How do you do it?

Do you used cleaned up version of Pleasantview, Strangetown, Veronaville, etc...or do you completely build your own neighbourhoods?

How many Sims do you start with?

I am currently frustrated with my Megahood because I am stuck in Bluewater Village (ugh.) with the Tinkers (UGH!).
This is why I want to start a new neighbourhood.

Usually I take one of Plasticbox's WONDERFUL neighbourhoods and play in them.
The neighbourhood gets populated by eight Sims, either four couples of eight singles.
If I start with four couples I won't generate townies, if I start with eight singles I will generate townies.

I also attach Downtown, Vacation hoods and Universities immediately.
The shopping district is usually building space for when the hood becomes too small.

________________________________________

Sorry for so many threads but I just love reading how others play their game :3

I usually just hop into one of the premade hoods that I haven't played in a while if ever when I get bored of an old neighborhood. I just started playing my second ever custom hood not too long ago though. It's a bit of a relief to only have one family to play with. I think after this rotation though. I'll make a sim for a challenge that I originally made up for... Nina, I think? The romancer of the twins. Hard drive crashed before I could finish it with her though. So it'll be fun to see if I can actually make it this time!

The version of my current custom ´hood started with 10 families, where each family consisted of two married adult sims. No toddlers, children or teens. So all my second generation sims are born in game. The Berg, Skoog, Lieb, Herz and Schneider families have been in my game for quite a long time now, and were all part of the previous version of my neighborhood. It felt natural to include them all when I recreated the ´hood. The other five families consisted of some old sims and some new. I kinda like to create sims in Body Shop so I had a whole lot of sims to chose from. I originally wanted to make just 8 families, but there was too many sims in my saved sims folder that I so much wanted to use, so I decided to go for 10 families instead. Since I normally only allow marrige between playables, and since I prefer not to create a new sim just for the purpose of marrying him/her to one of my already existing sims, it was actually pretty good to have 10 different core families. These families have now given me 32 born-in-game-sims, which means every single one of them can marry another playable sim. Just the way I like it!

EDIT: I also do enjoy playing the Maxis neighborhoods, and when I do I prefer to maximally merge two neighborhoods. Real Über-hoods are too overwhelming IMO.

Do what I did with the Tinkers.

Max out motives, freeze motives, get a homework hack and a bill paying hack (or not), and let the family run on a faster speed while you do something else. Like sleep.

I did that with my Tinkers, and Melody was abducted three times during her teen stage. That kind of pissed me off.

I hardly ever have played in one of the pre-made neighborhoods. I generally build my own neighborhoods, and start small with a handful of sims, and grow it. (Current neighborhood's population stats: 5 families, 22 people.)

I keep borking up my game and have started the same game over and over and over (and I've been playing since the game first came out). I'm currently playing two neighborhoods right now, Pleasantville and a neighborhood that I created, called Beginaggen. Pleasantville is clean and Beginaggen is empty. I don't pay close attention to the character files. I needed more townies in Pleasantville and so I created some. Many of them were used as templates for SimPE surgery on the Pleasantville characters (both playables and NPCs). I have the no townie regeneration hacks, so I don't really get a large number. I do occasionally have a playable marry one of the NPCs, so I'll allow one to age up when another playable has a birthay. I'm only beginning to get through the first generation, so we'll see how long it lasts this time around.

Beginaggen had two central characters that I downloaded and tweaked: The tutorial couple. I've made more townies again since my town was empty. So far, I'm in generation two. The first couple had twin girls. The girls have left home and each married a townie.

Before the last rebork, I was playing the Maxis neighborhoods and had a Medieval neighborhood going as well. I don't attach all subhoods to every hood. It depends on what's needed during game play.

I usually start with a single sim in a blank neighbourhood. Then I add some basic community lots like grocery store and a park or coffee shop. I add new sims whenever I get bored of the ones I'm playing.

My latest neighborhood is the cleaned up templates for the megahood.

For my normal custom hoods, I like to start at 1 person, and grow the neighborhood that way by having him marry townies and expanding that way. Then all of the businesses are funded by my sims.

If i'm not playing a maxis hood i'm trying with all my might to stay interested in one from scratch. Not much luck though. I tied out cleanand empty templates and neither suited me so i just stay with the normal templates. Though Stephsim's medieval kingdom templates are really really cute to do small towns with. That's what I'm currently doing. I'm mapping out all the community lots first then when those are done I'll start moving in sims. I think maybe doing it this way will give me enough of a town background in my head to have sims be where I want them to be story wise instead of just plopping them in and going in any direction.

