So here's another point of where differing play styles could come in. I am interested to know how this board makes and maintains relationships, specifically friends for their sims. Is there a process you go through or is it all happenstance?

For example does your sim make friends of walk-bys and neighbors who come to greet them when the move in? Do they meet people online, chat, and then call them enough that they get to friend status? Do they make friends because they want to in their wants panel or do they do it more for business promotions? Or do they make friends because you decide they should be friends with specific sims?

Once your sims has friends do they maintain a distance and call them every so often when the friend is wanting to talk around 5 pm or when your sim's social is low and they need someone to talk to? Or do you plan some kind of regular group outing for your sim and their friends where they get dinner or go dancing?

How badly do your sims' friendships suffer when they have kids or do they maintain their friendships when they have a family?

For newly-made sims I always found it kind of daunting to make friends because those sims who were born in game or created at a younger life stage had more time to cultivate friendships. For those born in game, I usually have them chat with just about any kid they can when they are old enough to chat online so they can start to know sims in their age-range, and then they start forming cliques that carry toward teen life stage. College is a great time for a friend boost through parties and study groups, so then by the time these sims are adults they have a good base of friendships that can go toward promotion requirements.

How do you approach this? Of course each sim may be different (some shy, some extroverted) but I am talking in general, and overall your process or view on going about it.

I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. What I don't do however is make friends for promotions. IMO that is one of the dumbest things in the game so I modded it out.

If they're a Romance sim I will generally have them meet all sims of opposite sex that walk by or they might meet at a community lot. If they're a Family sim sometimes I'll have them meet any and all sims so find out who might be a suitable match for their darlin child .. lol.
Of course Popularity sims want to meet and friend everyone and I try and let them.

Most times thought I do it on a whim o what I feel the sim might like/ want as to also takin into account their niceness and such.

After the difficulty of making and maintaining friendships in Sims1, I was astounded at how easy it was in Sims2. It's practically effortless! It's a little bit more tricky to make sure you build particular relationships you want, and sometimes you just have to accept that the children of those two best friends will never be close - but for the most part I don't even have to consciously deal with it.

A certain amount of this is down to my playstyle. My sims visit community lots frequently. This not only allows them to meet and mingle with other sims, but allows other sims to meet and mingle in the background. So when Pigeon Hawkins takes her children down to the Convenient Stores to buy groceries and school clothes, Georgette Skirt and Dom Estic are playing pinball together, little Laus Newson is solemnly going around viewing all the decorative items in the place, teen Epiphany Curian is hanging out with her friend Maria Casilda Centowski and checking out Juan Baptisto Starchild, Greg Aerius is running into his old frat brother Joshua Ruben and introducing him to his sister-in-law Leslie Gay, Billy Ghote is chatting up Dulcie deLeche, and a lively game of cops and robbers has sprung up between the Hawkins twins and Estella Zarubin. Of course, Brittany Pitts-Upsnott has also caught her husband Ashley flirting with Bad News Beverly Spitzig, but from the player point of view it's all good. By the time Pigeon's bought some clothes and groceries, grabbed a burger at the food stand, been directed to say hi to one of her sisters, gotten a picture at the photobooth, gone to the restroom, and taken a turn at the karaoke machine, over a dozen relationships have been formed, strengthened, or undergone dramatic reversal, without me lifting a finger.

You need good community lots for this to work - not so big that your system's resources are too busy rendering it to bring any sims onto the lot, with enough fun and useful stuff on it to attract sims but not so much as to distract them from interacting with each other. You also should try to go to them during prime business hours - you'll get less action in the wee hours of the morning, and will lose kids and teens after the curfew hours strike. And it's important to get kids to community lots to meet other kids, because you can't control who comes home from school with them, and on school days the timing for inviting them over is tight - if your kid is too exhausted from school to talk to a visitor before she goes home at 6, you might as well not invite them. Curfew-busting hacks help but don't solve the problem.

When I want the children of friends to be friends, or when families live so close together that the children logically ought to know each other, Invite Household is a blessing. Jared Starchild invites household on his next-door neighbor Erik Swain, his wife, and his kids; throw in a few phone calls, and Alta Mira Starchild and Erika Swain grow up BFF, as they should. This can also be used to get adults to mingle - inviting the entire frat instead of just the YA the family at home wants to see, asking the cute girl she met in the park to come over and bring all her housemates, etc. If a university student keeps rolling wants for their pets back home, or you hope to breed your Dalmation to a friend's husky, or are working on the 20 pet best friends LTW, you can even invite household and include the pet.

