Rules I’m Following

The Build a City Challenge has almost as many variants as there are players of the challenge. And the players are very open to that and will borrow ideas from other players and other challenges. And I am no different.

I dislike how the start of the original BACC starts with just one Sim. It’s boring for me to just play one family for ages. But I’m not too fond of the BACC variants where my progress is determined by Sims maxing out certain skills and/or becoming best friends with Sims who meet certain requirements. Yes, those are realistic if you were roleplaying that the families were moving to a far away place so far away from other cities and towns as to make just hiring outside contractors to deal with water and electricity unrealistic. I also don’t like some of the requirements to unlock/open positions in some of the careers. Like requiring a sports lot that’s worth $250K. That’s really hard to do without getting absurd.

I’ve also attempted the Prosperity Challenge. I dislike how quickly the challenge goes away from that challenge. I hate how in that challenge you can’t add anymore families to the neighborhood through CAS but can bring in townies.

So I’ve combined the two challenges. I don’t score, so I’m not going to put in anything regarding the scoring aspects of the challenges.

NOTE: I play table top RPG games enough to prefer to use their terminology for dice. So a d6 is a 6 sided die. A d12 is a 12 sided die. A random number generator may be used in lieu of a die or dice. And I love using my dice so I create as many excuses as I can to use them.

Rules

Challenge Start

  • Create a brand new neighborhood. Do not add a Downtown or any Business Districts. Do not add any community lots.
  • You may add any and all Vacation Destinations.
  • You may create a single University – either pre-made or custom. See the Out of State section on the University – In State vs Out of State vs Not Going page for details on this University that you can add at the beginning of the challenge.
  • Family Creation
    • Roll a d6 and add 1 to the value you get. This is the number of families you start off with.
      • Or just choose the number of families you want to start off with if you know you don’t want too few but don’t want too many. But keep it within 2-7 families if you do so.
      • You may add 1 number to this if you want a house with just a single Sim in it for the purpose of a side challenge. This starting side challenge Sim may be randomly created like the others short of the age or you may decide what stats it has.
    • For each family roll a d6. This is how many Sims you have in each family.
      • Yes, you may have single Sim households.
    • For each Sim, you will randomize the following: Age, Gender, Zodiac, Primary Aspiration, and Secondary Aspiration. You can choose the turn ons/off and their appearance.
      • Age
        • Roll a d6.
          • 1 = Toddler
          • 2 = Child
          • 3 = Teenager
          • 4 = Adult
          • 5 = Elder
          • 6 = Roll Again – if you use a random number generator, have it randomize between 1 and 5.
        • If you get a combination that does have any adults in it you may do the following:
          • Re-roll all of the ages for that one household. You can’t just pick one and change it to adult.
          • If it’s possible for the household to exist in game without the social worker coming, you may create up to 2 Sims to act as a placeholder.
            • You must kill or permanently bin these placeholders immediately after loading their lot for the first time.
              • The graves do NOT count towards the Paranormal requirements, but you have the option to create the cemetery prematurely so that the ghosts can’t negatively impact the Sims. However, you may not visit it or count it towards the # of lots you have until such time as you’ve earned it.
                • You may bin the Sims and then place them down to kill them later when you’ve earned the cemetery.
          • If you have a single adult in a house and you want to create the story of an uncle/aunt raising their niece(s)/nephew(s), you may create placeholders for that as well. They follow the same rules as the above placeholders.
            • Basically, you are allowed to create whatever family dynamics you want as long as the placeholders get permanently binned or killed.
      • Gender – Roll a die with an even number (d6, d12, etc)
        • Even = Male
        • Odd = Female
      • Primary Aspiration – Roll a d6
        • 1 = Fortune
        • 2 = Knowledge
        • 3 = Family
        • 4 = Romance
        • 5 = Popularity
        • 6 = Pleasure
      • Secondary Aspiration – Roll a d6
        • Same numbers as above.
        • If you roll the same number you may either make them Grilled Cheese or roll again.
      • Zodiac
        • Roll a d12
          • 1 = Aries
          • 2  = Taurus
          • 3 = Gemini
          • 4 = Cancer
          • 5 = Leo
          • 6 = Virgo
          • 7 = Libra
          • 8 = Scorpio
          • 9 = Sagittarius
          • 10 = Capricorn
          • 11 = Aquarius
          • 12 = Pisces
        • If you don’t have a d12 and don’t want to use a random number generator, roll a d6 twice. First time determines the set, the second set. First set is the above from 1-6. Second set is the above from 7-12.
        • You may fiddle with the personality point distribution, but the Zodiac sign must remain what you rolled.
      • Turn ons/off – Your choice.
    • For each family roll a d20. Multiply that number by 1000. That represents how much extra money should be added to each family. This represents that families of different economic classes would be the ones moving to the newly forming city. You will do this for all families you add from CAS.
    • Occult Status – Optional
      • I love occults and I hate that they are not genetically passed on like they are in Sims 3.
