THE SIMS 4 Managing Households

Managing Households

Sims do not live in a vacuum and, depending on how their lives evolve or simply on your whim, you may find that Sims to change families or houses. We saw the Marriage of Christine National and Freddie Holman, but they did not move in together immediately due to a bug (or possibly a feature) that would have interrupted their wedding. Now that both parties are home, we can unite their families for good.

There are three ways you can get to the Manage Household screen. If you're playing as a family that you wish to bring a Sim into, you can have an active Sim speak to the target and choose “Ask To Move In.” Christine can call up Freddie to invite him over, then use the social interaction. Because they're married, he's guaranteed to accept, and you'll access the screen.

Second, you can bring up the pause menu by pressing the Escape key, then clicking the “Manage Worlds” button near the bottom.

Finally, you can do it from the map screen. Hover the cursor over the house you wish to change, and a few buttons will appear. Click the icon at the bottom that features two Sim silhouette, as shown in the very top screenshot of this page.

No matter how you get there, you'll be shown a screen that features two tabs: one for played households, and one for unplayed (NPC) households. Christine's household is the only one in the Played tab, so we click that. We are shown this screen...

The four buttons across the bottom lead to the features where you can affect the household. The left button (with the pencil) allows you to edit the Sims' clothing in Create a Sim mode. Note that you can't change their names, bodies, or any other feature except outfits. The second button (with the moving van) allows you to move the entire household to a different lot. The fourth button (with the trash can) will delete the household entirely.

The third button (with the two opposite-facing arrows) is the one we want. Click that, and you're taken to the House Split and Merge screen. The selected family is on the left, and the right side is currently empty.

The right side features the same Played and Unplayed tabs, and you can create a new family outright. We click Unplayed here, since Freddie Holman is an NPC. Now, some NPC families will mix up, and it may be a little tricky to find them in the list since we don't know exactly what world Freddie was living in in the first place. We're given three worlds: Willow Creek, Oasis Springs, and Not in World.

Luckily, unplayed families are named by the surnames of their occupants, and anyone who is “Not in World” will always live alone. It's always best to start there unless you know that your target already lives in one of the two main worlds. So we click the Not in World dropdown menu, scroll though the list, and we find “Holman” in short order. We click that to see the entire Holman family (consisting only of Freddie) in the right panel.

We can now adjust the family as we will. If there are multiple Sims per household, we can select individuals to move around freely, including splitting spouses (which does not alter their married status), swapping kids, or any other combination. All families need at least one Young Adult or older to function.

A family can be entirely merged as well, as we want to do here. We click Freddie's picture, then click the left-pointing arrow to get him on Christine's panel. Going the other way would essentially remove Christine from the world, thus rendering her unplayable. We are simply bringing Freddie into the world proper, not ejecting Christine from it.

Because we are bringing in the entire subject family, his entire net worth comes with him. Most families will have variable net worths due to their different houses, possessions, and liquid assets. In Freddie's case, because he is “Not in World,” he has a fixed amount of §20,000, the starting amount for a family. Twenty grand is a huge boon to Christine.

If a family doesn't completely merge (for example, if Freddie lived with someone and we just drew him out), then no money would transfer.

If a family completely merges but had possessions in their family inventories, then we would be given the option here to sell the possessions and keep the cash, or if the possessions merely transfer into the combined household. This is useful if a family has a lot of rare items, collectable items, or if the new household needs some furniture. In Christine's case, she has everything they need and wouldn't have minded Freddie selling it all, but Freddie (again being “Not in World”) didn't have any possessions anyway. In the screenshot below, you can see that the check box to decide what to do about Freddie's possessions is grayed out. (If you have trouble seeing it, the box is directly below the blue text on the right panel.)

Once all the arrangements are made to your liking, click the check mark, and all relevant households will update. The game doesn't fully save, so consider doing so once you know everything worked out.

Households can always be un-merged or re-merged at will if you change your mind, but if someone sold their possessions, they're permanently gone. If you have any doubt about the value of a target's household inventory, consider allowing them to bring it along. You can always sell it later if it turns out to be useless.

Moving

Moving works in basically the same way. Now that the households are combined, Christine finds herself with over §21,000 in the bank, and she wants children eventually. She decides to move; this was only a starter home anyway, and she decides she wants something bigger.

There are two ways to move a family. First is on the Manage Worlds screen. Click the family in question, then click the moving truck button that pops up. This evicts them from the house, though you can move them elsewhere as you choose.

Christine doesn't want to go that way: she can just move from within the game proper. She uses her phone, then selects the “Move Household” option.

This basically lets Christine skip a step as she's taken to the map screen. She can select any lot, even an occupied lot if you want to merge the households. Christine doesn't; she chooses an empty lot across town because she wants to build her dream mansion from scratch. After a single confirmation, she and Freddie immediately teleport to the new lot. All their furniture and appliances are automatically packed into the Family Inventory, accessible through Build Mode, allowing them to simply build the house while recycling their old stuff to reduce their costs.

THE SIMS 4 Marriage

Marriage

Now that Christine and Freddie are engaged, Christine can use the Romantic... > Elope With Freddie Immediately command to marry him on the spot. This is similar to how The Sims worked in its older iterations, with both Sims just swapping vows and smooches without anyone else getting in the way. This is fine if you're in a rush or are role-playing a shotgun wedding, but you will miss out on some good rewards if you do this.

Christine decides she wants an actual wedding. She can do this at any time with her phone, but be warned: the instant you choose to activate the wedding, the wedding will immediately take place. In previous versions of The Sims, you could plan ahead and figure out when you wanted weddings (and other social engagements) to take place. Not so with The Sims 4: everything always happens immediately when you give the command.