But it can be hard to get Alta Mira and Erika even to meet the swarm of blonde kids in the Beare household just around the corner from them, because Jared and his wife don't know Kevin and Heather, who were an age cohort ahead of them at University. So if Alta Mira can make a friend who is also friends with one of the Beare kids, as soon as that friend hits teen, she can put together a social group that contains both Alta Mira and Cinnamon Beare and invite them both on outings. Then, when I play her house, Alta Mira can add Erika to the group, while Cinnamon adds her little siblings. Once you get teens, forming posses of teens and tagalong kids to go to the park or the roller rink is easy and natural; and if, like me, you don't bother to synch your lots, you may be able to get the group several weekends of play over the course of a few rotations. These groups can change over time as teens grow up, teens who used to be kids add new friends and little siblings, and so on; or they can become lifelong circles of friends who get together as adults for baby showers and whatnot. Outings "just for fun" are undemanding and will continue until people's needs start becoming critical. If an outing winds up back at home, ending the casual group doesn't send anyone away - they'll continue to hang out till 2:00 or the player gets sick of them and tells them good-bye.

In my example of community lot use, Pigeon could also have asked her sister and any other acquaintances, including children, to form a casual group, and brought them all home with her. I do this a lot when relatives or old friends who haven't seen each other in awhile coincidentally run into each other on a community lot. If the relative and the old friend are triple-bolters who haven't met yet, so much the better!

And then there's parties. Birthday, anniversary, got a promotion and want to celebrate, got fired and want to blow off steam - party! Arrange the phone list in friend order and make sure you prioritize guests from the low end of the spectrum whose friendship you don't want to lose, people who already know and like each other, and people you want to make sure meet and interact. Serve dinner, don't let a dance epidemic erupt, hug and introduce and influence your friends to interact as necessary, you'll get a good party score and strengthen relationships. For child and teen birthday parties, I will often invite friends with children or younger siblings of the appropriate age stage, and then use the teleporter to summon the related kids.

Busy sims who have young children use the phone to chat, but they also invite people over and influence them to help out around the house. Direct the toddler to ask for attention from a visitor with a child about the same age, and they can get their own birthday party invitation, instead of being teleported!

Once in awhile, when a kid's sleep schedule is out of whack and they're up getting on the computer at 3 AM, I've had them get acquainted with each other in chat; but that's so random I don't rely on it. And it's not very time-consuming to shoot off an e-mail to the lowest friend in the relationship panel, just to keep that last couple of points from eroding. But mostly computers are for games and novel-writing, not relationship-building. Children will autonomously call their siblings at college, which is sweet, and can make them friends even if they weren't before. I once had an estranged father who called his daughter so often while she was at college that they became friends; but that's serendipity, since you can't control who calls in.

I have several mods/hacks to encourage friendships, plus the usual 'go to the community lot' thing..for instance, I have the DMA 'teleporter' which allows sims to have phones in their inventory, so they can call up their friends when they're lonely; Christianlov's 'visitor Manager' which allow sims to stop and actually stay on the lot instead of passing through-both of which make it far easier to develop friendships than the vanilla way.

Pescado's 'Macrotastics' function of the batbox is very helpful, as when you put a pixel on 'auto idle', they call their friends up instantaneously when their social needs are low, and of course, ACR encourages people to invite their lovers over for various slap and tickle functions.

Of course maintaining the friendships is half the battle-but once one is developed it's pretty easy to stay stable-unless of course they get into a fight over something and lose their friendship.

One should always have a few community lots for them to congregate on, because while you're watching yours have fun, the others are interacting as well, and their relationships develop without any input from you.

Sims1 friendships difficult? from what I recall, making them and maintaining them were no more difficult than Sims2. and if I remember correctly, the base game did not have relationship decay/normalization; that I think came with Unleashed (along with daily/lifetime relationship).

Sims2; the main friendships my sims make and maintain are the characters that are (or will be) part of their household.

How do I maintain friendships? More realistic relationship decay. Some may say cheating. I say adding much needed sense to a ridiculous system. While I would agree a friendship takes work the way I see it a relationship at max stays that way until someone does something stupid, so I love that mod.

