Re: Deleted Households

Hi, thanks for your help. I’m not sure it is this because it’s already on unlimited and I’ll have I.e. 70 sims overall then suddenly it’ll be down to 40. Keeps happening ☹️ 

HI @emilybear28 Are you playing on PC and with content in your Mods folder? If so, can you please test without? Exit Sims 4 then drag your Mods folder to your desktop. Then delete the file called localthumbcache from Document > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4. If you think you might accidentally forget to exit without saving after testing, copy your Saves folder to your desktop too, to back it up. Now open Sims 4 and see if you still have the problem. If you don't, you can start the process of figuring out what from your Mods folder was causing it.

Thanks for this! I think you’re right. Playing on Mac but I do have mods. Would it work if I just deleted all my mods? 

@emilybear28 

You can delete your mods but doing that might not work and then you'll have to go download them again once you figure out the problem.  Just move the mods folder to your desktop or to another folder out of the game path.  Then you'll have them at hand when you are ready to start adding them back.  You should check all of them though, to make sure you have the latest version.

But since you play with mods, take a look at your settings for any that might affect culling or otherwise might be causing sims to be deleted.  If you are using MCCC, that does have options to control culling but basically the main option is to turn culling off altogether.  I haven't looked at those options in a long time so I'm not sure what other options are available.  I have turned culling off before for a while but currently I just let the game handle it.  

In my last save, I had over 700 played sims and culling wasn't a problem.  Neither is it a problem in my current save where I have over 400 played sims.

One other way to prevent sims from being culled is to keep all your played sims under the My Households tab in Manage Households.  You need to leave them marked as played as well.  Sims marked as unplayed under either tab will still age if you have aging on for unplayed sims in Game Options. If you allow aging for played sims, then to keep non active households from aging, you need to set the dropdown to active household only.  Otherwise, all your played sims will continue to age, and some may die before you get back to them if you are a rotational player.   

Hope this helps.

@emilybear28 Just going to add that you might want to test without mods (and delete localthumbcache) in case an outdated mod is doing something very strange with Sim culling.

Thank you for your help! All okay now 🙂 I kind of think it may have been culling the households because both adults in it died, leaving just the children alone. 

@emilybear28 That would definitely do it! There are a couple of things to look at for that. If you have Elders + Children and play with aging on for the whole world, you could add another Sim to the household - Teen or older. If Neighborhood Stories is orphaning Children and younger, turn off the death option for households with kids.