Re: Orginal Ghots by default in new savefiles
I have my own "Starter Save" with my own custom holidays and townies so I've been watching the overhaul to see if I wanted to "patch them in." (I love the new Cassandra! but think I prefer the old Alexander. I'd already darkened their skintones, but might make my Cassandra look more like the refresh.)
If you create your own starter save, it would have all your preferred settings/holidays/townies/etc. You just launch all scenarios/"new" games from the starter and immediately choose "save as," and all your holidays, etc., would be there. (I started this for the holidays because UGH, I have a lot and recreating them all, UGH.) You could put the original Goths in there as well.
My starter includes:
My own "base game refresh," which is mostly giving everyone hot and cold weather outfits/fixing skin tones for the Goths and Liberty Lee/making Johnny related to the Landgraabs and giving Johnny a hurt sentiment towards Nancy/giving Geoffrey a guilty sentiment towards Johnny/updating the relationships to non-defaults--it was a lot of fun for me to do. (Pancakes have lower friendship and romance than default, Johnny has a poor relationship with Nancy and a slightly better relationship with Geoffrey, added some tiny romance bars with Calientes to match the bio, etc.)
Also my custom townies include: a lesbian couple who are "new in town" and live in a modest house but have $9,999,999 in household funds and gold bars/money bags/a stolen ATM under their stairs, a big (two parents, three "children") family with very little money where the YA son has a romance with the YA woman down the street and the teen girl has a romance with the rich teen girl who's an only child across town, my artsy married gay couple... An aspiring actress with two cowplants and lots of urns in her attic...
I did pop in and put a machete and an urn under Jacques Villareal's basement stairs. 😉 I should probably do more with his interesting career rewards... 😉
But I digress! if you use a starter save you can have any families you want in it. Just launch and immediately Save As.