How to reduce game generated Sims?

"Sharonia;c-17023620" wrote:
I wouldn't mind reducing the townies with Japanese sounding names. I don't mind a few but it seems like there is a lot of those in my game. I'd rather have townies with recognizable names that I can remember.

Agreed. Many of my auto generated townies' last names are Izumi, Mizuki, Yamamoto. These 3 are used the most. And those sims don't look asian at all. And there's this arabic names also annoying.

As for OP's question, It depends on how you are playing the game, what you're doing at a given play session. MCCC has an option to force the game use existing sims as much as possible. On the other hand, in many situations random sims generation is unavoidable. For example if you are playing a vampire family in forgotten hollow, game will generate 4 or 5 random not-in-world vampires to walk around. They are usually elder or adult. What I do, I use cas.fulledit cheat to edit them. I make them all young adults, dress them nicely, change their names and leave them wander around. As there are enough vampires, game stops generating more.
If you are playing a veterinarian, then the game starts to generate crazy amount of new sims who have pets so that you can have a lot of patients.
But as far as I see there's always a limited number. Keep those sims who look normal and reasonable and delete those absurd ones regularly so at some point you will have acceptable townies around and the game will stop generating more as it reaches the max number needed untill they start to die of old age.

Trying to reduce the number of townies the game generates is really complex because there are a lot of different sources and reasons why the game makes them. Trying to stop it is like plugging leaks in a bucket full of holes.

In most cases, it's to fill job roles. If you can fill the jobs with enough sims, then the game doesn't have to create new ones. For example, when I got Get Famous, I discovered that the game needs around five or six paparazzi before it stops generating more and uses the ones it has. So, instead of letting the game make new townies, I took six existing unemployed ones and used career cheats to turn them into paparazzi.

In other cases, there are unwanted rules in place that generate unnecessary numbers of townies out of control, such as whenever you visit a bar, the game will generate brand new sims to be "bar regulars", except that they aren't regular, it's new sims every time to visit a bar. Also, there's a weird rule that makes the game generate brand new sims for roles like bartenders instead of using existing unemployed ones if they have met your sims already. As if the game wants you to meet new strangers all the time. In cases like these, you have to rely on mods that alter these rules.

And there's tons of roles that sims need to fill that you probably don't even know about. Such as City Living neighbourhood townies - each district needs about ten or so townie households that populate the area as regulars (even though they don't need to live in housing) and do things like visit food stalls. Or every time your detective sims get a new case, a new townie is generated to be the criminal, and then becomes a regular townie after the case is over - so if you do a lot of those, you're making a lot of townies. Or have a scientist visit planet Sixam and suddenly the game generates 18 new aliens because it needs that many to fill the alien party when you arrive on the planet.

Right now, my game is at a stable amount where it isn't generating any townies at all and I don't need to delete any when I finish my gameplay session. To give you some idea about how many sims the game needs to reach this, there are about 576 sims in my game. And that's just humans - there's also a whole bunch of cats and dogs...

@Galactrix thank you for explaining in detail. I have every pack installed and figured that might be a factor. Those are great things to keep in mind when I set up my new save. Truthfully I just wish the game would create more diverse Sims, not a bunch of pale overweight elders with Japanese names. It’s really a shame, with the amount of skin tones and body types the game has to offer, very few are utilized.

"Kita5399;d-957982" wrote:
I know there is a setting on MCCC that can pull from your tray, but I keep copies of all the madeover premades in mine, and don’t need multiples of the same Sims everywhere.

MCCC will not take sims from library if they have the same name as already existing.
Also, you can add a hashtag (mccc_bypass if I'm not mistaken) to sims you don't want MCCC to use.
For me, it's the best way, even if it may require some effort (I had to fill my library with a lot of sims of all ages and I don't know what'll happen when townie dies, will mccc generate the same sim eventually? I guess so). Anyway, now my world looks differently, even some real life celebrities that I downloaded appeared on set as co-stars or background actors instead of that tiring ugly nonames.

"Cupid;c-17024093" wrote:

"MLadyAzzera;c-17023890" wrote:
One way I've been working around this issue is by putting townie sims I want to keep in favorite households (pressing the heart) so that it slows down random generations. I have 180 favorite households (max population set to 200), leaving 20 for births that might occur in my playable households. If you have non-playable sims set to aging on, then you will have to add new favorites over time, easy to do with downloading sims from the gallery.

Favoriting households does absolutely nothing to stop townies from generating. The maximum sim setting does not include sims from unfavorited households and those will continue to generate beyond reaching that number.

I said I was using this to work around the issue, not how to stop townie generations. By filling up my favorite households, I can have a healthy population of sims I actually want in my game. I found that if each household has only one to three members in each, they will spawn more often than a household of eight.

Even though some unwanted townie sims show up, I now have a healthy half of the population actually looking the way I'd want them to. Every once in awhile I'll go in and manually delete some spawns I absolutely can't stand. I take many sims to get a "makeover" at a fashion themed lot I have as well, helping even those I can't favor for at least a little while until they get culled (however I think there is a mod to prevent culling)

@veronica55
@Sharonia
@Rouenpucelle
There is a mod where you can have less or no foreign name generations on Mod the Sims... No/Less City Living Townie Names. I have the "less names" version and it is now a healthy balance. I'm loving it.

Is there a mod for more names?

This is an interesting thread because I do go through my save and put my own townies in. It really annoys me that I spend alot of time working on my townies for my game to generate a random pale overweight elderly person with a random asian name. I wouldn't mind this if it mixed it up once in a while. Or my Townies didn't all end up with the same username. Sometimes i'll just straight up delete them but i'm interested in seeing if MCC will be any help.

Also major shout for the mods that change the names/ gets rid of the names. Looking into that as we speak. Thanks!

@AlwaysAsking
I’m in the process of testing different things in my new save, so far MCCC has been the biggest help. If you don’t mind mods, I’d suggest going to the MCCC site and reading about the population settings especially. If you want very specific Sims to show up at your venues you can always use the club system (if you have the pack of course).

@Kita5399

Hey! The club system is an awesome idea! Thank you!

Because no, I don’t really want any mods in my game. I’m very nervous about messing it up, because I don’t have anyone who can help me fix it, you know?

"AlwaysAsking;c-17030691" wrote:
@Kita5399

Hey! The club system is an awesome idea! Thank you!

Because no, I don’t really want any mods in my game. I’m very nervous about messing it up, because I don’t have anyone who can help me fix it, you know?

No problem! It works really well, just takes a bit to set up (but worth it). I have a movie theater/arcade that looks full now, and Sims actually get popcorn and watch the TV screen together.