First of all, welcome to the forum.
I've read or skimmed most of the thread and have seen bits and pieces on various towns and their pros and cons, but I'd like to ask advice on choosing a town. What are some of the positives and negatives of each town? Are certain towns more or less likely to cause crashing or lagging? I'm aware I'll have an enormous file should I be fortunate enough to make it to the end, but I'd like to not shoot myself in the foot by picking one that's known to be particularly problematic.
Thanks in advance for any help or information.
First of all, Sunset Valley is home to both Mr. Highly Desirable Dynasty Mate (Christopher Steel) and Agnes Crumplebottom, who has Level 7 Painting and a Bwan Speedster worth about $85,000. I don't really know about Downsides for it.
Twinbrook's Sims are kind of... questionable. They're not always a good-looking bunch, but some of them are quite rich (like DeAndre Wolfe).
Bridgeport's hard to travel in sometimes, and can be kind of laggy depending on your Graphics Settings. There are also celebrities EVERYWHERE who you need to impress before you can say Hi to them.
Barnacle Bay is a good choice - the Coastal household has Life Fruit in their backyard.
I can't give advice on the other Store towns, as I don't have them.
Union Cove is highly laggy on a lower end computer (and some higher end computers) on high graphics, so I'd tend to avoid doing a Dynasty there.