I do have pretty much about 1500 sims in one save all using some CC of some sort so yeah that is probably the case with this LOL.
I do have other programmes running as well, I play the game through Steam, thats running the background as well as the EA App, Discord to chat with friends etc and Chrome running Twitch so I can watch streams on the other monitor, so they could all be factors.
At least I know I'm not the only one experiencing it, I do enjoy the game alot and I like to populate my saves with alot of sims whether they are played households or not, I'm quite addicted to CAS and I love making different and unique sims alot.
I guess it's something I'll probably have to put up with because of this play style, I might do a new save game with minimal sims next time and see how that runs 🙂
Discord is the one of the worst offenders that I found that affects the game if you use the app rather than the browser option. Try getting the game going before you start Discord and see if that makes a difference. The same holds true for any of the social media apps which keep a connection open to the internet. For some reason apps that keep an online connection seem to affect The Sims 4 much more than other games. Idk why, but it sure seems that way to me based on how my game performs.
And I play pretty much the way you do. Only about 500 played sims and I use CC too. I can see a significant difference in how the game performs when I start a new save. I like playing that way and just live with it. One thing I do that seems to help a lot with the lag is to turn autonomy off for my bigger households on big lots. Those are the ones where I see the most lag with autonomy on. You might want to consider doing that if you already haven't done it.
Hope this helps.
