Hiya, this is a 12:30am posted from my phone sort of post but I didn't want to get out of bed to go turn my laptop back on, and I wanted to post this now so that maybe someone will have some advice for me by morning so I can decide what to do.

I was looking through the pictures threads on here again and it made me want to add Riverblosom Hills, Desiderata Valley, and maybe even Belladonna Cove to my megahood because I totally don't already have more families than I can handle

But I thought, if I do, I would leave their ages alone so I can actually enjoy playing their whole lives out.
When I added Strangetown, Veronaville, and most recently Bluewater Village, I cheated everybody's ages to match their most closely aged Pleasantview counterparts (I think Buck Grunt is meant to be like a day older than Lucy, a lot of the adults are the same age as Dina & Nina etc).
But this meant that a good chunk of the adults are nearly elders and still single and done nothing with their lives.

Then I thought, I'll just set their ages all back. But then I remembered that Mercutio Monty just woohoo'd Jessie Pilferson tonight and if I put him back as a teen that would be weird.

Which led me to my thought process of maybe I should just start the entire megahood over. Since I know now I enjoy the premades, and that I can handle a megahood, I'd just add everybody at the start this time. Wouldn't need to mess with any ages. Would actually get to send the strangetown and veronaville teens to college instead of cheating them to adults and cheat degrees.

But the things that are stopping me is all of my already born kids that I would lose and might not be able to recreate the same scenario to get them back if one of their parents are a townie. As well as everybody's gender preferences would be rerandomized so a handful of couples would be different for sure. As well as them all having different turn ons/offs. I could cheat ltws and stuff to what I have written down for them. But I don't have the patience to write down eeeeeeevery detail about my sims like turn ons, interests, things like that. Or do interests stay the same?

I feel like I am leaning towards starting over because it's stuck in my head now and I'm one of those people that gets something in their head and can't get it out and has to do it
But that's also exactly why I wanted to post about it and get other opinions before I just go for it.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

You don't have to delete your old game just because you want to start with a newer game.I'm also starting over with a new town and will keep my BACC still going even though there's a new game starting out.It's going to start out as a colonial settlement with the first couple to arrive having arrived in the spring of 1600 and setlling into their new lives as colonial setlers.I would start my town out small with just one couple and start to add more to it and let it grow itselt as I play it like my BACC with a gradual growth because it holds the interest longer and I'll likley need ACR to disable the sims acting in ways I don;t want them to when the population is getting bigger.

If you have the room, you can create a new Sims 2 folder, (rename the one you're using now to something simple, like "Sims 2 Current hood") and put in whatever you want for CC (I just copy the entire CC over) and it will generate an new game that you can add new NH's into.

That's how I'm doing a beta test for a mod right now. I didn't dare put my favorite hood into it, so I copied over the entire game, and put in a hood I'd not played in order to keep my favorite from getting messed up from the mod, if that were to happen. Because I have empty templates, I could do it without generating any Maxis NH's.

I like Fran's idea. Then you don't get to lose any of the storytelling you already have.

I either create a new Sims 2 folder,copy my folder and create a new town from one of the empty templates or just add another town into my current folder.I can actually run on one of my two user accounts on my computer which means two TS2 folders can be active at one time.We're all suggesting much the same idea which is that you keep your other game safe which is what I'll do for ACR while I learn how to set it up and customize it for how I want it running things.

Yeah, like others have mentioned, you don't have to completely scrap your current game. Just back it up, place it somewhere safe, and generate a new 'The Sims 2' folder. That way, you can start your new game and then, if you feel like, you can return to your original game.

I do similar to @TadOlson , I have several copies of the Sims 2 folder in my Documents/ EA Games folder, I swap them in and out according to what I'm playing. Currently I'm playing LacunaD, so the 'The Sims 2' folder contains all of the CC, modifications and hood files for that game.

The Farprork one is a vanilla setup that I am using whilst I am building a basegame neighbourhood- I am actually building that using the AGS but this folder exists so that I can playtest it in a vanilla EP environment. The drawback of having folders like this is that you need a lot of hard drive space- my Lacuna D folder is 10GB and the Alien one is 8GB (it uses spaceage CC, lots of mods that I wouldn't normally need and a bunch of texture replacements to make the sky and terrain look alien). Plus, each game configuration necessitates a different set of gamedata (the game installation files) too. For example, I use a lighting mod in one game that would look awful in another, clothes recategorisers in another that I don't want in all games; one game has about 20 custom stairs and another has none, some have empty templates and others don't... it's easier to do it this way!

I also like to keep an untouched set of install files there so that I can retrieve a copy of any file I need easily, you can see that I have a backup of the Sims 1 (Maxis) folder there and also Sims 3 (in the Electronic Arts Folders). Don't worry, I use batch files and powershell scripts to move things around, backup, delete caches, run different processor affinities etc, so it's not all tedious.

Thanks for the replies!

For sure I wouldn't just outright delete my current one, but I'd stick it on the backup drive named like "Old Megahood" or something and probably never touch it but just keep it for the memories.
But I know I wouldn't be able to play both. I'd find it too weird to have two ongoing copies of the premade sims.

I'm exhausted today because instead of sleeping I just kept laying there thinking about all my new plans, and the longer I did that the more excited about restarting I got. Seems like I've got a busy day ahead of me!

Save your current hood for sure.

Isn't a loved aspect of the premades how differently you can play them and always go back to the same characters? Having different offspring, couples, and gender preferences will give you a whole new version of the same premade towns you love.

@Simsample -I would also make use of 7zip to make compressed versions of my folders and just keep those if it's just a back up copy and I just copy or move the contents out of mine to it's holding folder and replace it with the conetns from the folder I want to make active.I also play UC so I have all EPs and SPs in my game.
I've got a few TS2 folders to compress on my other computer user account soon since I've got two of those I often use.