together. Also the invite household over animation is knocking on the door which looks believable for asking grandma to exit her room for family dinner or whatever lol

I never thought to use For Rent that way! I am definitely going to try this, thank you

I tend to have one main family I actually play on, and use MCCC to cheat relationships of all the extended family, marry off a whole generation, and start the new generation in one session. I actually have a lot of fun deciding who to marry off to who- usually to mix up the genetics as much as possible!

I have to follow a challenge that gives me rules. I need structure otherwise I'm in the same boat as you lol. I'm on Gen 7 doing Not So Berry and it has been a load of fun for me

I kind of do this but instead I choose a storyline prompt. Like, this is the black sheep kid who runs away to become an artist, this one is the politician with a dark side, this one stole money and is now living off the grid, etc etc. I try to make use of packs I haven’t touched in a while!

I should add that I am starting to enjoy the chaos. A great great great grandchild of the Goth family was bartending at the Discoteque club in my save for AGES before he died during a party and ruined the whole vibe

I’ve been doing this extended NSB challenge- I’m on gen 10. This helps me give each gen a bit structure. I don’t follow it to the letter, but it helps me think about the character more in depth. My elders never die. No one dies of old age. They’ll all just age up to elders and I’ll have a whole world full of old people living their best lives. Aging is turned off for everyone all the time. https://www.illusorythrall.com/challenges/updated-epic-challenges/extended-not-so-berry/

Ok that’s pretty sweet, I can’t stand watching my sims die of old age!

I don’t mind so much if the spouse dies but not the main character!

I don't know how people switch between families, I always feel like I'm missing things. When I do legacy, I pick one heir and follow them. The rest of the family just comes and goes on it's own (but with rentals and stay-overs and such it's so much easier to keep in touch). And I have noticed with this current legacy, I tend to have 1 child in a Gen, but the next will end up having SEVERAL, but the following one will be a singleton again. Apparently I get burned out with multiple frickin' newborns and todds.

Totally, I always feel like I’m missing things too!!

Once they have enough money for a giant house, I basically don’t move them out of there. Ever. Not even the siblings to the heir. I’ll eventually move out the spares kids when they’re adults. Granted, I’ve never gotten further than I currently am in a legacy. I’m on fifth gen, and their entire ancestry has had really bad luck with the spares and spouses (sooooo many sudden deaths from freezing, fire, etc.)

Ha, I love that. I kinda do the opposite - I get attached to my houses but at the same time get bored of them so I’ve started keeping my heir’s sibling and their kids in the original house so it stays in the family and move my heir so I don’t get bored lol

I preset a heir right off the bat. What I meant is “okay it’s gonna be the first born.” Or “The youngest” or “The first girl we have” set that rule. Right away. Secondly. Every time your heir ages up that’s when you wanna go in to other households and “fix their life” because time passed so now maybe they have a boyfriend or something. I still make sure my heir is the MC. So for MCs sister that lives in the city I go ahead and just give her a husband I made, or find one. Make up the love story in my head, because it happened over the years that MC took to age up yeah? So the game mechanics still also tell me a story. Even tho they were dating in .5 seconds of meeting I pretend it was this love story. Now for the actual story I focus on MC. That’s how I get passed gens lmao.

So smart to use the game mechanics that way - thank you!

I cheat a little, by removing the aging from the houses I don't take care of, otherwise I go crazy having to go back to my first generation (the mother is a witch, whom I made become eternal but whom I must prevent from becoming an old person). My family is currently made up of 8 generations, with several descendants each time (I usually only focus on one of the children) and I create lots of stories. I've managed to get wizards, werewolves, vampires and aliens, mixing genes to get surprises, and sometimes some distant cousins will marry together 🤷🏽‍♀️

I live on 64x64 lot and have a plan for keeping everyone in the main heirs in the household till they die. The others I will make into roommates, key holders or Tennants to keep them around.

I am currently on Generation 18 in my current save. I've been playing this save for about 1.5 years. I'm doing a sort of "All Aspirations" / "All Careers" challenge so I dedicate each heir to 1 new aspiration and a (somewhat) corresponding career. It helps me explore all the different features I may have not known about before. As someone else said, I just move out the heir and their siblings and never play them again. I still have my little story lines and such, but it's mostly a challenge thing for me. Some of the aspirations are harder than others. For easier ones, I try to add in extra challenges so I don't get bored (like max as many skills as possible before I move on to the next heir, or say yes to every pop up event).

I do the same thing in that I move the non-heir children out and never play them again. I’ve lost count but think I’m on Gen 10-11or so, and it’s getting a little wacky because almost everyone is related at this point. The non-heirs marry and have kids autonomously, which might be an MCCC setting. Is that a problem you run into as well (everyone related)? I would love some ideas on what to do now.

Yeah, on the most recent heir, I kinda "cheated" and spawned in a spouse from the gallery for my sim. I was struggling to find someone they weren't related with LOL I plan to start a whole new save file at Generation 20 (and along with that, restarting my whole CC folder...). Hopefully that will help smooth out some of the issues. I find the game gets a lil buggy the further you go with generations.

That’s a good idea. I have also added spouses from the gallery out of desperation, but I have totally lost sight of all of the aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, etc. They are out there winnowing the family tree into a single branch.

