Disappearing townies

[ClayMask]

Right now my Sim needs to have 12 friends in order to get my next promotion.  This Sim has been alive for a while, and I think all of the original people in town are dead.  Only two houses besides her have anyone living in them.  I keep having her befriend random people she meets, but they keep disappearing off her list.  It's not because they died.  They're just gone.  So many are disappearing all the time that it's hard to make any progress at all towards this goal.  It's so frustrating!  Have other people found a way to deal with this issue?  Do I need to populate the houses with Sims myself to get ones that won't disappear?

[MarianT]

Supposedly they are less likely to disappear if they're are living in a house. I had my current heir's aunt and brother disappear, so I've decided that the next spare I move out will definitely go into a house rather than move in with one of the homeless townies.

[ClayMask]

I'd heard that, too.  I decided to go ahead and move some families into some of the empty houses in the neighborhoods, and befriend only those.  So far, so good.

[Tigerskin]

Although not specifically linked to the disappearing sim topic, once you have met a townie in question, using the "chat with" option on the computer can seriously bump up your relationship with said sim a lot. My sim needed to have 8 sims as a friend to get a promotion and did this easily by using this option (under socialise).

[_Annika_]

Thanks for the tip Tigersim - that may help quite a bit.

I found they were less likely to disappear if I did not let my sims travel, although I may just have gotten far enough ahead of the sims disappearing. Mine were disappearing literally overnight, after my sim had made friends with them. VERY frustrating.

For challenge (and dynasty) purposes, it may be worthwhile to get the mixology career out of the way early. Depending on the rulesets, the Mischief aspiration might be another early candidate, as there was only 1 inhabited household left in my town by the time gen2 reached elder (1 youth potion for gen 1 YA, and 1 youth potion for gen2 child), and that house I had populated myself from the exchange! You need to visit 5 homes for this aspiration and clog their drains.

[Playalot]

@ _Annika_
I have had empty town syndrome as well with my legacy.. I posted a bit about it here..

http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,21890.msg392433.html#msg392433

Basically in my experience another legacy is totally impossible without using the exchange. Also I have a bug where I can not visit any homes. So completing the Mischief aspiration is an impossibility. I think that this is the norm and that as other players experience TS4 through multiple generations they will find the same thing happening. Unfortunately.