      • I’ve decided to allow for the creation of occults at the start of the challenge using cheats or mods. I rolled a d20:
        • 1-4 = Vampire
        • 5-8 = Werewolf
        • 9-12 = Witch
          • Personality points in Nice determine type of witch they start off as.
          • 0-3 Nice points = Evil witch
          • 4-6 Nice points = Neutral witch
          • 7-10 Nice points = Good witch
        • 13-16 = Alien
        • 17-20 = Non-occult
      • You can use whatever die you want and set your chances however you want.  These chances can change as you play depending on your desires. For instance right now I don’t have Plantsims in there and I will never have Zombies in there.
        • Plantsims have a shortened life span and I haven’t figured out how I want to handle that in this BACC. And I’ve played them extensively in another BACC I had as my founder glitched out and became a Plantsim after way fewer than 100 sprays.
        • I play for genetics and Zombies can’t get pregnant or get other Sims pregnant.
      • I’ve also decided that the occult status is passed on by simple dominant recessive for the occults that aren’t passed on by the game (Aliens and Plantsims). Occult status is considered dominant.
        • If you want me to make a page on this to go into more detail on how I determine what gets passed on and what doesn’t let me know.
        • I consider Sims in CAS that do not have parents created for them as being pure occult (so OO or oo and not Oo).
          • Though I did make one of my starting Sims in this attempt have 2 occult states.
        • I also assume that there are no occult states that prevent you from becoming another. So if one parent is a vampire and one is a werewolf, the child could be both a vampire and a werewolf – he/she wouldn’t be forced to be one or the other or neither.
      • Since Vampires live forever and that can lead to problems that result from too many memories not to mention player boredom with that one Sim after they’ve done it all.
        • To combat this, I have decided that once the first grandchild of a vampire dies, the vampire will lose their vampire status.
    • You may choose to either randomly generate families added in later on and wait for the CAS Sims available to reach the number you need based on the roles you get or you may make them as you see fit. Or some combination – like you choose age & gender and randomize personality & aspiration
  • Locked features
    • Community lots
    • CAS after you finish making your initial families
      • You may use CAS to make Pets to give to families, but you must remove the money the pet(s) add to the family.
      • You may use CAS to make a Sim to hold the money collected from taxes if you use a mod that requires you to send the money to a specific Sim. Such as a checkbook mod. They do not count against your available CAS Sims, but they don’t count towards your playable Sims for population.
        • You may also have multiple money holder Sims if you want your taxes to be used for more than just the University. See the Taxes page for more information
    • Services
      • While you’re not too far to hire out contractors to deal with things like electricity and water and a school bus, none of the food delivery or cleaning or gardening services have your city in their range and you aren’t big enough to start to warrant them adding in the area.
      • The Adoption Service is allowed as I assume the family doing the adopting would be willing to travel to the nearest city to do all of the necessary paperwork. This is also true of Pet Adoption services if you choose to adopt pets.
      • You may hire nannies as we’ll assume the nanny factors in travel time and gas money into how much she charges.
      • You may have groceries delivered. This isn’t off in the middle of nowhere, location would have been found to be not too far for someone in the neighborhood to do a grocery run for the neighborhood until a grocery store is added to the neighborhood.
    • Careers
      • All careers start off as locked. Sims moving to this neighborhood are looking to start their own city, not become a suburb.
      • One Sim per generation may enter a job that’s locked behind population or something that is not feasible to be unlocked before they would be too old to join the career.
        • Paranormal requires people to have died. You can have one Sim enter that career before the requirements are met provided you don’t have many elders.
        • You could not do this for Military as it’s not impossible to get enough lots to open up a community owned community lot.
      • One townie per generation may keep the job they moved in with, even if there are no open positions for it.
        • They automatically fill a position for it if one opens up
        • If they quit or get fired for any reason, they may not rejoin that career.
        • They do not unlock anything if they top a career that would otherwise unlock something. They’re helping out another city, not yours.
        • If a townie marries a playable Sim, they are considered the generation of the Sim they married.
        • If a townie does not marry a playable Sim, they count as the generation of the youngest Sim of their age group.
          • So if Goopy gets made playable and moved to his own lot, he would count as the same generation as the youngest adult you had in the neighborhood. Basically keeping Sims of the same age in the same generation.
          • If you make Meadow Thayer playable by sending her to college and she does not end up marrying a playable, she would be the same generation as the Sims she moves into the dorm with. If there are multiple generations in the dorm, she’ll be in the newest generation (if generation 3 and generation 4 are in the dorm, she’d be generation 4).
    • Neighborhood Additions – you have to be a decent size before you can have districts or suburbs or have a downtown

