Mainly I play families with a lot of toddlers and kids. I have the same few families I've played for many years.
I let them age using MCCC but I have it set to something like 90 days as an newborn, 150 as infant, 350 as a tot, 550 as a child and same with teen and then 4000 for young adult and again for adult, so so far none of my sims are elders. I may stop them from becoming them, not sure yet.
I have all deaths turned off and use cheats to keep the families needs full at all times, or else it just feels like a grinding game to me. I don't care about bladder issues and sleep, that's boring to me. I want family time, holidays, making memories etc.
I do use a foster family mod to bring foster kids in when the households are full. Sometimes when older kids age up we'll adopt a foster child.
Nearly all my sims live in Sulani full time but not all.
My fav careers are detective and conservationist and writer, but I also have several sims become archaelogists and spend a lot of time in the jungle and I really enjoy having them own a store.
I turn occults all off except mermaids (but I've never played with them) and the only ones I've actually played with are plant sims which I rather enjoy haha.
When I sometimes take breaks from my main save it'll be to do a rags to riches, 100 baby, or strangerville mystery save... (I do like the challenges but after completing 100 baby once the next time I did it with a couple as the finding different dads for each kid was boring for me, I just wanted to raise the kids and this is how i normally do it now.... )
I am not a huge fan of building or CAS play but since I keep my sims for so long I do make sure that they have the perfect house/ and 5 outfits per category (sometimes switching it up when I feel they want a new wardrobe or depending on the stage of life). I usually download houses from the gallery but then I tweak them to fit the family.
I never play premades except one exception and I fill the world with sims I've created. (The one exception is Erwin from Strangerville, who now lives on Sulani in my save because after completing the strangerville mystery he heard rumours of the existance of mermaids and conspiracy theorist that he is he had to come check it out. He's never found any and he's now happily married to his childhood best friend and has 4 kids but he's still keeping his eyes open while he works as a life guard and one day I may let him discover one haha)