That's correct, I have never had a Sim start romantic interactions with another Sim unless I have directed them to be romantic with that Sim in the past. Like for example a Sim might flirt with or kiss with their high school sweetheart if they meet again.
But quite a long while somebody on these forums here claimed that if you direct Sims to scope a room then they will start their own relationships after that, not sure if that's true, since I don't use that interaction.

NO. You do not need to direct them, they will do it by themselves. If you want them to be non-romantic do NOT choose their gender preference. If any of them gets gender preference they will start flirt back and forth with anyone. They will get gender preference also if you only direct them scope room. You need mods to stop that vanilla behavior. One is romancemod and other is noinstantloves.

I have to disagree with people who knowbetter than me on this one . Sims do flirt autonomously - at least I know it worked like that in basegame.I've used ACR since day one of playing UC, so I suppose I can't say for sure. But in basegame, definitely. It won't be anything higher than a 'charm' that they do autonomously and it's not something that happens a lot, but if I haveseen it happen and know Ihaven't done anything to cause it to happen, then I'm just gonna have to believe that's how it works, whether it should be possible or not.

Unless I want a sim to be asexual I tell them to flirt a random teen as soon as they grow up and from that point they are capable of choosing to flirt, and unattached ones will do so. The only player intervention required for autonomous flirting is that initial activation of the chemistry coding.

Training does tell. If a romance sim gets married, random flirting will still happen. If a romance sim marries the first person they flirt with, and is never allowed to fill wants for unfaithfulness, they're pretty steady. A Family sim who chooses between two lovers will forever be at risk. This is why it's more common for Mary Land to cheat on Valentine Hart autonomously than vice versa in a non-ACR game. But it is misleading to tell people that in an unmodded game sims will not do autonomous romancing, because once that chemistry code is activated, they absolutely are capable of it, and activating the chemistry code is not what most players are thinking of when making the distinction between autonomous and directed activity.

Who sees it and who doesn't probably depends partly on specific setups, the behavior of their randomizers, and subtle effects - I use "Scope Room" (which is only usable once chemistry is activated) rather a lot, so if use of that increases the chance of autonomy, that would explain why this behavior appears more in my games than in others.

I use scope room quite a lot too, and I have townies that have had romantic relationships with sims so definitely have a gender preference and chemistry. But I've never once seen a sim autonomously initiate a romantic action on another sim, unless they have already been romantic with that sim. My current modded game is a neighbourhood that is at least ten years old; I've played it for several generations and have townies who have romantic relationships with my playables, but still they don't autonomously flirt with other sims, unless they already have a romantic relationship with them. I haven't seen it in my unmodded basegame either, but of course no chemistry there. I can't think what I would be doing differently to other players to not see this, I certainly have never had a sim wreck a relationship by cheating, unless I've initiated it by having those sims romance previously. I recall reading something about throwing food being romantic, and I've seen townies do that autonomously, but still no romances...
I wasn't being deliberately misleading, I wonder what I'm doing in all of my hundreds of hours of playing that I've done over the past 17 years in all iterations since the basegame that is different to yours and Annaminna's and AnMal's? I'd be interested to hear if others see this too, especially anyone playing unmodded.

The reason is three-bolt chemistry. Sims who have very high chemistry against another sim doesn't care about their marriage status or whatever and are following their three-bolt victim everywhere and trying to flirt. My sim may not feel same against them but those are most annoying (aka Drama professor behavior)
The most curious was Unsavory Charlatan on vacation destination who didn't have romantic actions in his pie menu and just followed my sim and stayed always near her surrounded by red hearts.

I've had one guy leapt into the arms of another that he had chemistry with, and since they were BFF's that caused them to fall in love. Since they're related (although not considered as such by the game - the one who took the initiative is the child of the others' cousin) and, more importantly, they had lived in the same household and known each other since leaping guy was born, I know with absolute certainty I have never made them flirt or anything myself.
And I've had another sim jump into someone's arms more than once, only to be rejected each time. I don't think I flirted or did anything romantic between them either, though I can't be 100% sure there.

I haven't actually played in a few years, but I did see this in my game once (I remember it, because I was so annoyed).

