Do you customise worlds before playing?

I like having the "iconic townies" in my world, but I don't use Sunset Valley much so I usually miss them, so I've got a whole collection I place in every world. The Landgraabs, the Goths, the Calientes, the Brokes, the Capp family, Agnes Crumplebottom, etc all go in, even if it's a bit weird having the Goths on a tropical island :D I also have my own custom townies, I like to recreate sims from other games so I've made some MySims characters like Poppy, Violet, Travis, Summer, etc who go into every save, I'm not very good at giving sims unique looks/personalities so if it's a character from another game they already have that.

Also always place the supernatural alchemy? lot, my sims lore for it is that it just magically appears, so it's always in the most bizarre places like on an island on its own, or at the end of the swamp with nothing around it. Not sure what it's called but I also always place the penthouse exclusive lounge lot as I like that lot a lot. + I've found placing subways is a good way of getting around, especially in Isla Paradiso.

I've only ever successfully completed one build in my entire 10 years of playing this game... :D
This sleazy/trashy bar, which I also created 'exotic dancers' for. So in every world I play in I always bulldoze any other bar/club (because EA ones aren't as good as mine, lol) and place mine along with the dancers.
https://imgur.com/JlktXES.png


But as far as placing other lots/moving in new sims, not really. I like most EA worlds as they are.

I sometimes customize worlds, but not always

It depends on which world I am playing in. I like to play Glenvale County by @Rflong7

It comes with the basics for community lots, so I will add the community lots/venues I want to my game. It also comes with just one house, so I need to add houses to the game. Because the world comes unpopulated, Story Progression will need to add Sims to the game, and they will need housing.

Every time I play a new game in Glenvale County, the world is different. I place community lots/venues in random locations, and will either place residential lots or use prebuilt starter homes that I have created so Sims can afford to move in.

Edited to add my vote to the top as it removed it when I changed my post.

I took the second option. I didn't count stuff like not letting the game place the expansion lots and placing those I actually want to have myself, which is more or less always happening. Other than that, I have everything from very minor changes to sweeping edits.

For example, my short Riverview game from a few days ago involved just placing the consignment store, a junkyard, and The Grind. I edited the bar in the center to a real one, and of course the lots I was playing on. Now that I think of it, I also placed cribs, upped the number of beds in many houses. Hmm, okay, that was more than I initially remembered.

In one of my long-going games in SV, I had to edit the whole town after I deleted the whole existing population and used Porter to get the whole population in its advanced stage from a prior version of SV that became unplayable in. Most houses were edited, lots of venues placed, stuff like replacing the science center with a combined bot shop, cafeteria and the old rabbithole, etc.

The upper end of the spectrum is a "town" that started on an empty map without a single building, not even rabbitholes. Although that was probably less work than editing an existing state of SV to the state I needed it in.

Which means it depends.

I voted for "I sometimes customize worlds", but really, I customize them at least 80% of the time. Sometimes it's only a matter of adding lot types that the original world doesn't have, but sometimes I want a world slightly different to what we have available, and I try to create it by editing the town (I have CAW but I never managed to understand the instructions, so making my own world is not an option).

For example, I like the look of Bridgeport but I don't like that there never seems to be any life in the streets. For the save I'm currently playing, I used an empty version of the custom world Laguna Coast and added Bridgeport skyscrapers to it, but I also made a main street with most of the rabbit holes, and I made these lots Visitors Allowed and added places to sit, sources of food, fun objects and lots of decor. My plan worked: townies love to hang around in these lots, and it gives me the feel I wanted: a colourful, crowded and messy city.

https://i.imgur.com/LBgviu8.jpg

Also, a few years ago I played a nectar-making household in a version of Riverview I made over to resemble Champs Les Sims. I placed copied versions of Champs les Sims buildings in empty lots, built some new homes, but with most of the existing homes I just changed the roof, the wall covering and the type of fence. It did give the town a completely different feel.

https://i.imgur.com/SCVhtRN.jpg

I'm very slow in applying this types of changes to a world, but I enjoy it very much.

I usually play without customizing when I'm playing a world with a very distinct feel (like Starlight Shores, Moonlight Falls, Monte Vista or Roaring Heights) for the first time. I like to explore these worlds for the first time through the eyes of my sims, and go into Edit Town later if I think there is something missing.

I’ve never really bothered with customizing EA worlds. I generally play them as is. I may put a few more lots down if needed but I don’t want to mess with the current layout of the Sims 3 EA worlds. I tend to treat them as fragile because they are. You tweak the wrong thing. routing becomes gimped, and then you got problems.

Now a blessing that EA gave us was CAW for those who really want to delve in and create our own customized worlds.