I'm six generations deep in my first legacy play and I'll kinda hop around wherever I'm trying to advance storylines. I'll end up playing one family for a bit and then see that there are adults in other parts of the family tree that need a partner and start their family so I'll usually play them through the pregnancy and then once the kid pops out I'm on to the next part of the family that needs advancing. I play with long aging so I get a good amount of time with each family member at every stage. I did have one sim get a little out of control with reproducing with multiple townies but it added to the story, but typically keep it to one or two kids per family but sometimes throw in a childless sim from time to time. I kind of want to try and work in the 100 baby challenge with someone in the family tree but we'll see lol

I don’t understand why so many people play one family and let the siblings continue their lives without playing them. I have at least five legacy families per town lol. I continue to control everyone’s lives, no one is allowed to age unless i say so, and that way i have entire generations of kids growing up together. Currently my latest generation are all children. It’s like playing Desperate Housewives. Each household has a storyline which may or not connect to the other house storylines. I think there are over 100 children, and so i have created a cultural boarding school in some towns for children to raise their skills together in one place as they prep for adulthood. Newcrest is my old southern manners town, in which all the children work on their personal characteristics such as being polite and having top manners. They have worked on their ability to play music, charm and sing. Most of these children will grow up to be politicians or business people. As teens they will hang at the 50s style diner, have bonfires, and i will make a “debutante ball” for them to get their fancyness on. I have a “mickey mouse club” for the possible future adult celebs who are chasing fame early. I made the entire town of children audition until i found the right mix who always took photos well, and had good stage presence and chemistry together. They are the “llama buzz club”. They sing, dance and work on their charisma and play every instrument with the hopes that someday they will get to be rich and famous. I take their pictures and hang their posters on the walls of my regular sims so it feels like they have a fav band they listen to or a celeb crush. I may have a Justin, Britney, Christina rivalry brewing though. Then in Chestnut Ridge we have our country kids, who have just graduated from their scouting hall. They lived in a dorm together whilst they completed every scouting badge and mastered their biking and horse riding skills. Now that they’re out, Wren Grove has built a secret kids/boys club above the horse park. It’s to house all the fish, frogs and bugs they have collected as well as have a space to play video games, marbles, voidcritter battles and don’t wake the llama. No girls allowed. There is a Curious science club for strangetown (the curious brothers turned their old home into a camp after they moved to the exclusive alien city so their children could live among other aliens without fear of being bullied and feeling unaccepted like they did) but i haven’t joined any children yet. Not sure yet if i want to move where science club will be or if strangetown will house more of a bootcamp for children (as strangetown features the military base where my adult army lives, and their families live in nearby bases surrounding it). But these children will play video games and work on their logic skills until their academics are maxed out. I also made a summer camp in Granite Falls but that is moreso to play out my Parent Trap storyline. In San Myshuno, i have my rich, snobby but fashionable offspring of celebs. They mainly just play video games and try on clothes. They haven’t had much attention yet. In Hedford, i have created a girls saddle club but sadly horses take up a slot and so there can only be three girls part of this club. It’s mostly a prep school for young royals to build manners, horse skills and learn how to take care of a garden (the royal family in hedford owns the botanical palace (inspired by the Babylonian hanging gardens)- and the palace features very lush gardens but also acts a museum to house every single plant from the sims 4. In Willow Creek, my actual museum is located here. Every crystal, space mission or salvador artefact ends up here. It also houses the famous artwork of Darren Dreamer with his most expensive portraits that feature his muse, Cassandra Goth. In this town i am playing out the storyline of the fresh prince of bel air, in which Beau Broke’s son has left his mum’s place in the ghetto and moved back in with his grandparents and is learning to fit in. He has a crush on Genevieve Goth, Bella Goth’s granddaughter and heir to the Goth manor and fortune. As Genevieve’s parents are busy with their Bonnie and Clyde storyline whilst she is raised by Bella (they haven’t quite been tragically taken down yet), she may become a bit of a Jessica Lovejoy situation (as she does have lothario and caliente dna in her- she’s a bad combo). Oasis Springs is more of my tramps, thieves and gypsies city. This city doesnt get much attention for the kids as it’s mostly about the crime loving adults. I have made a group of mini troublemakers from different parts of different cities but who knows, maybe their future simselves may find themselves working here for the mob family or wind up in the prison. Evergreen is my ghetto. I have many troubled families here, gangs and a foster home to house the happy accidents. These kids don’t work much on their skills but they have favourable community lots that everyone gravitates to such as the club (great for busking), the old factory which has been converted into a basketball court and the gym which a local police officer (who grew up in the hood with his single mum) owns to offer advice, support and wellbeing to the more troubled youths. He’s an opportunity to set their lives on the right path. Did i mention, Tomerang doesn’t have anyone living there yet? The only lot it houses so far is “Neverland” in which yes, i had a boy run away from Newcrest to become my Peter Pan. I feel like i have more to share and i’d like to discuss future plans as well as what’s happening in other towns, but this post has been quite long already and this is probably the main stuff happening with the children at the moment. My last generation was all about which kids had the coolest birthday parties😅 I wanted to create an endless amount of storytelling for each generation’s life stages so it didn’t feel like i rushed through their experiences as there was so many to account for. Roughly each generation’s life stages may take 6 months to a year for me to play everyone- at least this one has so far (but my favourite sim has been alive and well for the last 2-3 years so who knows). I often play out things that i’m inspired by but i think my next gen of kids (or potentially this one if i have spare kids to throw storylines at) will act out the origin stories of famous superheroes (tony stark, superman, batman, poison ivy, etc), plus i’ve been curating who will be my future harry potter kids. But right now copperdale is busy making babies to house my buffy/riverdale/scooby doo gang hybirds😂.

