I have seen in several places a cheat code titled "autonomy 1-1000" where apparently 1000 means total autonomy, i am not sure. Anyhoo it does not seem to work in the game.
Here is my issue,
on several occasions I have set up a family, givene everyone jobs, schools, etc and then left the game running all night. When i wake up everyone is dead. I am confused because if I do not influence them, they seem to take care of all of their needs themselves, as well as socializing, entertaiment and study. so what is making them not be able to continue that over the long term?
it seems that with their ability to learn and develop personalities over time with activity that you could leave the game running for weeks and end up with a very unique and fairly artificial simulation of the character creating his or her own existence.
this is something i am curious about and would enjoy seeing happen.
Is there anything I can do to set up the game so that the sims can make decisions on their own based on their base personalities and then allow them to create their own personalities through their own choices without killing them?
thank you = )

Sims are basically stupid. The AI is not sufficiently developed to allow true autonomy that is 'intelligent'. For example: sims will not autonomously order groceries. Instead, they will starve to death because the fridge is bare. Using a variety of hacks will cut down on the silly behaviors, but they won't make Sims 'smarter'.

Hopefully Sims3 will have better AI with fewer stupid deaths and what I consider Sim suicide!

I'm resurrecting this old thread as a way of starting my own - a look at Sim AI ten years later. AI has become a much more interesting topic in the last 10 years and, of course, we all have Ultimate Collection now and the Sims probably wouldn't die overnight now (would they?). I, too, am really interested in setting up the perfect environment so that my Sims could be autonomous. To me it's a logic puzzle - how to work within the constraints of the game to design an environment so that Sims best take care of themselves. Anyone else into this? Tips? Ideas? Things you've learned that make your Sims take better care of themselves? Hacks/mods are fine, in my view, if they help the Sims act more on their own, rather than just maxMotive them all the time. Has there been a challenge based on this idea (I didn't find one)?

@Sunrader please don't resurrect 11 year old help threads.
If you want this as a chat topic (and it would be a good chat topic ) please post about it in chat.