I'm having two main problems with the sims in my town, and I'm curious if this is common, if there's a solution, and what you all think about it.
Problem 1: Vanishing sims.
Through a great deal of effort, I get my main sims' 5th daughter to marry Malcolm Landgraab (they didn't like each other at first, but you know what money does to a girl). Happily, they have two sets of twins (all girls). However, just after the second set are born, one of the teenagers vanishes. I can't find her in the town anywhere, she's not dead, and she vanished from my main sims' lists of contacts (further proof that I'm not just missing where she went: according to the family tree, her sister is older than she is now). I have no idea how to get her back! This has happened with 4 of my main sims' grandchildren so far.
Perhaps along the same lines, recently I had to do some manipulating of relationships (see problem 2 below) and needed more family slots open, so I stopped aging and free will, shunted the newborn triplets off to a neighbor, and got busy fixing things. Before I was done, I got a message that the neighbor moved out of town!! Dagnabbit, I'm not losing three sons, so I reloaded and lost about 3 hours of work (I was avoiding saving in case I meesed up the "fix"). So I'm guessing maybe the vanished grandchildren moved out of town. I really wish I knew why, or how to stop it.
Problem 2: Every sim has commitment issues!
In the entire time I've played TS3, I've never once seen non-player sims in town get married and produce offspring. Yes, I see immaculate conception all the time (I suppose it's adoption), and I see layabouts shacking up with neighbors as roommates, but I never see romantic relationships move on from flirting to wedding. Plus, the only sim children born in town are either adopted, or a direct result of my actions. Example: out of 9 adult grandchildren in my main sims' family, not one has a romantic interest. I want to see great-great grandchildren someday, and so far it's not happening.
To correct this, from time to time I have to cheat to grab up a lazy dude and force him to procreate and make an honest woman out of another sim. If I don't, I have to watch every unmarried sim in town either produce ** litters (I try to delete them when I see them - I'm looking at you, lucky Mr. Steel) or die alone and get replaced by random pre-made families. It is really getting to be an unfun hassle, but still I do it because I prefer the work to having a game populated by uninteresting sims with no ties to the neighborhood.
I mean, even those freakshows from the Bunch family are more interesting neighbors than the Waugh couple (how'd they get here? why don't they have friends?), but none of the Bunch children got married. I recently saw the last Bunch in my game die - no more Bunches because none of them married.
