This is where I put any gameplay tips/observations:
I'd already read in a FAQ that Servo, the robotic butler, will sometimes amuse visitors with a juggling trick. In my game, though, he does more. He talks to visitors and dances with them. Apparently he's coded to react to Sims' Social needs.
Servo is also a better buy than Bonilda, who only cleans, and freaks out visitors. Servo cleans, waters, repairs (I'm not sure if he feeds the carnivorous plant), produces meals and cheers up visitors. And turning him on doesn't take so long.
Anyone who has all the Sims packs has a number of servants to choose from: the maid or Bonilda for cleaning (but not at the same time, this is a bad combination) the gardener or the gnomes for gardening (but using a gardening charm makes the gnomes really angry), the repairman or Wally o' Wisp for repairing, where Wally also does the cleaning and, unlike Servo, can teleport and doesn't need to be turned on; and, as said, Servo for all three. But Wally has a disadvantage that the others might also have, although I never noticed it before. Wally, that wandering coat and hat, is officially male. That means he can't clean toilets behind SekDetek doors for women. But it's not as if he won't try! If he's crazily teleporting all over the place and not doing any work, chances are that he's got a Clean Toilet task in his queue that he can't carry out. The solution: have a female Sim clean that toilet or buy Bonilda and turn her on. Both females will at first go to the toilet and then turn back as it is "in use" (by Wally) but ultimately the task should drop out of his queue and be snatched up by the female (this is why Bonilda is the better option, unlike the female Sim family member she will retry automatically and not have to be assigned again and again) and Wally will go on to do the stuff that he can do. Another source of frustration for Wally is certain items that become permanently dirty over time, like that Vacation bathtub, the AqueFluvium. He will clean them, teleport out, teleport in, clean them, etc. I had deleted one crazy Wally with the move_objects cheat and was about to delete a second, before I discovered this. I have no idea whether the maid, Bonilda or Servo have a problem with SekDetek doors, but they'd avoid getting stuck on the task by leaving or turning themselves off when there's nothing left to do.
As for the butler... But he'd just call the maid.
When Sim kids are visiting, their parents show up in the evening to take them home. Sim orphans simply leave at nine, which is a problem, since Simkids with parents can stay all night if they want to, it's just a question of ignoring the parent, but there's no way to make orphans stay. If however there is a party going on, Sim parents will auto-greet themselves and then take their child with them, there's no way to stop it happening. Or, rather, there are two ways. The first is to start a fire, and have the Sims run in and do their panic dance. This somehow aborts the picking-up, the parent leaves and the child stays. The second, which can only be done if Vacation is installed, is to put the volleyball court in the garden and have everyone play. This so takes up the Sims' attention that somehow the parent doesn't even think of showing up. In fact, it may be hard to drag Sims out of their game (more on that below). I haven't yet used this trick to stop orphans leaving, but suspect that, like my test guests, they'll be playing volleyball round the clock.
There are "addictive" objects. The Beejay guitar is one of them. Once a Sim gets in stride musically, deleting the action "Play guitar" has no effect; they will strum until they drop, possibly losing their job after missing their second carpool. The volleyball court is another; I've had guests and hosts play for more than 24 Sim-hours without my being able to stop them, and other guests frozen because they were standing by the court, waiting for someone to drop out so they could join. Finally, I found out how to draw them away: by buying a birthday cake and having a non-playing member blow out the candles. The Sims stopped playing ball and crowded round. Possibly, this trick might also lure Simi Hendrix away from his guitar.
(One day, though, the birthday cake met its match in a malfunctioning - in both senses of the word - standard Maxis sink. It was broken and a Sim was cleaning it. At each cleaning action the broken sink poured forth water; this prompted the Sim to start cleaning it again in a very vicious circle that had all the Sim's bars going into the red as the property slowly flooded. The other Sims, though not caught in this circle, also saw their bars decrease as they kept mopping and mopping. I bought a cake and had a Sim blow out the candles, but this other Sim just stood and waited. Going back to the sink-locked Sim, I saw the birthday cake in his action cue: he was holding up all the others! The only solution was deleting the sink with the move_objects cheat.)
The following trick also needs Vacation. Having a lousy party? Put in some arcade games. Sims enjoy both watching and playing. I spiced up a party this way, and one minute I had the mime, the next I had Drew Carey. (No great improvement, but still...)
Parties can draw people with names like Pete Dropinsky. What kind of people they are can be seen when clicking on them: the only available menu item is "Ask to Leave". Except of course when playing volleyball: party crashers can be invited to play, and while doing so, don't have the time to break anything, and do help the real guests to enjoy themselves. As a bonus, unlike real guests, they can nap on deckchairs and the like, and so need no looking after and won't leave until told to.
Even if families of more than 8 members don't make the game crash in Deluxe and higher, it's wise to stick to 8 members. I hacked the puppy and kitten showcase to allow children to buy pets, even if the family was already full, and let them buy a cat and a dog. Later, the game crashed on some custom-body character and I re-imported the family into another neighbourhood. Without pets! Either they were not written into the FAM file or they were discarded when importing it.