Christine learns this the hard way at first. She tests out the command at night, thinking she will just plan the wedding for the next day. Unfortunately, everyone she invites is teleported to the park in the twilight, so they're starting their “party” by being extremely hungry, tired, and needing to pee.

No one is happy, and nothing has happened yet. Not a good sign since we're trying to get a solid rating for the social event.

Christine appeals to the time gods (i.e., we reload the save) and prepare a bit better. Around noon, she carefully contemplates her actions.

First, take a look at this screen as she prepares to send out the invitations for the wedding...

Although caterers, mixologists, and musicians are not necessary, they will make things more comfortable for the guests. However, they will need the right tools for their job: caterers need access to a kitchen of some sort, the mixologist needs a bar, and the musician needs a piano.

Although Christine originally decided to have the wedding at the park, these requirements make her think twice. The park does not have a kitchen; it has grills, but hot dogs at a wedding is a little tacky. The park doesn't have a bar either, though we can buy one for the park anyway (and the cost is “free” since it essentially comes out of the infinite tax dollars of the city). Same with the musician.

Christine calls an audible and decides to have the wedding at her house. After all, the side yard has enough room to hold a wedding arch and a bar. It'll be a little cramped, but it will work. She goes into Build Mode and makes the necessary arrangements. She also bakes a cake, then interacts with it and chooses “Add Wedding Topper,” then throws the cake in the fridge. It's a little odd to be making a cake for one's own wedding, but the cake is part of a minor wedding goal, so she prepares it now.

Next, she saves again, then activates the social planning again. She decides not to hire a musician since she doesn't have a piano, but she does hire a mixologist and a caterer.

When you hire any of those three positions, note that you can hire someone you already know, or hire an unnamed NPC. You can also have multiple ones if absolutely necessary, though most Generation 1 Sims won't know enough guests to make that worth it. When choosing who to hire, you'll see a list of all the people your Sim knows who can qualify for that position. As you see here, the only person Christine knows who qualifies for the mixologist position is Daniel Mosley.

If Christine hires an unnamed mixologist, they're guaranteed to be skilled; Daniel may have just started and could mess everything up. However, he's free, and Christine is running out of cash, so she hires Daniel anyway. This may not be a risk you're willing to take with your own Sims, especially if you're using Generation 2 or later Sims who probably have enough money to splurge on a skilled townie.

Christine finishes her plans and chooses her home lot as the site for the wedding. As with Christine and Freddie's second date, the wedding starts immediately as everyone teleports to the house. Christine changes into a special wedding dress automatically.

Any hired help goes to their stations at once: Daniel starts mixing booze, the caterer heads for the kitchen, and if a musician had been hired, they would have gone straight for the piano.

Christine has an obvious role to play too, but unlike dates, it's usually best to get the main goal out of the way first. Because wedding starts in the afternoon, the guests are already reasonably taken care of with high need bars. It's best to do the wedding now, then worry about feeding everyone.

A wedding arch is not necessary, but it makes for a nice picturesque addition. Christine interacts with it and chooses “Get Married.”

Here, she then waits: once that command is given, everyone on the lot automatically starts heading to watch. She needs witnesses to fulfill certain minor goals of the wedding, so she waits until they gather. If there were chairs, they would sit to watch, but Christine didn't bother to buy any.

If you wish to force the issue, you can interact with the spouse-to-be, then choose “Exchange Vows” to get the ball rolling. If you don't, as Christine chooses not to, then the betrothed will automatically do so. Vows are given, as well as smooches.

It's a happy moment for everyone involved... except for the player, because of this pop-up box that causes an unexpected problem:

If you say “OK” on that screen, you will immediately terminate the wedding. It's nothing that crashes the game or causes any other seriously awful bug. However, this terminates the wedding and you will not be rewarded for doing it. Make no mistake: stakes are high to get the precious gold medal for doing it right.

Note that if you elope, or if you don't care, then clicking “OK” here doesn't matter; if the two Sims already live together, the pop-up box won't appear at all. We'll address Managing Households in a separate page, but suffice to say, you can manage households any time. The Sims 4 no longer requires spouses to be living under the same roof, and there is no harm in letting them have separate addresses for the moment.

So instead, Christine says “Cancel,” and the wedding continues, even though that seems like odd and unintuitive terminology. With the main goal complete, Christine starts to work on the minor goals, such as grabbing a drink from the bar and getting some food from the caterer. She also pulls out her cake from the fridge, and the AI is smart enough that the other Sims do not attempt to eat it. Christine cuts the cake and eats the first slice, thus fulfilling a minor goal, and then her guests decide to dig in as well.

The wedding goes well, and Christine achieves a gold medal. Because of this, she gets almost a thousand simoleons' worth of free household appliances and décor in her family inventory! At the end of the wedding, everyone goes home... including the groom. Christine didn't marry Freddie just so they could live on opposite sides of the planet, but we'll take care of that in the next session. Christine ends the night by selling the bar and the wedding arch to recoup a little of the cash she spent; hopefully, she won't need the wedding arch again.

Marriage in The Sims 4, like the previous iterations, does not confer any specific, special status changes. Spouses take on a little more jealousy if their significant others engage in romantic activity with others, compared to the jealousy they felt during mere dating. Also, as previously mentioned, married Sims do not necessarily need to live in the same roof. Children can be conceived and raised when both parents are separated and regardless of their relationship, if any.

Sims can marry other Sims of the same gender. Divorce can happen, but otherwise, Sims can only marry one other Sim at a time. Also, unlike previous iterations of the franchise, no one's name is changed after a marriage. Christine National remains Christine National.

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