I stuck with modern day because I didn't want to get into the project of trying to download custom content to make it a medieval theme. I downloaded empty towns from modthesims.com, and gathered a bunch of setup ideas, rules, and gameplay from the original Sims2 version, as well as suggestions posted on the MTS forums.
Setup
1. Download an empty town here to begin. You could go as far as to download rabbit hole signs to create your own workplaces. I didn't want to do all that work, so I stuck with the default community lot locations.
2. I also suggest downloading some starter homes from user: plasticbox to speed up the process. I'm a big fan of all plasticbox's architecture as it's very useable and simple, but aesthetically appealing.
3. Build your town however you like, whether you download or build your own lots. I'm impatient, so I download and just drop the lots wherever.
4. Time to create your sims! In Sims3, the town holds about 25-28 families. I took this suggestion from the MTS board.
Royal Family - 1
Nobles - 4
Merchants - 9
Peasants - 11
For a total of 25. But you could stick with the original numbers of 1-4-4-4 or less
- I rolled a die on http://www.random.org/ to decide how many people would be in each family. (Excluding the royal family, which can only have a king and queen).
- I hit random for personality traits
- I tried to pick non-career LTW for peasants, since they can't have careers in my rules...sort of
Playing
- Start with playing the royal family for a predetermined amount of time
- Switch to a random merchant or peasant family for the same amount of time. (I'll be assigning a number to each family, and then using a number generator from random.org)
- Switch to a random noble family after that, and keep rotating
- Townies (for the most part), NPCS and any family the game moves in are peasants
- Royal family must produce an heir to stay in power. And since I'm a feminist, and I read once in a book that ancient Egyptians believed the heir was always female, because you can always be sure who a child's mother is, my lineage will be based on the women
- Royal heirs must marry a noble. Townies with blond to red hair are foreign nobles/royalty (just for variety of sims)
- Royal non-heirs can marry anyone, but become the class of their spouse and must then follow the rules of their new class
- Noble heirs must marry a noble or merchant
- Merchants and peasants can try to work their way up the ladder with wealth and holdings. I haven't been able to come up with an arbitrary number of net worth in order for this to happen
- Peasants can marry anyone they convince to marry them. Non-heir peasants can strike out on their own, or join other houses as servants
Royalty
all money cheats are okay
firstborn daughter is the heir and cannot move out
careers: business, military, politics, science
the queen/heir must be in politics
Royalty always attend school
Nobility
may only use motherlode cheat twice
firstborn daughter is the heir and cannot move out
heirs are not allowed to marry below status
careers: business, military, politics, science, medicine
*heir must follow mother's career path
family must hold 5000 simoleons total for kids to stay in school
Merchants
may use motherlode cheat once
heir can be legitimate or adopted
careers: medical, business, culinary, journalism, law enforcement, or music
non-heirs can also be criminals
must have 1000 simoleons per child to stay in high school for more than 3 days
Peasants
no money cheats
heir can be legit or adopted
careers: part-time jobs, military, or criminal
each house must have 20 plants, as peasants are farmers
only go to school in childhood
All other rules are the same as the original Sims2 Royal Kingdom Challenge.