On pets and zombies: it is really hard to make pets leave through neglect! I tried ignoring them, cancelling their social interactions, making them sleep outside, denying them Fun objects and not feeding them. Cats keep their hygiene up with no trouble, dogs have endless fun digging holes and sleep quite comfortably on the floor, and although pets take a long time to starve, they will die of hunger before hitting the road, and, when almost dying, may still ignore that filled food dish placed before them. In my effort to add two members to the Strays family, I had to play rock-paper-scissors with Death three times to save my guinea pigs. The third time, I ended up with a zombie - character points all at zero - which I paid the fortune teller in Old Town to revive. I don't know how it goes for humans, but the ex-dead dog didn't get its character points back, and even its lousy mood after having died didn't persuade it to leave. Rats! (It's just as well I failed, because I thought that pets who leave home automatically join the Strays family. They don't! Their family ID is set to a negative number, meaning, they're no longer registered in the neighbourhood IFF. Like the Sim who loses in a bout of domestic violence, they disappear forever.)
By accident, I discovered how to turn a pet into a stray. There is an old trick of giving a family a house for free by building a house on a lot (possibly using another rich Sim to finance this), taking this house out of the neighbourhood's directory, putting back in the original (and much cheaper) empty lot file, having a family move to that lot, quitting, copying the built house file over the empty lot file, and starting again. The human Sims will be invisible, a red crosshair mark on their icons, and can be recalled by clicking their icons. Animal Sims will also have a red crosshair, but, on being revived, will somehow suddenly be members of the Strays family. Fortunately this doesn't work when deleting and restoring a pet with the "move_objects on" cheat.
Warning for housebuilders: Sims have a problem with the concept "fence". Make a house with one door opening onto a fenced back yard or balcony; invite some guests; lead them into the enclosure, or let them go there by themselves. They cannot understand that the way to leave the enclosure is to go back into the house, and will stand there shrugging and shaking their heads until they drop. This is particularly a problem when they've said goodbye and can no longer be addressed; otherwise, they can be called back inside the house, from where they'll find their way to the front door. Visiting pets are as stupid, and even harder to lure out of their predicament.
In a house with a guest-trapping fence, guests who would like to leave end up staying anyway, discovering furniture that will serve them. Having guests sleep over is always a problem as they won't use most beds and sofas. Vacation's Sew Doe Sofa is an exception; a guest I assumed dead and/or gone was found happily napping on it.
I hate SimCats! They attract more mice than they catch! They do practically nothing about the bunnies that multiply if you've grown a crop of carrots even once. All these mice and bunnies horribly bung up the road. Call a cab, get the Sims into it, and watch their bars go redder and redder as the cab honks for an hour because the stupid vermin won't leave and the cab-driver is too animal-friendly to drive over them. Worse yet, the cab driver is too sqeamish to drive over a dead mouse left there by the cat just before hopping in! Result: by the time the Sims arrive at their destination, they're so crabby that they're ready to go straight back home. In desperation, I applied the move_objects cheat to get rid of the obstacles, and would you believe it, the nasty little creatures are worth money!! Bunnies go at 1 simoleon each, and mice... I know that a swarm of flies is worth 460 after a certain time, well, so are mice at any time. Considering mice don't just hold up the cab, lower room scores and leave rotting corpses courtesy of the cat, but also make residents and, worse, guests lose valuable seconds freaking out over them, it's a pity I didn't know this earlier.
Toads take about seven kisses to produce toad sweat. How to make one turn into a prince is something I haven't found out even by peeking at the code. Kids should be able to kiss toads, the animations are there, it just isn't enabled in the menu. A quick hack made toads kid-kissable, but then I found out that slime-collecting is disabled for kids through an age check. So I disabled that too, because with hacked vendor carts, a Simkid may sell the useless (for the kiddie charm maker) toad sweat for MagiCoins. Now Simkids may be able to get all their magic ingredients in the home - toadstools from sitting on the toadstool chair, fairy dust from playing with the Sugar Plum Fairy toybox, dragon scales and tears from respectively grooming and tickling a pet dragon (a child tickling a dragon is never rejected) but there's one vital thing they need and can't get as long as they can't buy it: dragon treats! Giving these on a regular basis is the only way to stop your dragon from becoming very very angry with you! And of course someone has to buy the dragon egg. Incidentally, dragons love toads. (I haven't tested if a Sim can be killed by toadifying when dragons are near.) So when that Bake Cakes charm misfires again, and there's no way to harvest toad sweat, at least the dragon gets a meal. Great for when you're out of daffodils.
Gardening gnomes are a huge improvement over hiring a gardner. They do everything short of sowing and harvesting. However, they can't reach up and won't water anything that's not standing on the ground, like flowerpots on tables. If you've ever wondered about their funny walk: like dragons, they have a cat skeleton! They can also play with cats and dogs, at least the gnome icon can show up in a pet's queue. But as long as the property has a wine press, the gnome has better things to do with its spare time.
Here's a bug that makes bills cheaper. If too much time passes before the Sim picks up the mail, there may be two bills in the mailbox. These will be dropped in two different places and have to be paid separately. By that time, it's too late for the following trick: get the mail/bill. Drop it somewhere until the mailperson delivers a new bill. Now pay the old bill before you take the new bill from the mailbox. Both bills will be gone for the price of one. I don't know if it works for all expansion packs, but ran across it when testing the mailbox hack which makes bills add money instead of subtracting it (so this bug costs me money!)
I never shoo off obsessed fans. Unlike the Dropinskies, they
neither break anything nor interact with anyone. They hang
around for a bit, drop a bunch of precious black roses (which
the domestics will clean up if you don't beat them to it) and
leave. With MM installed, these roses are the missing ingredient
for a charm that raises fame (thereby producing more roses...)
only - and this is quite obvious, but it's a mistake I tend to
make - don't use that charm when you've just returned from
Studio Town, or you won't be allowed to return, which means
that temporary fame boost is wasted. Unless it happens to be
the right time to receive a Simmy award, which sells for around
500 simoleons if sold right away.