After several dozen false starts, I'm playing a 'from scratch' hood, with randomly named, and personalized sims-16 families. There were no townies at all when I started it, and now I've got about 5 of them, plus the assorted strays.

They started out as 16 singles-8 men and 8 women. But now, in day 5, I've had 4 marriages, 5 births, 3 or 4 more babies to come in the next rotation-and I've added a new family. I only add a family when a house is empty by way of marriage or move-in. In order to keep the sex ratio balanced, when a new family is put in, I usually make it a brother and sister duo.

I don't want to add any more houses than this amount, because it doesn't overwhelm my play style. I'm also keeping more or less detailed notes on what went on in that family for that day.

I've had to train myself to keep to the strict rotation, house by house, and not deviate at all. If it's Thursday, every house stays on Thursday until I get through that day, then move on to the next day, starting from the first to the last family.

I've also discovered that when a house is totally empty, the next family to move in will be numbered as that house. Very useful information to know.

But I've enjoyed this one more than I thought I would, because by paying attention to one house at a time, I've gotten to "know" these pixels, and they all have different personalities than I imagined they would, and more depth that they started out with.

For instance, the minister's wife is a total crazy lady who wants to kill her ex-lovers because they dared to get involved with someone else-so she's growing a cow plant to get rid of them. I'm sure that her husband (clueless in all of this) would be horrified if he knew that he married a would-be serial killer. She only looks nice.

The Tinkers have obviously had fertility issues--family sims with only one child--and clearly need to adopt or foster children. Melody is an easy sim for me in personality, while her parents are difficult. I let them adopt, take in animals, and generally expect too much of Melody. The whole toy shop thing? Nope. I'm highly prejudiced against most lazy sims when it comes to business ownership. Crafting benches tank motives too fast if the sim doesn't have the right personality. Stephan writes children's books and Wanda nurtures their adopted brood. I also flag DJ Verse, of LFT, as Wanda's niece.
Now, unlike me, you may find that the cure for boring is not add sims.

Often, when I start a new neighborhood, it's for a multi-generation challenge. Now is a great time to start an Apocalypse, if you're in the northern hemisphere, as what could be better than eternal winter? Also, the thread is very active and full of good advice.

Since I was able to manage to install empty templates, I have always played with a self-created empty 'hood. If I'm not playing a challenge (or the challenge doesn't require me to start with a completely empty 'hood like a Build A City challenge) I build houses and community lots and do a bit of decorating before I move sims in. When I populate, I usually do it Prosperity style and 'roll' for a random number of families and a random number of sims in each family -- mangaroo's Sims Randomiser is very handy in this, especially as the safe version guarantees no family with a child as the eldest member. I add on the default Downtown area and a blank area for university, although as I've now got a semi-complete uni template I'm likely to add that in instead.

A good example for me is Adamswater Ridge and its founding families: Feverstein, Leighton, Bulger, Meeker, Yard, and Tabarez.

The exception to these rules is my (almost) fully-custom 'hood, Cresdale. It's made up of the main 'hood, Cresdale, the farming community Danport, Danport University, the beachside Hillside Bay, and downtown Springvale (no pictures of the last two because they're still in progress). I also started with eight random university students to start populating my game, but I'll be adding more sims/families in later when I've got the timelines right (this is also a 'hood I plan do write stories about).

Well, I only stick with one neighborhood, and that River's Pleasantview. I added two universities, a downtown, three shopping districts (Bluewater, Riverblossom Hills and Desiderata Valley) and vacation destinations (all of them).

I have my legacy family, but I did change the neighborhood's background story. Mary-Sue divorced Daniel after catching him in bed with the maid, and Daniel now lives with his sister Jennifer Burb in Downtown. Lilith and Angela are enemies, but are 'school queens', and they have to be pretty dressed and stuff... anyway, they're soon off to college. Also, Mary-Sue's parents live with them (the Oldies).

Dirk broke up with Lilith and Darren is not in love with Cassandra, so Darleen may now rest in peace. But they're still broke, and are living off Darren's art creations. Dirk still doesn't know if he's gonna enter college or not.

Cassandra broke up with Don after he got Dina pregnant (accidentaly, of course ). Bella is back, and I aged her to elder. I also set her up in SimPE that she had a job as a Pleasantview's major. :lovestruc Alex is a teen, who'll soon be entering college. And Cassandra is still recovering from the break up.