I have some certain sim couples who are my favourites - I control them a lot, to make everything happy and perfect, because I want them to be happy and in love, happy everafter and all that.

But once one of the sims from one of my favourite couples was talking to a friend, and then something happened auotonomously (I can't remember which interaction it was, sorry), and the married sim got a crush on the friend.

I was so gutted that I quit without saving, then researched, found and downloaded Pescado's Romance Mod, which I didn't have until then.

My game wasn't unmodded, but it didn't have any mods relating to romantic interactions until after 'the incident'. I ony have Nightlife and Pets installed though, I'm not sure if that affects things.

The reason is not three-bolt chemistry because Sharla and Buck had no bolts! A high relationship and contingency may have been the determining factors there.

I absolutely believe you, Simsample, and this is an example of how oddly idiosyncratic this game is. A behavior that is common as dirt for one of us is vanishingly rare or completely unknown for another, and that's even before mods enter the picture. The same mod will create a problem in one game and not in another superficially identical one - and the problem may be mindbogglingly bizarre. Only a small number of us ever had the problem of SlowerLTAGain freezing the vacation clock, which Cyjon compared to the toilets flushing when you flip a light switch, but we definitely had it, and it was definitely that mod by itself because it happened when that was the only mod in the game. Was it something to do with our make or model of computer, our processors, our drivers, the editions of the game we used? No one knows. It's not exactly an easy question to troubleshoot. Chaos theory applies to The Sims 2.

It's frustrating, but it's one of the reasons the game is so awesome and full of surprises. No two people are ever playing the same game.

The one of them and initiator had Family aspiration. This is reason why I think Family sims are the biggest "bitches"
I liked your comment though.



My first "incident" was back in 2005 when we had only base game and university, so I don't think that affects things. Though only with base game I don't remember something like that.

I've had issues with sims getting confused and flirting with the wrong sims on community lots on their own as inactive households visting the lot while I was in control of another family in a vanilla game on my old computer well over ten years ago and actually had to drop that town and I wished I'd used Mods uncluding ACR now since it would've stopped that mess if I just tuned it right.I've got ACR tuned out so sims can only start flirting if I direct them to flirt and can cheat on a spouse if I direct it.It's because autonaomy is globally disabled for all ACR romantic actions.

It doesn't help you. You disabled ACR actions, those what are under Casual, but original Maxis romantic actions will still continue to kick in. It is recommended to use romancemod with ACR too.

I can only agree with Sim sample in all my years of playing, and yes I have Free Will on, my Sims only ever flirted with Sims I directed them to be romantic with. I've ne er had a Sim choose a romantic partner by themselves or choose to cheat by themselves with someone they never were in love with.
But I totally have things like a Sim flirting with a former romantic partner at a party, right in front of their spouse.

Plus I always thought Sims choosing their romantic partners autonomously is what ACR does, hence why I don't want it anywhere near my game.

Like Tad, one of the reasons I got ACR was to control cheating. I do wonder if the sim being a playable you aren't currently playing has anything to do with it. The situation that prompted me getting ACR was very similar to Tad's. I was playing a sim on the cooking hobby lot, when one of my born-in-game sims was spawned as a visitor. That sim, who was engaged and had decent chemistry with his girlfriend, ended up flirting with a townie. He had never tried doing anything like that when I controlled him. Over time, I've noticed that playables that get spawned as lot visitors will sometimes act in ways (including cheating) that never pop up as autonomous actions when I'm playing their household.

I had given up on towns that got ruined by sims cheating on partners after it ruined marriages and relationships because it was happening way too often and I would rather it only happened if I directed it and only very rarely.I aso use a lot visitor controller Mod and restrict visitors to playable households and townies only on community lot stores to stop NPC from spawning on some community lot types which reduced the cheating and ACR combined with VC would stop almost all cheating except instances I initiate.

I only got ACR to encourage autonomous romance, as it never happened in my game unless I gave my sims a little push. If left to their own devices, they just used vacation gestures... I've since modded gestures so that they are limited to vacation destinations, so I'm unsure of that would've improved my sim's love lives without ACR. Even then, romance interactions were few and far between and I wanted some spontaneous, unpredictable behaviour.

It's funny how different our games are.