How my Sims make friends depends on the Sim and their style. I do tend to use the phone a lot, because imo it's the easiest way to get to friend-status. Unlike talking face to face Sims won't do that ridiculous fingers in ear thing if the topic is something they aren't interested in. They'll get a negative bonus, but the conversation does not end. The other Sim never hangs up on you, and your Sim only hangs up if social is full. I have testingcheats on at all times, so I just empty social bar to keep them talking. Some may think that's also cheating, I think it's dealing with the games limitations. No need to queue up a bunch of new interactions, and no risk of childish behavior. Once they are friends, you can invite them over and they'll be more inclined to respond positively to interactions.

I use the phone approach when my Sim has a want to befriend a specific Sim, or if I want to be able to call the other Sim over. If there's no real reason to make friends it just happens naturally. I have some Sims who bring home a lot of work colleagues, which eventually means they become BFs with them from the repeated bonuses. Others do a lot of parties, I have a mod that makes anyone accept party invites, so occasionally they invite friends of friends and become friends with the friend during the party. Some like to go on outings, and there's usually some townie friend part of that which leads to other townies calling to invite them to outings. Most of my Sims live in apartments, and if they are social people I make them greet their neighbours, which usually turns into friendship later on. I also visit a lot of community lots, which gives them plenty of opportunities to talk to random townies that then end up calling to say hi.

I've modded out the welcome wagon, and I don't tend to notice walkbys, so those are never sources of friendships in my game. I rarely chat online, because I find it annoying that the Sim randomly decides to log out, and I don't like that I can't tell what age the Sim is. More of a party/outing/community lot visit kind of player.

I have my Sims make friends when they need a promotion or their social needs get low. I'll have them greet passing Sims if they're not busy but send them on their way after a chat - I hate them sticking around for hours getting in the way.
I maintain some friendships by calling them or chatting on the computer. I have a mod to eliminate the need to phone them up everyday to maintain the friendship - that really annoyed me.
I don't have them go on outings much and don't have my Sims go to community lots much at all except to buy clothes as the lots are full of elders. I'm sick of my Sims being surrounded by elders wherever they go, and it's completely useless for a young Sim wanting to meet a potential date.

I send them to community lots so that they can meet other Sims first. Playing chess in the park with a stranger helps, or pool, or fishing together in a pond.
They also greet the Sims strolling past their houses and feed them - having meals together is a great way to start a friendship.
Once they have friends, friends have to be invited over quite often. Most of my Sims throw parties or go on a outing with every promotion (if they can afford it, the nanny is called to babysit).
Continuing kind of a RL tradition, friends are invited over on Sundays (or on other days off then) for lunch and some fun after that.
I try to have them phone one friend a day, normally the one with the lowest relationship on that day.

OOh I like that idea - going out for dinner with friends for a new promotion! I've never thought of that before!

Young sims can date elders, krudyard! You can learn a lot from dating elders! Okay, not teens, obviously...but if you befriend an elder with a teen grandchild, they can matchmake!

The two most effective autonomous friend-makers are chess and hot tubs. Chess will even wear down bitter enemies.

In Sims1, I developed strategies for forming and maintaining friendships which involved every adult sim taking every third day off to have his four lowest relationships over. In order to maintain enough friendships for promotion, each sim had to marry, each spouse had to maintain separate circles of friends with no overlaps, and each couple had to have children so they could make friends, too.

In Sims2, I never ever look at the friendship requirement for promotion - it's always met! My shy sims often have 20 friends apiece, and I go out of my way to make spouses friends with each other's friends. I don't need strategies. I just play to character and let them sort out how many friends they want.

I do a variety of things - social things mostly, events but I confess I also use, I think it's Pescado's talk hack which you can get your sims to call their friends and top up their friend ratings without too much effort. I also like to use Moghughson's cards - Christmas, birthday, graduation, wedding anniversary and so on - I made enough of them after all.

Most of my Coral Bay sims have 20+ friends without me doing anything special.

Three things that makes this possible/easy.
1.My sims have long lives. 74 days for an adult.
2. I have very few townies, I think 3 so everyone who they talk to is another playable
3. I often have them greet walkbys since they know all of them. While they are there they naturally interact.

Elder females can't have babies.

Edit: Surely elder townies are single and don't have grandchildren. It's townies I'm talking about. My community lots are populated by elders almost to the exclusion of all other Sims.