Daniel Pleasant said to his sister that he'll leave their house ASAP, just when he finds a stable job and stuff - but the kid and her father realized, that he had the job the whole time! So therefore, Daniel's a f***** up person, who's using his younger sister and her family to pay his bills and food. D*ck. (I think I went too far with him, heh.)

Don got Dina pregnant, and Nina caught them having woohoo. Nina moved out, and Don still loves Kalylin (like a backup plan or something). He isn't quite himself, so therefore he isn't even CLOSE to thinking he'll move in with Dina.

Dina is very suspicious, and most of the disasters in Pleasantview come straight to her bill. Neighbors are even thinking, that she's the reason Don and Cassandra broke up (she's invisibly pregnant). It's yet unknown who is the one who caused suspicious deaths around the hood, although they're aiming at Dina, too.

Brandi finally got hired. Dustin isn't acting out, I've set their story that they've been robbed, and therefore that's how they know Gordon (the burglar). Dustin's soon moving out to college, he did have his first kiss with Angela, Beau is a kid and Brandi is about to give birth when I re-enter the household.

Huh... what else... Oh yes! Nina is dating Malcolm Landgraab, as EA wanted.

I have yet to decide what to do with Riverblossom Hills and Desiderata Valley story.

---

I have renamed Sim State University to North State University; Academie Lé Tour to South State University; Downtown to Miami Hills; Bluewater Village to Sunset Valley; Riverblossom Hills to Riverside; Desiderata Valley to South Falls... and I'm planning on creating a downtown called Bridgeport and a shopping district called ... I have that written down, I just can't remember it at the moment.

I like playing with new neighbourhoods, completely new, and building them up from dingy settlements into thriving towns, so to speak. The neighbourhood that I'm currently playing (Tailor Bay) is, however, a cleaned-up version of Pleasantview. When I start off my neighbourhoods I usually like to populate them with only two or three families, each consisting of a male and female (i.e. 2 or 3 households with 2 sims in each). That way I can open up the gene pool without my hood getting overpopulated too quickly. If I'm feeling spontaneous (which is hardly ever) I roll a dice to determine how many families I want, but I usually go back on my word.

I only play the cleaned up versions of the pre-mades now, mainly my mega hood.

But at the moment im playing in Heather Hills which is home to my Legacy and other challanges, im currently attempting a Asylum challange, its harder than i thought!!

I got bored of the pre-made hoods pretty fast, so I tend to create my own. I've got a legacy neighbourhood which is now on the 4th generation, but at the moment I'm taking a break from it.

In the meantime, I decided to create a brand new one and build it from scratch with nothing but my own creations. I started out with a family of 5 (mom, dad, 1 child,one toddler and a dog!), two single women, two single men and 4 townies (I use the notownieregen, so I have to create them). These singles then married each other or some of the townies and gave birth to new sims, who are still children.

As the child of my first family has now grown into a teen, I've created a university and 4 college students as well.

As far as business goes, I want my hood to be self-sufficient, so here's what I did:

- that first family of 5 are farmers who grow vegetables, go fishing and breed chickens and cows (Rebecah's Farm Animals ) and then sell the produce to the owner of the local supermarket. When my sims need food, they go to the supermarket and buy that produce at a higher price;

- I also built a boutique which is owned by another sim. She makes the clothes that she sells and hired the wife of the first family to sew for her;

- there's also a beach as a community lot, which belongs to the village and is free of charge. I'm still in the process of building other community lots, which will, of course, be owned by my playable sims.

Finally, I have also built a tropical holiday destination which has a hotel, a beach with the pirate's ship, the secret lot and some ruins, all built by myself too. I created all my locals and tourists.

Progress is slow when you play like this, but it is more challenging for me as well, so I'm having a lot of fun!

When I first got Sims 2 (years ago) I didn't even touch the premade neighborhoods I simply went straight to making a custom hood (or 12 lol) I start with at least 4 families whom I usually know what is going to happen to them. As they have kids and the kids grow to become teenagers I usually add one or two new couples. A really good way to populate a neighborhood with new sims is to do the teen boarding school challenge its kinda long but so worth it.

I just used the Belladonna Cove map to make my own town called "Lakeview Hills"
I created the Universities, Vacation Destinations, Downtown, and used Moon Islands terrain to make the shopping district, "Lakeview Island"
Currently I am building the businesses in Lakeview Island. (I just made this town)
Then I will move on to other community lots in Sim State U, Downtown, all Vacation Destinations, and Lakeview Hills.

