Marrying foreign sims

[cwykes]

Has anything changed on this since the last thread on this topic?
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17740.0.html

My sim fell in love in China with the special merchant.  Yes I know it was a bad idea; I don't know what I was thinking.  He didn't propose in China, but came home again.  He invited her over, proposed and has the option to marry her.  I saved the game at that point and went looking for info just in case it was a bad idea.  The thread above says it's better to do the marrying abroad, so I took him back to china, but no options to do with the wedding come up at all despite serial romancing.  He hasn't got to visa level 3, so he can't buy a place and can't throw parties.  Advice please..

[J. M. Pescado]

If you can get it to WORK, you should be okay, but getting to work at all is sort of a crapshoot.

[cwykes]

Has anyone been able to isolate what series of events causes this to happen, or is it just a random crapshoot every time you attempt to marry a sim from the vacation neighborhoods? Could there be a safe way to marry them at all, to save those of us with fairly empty base hoods from having to create a mate in CAS for every sim?

Yes, the fix is to get the latest AWESOMEMOD. Otherwise, breeding with a foreign sim will inevitably cause a BFBVFS. Also, when taking a foreign sim home, always do so from inside foreignia.

So the threat of a BFBVFS has receded even if you don't move them in while in foreignia?

[Seqkat]

I'd add a word of caution here - one of my sims recently married a nice French lady (having separated her from her husband and son in France) - the marriage took place in Riverview rather than abroad, and all seemed fine. However, after I did a fixall the husband and son disappeared entirely from the face of the planet (no longer in France, not on family trees, no one remembered knowing them), and then her family tree broke - clicking the button does nothing. Thoughtfully, she passed this family-tree fail on to all her descendants. Two generations on, I can access a half-complete tree through spouses, but no direct descendants have one still. So perhaps if you care about family trees a foreign marriage could be tricky.

[wizard_merlin]

Has anyone been able to isolate what series of events causes this to happen, or is it just a random crapshoot every time you attempt to marry a sim from the vacation neighborhoods? Could there be a safe way to marry them at all, to save those of us with fairly empty base hoods from having to create a mate in CAS for every sim?

Yes, the fix is to get the latest AWESOMEMOD. Otherwise, breeding with a foreign sim will inevitably cause a BFBVFS. Also, when taking a foreign sim home, always do so from inside foreignia.

So the threat of a BFBVFS has receded even if you don't move them in while in foreignia?

I would tread carefully.  Save your game first, then use "save as" to give the game a new name, then perform the marriage or move and see what happens.  If the game turns into a BFBVFS then all you need to do is delete to  current game and restart the earlier saved game from before the marriage or move occurred.  By using a different name for the new save you avoid the problems of trying to remember which back-up is the right one to revert to, or accidentally overwriting the older save you want to keep.  Hope it makes sense.

[eevilcat]

The current family I'm playing are on about the fifth generation of bringing back and marrying foreign sims. The family are based in the Ambitions neighbourhood and there have been spouses from all 3 holiday destinations with no problems so far. I forgot the dire warnings the first time I married one in so figured I may as well continue until the BFBVFS strikes (or not).

[daisylee]

I had a Sim marry a local in China and he came home with her and there were no problems. Several generations later my Sim was in France and met someone from Egypt there. Back home she invited him to visit and they married. The odd thing was after the visit he left and went back to Egypt. She invited him a second time and I used the cheat to add him to the household. So far, no problems.

[Ellatrue]

It could be that inviting foreign sims to visit is simply a Bad Idea. I had issues (my own fault, really) after inviting a foreign sim to visit and switching to another family before the foreign sim arrived. When I switched back, the foreign sim was nowhere to be found, but it wasn't possible to invite them to visit again because the game seemed to think I had a group of sims visiting, and insisted that I wait for them to leave first. Perhaps romancing and marrying foreign sims is indeed best when in Ausland.

[Beldara]

Just don't do what I did, I had a female sim marry a chinese guy while on holiday there.

I switched chars to the male to do the proposing since I wanted her to have his surname.

Cut a long story short, hilarity ensued, and the Chinese dude and his elderly grouchy mum ended up finishing the holiday bar timer and disappearing back to riverview, and she got stuck in a crappy little house flagged as a local, with no ability to go home or leave.  It was pretty amusing, it felt as though she'd been used for a visa and then dumped.

[wizard_merlin]

It was pretty amusing, it felt as though she'd been used for a visa and then dumped.

Damn, EAxis actually got something similar to real life.