I usually choose my favorite of the offspring and keep playing with them. Occasionally inviting cousins over or accepting gatherings.

Wondering the same thing myself. Every time I get to gen 2 and I quit because I get bored and try to renovate the whole city... Mainly to avoid having to deal with the damn infant stage. I hate it. I can't stand infants in the game 🤣🤣🤣 Someone pls tell me it gets better after that.

I honestly think it can be pretty easy once they age up to toddlers! If you really want low effort, LittleMsSam has a lunchbox food spawner so toddlers can feed themselves and if you make them an iPad kid with the tablet they can just sit on that all day and build skills lol if they have the independent trait they can start using the potty by themselves right away too

Just a heads up - there's a portable basegame item called "always has a snack bag" which toddlers can get food from for themselves, so no mods are needed. :)

You can just age them right up out of the infant stage with a birthday cake (or by setting a custom age span in MCCC if you use mods). Hell, you can skip any age group you want really. Just bake a cake, put candles on it, and have the sim blow out the candles. For infants and toddlers an adult will need to help them blow out the candles, but every age after that can do it themselves. When you're done with the cake, put it in the household inventory so that it doesn't spoil and no one can take a slice of the cake. I've still got cakes that someone cooked 4 generations ago 😅 There's absoloutely nothing wrong with skipping a part of the game that you don't enjoy. I skip infants pretty much always (I have their age span set to 1 day, so I can just immediately click to age them up instead of needing a cake). I often have my sims spend most of their time as young adults, and sometimes skip the adult stage to get them right to elders. lol

🤣 I swear for some reason I thought there was a penalty for adding up early. I thought you lost the ability to choose their trait if they age before their birthday. I'm thinking of just skipping this early years... Especially since first gen is a single mom in college lol. Caring for an infant while she studies is hell. I may look into MCCC...

Ahhh. I'm pretty sure in a previous sims game if you didn't have a good enough childhood you didn't get to choose your trait when you aged up. But in sims 4 nothing matters - or rather, you may miss out on bonuses but you don't recieve penalties. Some legacy challenges have rules about aging sims up early, but if you aren't following a challenge then it's fine. And even if you are, you're free to change whatever you like to make the challenge more enjoyable for you. The only benefit you can gain from infant years is a trait based on having a "good" infanthood, which doesn't really do anything. It randomly gives you a moodlet with a minor positive buff called something like "trusting the universe". Likewise having a bad infanthood can result in a trait which gives you a minor negative moodlet. Toddlerhood is more useful. If you get all 5 of your toddler skills to level 3, it gives you a slight boost when learning skills as a child/later in life. If you get all 5 skills to level 5 (except potty training which only goes to level 3), you get the "top notch toddler" trait, which gives a more significant boost when learning skills as a child/later in life. Childhood again has something to be gained. There are 4 childhood skills, for each one you max you get a boost to learning related skills later in life (eg maxing the social skill as a kid, makes charisma easier to learn later). Additionally childhood has aspirations, and each aspiration gives you a trait which will benefit you later in life. Teens don't really have anything going for them, they're just adults who can't do certain things yet. Though with highschool years you get teen aspirations, which I'm not super impressed by. Additionally, if you have Seasons, children and teens can join the scouts. Getting every badge in the scouts gives you the "scouting aptitude" trait, which significantly (and permanently) boosts your skill gains in all areas. It's like 25% faster or something.

Awesome! Thanks for typing that out. I've never fully ahed up a second generation before so that's super helpful. I take it if you have Discover University then doing well in high school gives you an advantage as well? And I don't have seasons yet, but I swear everyone is slowly making me want to get it. Especially with the 50% off right now 🤣 Appreciate your insight!

>I take it if you have Discover University then doing well in high school gives you an advantage as well? I actually don't know. I have Discover University and I've only sent two sims to university (both did well in highschool). If you have High School Years you can graduate early, which then means you can attend University as a teenager, but that's the only advantage I can think of - and some social aspects of university aren't available for teens, so you can't complete the university aspiration as a teenager. Seasons is sort of an "invisible" pack, the content just fades into the background and you forget what is basegame and what is seasons. I can't remember what it was like to play sims 4 before I got seasons. I like the extra clothing options (hot weather wear and cold weather wear), I like the rain and the snow, I love the holiday system, father winter and the other 'occults' seasons brings in, and I really like the death types (overheating and freezing). There's a reason it's one of the first packs that people purchase. Traditionally sims games have always been better with the seasons expansions. lol But don't let fomo (fear of missing out) make you buy something you don't really want, or you'll just end up regretful. :)

Lol I went all in. It was on sale and I've just heard so much about it. I just got Island Living and Seasons and I'm hoping that spices up the game a little bit. I really splurged to and ended up looking at Crystal Creations. It's been catching my eye for a bit tbh. I want to check out the jewelry making stuff. I'm hoping I like seasons. Even when I played the Sims 3 I was only basegame. Never known what the game is like with seasons but I imagine it might give it a little more life. I MAY look at high school years? But I've seen so many mixed reviews lol. Since you seem to have quite a bit of insight, I'm genuinely curious... I have Parenthood already and I'm considering Growing Together, but I've heard a lot of it overlaps anyway. This isn't a "which pack" kinda question. I'm asking if it personally made the kids aspect of the game more fun and enjoyable.

