What should my next pack be? Get to work, City Living or Cats and Dogs?

With your preference for playing just one family, I ruled out Get To Work.

I like the pack, but when you play a sim with an "active career" you need to follow that sim to work, which means all the other sims in your household are out there on auto-pilot the entire time just one sim is working and the active career jobs from the pack have more work hours than base game careers on top of that. I've found that this makes active careers rather unsuitable for sims who are raising a family.
You do have the option to just send them to work, like a normal rabbit hole job, every day though. But that rather defeats the purpose of the pack in the first place.

So, now that I've clarified why I ruled out Get to Work, I voted City Living because it just adds 'more' to the game when it comes to what you said you enjoy, plus having apartments and penthouses for your sims to live in is freaking awesome.
All the additional homes (apartments) is also a lot of fun for the aspect of "micromanaging the community" which you mentioned. It gives you places for sim households that don't really make a lot of sense owning a house. Households which are all friends-as-roommates, for example, make much more sense in an apartment than a house (at least to me).

All that said, all 3 choices are solid packs as far as I'm concerned, so you wouldn't go wrong no matter which you pick.

Brindleton bay is a lovely world. There are some premades there that are tailored to family play plus some vacant lots to move more in. It is quite a realistic world and the storylines will be too. Pets are part of any good family I think. I enjoyed playing the vet career. The homes there could do with some redecoration and I like the coastal theme to thre furniture. You get a woohoo spot with the lighthouse and plenty of dog walking territory to explore.

City living would also suit your style of play. Many apartments and families to rotate through. Apartments can be decorated anfd interior walls changed but no building your own. There are a few commercial lots to build on. The festivals are fun and expand game play.

Get to work adds the alien occults. Game play is less realistic in the science career but the hospital and police career are realistic if buggy. No residential world or premades to play with but you do get a 4 lot commercial world with the ability to run a retail store (but it isnt the most fun experience).

Thank you both @Stormkeep and @Becka28 for your extensive answers. That really was the kind of help I was hoping for. From the sound of it I will rule out Get to work now (unfortunate as I would really like to have retail stores - to visit mostly though). Right now I'm leaning towards City Living. All those flats to decorate and stuff NPCs in sounds fairly fun, and the playstyle seems to fit mine. I will think about it some more before deciding, but again, thank you for your help.

@JAL, where retail lots really shine is if you play rotationally, because you can have all of your played households buy things that only one household has the ability to get.

In my game I have one where a sim with 10 handiness upgraded all of the plumbing, appliance and electronic items available in BB, and then put them in a big store for sale. That way all of my other played households can buy these things with upgrades rather than need to ever worry about raising handiness. I have another store that sells all of the RoM potions plus herbalist elixirs plus scientist serums. Again, so all of my played households can buy those things. I do the same for all the woodworking stuff, all the candlemaking, all of the fabricating, etc. etc.

But you only play one household, so the benefit for you is non-existent. It would just be role-play style flavor to be able to go shopping at a real store. I'm not against role-play style flavor at all, but it just isn't worth buying the pack just for that one aspect, at least imo.

City Living is one of the best packs, by far. Love the city events, cultural food, neighborhoods, Sims, apartment variety & jaw dropping views.

But I recommend Brindleton Bay (Cats/Dogs) which is the perfect neighborhood for family gameplay. The BB is a great enhancement for farmhouse, colonial & cottage style homes. The pets have really nice interactions with sims & look really good in the households.

Additionally, I suggest getting Get Together if you don't have already. Windenburg is gorgeous, with the most lots & a lot of sims including 4 families.

@JunkyPoem Thank you for the tip on Get Together. I do have it, and I love it, especially the club features. I find that without it some aspects of play just seems lacking. Windenburg is really nice, and I love the amount of lots, but have yet to live there so I don't know if I love the vibe yet. I do love some of the lots though.

Brindleton Bay sounds lovely as well, but also a lot like the other small suburbian towns we have so many of, so I think maybe City Living just for the variation it ads. But who knows, I might get both eventually :smile:

@Stormkeep I agree with you that buying a full pack for only one feature isn't worth doing, so I probably won't get it. But I wish there were retail lots (to visit not necessarily own) in more than that one pack. It would fit great in something like City Living. I'd happily take more rabbit hole shops à la Tartosa, I just want to take my sim to a store every now and again LOL

I like family gameplay too. I picked Cats and Dogs, because I think the world is really pretty. I like to place families in Brindleton Bay. The Build Buy stuff is nice to decorate a family home too. The toddler animations with pet cats and dogs are really cute too.

I love City Living just as much though, so taking a family to a festival there is fun. Also, having a family live together in a small apartment is fun to play with as well.

I think you will like either of those packs for family gameplay. :smile:

went with city cause not only is it fun for whole family its also one of most fun worlds to decorate and build in

well in my opinion anyway

get to work world is tiny and brindleton has bit of "eh i could have kinda built this in willow creek tho" vibe even if i use things from the pack literally all the time

like idk it just feels so basegamey to me same as get to work maybe cause i can't remember what i played with before those packs existed and ive had them for ages

also maybe just biased cause i remember fondly having family with trillion toddlers in one of those penthouses when they added toddlers in game

City Living for me too. It has been top to bottom my favorite pack so far. You are limited as to how much real building you can do, but there is so much you can do redecorating the apartments. The penthouses do allow for a lot of building opportunities even if there aren't that many penthouse lots versus regular lots in other worlds. I have on several occasions bulldozed a penthouse and built my own...or tried to at least. The penthouse lots really are just regular house lots, you can add landscaping if you like, you can go all building. All sorts of options.

And there is no shortage of things to do to get sims out of the house. Festivals, bad karaoke nights every night, and the food stalls.

Cats and Dogs was a really close second. I'd love to see more cape cod houses and colonials too. In the end though I'm just a sucker for San My and City Living.

City Living has a lot of great build/buy that I use all the time.

If you like realistic family play then the events that come with City Living-- neighbor noise, mice and other events from the TLC lot challenge, festivals-- will be fun jumping-off points for you. You can also just wander the city and talk to repair people or people in raccoon suits. The Spice District and the neighborhood around Myshuno Meadows are great places for kids to play. And Myshuno Meadows is the best pre-built wedding/party venue.