Mods and what to do without them?

My advice is to simply use all the features you have available to make each household and lot as interesting as possible. For my sims I make sure all of them, even the households I don't play or interact with, have appropriate relationships/sentiments, careers, skills/hobbies, clubs, weather preferences, reputation, fame, degrees, lifestyles, and character value traits. For all my lots, residential and community, I make sure each has a solid collection of activities, exclusive club hangouts, lot traits, NAP's, Eco Footprint, and appropriate utility sources. I also like to balance out the variety of lot types available throughout the worlds, my favourites being vacation lots, Community Spaces, Arts Centres, Cafes, Restaurants and Retail shops. I find when all these features are established throughout the entire game is when the best of the Sims 4's vanilla gameplay comes to life, seeing how all these elements bounce off and influence each other is always interesting, and at times, extremely chaotic.