Total Population

Before we can talk about how things are unlocked, we need to go over how to calculate the total population [will be referred to as population throughout the rest of the page]

Basic formula is: # of Playable Sims x Sim Multiplier = Total Population

Playable Sims

  • The Sims that you actively play
  • You may count the CAS available Sims for determining if you meet the requirements to complete the challenge. Not going to force you to make Sims just to cross the finish line. But they have to be created to count for unlocking services, career positions, etc.
  • Your choice on whether you count the dead
    • If you choose to not count the dead, you do not lose access to services or have to have someone quit if you have too many Sims in a population based career.
      • You just can’t add anymore Sims to the career until you have an open position.
      • If a Sim gets fired or quits for any reason they can’t re-enter the career until an opening comes up.
    • Wildwood Heights specific: the dead count in the population
  • Similar to the dead are Sims that choose to move away. I don’t like that in the Prosperity and the BACC that you have to play every branch of every family. People do move away or go out of state for college and stay in that new state when they graduate. So you are allowed to move Sims out of the rotation to not be played again.
    • Main reason for this is some Sims you just don’t get attached to for whatever reason or you’ve grown tired of a family because they just aren’t fun to play for you. And the challenge should remain to fun to play at all times. So if you have to cull families to keep it fun, then you should be able to do without having to resort to killing them.
    • Secondary reason is to allow for doing challenges that generate a lot of kids in a single generation or would be a challenge where it would be understandable if most didn’t end up staying in town.
      • 100 Baby Challenge
      • Baby Boom Challenge
      • Bachelor/Bachlorette Challenge
      • Asylum Challenge
    • Your choice how you accomplish this. Whether you just condemn them to the Sim Bin for the rest of the challenge or if you have them on a lot and you age them up appropriately using cheats.
    • As this represents them moving out of your city, they do not count towards the population anymore.

Sim Multipler

  • Starts at 1 at the beginning
  • You get +1 for the first community lot
    • Military base does not count
  • You get +1 for every 5 community lots you have
    • Includes the first community lot that you already got a +1 for
    • Military base does not count
  • You get +5 for adding Downtown
  • You get +5 for each University you add
    • Remember the one you can add at the beginning does NOT count
  • You get +5 for each Business District you add

Unlocking Community Lots

  • You an unlock community lots in 2 ways
  • Have a playable Sim purchase a community lot and run a business on it.
  • For every 4 playable households, you get 1 free community lot that is city owned.
    • Your choice how you decide what lot you earn. Whether it’s funded by the money that grows on trees or if you use taxes to do it. See the Taxes page for more details if you decide to go the route of taxes.
    • Wildwood Heights specific: Will be using money collected by taxes. See Taxes page for more details as I will be using my current plan for taxes and how the money is used as examples.

