FAQ: Sims 2 Lifespan

I got asked this on my stream a couple times so I will share my aging and chemistry system. 

I play my sims according to the in-game seasons which I have also modified. I use the Shorter Seasons mod by EvelynnMama on Mod the Sims which changes each season to be 4 days long. This means that 1 sim year is 16 days. Using that number, I wanted each of my life stages to experience all four seasons at least once. 

  4 Day Pregnancy ¹

  4 Days Baby²

12 Days Toddler

16 Days Children ³

16 Days Teens ⁴

8 Day University ⁵

80 Days Adult ⁶

48 Days Elder ⁷

I've got my adjusted Agecons file and Pregnancy mod available for Download Here. (Sims File Share)

They are separated, so you can use one or the other. If you want to make your own Aging mod, you can edit the jjAgecons file in Sim PE, or get a "clean" editable file from Simlogical's Aging Section

 ¹Pregnancy Each pregnancy trimester is 32 hours long, resulting in a 4 day pregnancy. 4 Days I felt is just enough, because by the time the babies become toddlers, a new baby comes and can take over the crib while the toddler moves into a toddler bed. In real life, having babies back to back, the first born should be at the crawling stage while the second born is just a potato baby. This 4 day pregnancy, 4 day baby, 12 days toddler makes it so you can play out "3 under 3". That is, 3 kids under 3 years old. 

²Baby When a sim is born, I make a note of the day of the season, the time of day. and the year they were born. I start counting the Years when I start playing the neighborhood, so in my current Desiderata Valley playthrough the year starts on the first day of fall. A baby born in the first round, would have the birthday of Fall 4, 0 A.S. (A.S. Standing for After Simulation) I don't necessarily try to figure out everyone else's birth year, but for existing sims in the world, an example child's birth year would be 1 B.S. (born 1 sim year Before Simulation) The time of day is used for calculating their zodiac which I'll get to in another post.

³Children To Allow Children to have a summer Vacation, I use a Summer Vacation Mod by Poiple on Mod the Sims. This corresponds to the actual season summer, so if your world only has one summer season, this will work great.* 

⁴Teen Let your teens build their friendships and crushes. Go through Academic phases of Success and failure. For the Child and Teen Birthday, If it becomes their Yearly birthday and the Age tracker is somehow off, I'll use an Age Up Anytime Cake from Simlogical or Use testing cheats to make it their birthday and use the regular birthday cake.

 ⁵8 Day University I suppose I should really find a 16 day university mod. But I can deal with 8 days with Cyjon's Semester Changes mod and treat it as more of a technical college situation. Essentially, a 2 year college. I use a Different mod to allow Young Adult Pregnancy (Not even sure if it 100% works yet) but I do still have Lamare's Uni-Aging-each-1-day-AL package from her Young Adult Maternity Mod set. To compliment this I also use College Dependent Adult Stage Days By Nopke on Mod the Sims. I use the version that will subtract 8 days from the adult life stage of sims who graduate from University.

 

⁶80 Days Adult For a little bit, I used the add 8 days flavor of College Dependent Adult Stage days, but then I had one sim stay at college longer because he got on probation. To keep his age somewhat in line with his partner, who graduated on time I decided to switch to subtracting 8 days from educated sims. Smart Age Correct by Lazy Duchess helped to immediately update the change. There are many features I like about having this length of Adult Days. 

 

•     You can "Celebrate" A yearly Birthday. Using a Celebrate Anytime Birthday Cake. Your Adult Sims can turn a party into a birthday party and not age up. While it isn't automatic, Toddlers and older from the beginning of simulation will age up on their birthday, and that day and season can be kept on hand for when that time of year comes around as an adult. You can choose to celebrate it or not. I do. 
•     Enjoy the early adult years child-free. Be a responsible sim and go to college. Save up for and buy a house, then have your children. You should still be able to live a few Adult years at the end child free as well before going into retirement. 
•     Become a young Grandma, If you have your family sim suddenly start popping out babies as soon as they are an adult, you will find that your family size fills up pretty quick. At about halfway through the adult lifespan, (probably age 40 IRL) The first born children will start to become Young Adults/Adults and start having children of their own. Bestowing on your parent sims the titles of grandma/grandpa. You could have your sim enjoy the empty house, or have them keep going, all the way up to a few days before they turn into an elder. 

 

⁷Elder I don't have too much to say about elder's quite yet, I'm still figuring it out. I never played through elders until recently and when I realized one elder wouldn't be able to see their child go to college I actually gave everyone 8 more days (before this, I had them only up to 40 days) . So now if your sim had baby right before the elder stage, they will be able to see the child grow up into an adult before the grim reaper starts his countdown.  

 

*More on Summer Vacations: While these are not in my game, Poiple also made a Summer Vacation by Quadrant mod that lets your sims have either the first season quadrant or third season quadrant off of school. And Phaenoh's Summer Vacation mod is for the second season quadrant. She also has a "Winter Day" on the last day of the fourth season quadrant.

 

And that's all about my life stages, lifespan, and pregnancy. You can see me play this out in my current playthrough of Desiderata Valley which at the time of writing is in it's third year of simulation. Rounds 1-8 are on my YouTube Channel and future rounds/seasons will be saved on Twitch, which I stream every evening at 9pm American Central Time.*Update 8/28/2023 Desiderata Valley Playthrough has concluded, ending at 18 seasons or "rounds. A few seasons were lost but 90% of the VODs were saved. Watch the collections at twitch.tv/noodlebelli*