Schrödinger's Baby

[Gus Smedstad]

I finally got around to running a series of baby-gender tests, using a doctor and her newly-showing pregnant daughter.

To start, I did a simple gender test.  The result was "girl."  I reloaded, and tried again, and got "girl" again.  I got the same result 4 times in a row.

For my next test, I reloaded and force fed the daughter 4 apples before testing the baby.  The result was "boy."

I reloaded, and tested again.  I got "girl."  Then fed the daughter 4 apples, and tested again.  The result was still "girl."

I reloaded, fed the daughter 4 servings of Apple Pancakes, and tested.    The result was "girl."

I reloaded, fed the daughter 4 servings of Apple Cobbler, and tested.  The result is "girl."


From this I conclude:

Baby gender is determined at birth or when a doctor performs "Determine Baby Gender."  Once it's set, it is no longer possible to change it.

It is highly likely that the random seed is saved with the save game.  The odds of getting "girl" 7 times and only getting "boy" when I used apples are a bit less than 1%.

You can change the gender after the baby is showing, on the second day of pregnancy.

While I haven't proved it with this test, my past experience is that you can influence gender all the way up to birth - provided you don't check it.

As of the 1.3 patch, cooked food no longer influences baby gender.  Pancakes and Cobbler both advertise the types of fruit, and neither works.  French Toast, Fruit Parfait, and Eggs Machiavelli all contain fruit without advertising the type, but it's unlikely that they removed the obvious ones and left the hidden ones.

 - Gus

[sumpsychochic]

Would it be possible to test whether the doctor testing and then eating apples/watermelons affects the status of twins/triplets. There have been reports that if a woman is having twins and has a doctor determine gender as "girl" then she eats apples, she winds up having boy/girl twins.

[Gus Smedstad]

I'll see what I can do.  The biggest issue is knowing whether it's going to be twins.  Fertility treatment will help, of course.

EDIT: I've run the test.  I rushed enough points to get Fertility during the pregnancy, and purchased it.

Starting from the same save point as before, I determined gender with the doctor, and got "Girl" again (as expected).  I ran through the next two days, and saved 3 hours before the daughter gave birth.

In scenario one, I took no other actions.  She gave birth to twin girls.
In scenario two, she ate 4 apples in a row, just hours before giving birth.  She gave birth to a girl and a boy.

So, yes.  The Doctor interaction only determines the gender of the first child.  If there are twins, the second child follows the current odds.  If you've adjusted gender with fruit, but haven't consulted a doctor, you're always going to get twins of the same gender.  If you consult a doctor and then adjust with fruit, you can get one of each.  And if you don't adjust gender at all, it's probable - but not tested - that you have 50% chance of same-sex and 50% of opposite sex.

- Gus

[sumpsychochic]

Hmm. Thank you for that information. Now to test the theory of 50%. Good to know that if I happen to want a girl and a boy there is a way to do so.

I would assume then that the same rules apply to triplets except the second two would wind up being the food-influenced gender instead of just one?

[Gus Smedstad]

That seems reasonable.  It's very hard to test, since I've never actually seen triplets, but it would fit the pattern we've established so far.

 - Gus

[Doc Doofus]

I have a heartbreaker male sim with the fertility treatment, and he has littered (literally) the town with his bastards.  Lots of twins and triplets.  And it seems to me that if the mother eats an apple or a watermelon, that all children in the same litter turn out the same gender.  Or so it has been so far.

I still want to try that doctor trick, though.  That sounds good. 

I wish the fruit only affected one sim-embryo at a time so we could better determine gender.

I think I've probably destroyed my neighborhood doing this with the heartbreaker sim.  All the sims in the next generation are related.  About fifteen to twenty of them.  Fuck me.

[Faizah]

Heh, my own fertility-enhanced pollinator had over 30 children in his save. He sired a few twins, no triplets, but every set of multiples I've seen born in game have been either all male or all female. I'll have to try this now, see if I can get different-gender multiples.

I have seen triplets though, once by chance, twice on purpose. Here's what I did for the latter: The parents both had the fertility perk. (And may have had the family-oriented trait.) The mother spent the pregnancy watching the kids TV channel, with a radio in the same room playing the kids music channel. I don't know how much of that works and how much is superstition, and I only ran two pregnancies under these conditions, but both came out triplets.

[Gus Smedstad]

The watching-TV thing has been sighted in the XML, so it's not superstition.  As I recall, though, the effect was very small.  I doubt family-oriented has any effect, but doubled Fertility probably does.  I've never used it on both parents.

 - Gus

[Faizah]

Iiinteresting.

I've only done one test so far, but I did get a mixed-gender multiple birth. The father determined gender as soon as the mother changed to maternity wear, and it said girl. I then fed the mother straight apples. A second gender determination still returned girl. The mother had triplets - a girl and two boys.

I saved just before the first gender determination. I can upload the save, if anyone is interested.

[Gus Smedstad]

That's the expected result.  Dad's gender check only effects spawn #1, no matter how many times he does it.  Spawn #2 and #3 checked the odds, which were 100% male since you fed the mother 4+ apples, so they both rolled boy.

 - Gus

[sumpsychochic]

So if you were to only eat say 2 apples which would up the chances for boy but not have it at 100% would it be possible in that senario to get 2 girls and 1 boy?

And if the doctor check is only to determine baby #1, then why when there are no influences are all other babies the same gender? This has to have more influence that can be seen.

