So after reading this thread I dusted off my copy of Sims 2, and discovered a wonderful strategy might work in 1. This may not be an issue for most people, but I loathe how careers force you to make and retain a minimum number of friends in order to advance. However, expanding on the “Seduced maid = free housework” strategy, if you invite an NPC sim to move in, you apparently inherit their family friends. As such, you can either seduce some unwitting game construct into doing your social legwork, or simply create a nine-person PC family and seduce one of the members away into your real household, adding nine friends that can be maintained with minimal work.
Definitely. I always keep my left hand close to the pause(` key) and 3 buttons on my keyboard. On pause I plan out my sim’s next few moves, and then I just press 3 to get all the boring stuff over with. There is no 1 or 2 for me. 
It does seem a bit rushed at times. Or rather, the Sims do things too slowly. It takes them like half an hour to pee. :dubious:
Uh, you mean that’s not normal? :eek:
There is a website…Around the sims, if you go to objects and look around for a bit, you can find some teleporters you can download and use. That way, you don’t need to previously know a Sim to call them on the phone, you can teleport any person from any family to your house. And they appear faster, too!
I only use Sims 1, too. And no expansion packs, alas!
One of my frustrations was that the Sims are idiots, plain and simple. Sims 1 has a button in one of the settings where you can disable Free Will. Yes, I’m mistress supreme and I take away their free will so that they do only what I tell them to do! 
Sims 1 is way easier, and more fun IMO, if you use the “rosebud” unlimited money cheat.
A. They don’t have to get a job, so that gives you all day for their skill-building and socializing.
B. You can buy all the top-of-the-line Health/Hygiene/etc.-building furniture, etc. that you want, and keep their levels right up there.
This frees you for the most fascinating part, the social relationships. You can send them around buying magazines, etc., and cultivating interests more freely.
I’ve only played Sims 1 and I agree it’s more fun when you cheat. Who cares? It’s not a game you play to win. Get a roommate to go out and earn money, while you stay home and socialize. Get a magic shower thingie which fills up all your needs at once. That’s great in a pinch when you’ve just invited friends over and your Sim starts getting cranky and tired.
The rosebud cheat is awesome… 
I can use it to build them a decent house with decent, good furniture, then stop using it so they have to go out and get a job (and I do leave them some savings to offset paying for maid, gardener, pizza, etc. until they get better skills/free time). The money they make? They can spend it in the lavish fancy paintings and sculptures. And their rent…
Best item to make your Sims happy in 1 is the ugly pink flamingos. Make sure you have a couple at your driveway.
Families between 2-4 people are the easiest to manage. I find it funny that people here keep talking about “a married couple,” my starter families usually were 4-8 grown-ups. Is poly-whatever legal in Simoland?
A single person pays much harder for dumb mistakes and has less time to do things. First thing I do if I get a prebuilt house is sell off most of the garden things and redo the floorplan. Remember that SIMs like big open spaces; my bedrooms look more like dorms. One bedroom, several bathrooms, one huge room for everything else.
Get the maid ASAP, get all your SIMs to learn cooking to at least level 2 before anything else. A pool is more expensive and less controllable than an exercise machine, but more fun.
And of course there’s the Murder For Money strategy. Play a couple (the tutorial couple works), build them some money, then sell everything except a wall and phone and switch to your own family. Make friends with the ones you worked with. Kill one of them. Get the other one to marry you: they move in and all their money becomes yours.
As I recall in Sims 1, you can skip every other day of work without penalty (except of course, for that day’s income). So don’t be afraid to give your sim a mental health day to catch up on stuff, work skills and the like.
Yup, and if you have two working Sims, you can alternate your skip days as long as your careful not to miss your carpool. That way, you can keep the house clean, work on skills, socialize, etc.
Here’s a fun trick if you have the time and the right expansion pack, and I think the OP has pretty much all of them, is to create a Sim with zero personality traits. He’ll be a total worthless slug. Then get the chemistry set and start mixing potions. Each potion has a different effect but when you get the yellow potion drink it. It reverses your personality traits so your worthless slug Sim will suddenly become essentially perfect.
I’m not a big Sims2 fan, but I did have some fun recreating the appartment my girlfriend and I live in as well as Sim versions of the two of us. Unfortunately, most of my “simulations” resulted in my Sim proxy starving to death and hers soon went insane. 
Even worse, my girlfriend has been really sick and I’ve been having problems in the kitchen. So now she keeps complaining “it’s happening just like in that game!”
Did you set the stove on fire? :eek:
I’m getting a huge kick out of this. Poor girlfriend!
Townies have friends commensurate with their job level and random amounts of money. NPCs usually have no friends (or money) but a lot of skill points.