I'm sketching out a rough idea for playing a Royal Kingdom Challenge using sims 3's advantages and unique features. This has been cross-posted to the sims 3 general discussion board and modthesims.
I'm building on an idea I found posted on the Sims3 general discussion board, so credit goes to AthenaOnyx. That post is found here: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/107860.page

Sims 3 typically keeps a population of 21 - 28 families, am I correct? The starting neighborhoods have 25 families.

So I'm thinking of populating a neighborhood from scratch, and designating the families:
1 royal family
4 noble families
9 merchant families
11 peasant families
= 25 families

The point of the challenge would be to observe the durability/successes of the classes over time. Will the royal family stay in power, or will they die out? Will the noble families continue, descend into poverty, or take over the throne? Can the merchants and peasants move up in society, hang on to what they have, or will they die off?

So! here's my plan, although this is just a rough plan. Please respond with any input, reasons why it wouldn't work, improvements, alternatives, etc.

Start by playing the royal family first, then switch active households to another family chosen randomly. Keep story progression on! I recommend playing with settings on normal lifespan. The length of rounds played can be up to you, be it one week, two weeks, or a whole generation, as long as you keep it the same all the time.
How you decide what order to play the families in is up to you. It could be completely random, or quasi random.
You could alternate between royal/noble and merchant/peasant, so for example royal first, then a random merchant or peasant family, then a random noble family, then a random merchant or peasant family, then a random noble family that you haven't played yet, then a random merchant or peasant family that you haven't played yet, etc.

Any families that the game moves in to your neighborhood after it starts are considered peasants.

Moving through the classes:
For the royal family to hold the throne and stay in power, they must continue their line. As long as they come up with another baby in the household, whether it be illegitimate birth, adoption, or legitimate birth by marriage, as long as the household continues the royal line survives. Why? Because they're the kings, they get to make their own rules. The royal heirs can marry anyone, (in your classic sexist kingdom this is the first born son), the royal non-heirs can marry anyone but join the class of the person they are marrying. Royalty can do whatever career or activities they want. Royalty can have live in servants, perhaps spare teens from the lower classes.

The noble families need to hold on to their wealth and continue their lines. Their line can continue through adoption or legitimate birth. If a child is born illegitimately he or she is to be considered a merchant class. If a noble family's net worth dips below the standard at the end of every round, they get bumped down to merchant class. Nobles can work in any career. ALTERNATIVE: Athena's rule that noble heirs must work in the same career as their father. Noble heirs can only marry other nobles, or merchants. Noble non-heirs can marry whoever, but if marrying below they move down to that class.

I'm not sure what net worth limits to set for the various classes, or cash on hand limits.

The merchant class and peasant classes need to survive, continue their lines, and build their wealth and holdings.
Merchants can only work in medical, business, culinary, journalism, law enforcement, or music, but can also earn money through painting, writing, fishing, collecting, and gardening. Merchant heirs can marry merchants, peasants, or downward-moving nobles. Merchants may procreate through adoption to a married couple or legitimate children for purposes of designating heirs. Any children that pop up otherwise get bumped down to peasant class.

The peasants first responsibility is farming, each peasant house must have 20 plants. They may only work in military or criminal career, although they can also make money through fishing and collecting. Peasant heirs can marry anyone they can convince to marry them, and non-heirs can strike out on their own or join other households as servants. Peasants can procreate through adoption, illegitimate birth, or legitimate birth.

Moving on up: If the peasant and merchant households reach a certain net worth (I'm still not sure what that should be) they can move up one level in society. Peasants can become merchants, and merchants can become nobles. Once the families change social class, they must abide by the rules of their new social class.
Character development and game play rules are similar to Pinstar's legacy rules: Traits must be chosen randomly, as should lifetime wants.

I'm thinking I'll randomly generate my 25 founding families similar to sims2 prosperity rules, using dice to determine how many people each family will have, the ages and gender of the members, and creating stories based on that.

My "kingdom" will be modern, simply because I don't feel like diddling with custom content and design.

What do you think? Am I missing anything? Is this going to work? Anyone tempted to try this with me? Should anything be changed or improved?

I do have a question; how big will the game let a neighborhood get before story progression starts kicking out families? do I need to worry about controlling my general population?

Let me know what you think!
Happy simming,
Auroraline

I like it, but personally I wouldn't have my nobels adopting as they could easily be considered un royal.Or whatever.
Im gonna give this one a shot.

Lol im doing this challenge, it sounds fun

Also to add to the moving up bit, to make it more realistic what if you can also move up a class by marriage?
And as to not have any confusion have each class have their own hair color (EX: Royals are all blond, Nobles all black, Market all Red, etc)

this sounds like a fun challenge I'm going to try it out. might increase how many families there are though because with the map I'll be using for the challenge is huge so I don't want it all to feel empty.

Love it!

If anyone's looking of a way to keep track of status through the generations, perhaps make family names that give a hint of the class?

Royal = indicated by a reference to a real life monarchy = The Kaisers, The Caesers, The Tsars

Noble = indicated by a reference to a real life place = The Burlingtons, The Glasgows, The Cheshires, The Buckinghams

Merchant = indicated by a profession = e.g. The Wellkeepers, The Crafters, The Fletchers, The Monks

Peasant = indicated by a name = The Smiths, The Olivers, The Jacks, The Marks

In case of a class change, this can be indicated by a fusion of two family names indicated with "van" (loosely meaning "of" or "from")

Examples: Fionna Curler-van-Bangor (Curler from Bangor), Isaac Smith-van-Brewer (Smith of the brewers)

Probably not the prettiest names I came up with, but you get the point

The most helpful thing ever! Starting this challenge soon!


The way I did the money thing and how they upgrade

Royal gets 100K
They become nobles if they drop to 50K, or they don't have an heir by the end of the generation.
Nobels get 50K
Once the current royal family dies out the most powerful noble family takes over. The nobles become merchants if they drop to 10K, or can't find an heir at the end of the generation.
Merchants get 10K
Merchants can become Nobels if they get 50K. The merchants can become peasants if they drop to 1K.
Peasants get 1K
Peasants can become Merchants if they get 10K. The peasants become enprisoned if they owe a debt or drop to 0.
Families can marry each other and move in.
For example, a merchant marries a peasant, whatever both of their money is at the time, you would combine them and get the outcome. So most likely the money would be around 11K.
Now let's be realistic, most of the time(in the medieval times) people stay in their own class and don't marry out of it, so let's say a merchant marries another merchant...their money would both be 20K.
So in essence, if you follow that rule...
For a peasant to become a merchant it would take 10 generations
For a merchant to become noble it would take 3 generations.
For a noble family to acquire 100K it would take 2 generations
A reminder is that for some people this might take less or more time just because of the income they acquire over time and the fact that you have to move out your children to start their very own family.