I discovered that relatives living in different households will only get certain memories unless they know each other. Grandparents and parents usually tend to get the "Got a Grandchild/Had Baby" memory, but cousins Juana Lothario and Joy Pleasant didn't start getting memories of each other's grades until they met. Marcus and Lucas Broke never got a memory of Daniel Pleasant's death despite Daniel being their father because they'd never met him.

This whole situation really confuses me.
It seems the one group has Sims that are all serial cheaters and uses ACR to reign that behaviour in, and the other group has Sims who don't even think about cheating and uses ACR to encourage it (or not all in my case)

Shouldn't the game work the same for everyone?

It works differently depending on what mods you have installed. Romancemod prevents sims from using Maxis interactions to cheat left and right regardless of their personality or aspiration or anything else. Once you have installed romancemod, no one cheats and it's very boring. If you then install ACR, sims will cheat when it makes sense for them to cheat based on personality/aspiration/etc.

I would want to control cheating based on where my town's growth is at as in having none of it in a newly settled area that is just being born as a new town while it might be fine to have it in moderation in a large well established city with a very large population.
@Orphalesion -I think most of us want to have control over wether sims are cheating in our towns or being loyal based on what shage the town is at and how far it progressed in the game.Mine is just starting out as two homesteads with a service center where they can shop for clothing or grocereies and also have options for earning money vocationally as well as there's a cafeteria for when hey need to eat.I agree that the game should work the same for all and just let us control what happens and wether we get any cheating or not as I strongly believe it should be fully up to each of us to choose what happens.

It will be very boring.

You can also set options for individual sims with ACR, I like that feature, I can set sims to never cheat if I think it's part of their story or they are really religious or had a parent who cheated and so hate it or something.

A small point about ACR in any form:

After a few hours, the pixel's setting on it will revert to their normal state automatically. So you might want to check that their internal setting isn't high by default. You can set it to spouse only or low, depending on whether or not their personality allows it.

It's usually pretty accurate if their personality matches the setting.

Annaminna says "If any of them gets gender preference they will start flirt back and forth... You need mods to stop that vanilla behavior." But this is not what Orphalesion and myself are seeing in our games... I have never, in all my years of playing, had a sim (who has a gender preference/ chemistry) autonomously perform a romantic interaction with a sim who they previously have not had romantic interactions with. I play a variety of games, sometimes vanilla, sometimes modded, but I am talking about either vanilla games or else games that have no mods affecting romance. I don't use romancemod, and usually I play all EPs and SPs but I sometimes use AGS to play basegame only. My play style varies, I have games where I play short rotations but also games where I play one family continuously, I also play apartments, community lots, businesses, vacations etc., where there will be inactive playables or townies.

My current main game is a neighbourhood I've been playing over ten years, it has ~500 characters and the majority of the townies and NPCs have a gender preference due to them romancing with various playables over the years. But never have I had any sim in the neighbourhood autonomously begin a romantic relationship. I've had sims cheat autonomously with a sim they were previously involved with, and I have plenty of sims in the world who have three bolts with several people. But I've never had a sim choose their love themselves. I don't have any mods concerning romance in this game, apart from a mod allowing bigfoot romance. When I play, I usually take my sims to community lots or vacation or Uni, where there will be non-playables around. My sims also have a lot of parties. I know I could mod this behaviour in should I wish, but I'm curious as to why I am not seeing this behaviour, but others are?

I do the exact same thing. I set an individual's setting if I feel that they would be loyal to their partner for whatever reason; unstable childhood due to cheating, they love their partner too much, they're nice, etc.

If it's up in the air, then I don't alter the setting until they display... a behaviour that allows me to determine their views on romance.

I do have romancemod, however, I installed that around the time I began using mods... the behaviour I was talking about before, communicating exclusively through vacation gestures, happened before I began to use mods; pure vanilla. Even pure vanilla, the game was so safe as far as romance was concerned I had to force affairs, which eventually didn't feel spontaneous.

If left to their own devices, at least in my unmodded game, my sims behave similarly to simsample's; they only perform romantic socials on sims they have love flags with, or have flirted with before. Even then, the latter was rare for me, too. It happened more commonly in my game if they had love/crush flags.