How can I add more townies?

[Mike Supafly]

I've been playing in Hidden Springs for 7 generations and the place starting to look like a ghost town. My previous generation Sim was the only Sim in school until I made a couple families with children to move into the neighborhood. Every where I go is dead; parks, festivals, bars, movie theater, etc. The only Sims I encounter are elders and plumbots.  It's like Children of Men in my game.

Is there an easier way to randomly insert a new batch of townies into the neighborhood other than spending a whole day making new families and finding homes they can move into? Plus I would prefer a more random selection than what I would inevitably create. I sorta recall Sims 2 having a cheat option to add new NPCs, but I haven't found any for Sims 3.

Obviously I could just up and move to a new neighborhood but I've spent a lot of time and effort improving Hidden Springs and I'm not a huge fan of many of the other neighborhoods. Anyways, any ideas?

[Shewolf13]

You have a couple options: one is a Story Progression mod, the other without using mods, is doing it yourself, in game by moving in families so that you control them, make sure they have children, then move them out.  As long as you aren't doing one of the Dynasty challenges that specifies you can't move Sims out, this is a pretty viable way to repopulate your town.  Myself, I use Twallen's Story Progression mod.  You're welcome to check out the mod section for more tips.  I also know that Trip has a handy little guide sheet to helping populate a town with original townie blood.  She'd be the expert to go to on that ^^

[Trip]

Hello Mike.

Shewolf is right about Twallan's Story Progression; it's a great mod for keeping the townies alive and well. However, it's also good for your purpose, which is getting new life into a game that's seven generations in.

If you want to rapidly get new townie families without much work on your end, you can get the mod and follow a few steps:

• Go to the options for the mod. You can access this by clicking on City Hall -> Nraas -> Story Progression.
• Turn on immigration, because it is off by default. This is under General Options -> Options: Lots -> Immigration/Emigration. You'll notice that the Immigration Gauge is set to 0 and that there are no other options. Set Immigration Gauge to another number. For this, it doesn't matter what. This will unlock a huge list of immigration options.
• Go to the Rapid Immigration option and enter in a number. This is the number of townie families that the game will move into town as fast as it can (will take a few game-hours).

That's the basics of rapid immigration, anyways. There are a lot of other options for immigration to fine-tune what types of sim come into town, but I would refer to the Nraas Wiki or to our Game Mods board for a deeper analysis of them. And Story Progression is a huge mod, to say the least. There are a lot of options for everything and it might be overwhelming at first.

Though if you want to do it without a mod, you might want to open up CAS and create some fresh new townies for yourself, whether you want to or not. You could also just download sims from our Swap Shop or elsewhere to cut out the step of actually making sims for your town. I don't know of any sure way of planting townies without a mod that doesn't involve doing the work yourself in CAS.

And while Shewolf also mentioned my immense guide of tips for keeping your town alive by pollination without mods, it's tailored towards our dynasty challenges and it's assumed that you just started your game rather than got seven generations in.

[Pam]

Welcome to our Forum, Mike.

Before talking about a story progression mod, I'd like to ask if you have Story Progression turned on in the game itself.  The game will move in new families without a mod.  It's bad about having existing families produce children, but it will move new families into town.  Another option you could try is to download Sims made by our members from the Swap Shop rather than trying to make them yourself.  You'll definitely get a lot of variety doing it this way.

[Mike Supafly]

Thanks everyone for your help. I downloaded the Story Progression mod, tried to figure it out on my own, got confounded, and gave up.

Then I saw Trip's tips and that got things rolling. I set the mod to move in 20 new families, and it gave me notifications that make me believe it did so, but I haven't had much time to see how much the population has actually boomed just yet.

I will update after I play for a bit today and let you know. Thanks again guys!

[Mike Supafly]

It looks like the Story Progression mod did the exactly what I wanted! In fact, there isn't any homes left for new Sims to move into, haha! Thanks for your guys' help, it is super appreciated. This is why I always come to this board when I'm stuck.