Unlocking CAS

  • You get +1 CAS Sim every time you add a community lot to the neighborhood, city owned or player owned
  • You get +5 CAS Sims for each Business district you earn
  • You get +20 CAS Sims when you earn a Downtown
  • You get +5 CAS Sims for each University you earn.
  • CAS Sims can be used as they are earned or saved up for usage later. Earned, but not used CAS Sims count towards the total population ONLY for the purpose of seeing if you’ve hit the total population end goal

Unlocking Services

  • Most services are unlocked by having just 500 population
  • Chinese Food and Pizza delivery require a population of 3000
    • You may unlock these early if you unlock the Culinary career
  • You unlock the Headmaster after you have one Sim top the Education career.

Unlocking Careers

  • Adventurer
    • One opening for each Museum Venue is open. It must actually look like a real museum, but there is no monetary requirement.
    • Unlocked for all when the 1st Sim reaches the top of the Adventurer career
  • Architecture
    • One opening for every 10 lots in the City.
      • Residential lots have to be occupied
      • Apartment buildings count as 1 lot, even if they have multiple units
        • If you use a large lot and have a couple of town houses as apartments you may count each individually. Use your common sense here.
      • Community lots have to be functional
    • One opening for every Neighborhood Addition (Business District, University, Downtown)
  • Artist
    • One opening for each Rank 5 Art Gallery Venue
    • Unlocked for Sims who meet the following criterea
      • Level 10 Creativity Skill
      • Sold at least one Masterpiece (you only get the memory once)
  • Athletic
    • Unlocked when a Sports Venue is opened.
      • No requirement for lot value, but it must predominately focus on sports.
  • Business
    • One opening for each Rank 10 Business
    • Unlocked after 1st Sim reaches the top of the Business career
  • Criminal
    • One opening when the population reaches 100
    • One opening for each Sim who reaches the top of the Criminal career
    • One opening for each Sim who reaches the top of the Law Enforcement career
  • Culinary
    • One opening for every Rank 5 Restaurant
    • Unlocked after 1st Sim reaches the top of the Culinary career
  • Dance
    • One opening for every Rank 5 Dance Studio
    • Unlocked after 1st Sim reaches the top of the Dance career
  • Education
    • One opening for every 250 in population
    • Always open to college graduates
      • Graduates from out of state colleges like the one added at the beginning of the challenge count
  • Entertainment
    • One opening for Sims who transition to Adult with maxed Charisma
      • This includes going from Young Adult to Adult
      • Sims moved in with maxed Charisma are assumed to have transitioned to adulthood with maxed Charisma.
    • One opening for each Sim who tops the Dance, Music, or Show Business careers
  • Gamer
    • Unlocked for Sims who own the following
      • 1 expensive computer
      • 1 video game console
      • 1 Pinball machine
      • 1 Arcade game
      • Items at owned venues count. Basically, if you don’t have to restock it, it counts.
  • Intelligence
    • One opening for each Sim who tops the Criminal, Military, or Science careers
  • Journalism
    • One opening for each 1000 in population
    • After the population reaches 1000, one opening is added for each Sim who tops the Criminal, Law Enforcement, or Show Business careers
  • Law
    • Open to college graduates
      • Graduates from out of state universities count
  • Law Enforcement
    • One opening for every 3 burglaries
    • One opening for every 3 fires
      • Basic rule is, if your active playable Sim starts it, it counts. Most of the time
      • Fires from burned food count
      • Fires from Sims using the grill outside count
        • Inside does not count since it’s guaranteed
      • Fires caused by lightening do not count
      • Fires caused by cafeteria workers do not count
      • Fires on business lots caused by the owner count
      • Fires on business lots caused by hired employees or customers do not count
      • Fires caused by a witch’s spell do not count
    • One opening for each Sim who tops the Criminal career
  • Medical
    • One opening when population reaches 1000
    • One opening for every 5000 in population
    • Open to college graduates
      • Graduates of out of state colleges like the one added at the beginning of the challenge count
    • Unlocked once first University is added
      • The one that can be added at the beginning of the challenge does not count
  • Military
    • Unlocked when a community lot representing a Military base is added
      • May use your creativity when making this lot. It does not have to be just a lot for show. Most military bases will have places for those who live on base to shop at. Grocery, clothes, etc. Your choice on whether you limit access or not to those in the military career and their immediate families
  • Music
    • Unlocked when one Music venue is added. The lot must have at least 1 stage and at least 3 musical instruments
  • Natural Science
    • One opening for every Rank 5 nature oriented business
      • Flower store
      • Farmer’s market
    • One opening for Sims who have a Gold Gardening badge
  • Oceanography
    • One opening for Sims who have a Gold Fishing badge
    • Unlocked once a Sim tops the Natural Science career
  • Paranormal
    • First opening when there is a cemetery in the neighborhood and there have been 5 deaths
    • One opening for every 10 deaths AFTER the first 5
      • So one opening for odd multiples of 5.
    • Pet deaths do not count
    • Graves do not have to be moved to the cemetery to count
  • Politics
    • Unlocked when population reaches 1000
    • Only 1 Sim may be Mayor at any given time.
      • Your choice on how you decide who gets to be mayor if there are multiple going for the same position or if someone is in the career and someone else wants to take the position.
  • Science
    • One opening for Sims who transition to Adult with maxed Logic skill
      • Like with Charisma, the transition from Young Adult to Adult counts and townies who move in with maxed Logic are assumed to have transitioned to adult with maxed Logic
    • One opening for every 3 electrocutions
      • It takes 4 electrocutions from Servos running amok to equal 1 electrocution
        • 1 Servo running amok can cause multiple electrocutions before they fully break down in order to be fixed
    • Open to college graduates
      • Graduates of out of state colleges like the one added at the beginning of the challenge count
    • Unlocked once the first Sim graduates University
      • Sims graduating from an out of state University like the one added at the beginning of the challenge do not cause the career to be unlocked.
  • Show Business
    • One opening for each Sim who tops the Slacker or Entertainment career
  • Slacker
    • One opening for each Club business
    • Unlocked once Downtown is added to the neighborhood
  • Pet Careers
    • Security Pet
      • Unlocked when there are 5 spots open in Law Enforcement
      • One spot open for the pet of a Sim in Law Forcement
    • Service Pet
      • Unlocked when services are unlocked
    • Show Biz Pet
      • Open for all pets who have learned all of their tricks
        • Excludes potty training for cats

