I may have to start using different saves after all...

Question

From the&nbsp;day I started playing TS4 in January 2017, I have only ever played one save. Aside from practical reasons (such as not wanting to renovate or replace the mediocre default public lots every single time), I simply don't find the idea of every family/household living in their own separate universe appealing. I prefer all of them living together in one big universe that I've been shaping over the course of those past years, with every world from Willow Creek to Henford-on-Bagley having its own theme that is reflected in its residents.But yesterday, something happened that I've been fearing for a long time, and I only noticed it by chance: One of my played sims got culled. Granted, she wasn't technically a played sim at the time, or at least not a member of the exclusive "favourites" club, which I have to manage carefully because I've already created more than 200 sims and can't keep them all in there at once. I don't want to increase the maximum sim count either because of potential performance issues (loading already takes forever as it is...), but until yesterday, I was convinced that sims who own a lot somewhere in the world weren't&nbsp;affected by culling either.I'm pretty sure that she was in fact culled, not lost in some other way, because when I checked her father's family tree, she wasn't there at all. Had she just died off-screen without me noticing, she would have shown up as a ghost at least. Fortunately, I had an older version of the save from a few days earlier where she still existed. Putting her in the library from there and&nbsp;moving her in again in the current save didn't take much time or effort. But now I'm worried about the rest of my sim world, currently consisting of 297 sims across 85 households.Has anyone else ever been in a situation like this, and when did it start becoming problematic? How did you break your world apart? And what else can I try to delay this move for as long as possible? I really don't want to do this, but don't want to lose my sims either... Seems like I'm going to lose either way, doesn't it? :s

logionx · Answer

I play on just one save too, I have culling disabled with MC Command Center. I have also downloaded sims from the gallery and placed them as unplayed households so the game will pick them instead of making new townies for NPC roles and sims that show up on lots.I also use one population control mod from bienchen, the sims4me_townieoverhaul_lessfame_nonewbarflys mod, because I noticed that the game likes to spawn tons of random townies when you are visiting a bar, this mod disables that.I don't use any NPC control mods anymore, for a while I used Zer0's No Random Mod, which helped with limiting townies.Here are the MC Command Center settings:Spoiler (Highlight to read)MC Command Center: Population_BypassCulling:true, this is the setting which will disable population culling, the game won't remove sims.Here are some other settings that you might want to use with this: "RelationshipCullingType": "E", this will have relationships getting culled (which the game does by default), which will help a lot in a save with lots of sims, otherwise you will end up with sims who have so many relationships that your save will get very long loading times.Population_MaximumHomeless": 0, the game won't create any homeless sims unless it has to. It will still create homeless sims but way less."Population_OpenHouses": 50, Set to a high number so the game will not fill any empty houses with sims."Population_PercentAdult": 0,"Population_PercentBaby": 0,"Population_PercentChild": 0,"Population_PercentElder": 0,"Population_PercentMale": 50,"Population_PercentToddler": 0,This basically tells the game that if it has to create a new townie, keep it as a YA that has a 50% chance to be male or female.MC Command Center: Population_BypassCulling:true, this is the setting which will disable population culling, the game won't remove sims.Here are some other settings that you might want to use with this: "RelationshipCullingType": "E", this will have relationships getting culled (which the game does by default), which will help a lot in a save with lots of sims, otherwise you will end up with sims who have so many relationships that your save will get very long loading times.Population_MaximumHomeless": 0, the game won't create any homeless sims unless it has to. It will still create homeless sims but way less."Population_OpenHouses": 50, Set to a high number so the game will not fill any empty houses with sims."Population_PercentAdult": 0,"Population_PercentBaby": 0,"Population_PercentChild": 0,"Population_PercentElder": 0,"Population_PercentMale": 50,"Population_PercentToddler": 0,This basically tells the game that if it has to create a new townie, keep it as a YA that has a 50% chance to be male or female.

sharooonia · Answer

I have also disabled culling with MCCC and I use NPC Control to stop random townies from spawning. If this was to ever happen in my game I think it would completely put me off playing the game. I also like to play in one save and I am very attached to my sims.

