Hmm, some very subjective notes, based strictly on my personal playstyle and experience (your playstyle may be different):
- Having both a Big Park and Festival Grounds might be redundant, one of them will suffice, IMHO.
- Exclusive Lounge only if you have a Film Studio in your neighborhood, with several residents working there, plus if you have celebrities. Now, THAT creates traffic in an Excl. Lounge. The place will be surging with workers of film career.
- I would hesitate to keep 3 different Late Night bars in the same neighborhood. If you want to see nightclubs, cocktail bars, things like that, than set them as Arcade, Nerd Shop or Rebel Hangout, furnished as LN bars or disco clubs, with LN Mixologists - the traffic is higher, and the visitors will still dance and drink at the bar, but will also be attracted to other entertainment objects as well.
- Stylist lot - I don't know. Years before, I liked to have one, recently I think I only set a Salon if I want my active sim work in that career. If my sims are only visitors in a Salon, according to my experiences, they cannot find anything interesting to do there, they are all attracted to the stylist station object, and not much else; they don't show much interest in other entertainment objects. So having a Salon, IMHO, is only economic if you want to play as an active Stylist.
- What I can't see in your list, is a lot for the Athletic activities - be either Gym, Academy, Pool or something like that. I think when one begins a new neighborhood, and sims don't have much physical skills, it doesn't seem to be important to have, but later, when one already has their own sports career, lifeguard or martial artist sims, a community lot like this becomes significant, and will attract more sims than at the beginning. I suppose.

Ah I forgot about the gym.

An updated list, would this work for a 70-lot world? Probably around 45 residential lots (maybe around 100 sims?)

High Traffic (Need at 4-6 sims)
Parks
- 1 Festival Grounds + space for Showtime performers (Waterfront park)
- 1 Big Park (Central park)
Bars and Clubs
- 1 Arcade- (Comic store + snookers club)
- 1 Hangout (Basketball Court)
- 1 Exclusive Lounge (Private Club)
- 1 Rebel Hangout (Local bar)

Medium Traffic (0-4 Sims)
- 1 Gym
- 5 Visitor Allowed lots with varying numbers of rabbitholes & consignment/coffeehouse registers (Will have all job rabbitholes)
- 1 Art Gallery (Do sims even use art galleries?)
- 1 Library

Story-telling (Only populated if your sims is active there?)
- 1 Stylist/Tattoo Shop
- 1 Small Park (School)
- 1 Laundromat
- 1 Basecamp (for NRAAS Traveller)
- 1 Resort
- 1 Scrapyard No Visitors Allowed
- Varying numbers of decorative no-visitor allowed lots

Another suggestion for the high-traffic ones - the Java Hut in all my saves is always packed, at any given time of the day and night. Sometimes combined with a bakery, but with or without it it seems to have a really high draw. Arcades do well too but idk if that's just the lot zoning or the fact that mine are always a combo lot with a billion different things to do... My experience with Salons is that they have a stable draw of about 5-6-7 sims and there are always at least two busking on some instrument. The others tend to either sketch if they happen to carry a sketchbook or go to the drawing table. So it's kinda an artistic space in a way I guess. (Yet when I put easels in the Gallery not a damn sim uses them... go figure.)

A note about Art Gallery:
- in my current 'hood, I frequently visit the Art Gallery because of the food bar (I furnished a cute eatery on the second floor), so not because of the paintings. Any time I go there to eat, visitor sims don't do anything special apart from View-ing the different objects. There are skill objects, music, eating options on the lot - they hardly show any interest. Not even in socializing. So, I would say, strictly from lot-economic point of view, the Art Gallery is unnecessary. BUT. If a player loves to hold wedding ceremonies on community lots (which I have not much experience about), I can imagine the Art Gallery being furnished basically as a wedding venue. It woulld give some useful meaning to the lot, and can lead to different, out-of-the-box interiors (a post-modern, abstract, non-figurative wedding venue could look awesome).