Now I want to make a “Vancouver, BC” world, more detailed than the current Sneakfeline world I currently use. And I’m going to try to make it as close to the actual city (since I live near that city. I may actually try to rip assets from FSX and mesh buildings to go with that world. Iconic BC Place and Roger’s Arena - try to turn that into rabbitholes. The Telus Science Centre, Skytrain?!! Sure wish there was something akin to a non-ITF Monorail system available in Sims 3.

I will try to do every major arterial route through Vancouver: Cambie Street, Burrard Street, Broadway, Hastings, Alma Street. 41st Avenue. Main Street. Just the major arterial routes. Kingsway is going to be a pain cutting through at a diagonal and then connecting to Main Street which then punches straight through to Chinatown and Gastown. The edge of the world will be Boundary Road (the eastern edge of East Vancouver. I may touch North and West Vancouver a bit but I’ve never really spent much time on the North Shore so I’m not as familiar.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm19Pt7hTyUYdCkepLUGBs06BQd6kuTuEQv91No1jwTQkG4GgnEawg86QIzPUTxXthz37SFoBWyReC1iQzpIYFc5YSnnMkFIVT_qxqeazO0nBJjLdGqIfDtCarMEQuPgYo4XoBzyHvN-hLg_VRybPtfcg_F0BdCueOmqQsXZIeGi5S6VrKviKEY-naoQ/s1600/134D2C15-1CA6-4AE3-942A-BB4A960EA27D.jpeg
This would also have to be a homeworld university with UBC. So I have to make UBC too as well as the buildings to go along with it.

Vancouver West End is really gonna be tricky because I’m not going to want to include YVR since it’s actually Richmond, BC.

This is a heckuva world to tackle and probably not for the faint of heart. But then again…I was always stupid and never really knew when I bit off more than I could conceivably chew.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JfRg4c9MCIw/TzWGR2OKIhI/AAAAAAAABj0/7X01cCgcvOg/s600/03-14-2007_falsecreek_nharbourfront_cambie_wm.jpg

I often have to edit the lots that come with Ambitions, either because they're placed so randomly (for example the junkyard being located among the most expensive houses which makes no sense) or because they're placed on lots that are too small so the entrance can't face the street. I usually add extra lots as well such as bars or cafés depending on what I think is missing.

I do modify the town sometimes. For instance, my most recent playthrough is set in a heavily modified version of Sunset Valley to make it easier to access content from the EPs. Here are the modifications:

• Removed the Showtime venues entirely. I dislike Showtime's careers, so they were useless.
  
• Moved the buildings added with Ambitions to more appropriate locations. Created a brand new lot on the beach behind the Langraab-Alto hill to use as a junkyard, and a new lot adjacent-to-the-left of the art gallery to place the consginment store.
  
• Added multiple high-rises to the three empty lots overlooking the oceanside from above a cliff, including the penthouse of a five-star celebrity, one containing an exclusive lounge, and the final one being a standard apartment.
  
• Added a dive bar and dance club to the beachfront.
  
• Created a miniature commercial zone outside of the town centre by including the salon from Ambitions, pet store from the Pets Limited Edition, and a church from the TS3 exchange to be used as a wedding venue. This involved moving one empty house to another lot.
  
• Added a horse ranch to the empty lot adjacent to the waterfall.
  
• Added the time portal to the large lake behind the small mountain for ease-of-access when I grow bored of the rest of the game's content and want to indulge in ITF's absurdly OP features.
  
• Added multiple houses I created over the years to the road of empty lots.
  

I ignored Showtime & Supernatural content because I dislike Showtime, and whilst I can appreciate the quality of Supernatural, it's not my cup of tea. I use ITF occasionally due to the superpowered Plumbots providing nonsensical fun.

Also, when the town became depopulated due to many pre-made Sims passing before they had children, I began adding households that I've made over the years to the town to bring it back to life.

I usually remove the Showtime venues as I don’t really use those careers. I often add bars/clubs/lounges, as well as a martial arts lot so Sims can learn martial arts without having to pay to go to China. I’ll often remove the school lot, particularly if it’s the combined school-and-stadium rabbit hole, and put in Par Excellence Preparatory School. I noticed that Sims who are in the Professional Sports career lose their games if they go to the combined rabbit hole, so that’s one of the main reasons I separate the lots.
Since I got Into the Future, I’ll often plop down a Bot Emporium too.

I've been playing in the exact same copy of Moonlight Falls for years. I put way too much importance on visuals and the impression that the town doesn't exist solely for the sake of my current household (as it technically does). I couldn't play before stripping the town down to its bare bones, bulldozing lots along with households. I then meticulously created every single household from scratch, each with its own backstory; I would begin by making families and then splitting them up to move a sibling to one house, grandparents to another, etc. and then pretty much just mix and match. I'm an awful builder so I would download most of the lots, including the festival grounds, but then I would rebuild and redecorate to fit the identities living there. I'm pleased as punch with the end result and it brings me joy every single time I play, but it was an exhausting process.