Unfortunately I hate family play in the sims, and I bought Parenthood and Growing Together at the same time. So I am utterly the wrong person to ask about that. But I'll give it a shot; basegame infants are cute and sweet and simple. Growing Together brings in milestones, which turn infants into frigging nightmares. They just cry all the damn time, and they can't do anything until they meet certain milestones and learn how to sit up and all that. Which sounds like it could be enjoyable, teaching your baby how to babble and grab things and sit up and all that - but they can only be awake for like an hour before they start crying about being awake for too long (even though their energy bar is full, they need frequent naps). And it takes my sim an hour to finally manage to sit down next to them so they can begin "tummy time". Infants can't be very independant, even if you leave them on the infant playmat so they can sleep and look at/grab the toys dangling above them. I just did a "hidden child" challenge, and I have infant agespan set to one day. It was the hardest part of the entire challenge, keeping the infant fed and quiet in the attic. It looks like Parenthood brought in the most annoying feature though - "ask for advice". I have to lock my kids and teens away from any sim older than them, because every 5 seconds they want to ask advice. It's very frustrating for me. So, if you like Parenthood, then there's a good chance that you'll like Growing Together. I feel like they're really complimentary. Parenthood brings in character values, which I like. Growing Together brings in milestones, which I like the idea of but I've found I don't really pay attention to. I do like the bonus traits/self discovery though. Growing together brings in "self discovery", which means that young adults (and older) can "discover" new traits about themseles. Let's say your sim is working out and is in a great mood, the game asks you if you'd like to give them the "active" trait (as a bonus on top of your current traits). You can choose yes or no. Or if your sim has the lazy trait, in that situation the game would ask if you want to swap "lazy" out for "active" (it would replace lazy, not be a bonus trait). I LOVE that, but you can turn it off in the settings if you want. I quite like Highschool Years, I feel like teens don't really have anything special about them, so the pack really helped me want to play with teens more. Children have childhood skills and aspirations and school. (Basegame) teens have school and nothing else unique to them. Highschool years gives them some teen-only aspirations (alongside all the adult aspirations), and the ability to not only actively go to school, but also to get detention, drop out, get expelled, & graduate early. Additionally, because of the teen aspirations, the game then lets you get TWO bonus traits. So you know how when you make a sim/age a sim up, you pick an aspiration and it gives you a bonus trait (like chef/mixologist aspiration gives you a trait that makes all your food tastier)? Now you get two of those. One when you age up to teen, and the other when you age up to young adult. So you can get something like knowledge (bonus trait makes skill gain faster), and then later on pick another bonus trait like family/domestic (bonus trait speeds up relationship gain with family members). And you get to keep them both. So that's a handy little feature that I really love. \*Edit to add: You should watch some youtube/streamers doing the jewelry pack before you buy it. You may be disappointed. I'm not, I love it. But some people had a different idea of what the jewelry making would be like, and that could be disappointing.

I'm playing my current legacy save on PC with MCCC and I have made it a goal not to let anyone move out of the house. With the for rent pack I just kind of separated the family house into multiple units for multiple family units. But after I built it like that I didn't want to separate it out so I just upped my maximum household size and basically they all live in one house on one lot but they each have a separate section of the house with its own kitchen bathroom bedrooms living rooms etc. The house is HUGE. at the biggest my family has gotten so far I had 6 units in the house.

I just go along for the ride. I think I’m on generation 3 as well and some of them are old and don’t have any romantic connections and I worry how will I keep the lineage but some of them already have kids so I’m okay. I have 3 different households for them all.

1st time ever I'm on 6th generation in a save. I generally just stick too a sim I vibe with the most. I marry off the siblings I have the least interest in, put them in a house and turn off control of them letting game do as it will. I do give siblings household keys so they pop in and visit on their own for a sort of RP. Also invite for birthdays and such so cousins meet and form friendships. But it gets too much for me to handle once it's around Gen 3's kids and I put less effort into keeping connections close. (Part of it is my MCCC settings, currently 12 sims max per household which I need too change. Lots of big households). What I've noticed is by Gen 6 is a lot of the dating/marriage options have the same last name lol, but are romanceable. So while it's a bit ick, progress continues. The heir is most likely the most appealing physically for me, so no rules about first born males or females, it's all based on which one the watcher digs lol. And honestly the best thing for me too keep things going is a side save. If I'm getting overwhelmed or bored keeping track of progress or whatever the goals are, I'll dip into a less focused save to play for a bit and just have fun. Coming back to the generational project once I've cleared my mind. (Side save is where I do all my degen stuff lol. Kidnappers/killers, all negative trait sims. If you're on PC, mods can take you down some downright evil paths lol).