About the Library:
- I don't think that a Library is a must for all neighborhoods (it depends on the theme of the town, see for example the trashy, grungy 'hoods), but you mentioned you want to place rabbitholes, like the bookstore? In my current 'hood I put the bookstore rabbithole rug onto a lot set to Library. Sims are attracted to the rabbithole first, then stay for reading they newly bought skill books (and they enjoy the library moodlet). For me it works as a doubly useful lot. I mean, the lot is not furnished as a traditional huge library - no, it's furnished as a small retail book shop with a UL coffee bar, it is just zoned to Library for the moodlet and the social behavior.

Library + School is another good combo, provided you want a town full of students with great grades. The game will still push the kids to go home when school lets out but for the family you are playing, you can cancel that and have them stick around long enough to do their homework before they head home.

Love certain ideas. Wonder how much I can incorporate with the base game and generations (which doesn't give anything in terms of lot assignment / rabbit holes). I think ideas for lot amenities mix and matching would be a good thread to open, that have people more with concepts for venues and stuff.

Not sure if true, but I heard that townie made paintings are sent and placed automatically in art galleries. If it's not true, than I see using that lot to place masterpieces from Sims, as well crafted stone/glass scultures in there (by some modifying memes).

Supermarkets (or any kind of malls) could theory be made with this practical combination: market assignment + bookstore & grocery store rabbit holes + book/food/general store cash registers + savvy sellers collection + deliciously indulgent bakery review.

Quick question- do festival lots perform the same way Big Parks do?

@jje1000 No, they don't. Unlike parks they have opening hours (8 - 21); festivals attract only Loves The Outdoor trait sims whereas parks also attract Angler and Green Thumb trait sims; festival lots don't encourage sport career or athletic sims. Festival sims attract slightly more sims overall. They are similar in other regards (babies cannot visit, open for cats, dogs, horses). Not sure about buffs and moodlets, I would think they come from the objects on the lot and not the lot type itself.

Hmm... interesting- do rabbitholes work on festival lots?

They do, but sims might be stuck inside when the festival lot closes at 9 p.m. (they are in regular buildings). I've never tried it though.

Did you use store content for the menu that they are reading?

Was thinking about this issue last night when working on a pretty darn cool if I say so myself LOL community lot in the world I am working on again now. Was thinking all this work and nobody will be there! I need to reread this entire thread again.

On an aside, another question- do food truck parking spaces, or even normal parking spots work outside of lots?

This mod is broken, right? Is Shimrod's Townies out on the Town a good alternative?

Final report regarding lot combinations. Total number of active households in the world was around 72 active resident sims + a dozen or so service sims, with a total of 73 lots. I utilized NRAAS Tagger to keep an eye on the distribution of sims.

Desired High Traffic (Need at 6-10 sims)
Parks
- 1 Big Park (Central park) - was usually busy, but I attribute this to the huge number of rabbithole rugs on the lot. Not super packed, but I attribute it to the huge size of the lot.
Bars and Clubs
- 1 Arcade- (Comic Store + Snookers Bar) - was usually busy - good success.
- 1 Hangout (Basketball Court) - was sometimes busy - good success.
- 1 Watering Hole (Local Bar) - was usually busy - good success.
- 1 Rebel Hangout (Bowling Alley) - usually busy - good success.
- 1 Exclusive Lounge (Private Club) - not that busy - occasionally had groups of sims there, but was far quieter. Celebrity sims did not seem to visit this lot more than the others.

Desired Medium Traffic (0-6 Sims)
- 1 Gym - was not that busy- sometimes a sim or two using the machines.
- 1 Library - was sometimes busy- usually a least a few sims in there playing on the computers.
- 1 Stylist/Tattoo Shop - was sometimes busy, occasionally a few sims on the lot talking to the stylist and tattoo artist.
- 1 Laundromat - was sometimes busy, usually one household on the lot.
- 1 Festival Grounds (Waterfront park) - unfortunately was rarely busy even during festivals, may work better if it replaces the main park.
- 1 Visitor-Allowed lots with Grocery + Bookstore - occasionally populated with a few sims.
- 1 Visitor-Allowed lots with Diner- Usually populated with a few sims.
- 1 Visitor-Allowed lots with Restaurant- Sometimes populated with a few sims, usually during the evening.
- 1 Resort - was rarely busy, unfortunately - no one actually used the resort on its own.
- 1 Basecamp (for NRAAS Traveller) - was rarely busy, moreso with tourists; sometimes some homeworld sims visited.
- 1 Art Gallery (Do sims even use art galleries?) - was never busy.
- 1 Small Park (School) - was rarely populated, sometimes part of a household or two using objects on the lot. Kids did not seem particularly drawn to the lot.

