I originally posted this on the Sims 2 livejournal community nearly a year ago, but thought I'd post it here, too.

Anyway, the basic point of The Caveman Challenge is to watch a blank custom neighborhood grow into a full-fledged civilization over time, starting with--as the name would imply--cavemen! You know, sort of like a "crossover" with the Civilization (as in Sid Meier's Civilization) series of games. Which just happens to be my other favorite computer game/game series.




The Rules:

-In the Neighborhood view, open the cheat window and type in 'deleteallcharacters.' (Create a fresh empty neighborhood from a clean template) At this point, the world has yet to become overpopulated. Note: If you have OFB or Pets, exit the game immediately after doing this, delete all the files under the appropriate neighborhood's character folder (under My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Neighborhoods/N00 (insert number here)/Characters), then start up the game again.

-Go into CAS and create a man and a woman (they can be married or just roommates--it's up to you). These will be your cavemen (or "cavepeople," if you want to be overly PC about it), so at least make some effort to make them look the part--dress them in animal skins, make them really hairy, give them stereotypical "caveman" features like huge, sloping brows and no chins, or whatever else you think just screams "caveman." Give them whatever aspirations, personalities, turn-ons, and turn-offs you want. Though I recommend giving the cavewoman a family aspiration because pretty much all she'll be doing is having babies and taking care of children (hey, don't blame me--blame history).

-Move your cave-couple, who I will from here on refer to as "Fred" and "Wilma" for convenience's sake, into an empty lot (any size, it doesn't really matter) and build a "cave" for them to live in. A good way to do this would be to build a basement, give it dirt floors and "cave" walls, and give it a curved roof with custom tiles (so that it actually bears some resemblance to the top of a cave).

-Since you are starting out with cavemen and whatnot, selection of objects/technologies available to you will be extremely limited. This means no electricity, indoor plumbing, bookcases, instruments, stores, pools, or anything else that obviously wouldn't have been available to cavemen. None of our "modern conveniences" would have been available to the typical, illiterate caveman (as for the atypical ones...well, who knows--maybe they used time travel or magic or some other illogical and cliched method of gaining access of technology that would otherwise been out of their reach) who'd have to hunt and skin animals themself for food and clothing. However, because I'm being nice (well, that and the fact that there's really no way around it), you are allowed to give your cavemen a primitive-looking fridge and grill--I'll let you decide which objects fit that description. This should probably go without saying, but you are allowed to give them a phone, smoke detector, or burglar alarm--sure, none of those would have been invented yet, but it's unfairly difficult to play the game without them. You are also allowed to use more time-appropriate replacements for items that have yet to be invented--such as wall torches with actual fire, or a woolly mammoth shower--though try not to go too crazy with this. I personally would recommend drawing a line at anything that obviously involves magic.

-When the paper arrives, momentarily ignore the fact that cavemen are supposed to be illiterate. When you're done with that, have "Fred" take whatever job is listed first. What, do you think cavemen were allowed to be picky?! And because we're going for historical accuracy, "Wilma" is not allowed to work--as I mentioned earlier, her job is to stay home and raise children. When the male member of the second generation become adults, they have to take the same career path as their father. The women are not allowed to work until you've discovered urbanization...which brings me to my next point.

-With the passing of each generation (obviously enough, a new generation starts when the first child is born to the existing generation--e.g. gen. 2 starts when "Fred" and "Wilma" have their first kid (for convenience's sake, let's refer to them as "Pebbles"), gen. 3 starts when "Pebbles" or one of "Pebbles"'s imaginary siblings has their first kid, and so on), you may introduce a new discovery to your sim!civilization. Your discovery of choice may be something concrete or something abstract (like urbanization, as I mentioned earlier), and it enables your sims to do things they were previously unable to do. I strongly recommend choosing plumbing as your first discovery and farming as your second, because otherwise your sims would go possibly a whole lifetime without bathing--and that means you'd have to put up with a whole lifetime of whining about needing a shower/bath--and you can easily get around the whole needing-to-buy-food problem by just deleting the fridge and replacing it with a new, fully-stocked one. As for why I recommend you choose farming as your second discovery? Realism, mainly. Since grocery stores didn't really exist at this point in time, I've yet to see "huntable" animals for the Sims 2, and simply deleting the fridge seems sort of like cheating (yes, I know I suggested you do just this for the first generation, but think of that as a "freebie" given to you because there's no way around it), introducing farming would be the logical choice. If you have Seasons, this means you can start gardening and harvesting the food you produce from doing so. If not, you can find harvestable crops and various farm animals (which admittedly serve no real purpose aside from decoration, though it's still a nice touch) at modthesims2.com.

-With each generation, you may also create a new batch of townies--not by using boolprop or insimenator to have the game create 20-something new townies for you, but by going into CAS and creating a "family" of sims yourself, moving them into a throwaway lot, and by using the teleporter plus shrub (or painting--it's your choice, really) from simlogical.com to make them townies. Obviously, choose time-appropriate clothing for your "custom-made" townies.

