I have so many custom hoods - some with no townies. I thought I had (years ago) done misc things to stop townie generation; do see "antiredundancy" in download but know that doesn't stop the basic generation of townies. I know I used to be able to create new hoods that did not generate all those townies, but don't remember. Help?

You have to hide the Pleasantview townies, if you don't want Goopy etc in all your hoods.

If you don't want the initial townies there, you have to install empty templates. The antiredundancy hacks will then stop new ones from generating.

Also, antiredundancy only stops service NPCs from making extras.

For townies you need notownieregen, dormies - nodormieregen, animals - nostrayrespawn and secret society members - nossrespawn.

And you need empty templates (or to rename the stealth hoods; personally that seems easier to me; then if you decide you want one of the stealth hoods for a particular neighborhood you can just change the name back for one load) for the base game, Pets, Seasons, University, etc. - all of it. It's really easy to overlook one, so best to open the templates for each EP in your program files and think about each one, do you want them or not?

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Thought I had already taken care of that, but since all the hoods I'm playing now are custom downloads (with no townies) I don't remember what I did. Will do the research to find the stealth hoods.

Here:
https://modthesims.info/d/520751/cl...-templates.html
https://modthesims.info/d/615468/cl...-templates.html

You can install no-townie versions (custom) of the empty templates alongside cleaned versions that have the original/cleaned-up sims, though.

I installed the empty stealth, all except for V001 (because I don't play vacation hoods). Made a new hood...there's townies! Maybe somehow because I didn't include V001? I'll try that too.

I found that I had changed the "neighborhoodTemplate", I ADDED to name "-stealth" -- a prior attempt to disable those stealth hoods.

But now (with 5 new "empty" stealth hoods all installed) I see a Characters file -- isn't this wrong, because those characters ARE THE TOWNIES?!

They are probably the vacation townies, in that case. I believe those are created whenever you start a hood, unless there is a disabled template.

So vacation townies show up in the main hood..even if you don't have a vacation hood? And there are over 30 of them...

Years ago I solved this problem (getting rid of townies in newly created, non-Maxis hoods)..but I don't remember what I did. except I DID change the name of the stealth hoods (added "-bac"). And pretty sure I also later used the EMPTY stealth hoods. Confounded that I am still getting townies...

They don't spawn on lots unless you have the visitor controller or something similar specifically allowing it, if that's what you mean. There are also character files for NPCs, which are necessary for the game to function.

I created a new hood and only Bon Voyage showed as being created, but testing a lot I found 45 townies had been created -& I didn't count ones that sounded like the special NPCs. This was via the gnome thingy. I didn't disallow any special non-playables.

There are plenty of non-special NPCs that are required for the neighborhood to function.

BV is suppose to make 48 townies.

Joandsarah77: thanks. So I guess I had managed to stop townies for all but BonVoyage (which I didn't "fix") so the 48 townies was correct..although I am surprised at that large number.

So now I have changed the name to NeighborhoodTemplate-stealth, for the 5 stealth hoods.

Result was a LOT of characters, and 5 children (which I don't remember getting before). I am still surprised at the number of walk-by Sims. And my Downloads file is being odd; lots of clothes and other stuff (animals) now appear - I remember getting them but haven't seen them for years. And when I try to adopt: asking for a child gets me a toddler, asking for a teen (a mod) gets me a child..guess I can't get a baby.

Also: inside the BonVoyage folder has NO vacation hood (A001,M001,T001). I don't really mind, I don't play them anymore. If I wanted to I would rather make my own (I've done it before, but don't remember how).

So for my original problem..I don't think I've solved it.

You only get babies to adopt if you have townies as the game uses them to create the baby.

Every EP added a large number, which is probably why so many of us choose to play without them. I think Maxon did a look through and posted somewhere the number with each EP.
The thing with BV is if your sims go away on holidays/vacation with zero townies there will be no locals or tourists there at all. Being at an empty hotel felt rather weird.
I disliked that as much as I disliked the 48 so I had to make some and making those type of townies wasn't quite as simple. No issue if you never use it though.

I did not know that!
But I DO still have townies...

The changing of the NeighborhoodTemplate name is the easiest method. I'm not sure why it isn't working for you. I have my Template folders labeled, "NO_NeighborhoodTemplate" because I'm too lazy to type out "stealth". "NO_" is also easy to delete, when I want to reactivate the templates.

Do you have the Base game NeighborhoodTemplate folders name changed as well?

In the Sims2/neighborhood template is only one png file

This is what I do:


And my Basegame folder looks like this:

Pretty much what I did in all the 5 stealth hoods (neighborhoodtemplate_stealth). But didn't do the Sims2 neighborhood renameing because it only has the one PICTURE - have no idea what I did to cause that.

Have you perhaps got a -second- basegame folder hiding somewhere? Seems very strange.

That is fine. The basegame hoods should be in "The Sims 2/TSData/Res/UserData/Neighborhoods". To prevent Base game townies from spawning, rename the "N001" folder.

In order to stop townies from spawning you have to do all of the following before creating the hood:

Before creating the hood:
- Disable or replace Pleasantview template with a no-townies one
- Disable or replace the stealth hood templates with empty ones. SEE NOTE 1
- Add "notownieregen" mod to prevent townies spawning
- Add some kind of mod which prevents apartment life social townies from spawning SEE NOTE 2
- Add "nostrayrespawn" mod to prevent strays spawning. Note that one stray of each species and gender is required for baby adoptable pets to spawn.

Dormies and Vacation locals/Tourists will only spawn if you add a university or vacation destination, so you will need the appropriate hacks for those if you want to prevent those too.

Also optional but recommended:

- Antiredundancy (creates only one NPC of each type rather than 3. May prevent NPCs being created until they are actually needed).
- Cyjon's There Can Only Be One - this creates one university professor per subject of a random sex, rather than one of each sex.

Note that it is normal game behaviour to get some characters spawning because these are NPCs which exist in every hood. Check in SimPE. But for me the culprit was the apartment life social group townies. You can tell if your files are these because there will be exactly 50 of them added at the same time and they have the Social Group family instance, which you can check in SimPE.

NOTE 1: I find it preferable to replace the templates with empty ones as this acts as a kind of "inoculation" against accidentally loading your hood in an environment without disabled stealth hoods. Disabling them may be neater if you are extremely disciplined about avoiding this and/or if you need it to be free of them e.g. because you want to create a custom hood for sharing.

NOTE 2: Since AL social townies exist primarily to be the occupants of vacant apartments, you have four options for this.

- Vacant apartments are occupied by townies (Cyjon's Townie Apartment Neighbors) SUPPRESSES SPAWNING. >>> However, this one does cause normal townies to be generated in order to fill vacant apartments.
- Vacant apartments stay vacant (on MTS but I forget the creator - called something like No Apartment Neighbors) SUPPRESSES SPAWNING.
- Vacant apartments are filled by "safe" NPCs (e.g. Pizza deliveryperson, Bartender) or townies or AL social townies (NPC Apartment Neighbors by MidgeTheTree) DOES NOT SUPPRESS SPAWNING.
- A standalone mod to prevent social townie spawning, again on MTS, fairly recent. This does NOT change behaviour of who fills vacant apartments - without another mod, vacant apartments are filled with social townies if they exist and if they do not exist, then they remain vacant.

Lastly, if you use some combination of mods which allows sims to be spawned to fill vacant apartments, you will probably want Nopke's gender fix because the game tries to balance the gender of apartment neighbours but it grabs the wrong info, so its attempt to balance does not in fact make things any more balanced and what happens is it just means all your apartment neighbours end up whichever sex it thinks it needed more of in the first place, forever.