Story-telling (Only populated if your sims is active there?)
- 1 Fire Station- was never populated except during its career hours.
- 6 Visitor-Allowed lots (with varying numbers of job rabbitholes) - rarely had visitors despite the rabbitholes. Usually the only visitors appeared when the active sim was on the lot.
- 2 Ports- no one ever visits the lot on their own.

Overall, I'd consider it a success as the world felt lively enough, though I wish sims with appropriate traits would pushed more heavily towards their respective lots. For instance, I had several artistic sims, but they never visited the art gallery on their own. Sporty sims did not seem particularly drawn to the gym lot. Pets never left their homes, since there were no pet-specific venues for them to visit.

I do wish that there was a non-Awesomemod-bundled mod that stopped pushing other sims to visit lots your active sims were on, just to keep a more natural distribution.

I tend to add very few new community lots to EA worlds. I instead modifty the existing ones to feature more activities. For example, I usually turn the "The Water Hole Juice Bar" in Riverview into a sports bar, the "River Front Swim Club" into a Poolside Club and the "Octagon House" into an exclusive club (because museums are most useless lots in the game). I also try to replace useless rabbit holes. For example, I add the bookstore cash register to the library and I build instead and arcade + coffeehouse (the UL one). I have always had better results when I don't add too many lots, only a few I know don't attract many Sims like the firehouse and horse-related stuff (only to rural worlds like Riverview; I disable horses altogether for more urban worlds).

With this, I usually get an insane amount of Sims on each lot, to the point it's just too many people and I can't even order a drink or they don't have space to walk. I've also been getting even MORE Sims than usual (the usual were 10) since I upgrade my CPU to a Ryzen 5 3600X (I've gotten up to 20 on some lots), so I'm thinking the extra clock speed (4.4 Ghz) is helping the game in ways I didn't predict.
There aren't any idle Sims anymore. Everyone starts talking to each other or doing any activities they can on the lot.


PS: The MSC Mod is BROKEN. DO NOT USE IT. My game was running perfectly fine and practically lag-free, I added it and I started to get random lag spikes and stutter, as well as script errors. I removed the mod, cleaned the caches, and the stutter is gone. The game runs really smooth now. I also don't really need it right now, since I'm getting a ton of visitors at every community lot, though I haven't played yet in Bridgeport, that has the most bars/clubs and all those damn ropes I'll have to remove.

Can I ask how many residents you have in your town? I usually have ~5 sims on any lot. I wonder if its because I'm not fixing up my lots correctly or my population is low (60 residents). I have a pretty good CPU so hopefully that isn't the issue...

You mean 60 residential lots or 60 residents. I have average 230 residents. I try to keep it at 200. When it reaches 260, it's elder culling time.

According to NRaas, there are 79 residents, 43 households, 85 service Sims and 28 homeless in Riverview (my current household). If you aren't getting enough Sims maybe you have too many community lots that allow visitors. Make sure that community lots that have rabbit holes are set to "No Visitors Allowed."

Nitromon, 230? Wow that's a lot.... I manually populate so I rarely have more than 80 people in my town.

@Naus You're probably right on the community lots thing. I think they're all set to no visitors allowed but I still get a lot of sims loitering around the rabbitholes. I think they go there for work or whatever and then just kinda hang around. I have bookstore and grocery right next to each other and there's 10+ sims there all the time. I think I will try what you did and remove some rabbitholes and just put a cash register/rug instead.

I made a mistake, that should be 230 total population including service sims, putting residents usually around 100-150 area. Game doesn't run well when the pop is higher than 200, so I don't actually recommend it. In fact, it would generate more "idle" sims as the game's 32-bit engine tries to manage all of them.

Can you post the graphics/processor log section from your deviceconfig log? There's a setting in the cfg file which determines how populated can your community lots be based on your CPU strength. This can be manually set to a higher number to increase community lot sims.



