Occassionally, story progression seems to stall and the town can become pretty empty. I've noticed this a lot in Sunset Valley. I've no idea if other town can become sparsely populated as I rarely play others. In my recent Baby Boomer challenge file, the town was almost deserted by the end of the forth week and I had to use a little, legal, trick to get romanitic interests for each of my teenagers.
If you are not playing a challenge file the solution to the empty town is fairly easy. Save your game and start a new game in another town. Go straight to edit town and move the families you like the look of to the clipboard then save them to the bin. Leave the game, don't bother to save, and return to your game. You can then place these families into houses in your town.
Another trick (non challenge games only), if you want a few more children is to start a new, temporary game, turn cheats on and then pick on a couple you want to have children. Play that household, use the cheat to get enough points to buy fertility treatement for both then "try for a baby". Immediately after, return to edit town, move the couple to the clipboard then save to bin. You now have a pregnant couple (probably triplets, to move into one of your houses in your actual game. Make several pregnant couples at the same time if you wish. Use a town you don't normally play or you will have multiple families with the same names in your game.
Both these methods are much quicker than creating families in CAS and of course, you retain a complete randomness in names and traits. The pregnant couples trick is fun too especially when your town becomes full of little triplets
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