I just restarted my hood (moved game over to another computer) and decided not to continue with my old game--but instead restart fresh.

I started up with 9 single sims (5 guys and 4 gals all unrelated) and one married couple--so a total of 11. Out of the 9 singles --6 paired up, one fell in love and married Tara Kats and another Malcolm Landgrab IV. One male (romance / pleasure is still single and having way too much fun to settle down). All couples have one child each---3 girls and 3 boys. The kids are about to enter teenhood. I will see how they interact with each other and hopefully can pair them up as adults or during collage.

I will be adding into game probably 2 couples when the 2nd generation returns from collage--just too add more variety to the hood. 2nd generation will have between 1 and 2 kids per couple.

from then I do not plan to add any more CAS sims---should have enough to keep the game going with just in born game sims and also will start to play more with the pre-mades (Pleasants, Goths, and Brokes).

If I end up with unbalanced number of boy babies and girl babies in the hood --I will try to find them their one true love at collage.

I play in rotation and am enjoying my restart and not having to manage such a large number of sims. My old game --my hood was up to 20 palyable families (each with 2-3 kids ) and I didn't feel the connection anymore to my game. Will try to keep my hood small this time.

I start with the Sim bin families Add 3 - 4 CAS families, and about 6 singles. I like aliens, I might make some for my current hood if these other lot aren't abducted soon enough.

I started with two families: Madame Sanders and her daughters Javotte and Martha, and Henri LeRoy (who married Javotte) and his creatively-named father Pere. Later added were two more families: Gavin (Gavroche?) Valljean, who married Martha and the two were promptly ignored, and the Littledragon family: Vlad, Elaine, Colin, Andrew, and Jonathan. Henri and Javotte had eight children, Andrew had three, and Jon had one. All the sims I currently play are descended from these sims, usually multiple ways.

I don't add new families from CAS anymore, but the number of households I play grows and shrinks depending on marriages, babies, deaths, and ages. I did add the Newsons once I got FT, because I wanted to play them, but I don't anticipate needing to add more.

I don't have to worry about maintaining the population. My sims handle that just fine. Actually, my sims have babies when one of the following applies: 1) both parents roll a want to have/adopt at the same time, 2) I'm playing a challenge that requires X number of pregnancies/babies, or 3) when I think they should have babies because they are awesome.

Do other people normally start only with adults? I usually start with all ages & stages, I like the variety.

Usually just one family, and they will try to connect with sims from the old neighbourhood.... Out of curiousity, do you normally create a new hood on open for business, or downtown?

It depends a lot on the neighborhood I'm making. Sometimes I roll the families I start with, meaning members can be from elder to toddler, and there can be from 1 to 8 sims in a family. A lot of the time, the simbin families get used by me as well - easy, pre-made families to use as I see fit Other times, the whole point is to start with a founder or some founder couples and build things from there.

I have started a hood prosperity style where families are rolled, but then if I do that I play it more as a challenge, seeing which family will do the best with a set goal. With my integrated hoods, which is the style I mostly play these days than yes, I start of with adult couples who I see as the founders. I find I don't get attached so much to pre made kids, I like to see what kids they can produce themselves as I play.

In the past I have started with two to five families. I was going to do that this time too but now I don't know.

When I'm playing in my typical way, I only start out with single founders, so I'm limited to starting with teens-and-up. I usually don't start with elders, though, because CAS-made elders generally die too quickly to do much in the way of any dynastic founding. So, I'll start with teens, YAs (if I decide the neighborhood gets a uni off the bat), and adults.

I have started neighborhoods sort of Prosperity-style on occasion, though, in which case, I randomly generate starting families using Mangaroo's generators here: http://www.mangaroo.com/sims2/ That way, I get a random mix of ages, genetics, and aspirations and such to start out with. I tend to like randomness a lot in my playing. It keeps me out of the ruts that I'll put myself into otherwise.

Oh, when I talk about "starting a new hood" I tend to mean a base hood. I just add downtowns and subhoods as I see fit.

For my latest hood Cornerhill I started with four families. Each has two parents and two children of each gender, one toddler and one child. A total of 16 CAS sims.
Up until now there are no born-in-game sims yet. Eventually that will happen of course, but this hood's purpose isn't really a legacy type of hood. The first generation will therefore, if it is up to me, don't have more children. I will leave that to the second generation and the oldest have just become teens.
I don't have inteen so there won't be teen pregnancies.
I'm not planning on adding more CAS families for this hood. When there comes a shortage of available sims to pair up with, I will use townies.

Do other people normally start only with adults?

Normally I do, but I've started with entire families before, such as in Thalia. It's a challenge to create a back-story for the families, which is why I usually don't do them.

Family neighborhoods tend to spiral out of control way too easily for me, and so I mostly prefer to use the single adults.

It's easier to develop the neighborhood from single people and let it grow on its' own. The story creates itself.