Is there a way to get more of the Sims I create to populate the towns?

@Purrpledrank  You can also limit the number of sims in your world in game options. The game will regenerate townies if you delete them all, but only up to the total number you set (i.e., townies spawned = total number you set - sims you designate to populate your world). Keep in mind, your game needs to spawn some townies to serve in necessary NPC roles. 

@Psychotps Do you share your Sims in the gallery? I don’t do this only because the time it takes to create them doesn’t justify the benefit I feel I would get. I have considered downloading shared sims, but again, vetting the quality from numerous sources takes time and doesn’t sound like fun. If I had the option to download from one source I’m familiar with might overcome the ‘activation energy barrier’ I’ve had up to now.

Edit: Added screenshot from game options.  It looks like 80 sims is the default and also the smallest number you can choose.

The sim count is only the amount you played thru created sims and pre made families, my main hood i'm at 200/200, i have to kill off 1 or more of my played sims b4 i can even have a birth, i could increase to unlimited but it says it could cause problems so i never tried.

The townies and unplayed pre made families is in the other household tab which doesn't count, it has its own hidden setting. Pending on how many packs you have it adds to the amount of townies. Say u start a new hood,it has a small townie list(even making pre made household sims as vendors,cause its so little), then u go on vacation, it adds those townies, u go to uni more townies spawn on the list. etc, etc.

as i played more and more different families filling the 200, thats when i see them around town more than townies, i do notice also  it must have some hidden factors on who appears, cause i notice it would sometimes be my outgoing sims or sims with 10 or more friends, i rarely see the loner trait sims around the bars.

@suzushka

I have a few I shared. I don't bother most of the time. Most players have this ... "stigma"... about "sharing" sims with CC, and all my sims use CC. It's like if you share something with CC you're the devil incarnate and should be burned alive.

Also, most of my custom sims start out from someone else's sims. I search the gallery for someone I like, like Emma Watson, look for someone's creation that's the closest, and I modify it and tweak it to look better.

Other players don't like it when you share someone else's work, even if you modify it and it looks nothing like the original.

The 200 limit on the number of sims appears to be somewhat fluid. I believe that the limit is there to help keep people from overloading their games but you can run a lot more sims if you pay attention to what the game is doing and what kind of lag you get and can tolerate.  As long as the game runs smoothly and you don't get crashes, you're probably ok running more than 200 sims but that will vary depending on what hardware you have and how you play.

The number of sims you can successfully have in your game is really dependent on the computer hardware you are running the game on.  People with high end computers with faster processors, lots of RAM and high end graphics cards can run the game with a lot more sims than those with low end machines.

The amount of cc you have and what it is also will impact the game performance.  If you have a lot of high poly cc, the game will lag a lot more than a game without it.  This is where the quality of your graphics card and how much RAM it has comes in.  CC hair is a very good example.  Most cc hair is moderate to high poly and when you have a lot of sims using it together in one place in the game , you generally see a lot more lag in the video performance and it can cause your game to crash a lot more.

I have a pretty good desktop and currently have around 425 played sims in my main save.  I do use cc but not much and no cc hair or high poly objects.  I haven't had a crash in ages but at times my game does bog down but runs pretty well for the most part.  I still get a lot of NPCs but I do see a lot of my sims out and about in all the worlds.  But my game would probably cause a low end laptop to choke and cry uncle.

In a nutshell, each player just has to experiment and figure out what their particular setup can handle and adjust their play style to how the game performs.

Hope this helps.

I recommend the mod NPC Control, which has a function to stop the game from randomly generating sims, and using what's already in the world to populate everything. Using this, and flooding the game with downloaded sims, you can still have a pretty full world.

I don't use mods or CC...too many bad experiences over the last 20 years with mods/CC breaking the game and causing the loss of entire worlds when you have to repair/re-install the game. I really wish the devs would cook some more customization options into the gameplay section for TS4. That way I know if something goes wrong - it's not because I have 15 mods running and 3000 pieces of CC mucking everything up.

If you haven't tried this yet, you can also make your own townies.  Plop a household of sims you want to be not-in-world npcs into a lot, save, go to manage households, & immediately evict 'em; they'll be categorized as 'not in the world'.  Un-heart them, & you've got a new npc-townie household.  Rinse and repeat.  Save when done.

I used to download 8-sim households of townies that various simmers made for the purpose.  However, the game never assigned those sims jobs as bartenders, etc., so I shifted to one-sim households only.  Can't remember if that worked or not!  Now I don't bother with the townies at all; just clear out (delete) the oldest ones out periodically.

However, this might suit your needs!  Hope so, anyway.