-Because you probably won't be able to build stores of any kind for quite some time, you are allowed to use cheats or hacks to change a sim's clothing, provided that their outfit is time-appropriate.


List of Discoveries, and what they enable your sims to do (not necessarily in order):

Farming = Allows your sims to grow and harvest crops for both food, clothing, and profit. This means that they no longer have to wear animal skins, and actually have a means of re-stocking the fridge.
Alphabet/Writing/Literacy = Allows your sims to buy bookcases, read books/newspapers, and do crosswords.
Animal Domestication (optional) = Allows your sims to have pets.
Architecture = Allows your sims build actual houses (keep in mind, they start out living in a cave...), along with pools, fences, etc.
Music = Allows your sims to buy musical instruments
Electricity = Allows your sims to buy objects that would, in real life, require electricity
Urbanization = Allows your male sims to choose any job they want (as before, they'd be forced to go into whatever career track their father was in), your female sims to have jobs period, community lots to be built, businesses to be started, and a downtown/university to exist. Keep in mind that any sims you send to university still have to follow the rules of the challenge while there, and can't make use of any technologies that haven't been discovered yet.
Plumbing = Allows your sims to build bathrooms/buy toilets, sinks, showers, hottubs, etc.


For some things, you'll have to use a little common sense--as some objects/behaviors/etc. would, realistically, require more than one discovery. For instance, you'd have to wait until both electricity and music were discovered before your sims could purchase electric guitars or stereos.


As soon as you have either discovered all seven technologies or the family line dies out (whichever happens first), you may begin tallying up points.


Scoring:

1 point for each generation reached
1 point for each technology discovered
1 point for each $100,000 in family net worth(add together each family lot's net worth, and round up)
1 point for each family friend at the time of technology #7 (or 8, if you opt to domesticate animals) 's discovery
1 point for every different career reward on any family lot. I should probably mention that you can move whomever you want out, as there is no "heir" or house that the whole family is required to live in. This isn't a legacy, after all.
1 point for each cheat-free, hack-free abduction (just because these are so freaking rare)
1 point for each lifetime want (or "impossible" want, for those of you who don't have Uni or NL) reached
1 point for each sim that dies in platinum aspiration (you do not have to keep their grave/urn, and may delete it if you want)


-1 point for every visit from the sim shrink
-1 point for every child taken away by the social worker
-1 point for every visit from the social bunny
-1 point for every inter-bred birth

Useful Links:

-Unlocked Ancient Outfits at MST2
-Prehistoric Clothing at the Blarney Stone (under Sims 2/Themes/Prehistoric)
-The SimStones set at MST2 (a LOT of content here!)
-Farmer's Set with Harvestable Crops (for those of you who don't have Seasons)
-Additional Crops here, here, here, and here

Wow! Detailed! And I play Civilization too, great game! I might just try that, it sounds very interesting, and not your average challenge! Perhaps more technologies needed though?

Wooooah....what an awesome challenge! =D

If I wasn't such a cheat addict I'd SO try this! xD

This challenge should be so cool.

won't your townies respawn without No Townie Respawn from MATY? The game would generate townies for you, won't it?

I have no idea, yamikuronue. At least not with OFB and Pets, anyway. I wrote the challenge when I had just University and Nightlife. I know NPCs will regenerate, which is alright because those are kind of necessary in order for the game to function.

You're probably right about the townies, though.

I was thinking you could do the same thing, but only in an end of days way...there has been some event that has killled all but this one couple...faced with these odds they have to repopulate the planet....here is a hack that might help (warning it to an adult sims site) http://www.sexysims2.com/showthread...ighlight=family although you don't have to use it...could just add townies as you go along.

Question.... are we allowed to have beds? If not, how do the sims pro-create? Or are we allowed to have beds, but we have to pretend they are slabs of rock? ;-)

A quick question.

Passing of generations - do you mean births or deaths as a milestone? i.e. Do we pick our first technology when gen2 is born or when gen1 dies?

With the passing of each generation (obviously enough, a new generation starts when the first child is born to the existing generation--e.g. gen. 2 starts when "Fred" and "Wilma" have their first kid

Do the kids go to school? Or should we use a schools out forever hack until the Alphabet is invented?

mattsh - Yes, you're allowed to have beds. And other "basic" furniture like chairs, couches, and surfaces (counters, tables, nightstands, etc.), since they require no specific technology. In fact, you could probably find some furniture that looks like it's made of rocks or stone, or recolor it that way yourself. Sculptures, paintings, and plants--unless for some reason it's obvious they use electricity (e.g. the neon flamingo sign)--are also allowed.

macthekat - I honestly hadn't thought of that. For convenience's sake, let's have the kids go to school and pretend they're learning non-literary skills like hunting or gathering there. And as for the homework, pretend that's something non-literary as well, like sketching something for their "cave painting" class.

This is so so awsome! Can you make the house look like a real cave?

i gonna try tis out , but first i need to prepare some Custom Content
so it look like a "cave house?" and full with wooden furniture