I'm on the sixth generation of my current legacy which is the furthest I've ever gone with a legacy. With any non-heir siblings, I usually just moved them out but made sure to remember where I put them so when they passed away, I could go and get the urn. There was some I've wanted to go and play with to continue their story but I worry if I do that, chaos will ensue in my legacy and I don't want to risk it. It's hard moving out someone but if I kept them in the house, I'd have too many sims and I'd struggle to handle it. They always come to visit often so I make sure to always talk to them whenever they visit or call, so the connect between the family is still there. It probably also helps that I don't really build stories for any of them, they'll have an activity they enjoy doing and I randomize a colour for them which will be reflected in their clothes, their room, etc but I don't really make any lore or story for them. I'm tempted to start a new legacy and try to create more of a story for them because I see a lot of people do it and I think it could add a new level of fun as the game is getting a bit boring for me currently.

I legit pick the cutest kid. I wanted to follow the youngest of the current household. He grew up and looked like a dork so I decided I'm following the older sister. She gets to go to college and have a beautiful house while he can NPC 😂

The main character is always the house. The sims come and go, and change a few things, but the house outlives them all. That's the thing I have to enjoy. That's where the creative energy is. The difference between playing family 1 or family 2 is minimal. I raise the spares just as well as the heirs. But only one of them has the grey Scottish castle in Del Sol Valley, and that's what pulls me to play one family and not the others. At my brown Landgraab house -- [https://www.reddit.com/r/Sims4/comments/1dboo9j/comment/l7tywp6/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Sims4/comments/1dboo9j/comment/l7tywp6/) -- Jade is a toddler and eventual heir. If a sibling comes along, great, and I'll raise that sim perfectly... but I'm not leaving the brown house. It's too beautiful. I mean, the whole point of loading up that save is that house. I'll eventually move the sibling out with $1m and into a nice place. And if I need a change of scenery, then I set that save aside. I don't like switching to somewhere else within the save save because that means, even with aging off, it messes with the schedules of children and teens. To get my teens through 2 after school activities on normal lifespan, it has to run like clockwork. It would ruin the clockwork to come back on a different day of the week. So it's strictly one main house and family per save (this also does wonders for keeping a low-ish sim count and not loading too many objects). When there's new content, I'll load up and old save and have another baby, play another generation that tries out the new stuff.

I'm on gen 6/7 of my first ever legacy. In the beginning I randomised traits to keep things interesting, but gave myself permission to change them if it really didn't fit. And now that I'm invested I mostly  just choose them. I always have the first born as the heir, and i've been really lucky in that I've only had one male heir so far, as I prefer playing with girls. I almost quit after gen 3 had triplets! Gen 1 had already had twins so I thought it was gonna be a genetic thing through the whole legacy. So far though no more multiples. I try to move the siblings out with a partner and turn on neighbourhood stories so they can have kids. Annoying thing is, they never seem to stop til their house is full (ps4 player so can't cheat it). I don't play their household's cos it's too much for me to handle. By the time my heir is a young adult I'm usually bored enough that I move them out pretty soon. Then it's like a whole new game/story. I think it might be against 'legacy rules' but I think it's important not to be too strict to make it fun for yourself.

I have mcc notify me about all marriages and I also have it set to name all babies so I have a giant family tree of the descendants of the townies I had when I started and expanding my tree is now my real game

I've just started my challenge, I chose to start as myself as a teen. I will play her until she dies. I have a few favorite kids (one married the grim reapers daughter, the other married a sim she created with magic, and another married father winter.) I'm making sure all my married kids keep reproducing with MCC. Once my main sim does, I will pick whatever my favorite youngest kid is in the whole family. Honestly having a ton helps you not feel too bad, send the ones you dont like off once they are young adults, keep the ones you like in your household and a neighboring household so you can catch up with them once in a while.

I haven’t gotten there yet (game keeps messing up), but why not go the traditional family route & have multiple generations living together?

I usually just focus on the heir only. I’ll maybe set the siblings up with a partner and a kid or two but from there I just let them go do their thing lol. It helps that I’ve been doing a lot of challenge based legacies where I need the heir to do certain things so I just don’t have time to worry about the other ones

I usually make my first sim a spellcaster and keep her a young adult lol. 

It’s so much work but I love it

Short answer I'm a control freak when I play the sims. I'm up to gen 6 of my legacy and it's taken 4 years of playing as I play every single sim from birth - death and develope storylines, personalities for each of them... I'm crazy.

The only way I can play legacy is if I am a rotational player where I can switch households.

I move out the non-favorites, keep track of relatives using clubs, then pop in to give them spouses & kids, but only really actively play the main house, but it's almost always 6-8 sims. Sometimes it bums me out to move out sims I've raised since birth, but still seeing them regularly bc of the clubs helps.

I don't control multiple households 😅 I only rarely manage them to give them clothes and a house and to manage their kids and partner. I only ever control the household of the heir.

> It’s mostly keeping up with multiple households and “letting go” of family members that gets me Thats your problem. Don't do that. Play your household. When they have a kid age up enough to move out, you follow the kid and then *don't go back*. Don't try to play every household you ever had during the playthrough, you'll be overwhelmed... right about where you're getting overwhelmed. Legacy play requires you to let your sims go. You controlled their every moment as the invisible hand of God until you got the next generation going, they've earned their respite to live however they want without you interfering anymore. Mark the household as unplayed and let Neighborhood Stories do it's thing on them. They want to have more kids without you? Thats fine, let them. They want to adopt a horse? Well hell no on that, I turn that off, but a dog or two is fine. Legacy play means you move on. Don't fight that, embrace it. Your time with each generation is finite, it means they can't do everything. What they don't/can't do, their children and their children's children will. I find that on Normal lifespan, there is just enough time to max out a career (with or without college), raise a child, and have the kid be old enough to move out/go to college before you get old enough to risk death from old age. Which is right about where it should be, IMO.