simmerville · Answer

I play just one save, too, but I have not yet noticed any sim being culled. I have unlimited amount of sims though. I started with a limit of 200 (?), and now I have about 400 actively played sims. My experience is that the game performance was not very much affected by the population growth. But this might depend on whether the added population is in different worlds, because I do notice extreme lag in larger households and bigger builds. In smaller households everything works well, I might just need the game to load all aspects of the household/hood meaning it might be laggy for the first sim hour or so. I added tons of CC over the past couple years, and I blame most of my lagging on those, especially in periods when my hard drive gets filled up - doing a major clean up often helps a bit ;)

ncisgibbs_boss · Answer

"GrumpyGlowfish;d-995678" wrote:From the&nbsp;day I started playing TS4 in January 2017, I have only ever played one save. Aside from practical reasons (such as not wanting to renovate or replace the mediocre default public lots every single time), I simply don't find the idea of every family/household living in their own separate universe appealing. I prefer all of them living together in one big universe that I've been shaping over the course of those past years, with every world from Willow Creek to Henford-on-Bagley having its own theme that is reflected in its residents.But yesterday, something happened that I've been fearing for a long time, and I only noticed it by chance: One of my played sims got culled. Granted, she wasn't technically a played sim at the time, or at least not a member of the exclusive "favourites" club, which I have to manage carefully because I've already created more than 200 sims and can't keep them all in there at once. I don't want to increase the maximum sim count either because of potential performance issues (loading already takes forever as it is...), but until yesterday, I was convinced that sims who own a lot somewhere in the world weren't&nbsp;affected by culling either.I'm pretty sure that she was in fact culled, not lost in some other way, because when I checked her father's family tree, she wasn't there at all. Had she just died off-screen without me noticing, she would have shown up as a ghost at least. Fortunately, I had an older version of the save from a few days earlier where she still existed. Putting her in the library from there and&nbsp;moving her in again in the current save didn't take much time or effort. But now I'm worried about the rest of my sim world, currently consisting of 297 sims across 85 households.Has anyone else ever been in a situation like this, and when did it start becoming problematic? How did you break your world apart? And what else can I try to delay this move for as long as possible? I really don't want to do this, but don't want to lose my sims either... Seems like I'm going to lose either way, doesn't it? :sI have noticed this sort of thing as well. This is what I do.I regularly cull the unplayed/unfavourited townies to stop them reaching high numbers, which triggers the culling (not sure what the actual number is). I keep a census which is why I’ve had to reduce the number of save games from 6 to 2/3.I’ve noticed more townies since Cottage Living including Sims that look like Agnes Crumplebottom but have different names and don’t have a Garden Shop Owner tag. (Haven’t seen the other stall holders yet). I play rotational and make sure each house is visited once. Each save has two main households and rest under a general file.I.e. 1970 Goth, 1970 Pancakes, 1970 All.Mystery Sigworth, Mystery Plane Crash, Mystery All. Hope this helps you. ?

galacticgal · Answer

I guess what I've been doing lately, is playing one save. I start with my main family, add a few others to the mix (the designated spouses for my Cantrell kids and their families) but I stick mostly to the Cantrell household. I even attempted to play rotation style, once the kids graduate from Uni, but I made the mistake the first time by starting with my celebrity Sim's household. Couldn't pull myself away. The next restart, I started with his eldest brother and hit his siblings, leaving his as my last household. I ended up playing more than one Sim week, however. I can't seem to help myself. I'm far more interested in Erik's household than any of the others. I used to delay his getting married. He would end up living with his only sister and her hubby so I could build her family, while Erik continued his career. I may have to go back to that.

I haven't yet experienced any culling. But then again, I only have 24/200 Sims in my game. I have had untimely deaths, however. Which I managed to fix, rather than do a complete restart.

I wouldn't know how to fix your situation. But I do hope you're able to preserve your game save. It's hard to start again. And it never plays out quite the same way each time. Frustrating. It's completely frustrating. You have my deepest sympathies.

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I may have to start using different saves after all...

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