Yes, that's a big one. RH should never allow visitors b/c once pulled there, they won't leave. Potentially it could crash the game if it is actively open. It's one of the issues with combined residential + commercial lots.

But that's also the easiest way to populate community lots, by combining it with a popular RH. Just don't play on it too long. Once your sim/camera leaves the lot, the sims will more or less dissipate and fewer sims will arrive. I modified the dive bar in Bridgeport with a restaurant/grocery RH combo. It runs fine when I'm not going there, but once I'm at the bar, it gives me a lot of sims so it was nice. But one time I stayed too long, and it was up to around 30-50 sims and started to lag.

Just got back home and found the file:

=== Application info ===
Name: Sims3
Version:
Build: Release
=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 4 CPU: 4 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 3400 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 4134 RAM: 16316 Adjusted RAM: 15804 Cores: 4
=== Machine info ===
OS version: Windows 8 6.2.9200
OS prod type: 0
OS major ver: 6
OS minor ver: 2
OS SP major ver: 0
OS SP minor ver: 0
OS is 64Bit: 1
CPU: GenuineIntel
Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Family: 6
Model: 12
Cores: 4
HT: 1
x64: 0
Memory: 16316MB
Free memory: 13358MB
User: Elsinore
Computer: Peach
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660
Name (database): Geforce GTX 1660 [Found: 1, Matched: 1]
Vendor: NVIDIA
Chipset: Vendor: 10de, Device: 2184, Board: 554319da, Chipset: 00a1
Driver: nvd3dum.dll, Version: 26.21.14.4575, GUID: D7B71E3E-62C4-11CF-B56B-4D751BC2D735
Driver version: 4575
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory: 6880MB
Vertex program: 3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Hardware TnL: 1

Actually is it bad that my CPU only has 4 cores? :/ I think most now have 6.

No, your system looks very impressive. It's an i7 with 4 cores, means it is hyperthreaded to 8 cores. TS3 only need 2 cores.

So everything looks fine, your issue really is "in game" and not your setup. Follow the advice given by others, see if that improves it. Else, you should try to increase your population. Um, have you done core unparking?

CPU cores are shuffled in Win OS around when in operation constantly turning off some and turning on others. This is designed to reduce power usage to the CPU. Though this is good in saving power, but it creates a latency each time a core is shuffled. In most applications this is unnoticeable, however in TS3 because of the way it is designed running multiple agents (sims) the latency is highly noticeable. Unparking the CPU will make then more active, "less idling," and especially when they're changing clothes.

https://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=571180

So in sense, you can have a 10 sims called to a lot, but 1/2 of them are idling at home or somewhere b/c of the latency. By the time they decided to go to the lot, you probably go bored and left already.

I actually replied to your helpful thread and unparked my cores a while ago (Via a program called "ParkControl"). I usually just leave it on all cores active even when I'm playing other games. I guess I will just need to revamp my town, maybe lower the amount of community lots all together.

I'm not 100% sure about this one. It was a common belief a while ago too many community lots will diversify your sims so they're spread out. However, later after some consideration, this is more of a myth because of the "stalker mode" in TS3, made aware by awesome mod. TS3 by nature the sims will stalk you, wherever you go. This is why when you go to a lot, it may be empty at first, but will eventually fill up. By this coding, then it really doesn't matter whether you have many community lots or not. However, still, there is still some truth to it as not all the sims follow the stalker code. So you can be at a community lot, but when you zoom out, you can find sims on some other lots.

So generally speaking, too many community lots is still bad, but there is stalker mode in place so you should still get sufficient sims on your active community lot. There's another thread, long time ago, where people discussed lot attractors. @igazor may remember more of this, each lot has a preset limit of attractors. (edit: actually this thread above has a list of lot attractors) Lots like "java hut" attracts more sims than a typical visitor allowed etc... Also various bar and dance clubs have different attractors. Generally speaking, university lot types such as rebel hangout are strong attractors.

But if you increase your population and still can't get enough sims on certain lots, try combining them with rabbitholes. Not too much. I created a mega mall with just the grocery shop RH and it populates it very well. The movie and diner RH are also strong attractors.