Unlocking Neighborhood Additions

  • Business District
    • One earned for every 5 owned businesses AND 1 Business Tycoon (level 10 in the business career)
      • So if you have 1 Business Tycoon and 4 businesses, then you have NOT earned a business district
      • Businesses do not have to all be Rank 10 in order to count, just be owned
  • Downtown
    • Unlocked when population hits 25,000
  • University
    • Three different types: Out of State, Public, Private
    • Out of State is free to add
    • Takes $1,000,000 in funds to add a University – either public or private
    • Out of State
      • Only one of these can be added. It’s the one you can add at the beginning of the challenge. Only lets Sims gain college degrees in order to enter careers that require them.
    • Public
      • Earned when the City’s funds for the University reach $1,000,000 OR population reaches 50,000
      • Best way is to take a weekly tax. See the Taxes page for more information
    • Private
      • Earned when one Sim or a few Sims pool their money together to purchase a University
    • See the University page for more information on the differences between the Universities and how I’m handling aging and University to make it so that every Sim doesn’t have to go to University, but still keep aging the same.

Ending the Challenge

The challenge officially ends when your population reaches 50,000. But let’s be realistic – that’s a large number to reach. So for me, this challenge ends when you’ve unlocked everything that you want to unlock and you’ve built up your city as much as you want and five generations have passed. If that’s after you hit 25,000, then so be it. If 50,000 isn’t enough and you want to shoot for 100,000, that’s also great.

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