[Gus Smedstad]

It's quite clear the doctor only influences spawn #1.

The real question is the mechanics for spawn #2 and #3.  I've never seen mixed-sex twins or triplets without the doctor check, but historically I've always forced gender to fulfill Wishes.  Getting the same gender is what you expect in that case, since fruit influences all spawn.

The most likely scenario is that each spawn has an independent die roll.  It's just that asking the doctor rolls the die for spawn #1 early.  So absent any fruit, you should have a 50% chance of twins being the same gender, and 25% chance of triplets being the same gender.

It's possible that there's just one die roll at birth, and all spawn use the same die roll unless spawn #1 has already rolled due to a doctor check.  This would be sloppy, silly programming, but it's not impossible that it's it written that way.

Since the random seed is clearly in the save game, running the same pregnancy multiple times isn't a good test.  To know for certain, you'd have to run a lot of twins and triplets with no fruit.  If any purely random twins or triplets had mixed genders, you know they're independent rolls.

 - Gus

[Faizah]

This was the first mixed gender set of multiples in my game, most of those without the assistance of apple/watermelon. I'm rather inclined to believe that it isn't otherwise possible to get mixed twins/triplets, and that this method may even be a 'bug'.

I force-aged the triplets, all the way up to teens, and one of the boys' hair remained the same from child to teen. Exactly the same, lodged in his torso at child-head height. I'm not sure if that's related or not, but I'd never seen it before. Of course, it was a store hair, so it may just be that hair. I was able to change his hair to an actual 12 hair, and have it appear properly on his head, it was just weird.

[Gus Smedstad]

I'm sure that was just the hair.

I think it's quite possible there's only one die roll at birth, as I outlined, but absent a real test I'm reluctant to say one way or another.  My own experience involves too many fruit to count.  Not directly, but through cooked food.

Now that cooked food no longer influences gender, we'll see what happens.  It's much more difficult to eat fruit accidentally now.

 - Gus

[Motoki]

Now that cooked food no longer influences gender, we'll see what happens.  It's much more difficult to eat fruit accidentally now.

 - Gus

Is that something the patch changed? My sims are always eating fruit in their inventory. Garlic too and it gives them bad breath. 

I think Pes added the eat food from inventory if hungry bit to SC a while back, at least mine seem to now while they were out stone hunting unless I was totally hallucinating it.

Personally, I think the whole fruit thing is stupid and panders to BBism where there were persistent rumors with TS2 that if you ate spaghetti you would have twins bla bla.

[Gus Smedstad]

No, they're just as likely to eat fruit in their inventory on their own as before.  For that matter, I've had them do this when they aren't even in the yellow "hungry" zone, to my annoyance.  However, you don't have to keep fruit in a Sim's inventory unless they fish.  No fruit in inventory, no accidental ingestion.

In any case, when I said it was harder to eat fruit by accident, I was mostly talking about the fact that it was not obvious that you were consuming apples or watermelons when consuming specific cooked foods.  Like Eggs Machiavelli, or French Toast.  The former is made-up, but I would never have expected that it had watermelon from just the name.  And in real life, French Toast contains bread, eggs, and milk.  Maybe cinnamon sugar, but apples?  No.

I am surprisingly OK with the fruit-influences-gender thing.  I thought Cheesecake was stupid, but I like being able to control gender.  Both for my own plans, and when my Sims roll gender wishes, which they always do.

 - Gus

[little_lark]

I don't suppose the doctor can tell if your sim is having twins? I've never had one in my game.

[Gus Smedstad]

No, the doctor can only tell you the gender, and as we've discovered, only the gender of the first baby if there's a multiple.

 - Gus

[Faizah]

Personally I think the genderfoods only exist for the sake of recreating (or is it creating, since it's supposed to be a prequel?) TS1/TS2 families. Bella and Morty can have 'Cassandra' and 'Alexander' in the right order, big whoop.

But yeah, my mother-to-be of triplets was only determined to be carrying 'a girl', not three of them.

[Gastfyr]

It's so unrealistic that the Dr can determine the gender, but not the number of babies.  IRL it is much, much easier for a Dr to determine the number of babies than to determine the gender.

[Gus Smedstad]

The lack of realism doesn't trouble me.  I mean really, the doctor determines gender through a conversation?  No trip to the hospital or ultrasound?

As I see it, the fact that the interaction doesn't reveal twins / triplets is just an oversight.  Though of course if they did implement this, they'd have to freeze the number of spawn after the interaction, just as they currently do with gender.

 - Gus

[mutchka]

I've had countless twin and triplet births in my game, and most of the time I prefer to leave the genders up to chance and go through great lengths to make sure the mother doesn't consume any watermelons or apples, having her only eat birthday cakes or that goopy stuff, and not a single one has had a birth of both genders.  I've never tried the trick with consulting a doctor, but I don't think there's any other way for a boy and girl birth to occur.

[Chocolate Milk]

I've never tried the trick with consulting a doctor, but I don't think there's any other way for a boy and girl birth to occur.

I would say this too.

I have never, ever used this trick, and I have had many, many multiple births in game, both in the family I'm playing and out (and both determined by food and not). I have never had a mixed gender multiple birth, as much as I'd love to.

Still, it's good to know there's a way.

Edit: I just tried the trick with consulting a doctor, and the mother had twins, a boy and a girl. Absolutely stoked!