I am unsure of how I will make families so far...

For me, I started with one neighborhood, and one small family. This family is the mayor of the hood, and as time passes I'd build university, downtown, and other craps. Then, the family grows and then finally my hood is overpopulated. :D
Oh, I use the Sedona map, because it's plainly awesome for me.

I never play the pre-made neighborhoods or their resident pre-made Sims. They're all long-deleted in my game. All of my neighborhoods are custom ones made from scratch by yours truly. So, if I'm not playing any particular challenge that has various requirements, my "normal" way of playing goes something like this:

1) I pick a neighborhood template. I have many custom neighborhood templates that I've downloaded over the years (Kudos to all the creators who make them! ), and I tend to choose one that has the ability to accommodate many beach lots because I like 'em.

2) I attach three vacation destinations and two Universities. (According to my rules, one is fairly easy to get into, the kind that, in the real world, would accept you so long as you can write your name. The other is far more demanding, like a real-world Harvard.) I let the game create all the tourists, townies, and NPCs that it wants to create. The more the merrier, in my book. I use ACR to randomize sexual preferences for the townies/NPCs/tourists.

3) I create five single male Sims. (Because I pass down the male surnames in my game, and since I play neighborhoods very long-term, I like to see how long the original surnames last.). The five starters can be teens, YAs, or adults. (Well, actually, I create those who will be teens or YAs as adults and then age them down when I get them into the game. That avoids having to create and immediate kill parents for them.) Their starting lifestage is determined by a (virtual) die roll, as is just about everything about them, from the letters their first and last names will begin with,to their aspiration, to their skin/hair/eye colors, to their personality and turn-on/turn-offs, to their sexual orientation, to how many skill points they'll have in each category to start, to whether or not they will marry and how many kids they want, to what age they begin their functional lives. (Whatever number the virtual die rolls is the number of days I lop off their starting lifestage. Unless they start as a YA, of course.) I like random, I does.

4) I set them loose in the neighborhood (or at one of the universities). Those who will marry get a random spouse of their chosen gender randomly chosen from gender-separated lists of all the townies/NPCs/tourists that are safe to marry so that I don't have to spend time finding their "perfect mate." Drama, which I like, happens often due to the randomness, especially when straight marries gay and/or with negative-chemistry couples. (Unless they're a YA, in which case if they will marry, they're allowed to find a fellow student of the appropriate gender that they actually like. Lucky for them...or not, if I end up finding their perfect lovey-doveyness boring.) From there, I follow their daily wants, with some input from their LTW. So, essentially, my pixels tell me what they want, and I attempt to make it happen, no matter how crazy it gets. And, in fact, the crazier the better, in my book. My favorite Sims/families tend to be the nuttier ones.

I (STILL!) am trying to make the process to "create clean hoods" work; it doesn't sound all that hard. I think it is only supposed to let you CREATE a new hood - without the people in the bin, or any townies. Since I have replacement default face templates, and names, I then wanted to batch generate new townies. Alas, after many tries, I still haven't made it work; and I just HATE the swarms of ugly townies with stupid names!

Since I have a hack for huge households (couldn't play without it!), I put ALL the Maxis people (in a few hoods) - from houses & the bin - in ONE house. If they hate each other, I encourage murder; if they love each other, I let them marry. If they love EVERYBODY - well, the resulting offspring are an interesting mix.

Well, you need templates that are EMPTY, not just clean, for it to work with no townies.

Ideas that have tempted me:
An Alien Zoo custom neighborhood, with Maxis townies and sims only created to a theme.
Island Refugia, a BACC in an empty neighborhood.
Several ways of playing Strangetown.
An empty hood to which I attach all three colleges, then delete everything except Academy La Tour, so the college premades graduate and found a town with an economy based around the Academy (I keep thinking of different names for these, most of them only funny to me)
A megahood with everything - all three colleges, shopping district, everything, including the Tricou bastards. (I'd never live long enough to play it.)
Recreating the Sims1 neighborhood, including Old Town, Magic Town, and Downtown - Studiotown, too, if I could figure out how - and playing it with a mix of my versions of the original sims, the family bin families, and my CAS sims.

