This was post-patch.  I doubt it's "all male sims created post patch," but I strongly suspect it's something new introduced by the patch.  I'd never seen it before.

 - Gus

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

I think the "massage" cure is pretty obvious.  It's even in the damned "sore" moodlet description.  The romantic Massage option banishes it as well.

 - Gus

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

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

So far as I can tell, the candle does nothing.  The Bubble Bath container is required to "Take Bubble Bath," which both fulfills the "bubble bath" wish and opens up the "bathe until tranquil" option.  Taking a regular bath only allows "bathe until clean."  The ducky gives a nice little bonus +10 moodlet.  Since you only have 2 slots available, you should never fill one with a mood candle.

The mood candles can be put on other surfaces, like bathroom counter tops.  They can be lit, but nothing seems to change while they're lit.  They appear to be ordinary decorations, so it's a bit surprising they are sold in the grocery store, rather than being ordinary decorations in Buy mode.

 - Gus

I've never seen it either.  Oh, sure, they're standing around doing nothing when I first switch to an area, but they immediately start doing their usual stupid stuff as soon as I'm watching.

Maybe it has to do with the number of processor cycles available for the brains of the townies?

 - Gus

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

I've had plenty of good Sims witness death.  Sure, they may run an animation (crying for good Sims, fainting for cowards), but there's no actual mood effect.

Evil Sims, on the other hand, get a + moodlet for witnessing death.  Pity that Zodon (the dead guy in my pick) was the only evil character at the party.

For that matter, fire won't ruin a party either!  There's no mood penalty for seeing a house fire, so the only lasting effect is the time lost.

 - Gus

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

I believe I've gotten the hang of parties now.

Forget animations or common sense.  It's all about the average mood of each guest.  It's much like the way Sims accumulate Lifetime points when their mood is over 100.  If you can pile a bunch of +moodlets on your guests, you'll get an "Epic" party no matter what you do, even if your host sits in a corner and reads a book.

Environmental stuff like music, decorations, and a fireplace can be a big help.  The other easy source is a couple of plates of high-quality food.  Wait until they're all through the door, Call To Meal, and they'll all be +25 to +50, depending on how good your cook is.  Well, except for the morons who throw a tantrum because they can't reach the food, and some of those might pick up a plate later if they get hungry.

Death involves lots of crying, but unless they were actually related to the dead guy, it doesn't involve a mood hit.  So death at a party is only a minor obstacle to getting rave reviews from your guests.

Crying babies (common at toddler birthday parties) aren't so bad because it only lasts 10 minutes.  Mess from a broken dishwasher is more of a problem.

 - Gus

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

That boat has already sailed.  EA already has plenty of evidence that they can sell buggy software and people will buy it.  The issue now is whether they'll continue to work on the product in ways that don't directly earn money.  Expansions?  Sure, of course.  Patches?  Much tougher sell to management.  However, they must be aware that customer satisfaction counts for something, or they wouldn't authorize the expense of patches at all.  The thank-yous are all the evidence they have that the patches are worth something to EA.

 - Gus

I see the people thanking EA as serving a useful function.  Yes, these things should have been fixed before release.  But at least the positive feedback encourages them to continue to work on much-needed patches.

 - Gus

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

I have no idea, since I hate tubs in general.  For routine cleaning, I prefer the speed of showers.  If there was a cheap shower / tub, which there should be since I've seen maybe one pure tub in my entire life, I'd buy that.  But no, there's only one shower / tub, and it's the most expensive.  So I ignore tubs until I can afford that one.

The tricksy bit is that the "bubble bath" action icon has one of those grab-bars.  Grab and drag it and it changes from "bathe until clean" to "bathe until tranquil."  I never noticed this until post-1.3, where the default now seems to be "bathe until tranquil" instead of "bathe until clean."

 - Gus

• The base Grief penalty is -50 for 48 hours.  I knew that you could cut that to -25 by either putting the tombstone in the graveyard, or mourning.  What I didn't realize is that the two stack - if you do both, it drops to -12, which is a significant cut given the length of the debuff.
• A relative in another household dying off-stage incurs no penalty, but if your Sims see it happen, it's as bad as a regular household death.  The tombstone goes in the mortuary, so you'd better take a trip to the graveyard to Manage Dead immediately to cut that -50 penalty.
• You can click on portraits in the Relationships panel, and queue Call to Chat or Invite actions without going through the phone interface.  This simplifies queued actions that are well in the future; before, I used to queue a phone call, switch to someone else, and then forget whom the original sim intended to call.
• Gussy Up gives a mild (+10) buff for 5 hours.  Useful if you need a slight edge, but not worth doing routinely.
• Bubble Bath has two modes, Bathe Until Clean, and Bathe Until Tranquil.  The latter gives a buff that prevents all Fun drain for 8 hours, just like Freak Out.  But the time required is steep (1 extra sim hour above regular bathing), so you'd better have some serious pain to prevent.

 - Gus

The timing is classic, but what really put it over the top for me was the ghost's "I have to leave the party now" dialog.

Fairwell, Zodon, Emperor of Evil.

 - Gus

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

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

As a matter of fact, the Sim in question (who was not under my control) was Inappropriate and Insane.  Probably driven insane by his disability.  In any case, after visiting, he tromped off to one of the beds, changed into sleepwear, and went to sleep.  When he woke up, he changed into formal wear.  His body and arms re-appeared when he wasn't wearing what is presumably Casual clothing.

 - Gus

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

No, he's not pregnant.  I'm running a vanilla game, no mods at all.

 - Gus

I have no idea how this came about - this is just some random townie that I happened to notice was screwed up, and invited over for screenshots.

 - Gus

There's an easier way.  If you have a stack of anything, seeds, vegetables, food, whatever, you can click on the triangle in the upper left corner of the inventory icon.  You'll open up a new window where you can examine each item in the stack individually.

Items are always sorted by quality in this window, with the highest quality items first.  This makes it easy to select the highest or lowest quality items (depending on what you want to do) - just pick the first or last items in the window.

 - Gus