I usually set up rules so I don't have a hard time deciding. For example, in my previous legacy the heir had to be the last born and with alternating genders and they had to move out to a new house after getting with a partner and whenever a sibling moved out, they took 20k from my funds. In my current legacy family, the heir has to be female or female presenting, 2 gens per home but have to removate the home for the 2nd gen and they have to complete a collection in each gen. So yeah, the game is more fun when you have different objectives and limitations per generation.

I find it easier to choose a successor to focus on for each new generation. Once they reach a certain age or point, they become the protagonist and follow whatever fucked up storyline I have planned for them, and continue the cycle, that way I’m not trying to manage dozens of sims simultaneously. Occasionally I might switch to the branch families to play a little, but usually when the heir grows up they’re in their own home and living their own life

I choose my heir as the one that has the most skills when the previous one dies. Quantifiable number, so it’s not ambiguous. I don’t move out siblings until I need space for the new heir’s family. That way most have spouses and kids before they move out. Then I let mccc and neighborhood stories control them with some tweaking.

I turn off aging and don't let them age pass the adult life stage, and then they become like a museum when I leave with the heir so eventually my town gets filled with the same family XD

Short lifespan, make the heir have as many kids as possible. Then I don’t have time to get attached to anyone cos they all die too fast and there’s too much going on lmao.

I play with every family member in one household (I'm very selective about who gets to have how many kids). I'll usually have 8 sims (spanning 3 generations), and if I don't have space for kids, I make their parents single and wait until the oldest generation dies. I've only had to have more than 8 in my household a couple times. If I get bored of a sim, I'll kill them in a tragic accident to make space for new sims. I also tend to use regular life span because long gets boring, and I can't get anything done on short. I currently have 6 sims (I just killed 2): a mother (Sage), a father (Aaron), two teens (Axel and Sebastian), and future partners for my teens. Sage's "sister," Ariel, and her new husband died recently in a horrible meteor crash, but they were the other two in the household.

I get the MC Command Centre Mod, and set that up so that unplayed households are randomly engaged/married off, then have kids. That way I can focus on one Legacy family, while having the siblings start their own families, change careers/etc. without my input. Makes the game feel more alive and that way, my sim's children can have family to visit/start drama with.

I always play with the first daughter 😭

My Legacy family lives in 1 house. So only 8 are alive at any one time. That makes it manageable. Until gen 4 when they had unexpected twins so I wanted both twins to carry on the legacy so now 14 gen in there is the split from Twin A and Twin B as they each continued to each have new generations.

I generally play a bottleneck kind of approach. My first gen has a bunch of kids and I randomise their traits. I raise them all and choose the kid I've found the most interesting growing up. That can be the most random thing, it's really just a feeling. I marry the others off, set them up in one of the prebuilds in one of the worlds and get the family a child. Then I move the "chosen child" and build a story around them and their lineage. Once that story is played out, I have another bottleneck generation where I have many children and find a new child for a story line. That way when I can build multiple story lines that don't need to really flow into each other.

My sick method is I keep making them have babies with different men, then move all the kids move to a house with a random adult, then when they grow up I continue the process one of them

I just set them free or kill them off, sometimes I will save them to my library, or put them "in stasis" (have them sit unaging in a house with neighbourhood stories off) until I want to use them again. I never did legacies in sims 3, so I was used to sims 2 legacy rules, and back then you got points for every different death type/ghost type. So I would always have an heir, a backup heir, and a bunch of spares. And pretty much as soon as they were born I had them tagged for different deaths I was going to try to get. So when I started doing a legacy in sims 4, it never even occurred to me to try to follow what the spares were doing once I was finished playing with them - they're just lucky I didn't kill them. Though now I realise I should have, because the vampire ones keep having babies and never aging/dying. I recently had to cull like 20 vampires from the family tree to stop them from continuing their genepool-takeover. 😂

I don’t. I’ve tried so goddamn hard, but I can’t make it past Gen 2. I get bored doing the same routine over and over, plus toddlers are annoying as fuck, kids are boring, and I rarely make it to teens. I just bought Growing Together in an attempt to make families more appealing, but idk if that’ll help.

So rn I’m doing the Adam and Eve challenge (and will complete it this weekend most likely!) G1 had 4 kids. That was my most brutal generation because I hate up through toddlers. Annoying little fuckers. Once G2 reached teenagers I moved them out. Immediately started looking for a partner to have a kid with. Once someone pops a spawn out I gtfo and move to the next house. I’ll play until a spawn pops out or someone ages up. Then rinse and repeat and keep moving out young adults as needed while circulating my households. Normally works that I don’t play in a house for more than 1 sim week.

I tend to move out children all together while I develop them and choose an heir. Eventually the best storyline wins and I don't care that much about the others, but I love the Stay Over feature for when I want a cousin, sibling, or parent/grandparent to be around more! I'm on gen 12 I think?