What I've done:
Drama Acres - a custom neighborhood built before I'd downloaded any CC or even heard of clean or empty templates, with Sim State, all the vacation hoods, downtown, and an option of a shopping district when I need it, using a mix of Student Bin, CAS, Family Bin, and townies and building from an elaborate backstory. I expected, when I built it, that this would be an experimental hood, but the characters are so engaging I don't need anything else.
Although I have, out of a sense of obligation to Vidcund (who I accidentally killed while pregnant long ago) also gotten into playing a sideline, marginally-tidied-up, Strangetown, into which I'm not allowed to bring any new CAS sims, but in which I can play my Family Bin sims differently than I do them in Drama Acres, and to which I can bring clones of Drama Acres sims when I need new students or adoption toddlers.

I like to mix and match. I'll have a Strangetown and/or a Pleasantview. Whichever one I use, I reset it every few years because I tend to screw up neighborhoods ... somehow ... and I get a little bored with them by then. My Pleasantview is due for a reset this year.

During the last reset of Pleasantview, I had no idea about fixed templates. I will use one this time. I don't mind EA's townies, and am admittedly too lazy to create my own, so I don't use the empty templates. (BTW, I use the alternate term "fixed", rather than "clean" because I've noticed that some people use the terms clean v. empty or clean v. fixed, and I get too easily confused re the "clean" part!)

Veronaville is out of the picture, in any case. I never could warm up to the neighborhood or the premise. (Not a huge Romeo and Juliet fan, though I do like Shakespeare.) I fill out my neighborhood roster with custom templates (this is also an attempt to lighten up on all the character files EA likes to put in its premades.) I keep all main hoods in my game to a limit of four to five, which also includes Riverblossom and one skimpy test hood (usually one with just a base hood, or one that has no more than one subhood.) The latter hood rotates out frequently. I don't have a particular attraction to it ... it's my "dump" hood where I try out new houses, mods, build mode items, terrains (particularly terrains), skintones once they've left CAS, etc. (Though usually, I've thoroughly tested out skintones in CAS by then, so it's extremely rare that I dislike them once they've gone into my test hood. Years of playing and stupid mistakes have improved that, at least.) I don't have any EPs above Seasons, so I don't have Belladonna, etc.

My preference with sub-neighborhoods is to have at least one custom one. Often, it's two. I usually have at least ONE premade one. Yup ... lazy again! And really, EA DOES tend to put a LOT of extras into their sub-neighborhoods as well. Usually, the premade sub-neighborhood is the Downtown or the University, though recently, I've had a lot of fun making my own Unis, and have packaged my better lot efforts. In the test hood ... always a custom, if I put one in. The poor machine probably complains enough with the size of my Sims folder! I never enitrely warmed up to Bluewater, either, for some reason, though occasionally, I'll toss it in a neighborhood. I usually add shopping neighborhoods only when things get too cluttered in my base and Downtown neighborhoods. Frequently, I don't add one at all.

I try to limit my founding singles and families, but usually fail at that. I do taper off the new Sims at one point. It varies as to how many singles or families, or at what point I taper off. Once I've put in my starting families, I try to limit user-made Sims or their progeny (including adopted kids) to no more than two a week.I use all the no-regen mods, though sometimes will "force" a new NPC because some of those playable NPCs are pretty cute, thanks to newer default templates!

Recently, I've been enjoying geneticized and townified skins, so after testing a small group of them thoroughly in CAS (much more thoroughly than customs), I mix and match with the townies and my other founding family Sims, just to see how it all works out. I confess that many of my Sims can be regular bunny rabbits. Some of 'em pop out some pretty adorable or interesting offspring.

Since the loss of my Pirri Beach neighbourhood I have started over many times...but not one of these neighbourhoods has really managed to keep me interested. So at the moment I'm starting over again...

I'll have three founding families. They're elders with adult children (1 or 2 kids per family). Their ages vary a bit so they won't die in batches again. After the first few rotations I plan on adding two more families, so I don't run out of marriable (is that a word?) sims too soon.
At the moment I'm building the founder's homes and there's one community lot that's not finished yet. I won't add colleges or anything else until they're needed because I really hope this neighbourhood will grow on me and kind of grow organically like PB. *shrugs*

I'm using empty templates and whenever I feel like it cleaned up versions of the premade hoods.

Thanks for all the posts everyone!

Right now I am setting up Phaenoh's West Weasels and I am using some randomisers to determine the number of families and their size, I use the generator from the fates challenge and Phaenoh's Random Family Generator.

This is so interesting. The Sims only exist in a Text file and already have a story! :D