I make an elderly family with one or two young adult sons, then move the first one to an empty plot the very first day and make him/her my active family. I like to have relatives around the map, otherwise I feel that my sim just comes from nowhere.

I make one sim in CAS and hook them up with a townie. I sometimes make a spouse but I like finding an interesting looking sim and having my sim get into a relationship with them.

I usually start off with a teen or young adult, get them a job etc.. and then use the mod "more options" ( I think this is the one) and select the ""Consider Attractiveness"" and ""gauge attraction"" options while talking to other sims. I guess this compares traits/signs/fav. color/and fav music etc... and gives a score based on how similar they are.

If my sim finds another sim that scores a 10/10 on consider attraction - I usually consider this as my sim falling in love with that other sim.. and if the other sim scores a 4/4 on whether they find my sim attraction, then that means they are loved back.

When I managed to find a perfect match, I have them marry have kids etc...

One time, my sims only managed to find a perfect match with a guy sim that was already married with kids... I searched the entire town and could not find anyone else that scored high enough. When I "make active" with that male sim and did the same consider attraction/gauge attraction with his wife... they scored 0/10 and 0/4 - I took this to mean they were in an unhappy marriage and got them to break up with each, so he could be with his true love, my sim.

I used to just start off with one female sim and get her established with a job and buy some better things for the house. Sometimes I'd hook her up with a townie and if nobody appealed to me I would make her a partner and get him established with a home/job. If her future partner is out and about in town I will have her meet him and other times I've just sent her knocking on his door instead of just merging him into her home.

Now I just make a married couple and send them to work outside the home until I can get some better things. When that time comes I will have them start a family and have one sim work from home, sometimes they'll have just one kid and sometimes I go nuts and they have lots of kids. Sometimes the dad works from home and sometimes it's the mom. It just depends on my mood and what career and level they are at. I had a couple that both had the fertility treatment boost so they would have twins and triplets. They had 14 kids but I quickly realized that would totally screw up my town and everybody would be related somewhere down the line, lol.

I seriously hate it when I switch households come back and discover one of my young adults has hooked up with an old fart or the town freak and moved them in. The elder sims are letches, they never seem to hook up with each other. Both the male and female elder townies always go after the young ones!

I have also done same sex couples with adopted children as well and tweaked the child's features. It seems the adoption agency sends me the ugliest kids they have so I take pity and modify them more times than not.

I change the way I play every now and again because I get bored. Sometimes I just can't deal with babies and toddlers and age the babies up right away, teach the toddler the starter skills and immediately age them up into children after that. I always let the kids and teens be kids and build up their skills.