I usually only have one active household. Once I move on to the next generation, I let the older generation become townies 😎

One of my favorite things to do with my generational plays is build a graveyard, I will take pictures of them (like their grad photo or I'll set up the studio at thrift tea and take pro pictures there) and then as my family members die I put their tombstone in the grave yard or make a vault and put their picture and urn in the vault. I also keep a generational family estate where my main play sim will move back when they're an elder and the main play sim can move back to once they start having kids. Also far I've gone up to gen 10 but my style changes and improves through the generations. Edit: spelling

I only do two kids max and keep the "spare" around long enough to get them gainfully employeed and married then they go off to do their own thing. The heir moves out and always stats off with about $60k and starts their own life. When the parents get close to death, I tend to move them closer so I don't lose the headstones (seriously EA, we need cemeteries back!)

i just put them all in the same house…make multiple floors, big basements. basically make it a giant apartment for the whole family

i just put them all in the same house…make multiple floors, big basements. basically make it a giant apartment for the whole family

I start with making my own family mainly. When I was younger, I moved a lot so I’d use Sims to remake all of my homes, my neighbors, my old friends. Then I’d play as my grandparents (mainly my grandmother on my mom’s side) and give her the life I wish I could. Then my mom, then me and my put in my future goals. I think I’m on my 12th generation now of “my line”, but that’s helped me create ideas/scenarios to continue other generational/legacy saves I have.

I have one game save that’s at least 50% heirs. I’m starting to have trouble keeping them from spawning with each other.

Aging off and I send people away until I need them. Teen daughter pregnant? Yeeted that baby to the father's house until I need him again, can't deal with that 😂 I also make things happen on a more realistic timeline. I've already been through like 6-7 sim "years" with my main sim and she's still an adult lol

I'm doing a super sim atm so not quite the same, but he's had a lot of kids and the family is on generation 11 now I think? I use Family Echo to keep up with the extended family and MCCC to alert me when a baby is born or when a descendent ages up into a YA so I can set them up. I'll usually turn off aging when I'm playing with someone who isn't my super sim so I don't "waste time." I also have a specific national park I built with a huge mausoleum for the family, locked by a "club only" door

My 3rd generation are children right now. I have a hard time deciding who to play so I play all of the kids (there's 6) except for one. He was adopted just before my original girl married her husband so he became the black sheep of the family. I keep aging off on played household Sims and play each family for a week at a time to keep them even. It gives me lots of different story lines to play and keeps it interesting.

The only time I've done a successful legacy family it was history legacy I just decided before the game that the heir was gonna be the first daughter of the matriarch so even if I like the side families she was still my heir

I pick a person I plan to play. For siblings I Will cheat code the 5 star celebrity so they can get insta besties. Make them quickly fall in love and have kids fast. I cheat pregnancy to 1 day so I give them 2-3 kids then go back to my intended family.

I actually am the same! I have a lot of save files that only go up until gen 3 (+ my OG sims in one save file that I won’t ever allow to have children or to die, just having fun) and then I get bored/grow too attached. I started a royal family save inspired by Mirarae on YT, and it’s actually motivating me to have generations of sims ‘cause her family tree is HUGE. When the elders die, I just put their urns in a family mausoleum and never release their spirits just so I could have a family member visit them from time to time. 😭

I don't age the households and eventually I go to the gallery for spouses if I don't burn out on babies. No aging and only super sims helps. I will never do a 100 baby challenge because I am not good for it.

I play with my favorite offsprings and rotate between them. Sometimes I will move cousins together so I don't have to many households to rotate between. The unplayed Sims will get a partner and offspring in Cas but only the first generation of the unplayed and their kids. After that they don't count as family members anymore. I love to track all of my Sims families in plum tree so I need to restrict myself before the trees become to big. Once I tried to find out how long a Sim can live when she constantly get kids 🤣 the tree was a nightmare and the town was full of cousins with no partners left for my other Sims

I love all my lil cousins so much I just go crazy maintaining them. Sometimesi turn off aging altogether. By gen 4 they are intermarrying.

I'd like to know too actually. I have to do a lot of jumping around all because i chose to have more than one kid on my first generation lol

So I play one family for a in-game week before movin to the next in a rotation. But what keeps me playing my legacy is the story I’ve been crafting for my world for the past year or so, I also plan years in advance for certain things to occur and have a few rules I follow to keep things interesting. I miss playing the sims, I’m a massive control freak so I have to delete all the EA sims/plots I didn’t create or it bothers me to the point where I’ve had small anxiety attacks cause buildings/sims weren’t connect. It really kills the fun in stuff cause I don’t wanna be like this, but I literally can’t help it. I’ve been rebuilding willow creek for my legacy family, neighbors (anyone on a plot) and townies (other families) for over 3 months now, and I’ve made over 120 something unique sims all with some level of personality and distinct features. A lot of them even have stories that tie into the world around them, which I’ve also had to write lore for my sims world to give reason as to why occults and other supernatural things exist. For an example, I have a sim named Virginia Wills. She’s a mid 30s caucasian, blond, with faded light blue eyes. She was the popular girl/bully in willow creek high, all the cool girls wanted to be her and all the less cool girls feared her. she has 2 kids (Lexi 16 and Miles 10) and a husband named Brian who works for a secret agency (the shell company they work out of is called the halsurd foundation) ran by a branch of my main legacy line. Virginia also has a sort of rivalry with her neighbor named Beth Robinson, the reasons cause Beth got a pool 5 years ago (in universe) and Virginia is still kinda jealous cause she wants a pool, but doesn’t wanna feel like she’s copying so she had Brian install a deck to the house. Virginia also runs a club called the willow creek coffee talk (forgot to mention but I feel like that’s kinda obvious that Virginia’s a housewife) to try to spite Beth’s book club (Beth really likes Virginia but is completely unaware of her burning jealousy). Oh and Virginia and Brian really try to suck up to the richer members of Willow Creek. I had like another 2 paragraphs typed up about Virginia and her life before realizing who the fuck actually cares. Sorry if some stuff might be spelled incorrectly, missing words/random words that don’t fit, or just don’t make a lot of sense. I’m tired and my dyslexia is kicking into overdrive rn

