When mine get too large, I let sims only have 1 baby each. Seeing as in my game I have a rule - every sim must have a biological offspring. I just love seeing how genetics pass on. 1 baby each (which includes if sims divorce, unless their new partner doesn't have an offspring) takes a bit of time to work because it's not that noticable until they're older - but eventually you start having loads of empty houses that were once filled as sims move in with their husband/wife, leaving their parents alone in the house and eventually leading to an empty house when they pass.


I also managed to accidentally decrease my population dramatically by accidental plague... erm.... that wasn't that fun... Literally all sims died of sickness at least once and had to be saved from the grim reaper. It was terrible. Probably not as terrible if I hadn't had been playing with mine and all my friends' simselves, and the reason everyone was ill was because one sim had accidentally made the mystery disease and spread it to everyone - that sim was my boyfriends simself, oopsie.

I love building on small lots as well and I absolutely adore the Grizzly Hills neighborhood by Nepheris. The streets are mostly a max of 3 squares apart and it has several great little sections for different types of lots, like a downtown, a quiet residential area, and couple bigger areas for farms and strip malls and what not. It's a small neighborhood but if you build small you can cram a LOT of lots in there. I'm getting ready to set it up as my new main hood myself.

Thanks for the link, that terrain looks rather nice.

I currently have just the base game.

tweaked the file that controls neighborhood camera; so that more of each neighborhood could be accessed.
path of file:: My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Cameras\NeighborhoodCamera.txt

planning 2 children for most couples (1 each of both genders).


plan to get the "ultimate collection" sometime after it becomes available to the public.
after getting it, would be adding apartments and sub-neighborhoods to each neighborhood.

Ulitmate collection is available now -- you just have to ask, maybe more than once. Check out this thread: http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=555674