How to reduce game generated Sims?

@Kita5399 I will Definitely do it that way now! I love it! Thank you!

"AlwaysAsking;c-17030262" wrote:
@Galactrix

Just wondering how you got your game to stop spawning new townies if it needs to make a new bartender every time you go to a bar, etc, (all those things you explained so well).

I didn't say the game makes a new bartender every time you go to a bar - it makes new bar visitors. For bartenders, the game needs three bartenders employed for each bar in the game (morning shift from 6am, afternoon shift from 2pm and evening shift from 10pm). Once it has assigned them, then they stay the same bartenders every time you visit, until something happens that makes them lose their job - e.g. you ask them to move in with you (because playable sims can't have NPC jobs).

When the game assigns jobs, that's when you could end up with brand new sims created. Even if you have a bunch of unemployed townies, for some reason there's a rule the game uses which ignores those unemployed townies if they've formed relationships already with anybody - e.g. if any of your sims have ever introduced themselves to them and they appear in anybody's relationship panel. If you've got very social sims, then the game can end up ignoring every townie in the unemployed pool and just make more that are completely new strangers to everyone in the game to hire for jobs.

For situations like that, and the uncontrolled spawn of bar visitors, your only hope is to rely on mods that are made to suppress that - like AKLsimmer's reduced random townies mod, or MCCC.

There's also another annoying behaviour I discovered in the game after a while when I started noticing all the townies that had jobs were suddenly quitting them and just sitting in the unemployed pool doing nothing. The game has a really basic story progression module where it tries to maintain population ratios for employment - and it has it set for something like and 80% employment rate for adults. Meaning if you have more than 80% of all adult townies in the game employed and not enough unemployed townies to make it 20%, then it will automatically make some employed sims lose their jobs to maintain the 80/20 ratio.

When I discovered that one, I was like "WTF" and used mods to change that so that the game won't care if 100% of sims are employed and there are no unemployed sims.

To have a diverse and interesting population of sims, I don't try to create any from scratch or download any from the Gallery.

Instead, whenever the game generates a new sim, I assume there must have been a reason it was made (for example it might have been made to fill a job role, or to fill a deficit in sims with certain traits, or to fill the need for sims living in a region e.g. San Myshuno district townies, etc). If I made my own sims and placed them in the game, then the game would probably ignore them if they don't fill whatever reason the game needed.

So instead I take that new townie the game generated into CAS and use them as a base to edit them to my own desire. Most of the time, I can do whatever I want, such as change the race, hair colour, clothing, name. So, if the game made yet another blonde Japanese sim called Genji Sakamoto, I can totally give them an extreme makeover and turn them into a brunette Russian guy named Dimitry or something more diverse.

For example, when the game generated 18 new sims to work at Plumbob Pictures studio when I made one of my sims an actor for the first time, they were mostly all the same generic townie. But I went through each of them and gave them some more racial diversity, backstory, styling and pizzazz and ended up with my own custom studio crew.

Sometimes, when the game made two different townies with the same surname, if they looked similar enough, I merged them together and made them into a family group. E.g. I put two elders with the same surname together and made them brother and sister. Then in game when I was playing my own sim at the Police Station, I saw those two elders and thought it was pretty cool that they worked together - the elder guy was actually the chief of police and his sister was one of his police officers. Then she walked into his office and gave him a sisterly hug. It's those kind of moments which made my sim world seem more connected and interesting.

@Galactrix: The way you describe is the only way to deal with townies. Even if you use mods like my townieoverhaul_lessfame, it is still advisable to give townies a makeover instead of simply deleting them. The game just needs a lot of different townies, especially if you own all packs.

@Galactrix thank you so much for taking the time to explain that. While I wish we could truly customize our worlds, the info provided here has been a huge help!

@Cupid thanks for explaining, guess I’ll just have to keep wasting time deleting/editing them all as well. :#

"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.

I agree with this too, I like diversity in my game..but I’m not sure you can call it that when they all look the same/have the same last name.
@catitude5 do you replace them or just delete completely from edit households? I also wonder if it helps to turn off the fill empty houses option, I’ve always left that on.

"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.

"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.

From my understanding the favorited households are just Sims that are protected from being culled correct? So how many more the game generates would depend on how high the max is set, and what your computer can handle? It may be a possibility to have a high number of favorites, and due to computer specs the game may not generate more (or would cull them regularly)? I have no problem with having some game generated Sims, I just end up with so many. Another problem I have is it giving me a bunch of households that have no name, and that causes last exception errors.

"Cupid;c-17024176" wrote:

"Kita5399;c-17024165" wrote:

"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.

From my understanding the favorited households are just Sims that are protected from being culled correct? So how many more the game generates would depend on how high the max is set, and what your computer can handle? It may be a possibility to have a high number of favorites, and due to computer specs the game may not generate more (or would cull them regularly)? I have no problem with having some game generated Sims, I just end up with so many. Another problem I have is it giving me a bunch of households that have no name, and that causes last exception errors.

Yes, it basically just protects them from culling. There's another "limit" for all the sims in that save, and once you reach that limit (whatever it is, I don't know the exact number or if there even is one) then culling begins. It probably takes a lot of sims to reach that point anyway though. And reaching it still wouldn't stop the game from making more, the culled sims would get replaced and it'd be an endless cycle.

Thank you for all the input! I guess I’ll just play around with the MCCC settings, and go back to just taking the time to delete & edit.

So, I’ve read this whole thread, and I’m wondering if any of you can reiterate or explain further how you can get the townies that you’ve altered to look good, or downloaded from the gallery?

For example, is it better to leave them as “not in world.”
Is it better to have fewer Sims in the households that you don’t play? The ones tthat you want to have as townies? Example: 1-3 in household rather than 7-8?
If you have your sims meet townies, will they show up more often?
If you specifically want some special sims from your “not in world” selection to Ever show up, (because mine Never do) is there anything you can do to make that happen? I’ve tried adding them to a household for a while, and then removing them back into the not in world pool, but it doesn’t seem to help.

And just my own little complaint about names - I often have at least 5 Genji’s (first name) as townies at one time - lol