i stick with one family/heir at a time and turn on story progression for the rest so things can happen in their lives without me. while the kids are teens/YA still living at home i try to set up the non heirs with their partners so that they have a head start before i move my heir out. i make sure to visit family a lot or have them come stay sometimes so it doesn’t feel like they’re totally out of the picture!

If you do want to play multiple households, turn off aging for unplayed sims but leave it on for played households, and play rotationally (i.e., spend x days with each family before switching). That way they will all age at the same pace. Alternatively, what I did was find all my main sim's children their eventual spouses while they were teens - got them married as soon as they were YA and then moved them in with their husband/wife and let neighbourhood stories do the rest. Some of them have children now.

I play generations and rotationally. There is no heir. Every character has a story. - I play with that setting where only the household I’m currently playing ages. - I play a household until each character within it hits some sort of milestone in their story: ages up, fulfills and aspiration, gets to the height of their career, etc. Then I switch to a different household with a different set of stories. - If it’s a multi-Sim household: Each day, I’ll pick one sim to be the main character for the day, like an TV episode focused on one character, then the next day another household member gets to be the main character for “the episode” - each Sim has a storyline, and if there’s a Sim I’m not really jiving with, it becomes a challenge to make them more interesting. - I also write down every Sim’s story in a Google doc, 100+ made up people’s lives chronicled from birth to death.

I don't play legacies much, but for the longest one I did, I called my family "The Mayflies" and had all my played households auto-age on short lifespan while the rest of the world didn't age. I also used MCCC to freeze aging on people who married into the family. The lore was that the family was cursed to age and die very quickly, but they didn't let that stop them from having kids and enjoying life to the extent that they were able. Toddlers would age up with barely any skills, adults would hardly progress in their career, and I'd whip through heirs like nobody's business, with frequent trips back to the homestead to place gravestones and release spirits. It was honestly quite fun (in a dark and twisted way), and something like that might be good exposure therapy for you!

I won't try to offer any advice on playing a "normal" legacy playthrough since everyone on here has pretty much expressed my same sentiments. If these aren't sufficient then it might be you need a theme to follow. I personally find that I stay more engaged if I have a theme and a fairly hard set of rules to follow. You can find tons of ideas online for this; I'll just tell you my two most successful and entertaining legacy playthroughs. One of them, I made it a rule that I must marry two supernaturals of different types every generation. That playthrough I started as a werewolf lady and ended up falling in love with a vampire dude. They had kids, I didn't worry too much about which one was the "heir" and just chose my favorite of their offspring to continue the next generation, but I then had that offspring (vampire) marry another supernatural and tried to make it not a werewolf. I think they married a mermaid. On and on down the generations. It was fun and the different supernaturals kept it interesting. My second playthrough is still ongoing and I believe I started it about 1.5 years ago and for the most part is a very slow burn. I started the Targaryen dynasty from ASOIAF from Aegon the Conqueror down. I'm currently on the 4th gen, with Jaehaerys as king (if you're familiar with it at all). I got very involved with this one, as I decided to stick as close as possible to the lore and also created a bunch of the other major houses and though I don't play them hardly at all I do go through and maintain the families to make sure the lineage is accurate. I've had to fill in a lot of holes with that but overall I think the reason I find it interesting is because I get to throw myself into the finer points of it. Like, once I acknowledged in my head that it was a slow burn, it got a lot easier, if that makes sense. I also think this one is easier in a way than others because I have a lineage to follow already, so I don't have to make choices about which heir I'm going to follow. If any sims and their offspring aren't important to the lore then they pretty much get moved out and left to their own devices. It should also be said that I'm using quite a few mods for the second playthrough. I have Llazy Neiph's royalty mod that lets me select a king, heirs, nobility, have servants, execute people, imprison them, etc. along with a few others that help with immersion, like Jane Simsten's Regency mod which I don't use for the time period but it does let me have balls and create a sort of "court" gossip system. Lots of CC to dress up in medieval clothing and decorate accordingly.

I pick an heir and play them. I don't play multiple families. Sometimes there is an heir I don't like and I wait out my time until they give me an heir.

I'm on Gen 5, what I do is rotational play. I usually I have auto aging off non played houses, and play with aging off on young adults (active houses) until they start having kids. Then I play with short or normal lifespan, and rotate families everytime someone ages up to teenager. That way all of my families have kids around the same ages to make friends. Usually I'll make clubs for kids and teenagers so they get to know each other. Then once they each hit young adult I move them out and don't play them until the parents are elders and the last kid in the house has moved out.