Ultimate Uberhood

My aging system is based on one Sim year lasting 24 days. Each Sim celebrate their birthday once per year, always on the same day. Infants and toddlers have shorter stages however because it would have been too long. Adulthood lasts for 4 Sim years and elders can life up to 3 Sim years.

I consider that one Sim year roughly equals 10 years in real life (or 7 for the younger life stages), but it’s not a straightforward x amount of days equals x years.

Here is how it works :

Life stage	Number of Days	Age
Infant	6	0 to 1 year old
Toddler	18	1 to 6 years old
Child	24	7 to 13 years old
Teen	24	14 to 20 years old
Young Adult	24	21 to 27 years old
Adult	96	28 to 64 years old
Elder	24 – 72	65 to 95 years old

While this system does not completely make sense from a mathematical standpoint, I find that it’s coherent enough for gameplay. And the best part is that now, my Sims have actual birthdays : they will always grow up on the actual day of their birth (except for the infant to toddler transition).

And since they have actual birthdays, I can now assign them a zodiac sign based on when they were born, instead of their personality points (which is more aligned with real life). Now twins always have the same zodiac with my system. And I haven’t noticed any strange effect on the in-game attraction system, so it’s a win-win for me.

I originally came up with this lifespan because I want all ages to experiences all seasons (especially for playing active schools, otherwise summer babies might never set foot in a classroom!).

The other advantage of this lifespan, is that it makes it very easy to keep track of Sims ages. If a Sim is born on year 1, then by year 2 they should be a child, year 3 a teen, year 4 a young adult and so on. This is also how I was able to retroactively give birthdays to all of the premades, based on their zodiac and how old I think they should be in comparison to their siblings, spouse or children.

For instance, in Belladonna Cove, Isaiah Gavigan is a Taurus, so I picked Spring, Day 5 as his birthday (which is April in my calendar). Since he starts the game as a child, that means he has lived for one Sim year and is about to complete his second year. Thus, he was born in Year -1 (I started the game as Year 1).

Then, looking at his parents, I assumed that they got married the year before his birth, so Year 0. Since they start out with no skills or job, I decided that they skipped college and got married as young adults. So if they were young adults during year 0, that means that they were born during year -4 (actually year -5 for Nathan because he was born on the last day of the year as an Aquarius).

Yes I did this for all of the premades. I’m a nerd.

Now, since my Sims live for so long, I also extended the length of pregnancies to make them last 9 days. I decided to do this so that Sims wouldn’t have too many babies (but given that my Sims can get pregnant as teens and as young adults, they can still achieve having ten kids if they reaaally want it).

Of course I also lengthened the life of pets, so that they live around 4 to 5 years.

I know it all sounds a bit tedious, but I set up my Excel spreadsheet so that once I input a birth date, it automatically keeps track of my Sims’ ages for me. So I don’t actually have any math to do while playing!

I find it very interesting to give Sims « real » ages, as it can really influence how I play them. It sort of created an additional shadow lifestage for the older adults, between 45 and 65. (It also makes age gaps in couples much more apparent).