Why so much lag?

[Senna]

I dont think lag is the right word but every single thing I do freezes the game for a second or two. It used to be this bad with weather (storms, heavy rain / snow) but now it's all the time. I have no mods, no CC. Game runs on lowest setting for everything.
I have a: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz

Edit: I got about 80 hours before this became an issue. The only thing I can think I changed was I got all the DLC years ago when it was on sale.

[HiFive]

Originally posted by Sy:

Edit: I got about 80 hours before this became an issue. The only thing I can think I changed was I got all the DLC years ago when it was on sale.

Yup, that's probably a big factor. Certain DLCs have lots of known issues. I don't have all of the DLC, but I manage to have the game running well with the 6 I have by limiting the fps for this game to 30. I used the NVIDIA control panel to do that. Here are some other things I have done in the past (back when I was using 60 fps) to help with lag issues.

Turn off shop mode.
Turn off online notifications.
Don't run other things in the background while playing.
If you are playing in fullscreen mode, don't use the Alt+Tab feature. (I can actually use Alt+Tab now that I limited the fps to 30.)

Turn off memories. You will get an excessive number of them and they will bloat the game.

I use sequentially-numbered saves. (Always use the "Save As" button and use different names. Don't use the "Save" button.) Whenever my game seems to be getting buggy or has severe lagging, I try finding a save from before the problem started.

Go into the game files and delete the excess saves after every play session. I leave about 5 or 6 of them, in case I notice any problems and need to go to an earlier save.

I make very frequent saves. Doing this helps a LOT. I don't know why, it just does. Make a save at least once per Sim day. I usually do it just before my Sims go to bed.

I've learned to clear excess baggage out of my Sims' inventories on a regular basis. If you have a gardener, it's easy to get way too much stuff in your inventory, and this causes a lot of lagging, and subsequent bugs. Keep the count of those apples and limes below 30 each. Under 16 is better, or even 12 or 8. Try to get to the point where you only have edibles of the same quality in each stack - like all Perfect apples, and all Perfect life fruit. The biggest lag I get is from too much produce or fish having too many different qualities.

Don't collect or buy too much scrap for your inventors. Acquire what you need, and use it, then get more. A max of about 200 units per inventor table or Sim inventory is best for my Sims.

I don't allow tons of fish either. I sell them all, or keep only the ones that are of the same quality for the best garden fertilizer.

Clear your sim's inventory as much as possible before travelling. This is very important, since travelling to other countries with a lot of stuff can easily create corrupted stuff in your game.

In general, the fewer details the game has to keep track of in your inventory, the better.

Don't go crazy with the fast-forward button. Using it too often can cause problems. These days, I don't initiate fast-forward at all, and only let the game do it when all of my sims are sleeping or working at the same time.

If one of your Sims gets really laggy, or yours or any other Sim gets stuck, use the reset function. Use Cntrl+Shift+C and type:

resetsim nameofyoursim (whatever that name is)

A more extreme measure for those with serious issues where the above steps are still not enough: Limit customizations as much as possible, i.e., just use whatever generic Sim/house/items the game has, and don't change the colors and patterns or build your own house, etc. This is what I had to do when I was working on a shrimp of a machine for a while.

There are 5 cache files that should be deleted every time you end a play session.

CASPartCache.package
compositorCache.package
scriptCache.package
SimCompositorCache.package
socialcache.package

This is safe to do for only these files. The game will create new ones when you play it again.

Here are some good guides with a lot more information:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1131162350
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=279488894
If you want to get more than 5 or 6 expansions, it's probably necesssary to get the NRAAS mods, although I do have that many expansions and still don't use mods.

And this is what someone else does:

I have found that having your GPU use v-sync and setting Reflections to Mirrors and water (NOT SUPERWATER), Edge Smoothing to medium and the rest to high refresh rate of 60 Hz caused the game to run much much smoother.

[Downtown Bond(ing) xd #savetf2]

Errortrap kinda helps with clearing up savefiles a bit