Generally, my Sims meet others via the Welcoming Committee, through school or work, or by going to community lots - either for groceries, or if they roll a Want to meet someone new. All teens go to a community lot to buy their kiosk devices when they first age up, and I try to get them to greet every unattached Sim of the opposite sex while they're there. Once they've finished their business on the lot, I usually leave them to their own devices for an hour or so before sending them home, so any new relationships can develop naturally.

For developing and maintaining friendships, I try to have each Sim make one phone call a day, usually to the person who is nearest to becoming a friend unless they have a Want to be friends with someone else. If they have several friendship Wants, they make several calls, and Popularity Aspiration Sims try to make three calls a day because often their LTW involves friendships. Also, if they Want a promotion and need extra friends for that, I get them to make extra calls, usually on their days off.

Sims who live in large families or student households often have a hard time making/maintaining friends because their Social need is filled at home, and parents of pre-schoolers rarely have time to chat on the phone, so they quite often have failing relationships. I don't direct Sims to chat online (unless a pregnant Sim is truly desperate for company in the middle of the night) but don't stop them if they choose to.

Me too I have tons of elders in my game, which is weird...because it's a city full of Elders. I love Golden Girls and I pretend it's the 4 ladies and all their friends lol

I have started to include family celebrations in my game, because I wanted families to know each other. So now, the wealthier families will throw a party about once a week where all the relatives get summoned, including their spouses. Then everybody just mingles for a few hours, and later they can make friends.

Hmmm. Well my sims gain friends in different ways. The Welcome committee of course, but then there are people they enjoy talking to at community lots and sims that call them on the phone. I always let sims make friends with people from the carpool. If you bring someone to your home, you must trust and like them enough to be good friends.

Maintaining friendships can be difficult depending on how busy my sim's life is. Some sims have little time for friends between family, skilling, and work. Others have time to reply to missed phone calls. Depending on the sim, if they have a computer, they can email or chat online with friends.

I actually do appreciate Apartment Life a lot for friendships though. I like building three or four small family houses on one large lot and using them as apartments. It allows the children to grow up with close friends and makes creating and maintaining friendships easier for me. If I'm playing one house, my other residences interact with each other on their own!

My Sims typically start with the welcome wagon. At least one of the welcome wagon invariably makes friends with a singleton Sim. In multi-Sim houses, results are more varied but it's rare a Sim who was in for the whole day will not be friends with at least one welcome wagon member by the end of the visit.

I also greet walkbys if a Sim appears to need company, or if there are already guests in the house. Sims typically meet at least one new person per community lot visit, though I don't send Sims just because they're lonely - they need another motive, such as running out of food or needing to investigate a crime. I've also been known to have Sims call the matchmaker and pay her a few Simoleons so that they can get some diversity into their friendship circles. (A surprising number of these no-bolt dates end with mutual crushes!) Friendships for promotions are a thing, but rarely an obstacle, and I don't feel the need to make Sims befriend each other faster than they feel appropriate.

Maintaining friendships is more varied. The most favoured approach is the telephone. Typically, friendships which are in danger of ending will receive a phone call, as will friendships close to going into Best Friend status. If a Sim is really lonely, they may call an old friend to socialise that way. Some Sims party a lot with some/all of their friends. Others go on holiday together. Occasionally Sims even stumble across each other at the spaceport or bowling alley and reconnect that way.

I do vacations in between rotations, usually sending two or three households to the same vacation neighborhood. They can't call or invite each other over; but they can run into each other on community lots and form outings, and I can use the teleporter to summon other vacationing sims to vacation homes.

Depends on the sims. My Romance sims are only out for one thing, so they have no time to build up a relationship. I use the sim blender to help them out so they can get down to business. Any other sims meets their friends by going to community lots, uni, or from a mutual friend.

To maintain their friendships depends on the sim. They will throw parties, go on outings, go on a date, phone calls, and even the computer.

@krudyard have you tried banning the elders from lots. I have been known only to allow certain sims on certain lots. Like only females in a strip joint with male strippers, or only male sims on on lots that have female strippers, only children in a certain park, only lovers on my lover's lane, and so forth.

That sounds a good idea - how do you do that?

Download the visitor controller, and set it to ban elders.

Link for visitor controller
Details in the readme

The visitor controller is one way, but I think my paintings came from BackAlleySims. There is one for everything, you can pick and choose what you want.

That's another definite download then, thanks .