I've been doing a rotational save in a made over version of Pleasantview, which has been pretty comfortable since it's a huge hood with ample room to expand. I'm now wanting to start a save in Strangetown but I have some concerns about what it'll look like long-term, lol. Genetic diversity is easy enough since I can add in sub-hoods and whatever, but since the layout of the town is basically one main road and it feels designed to stay small, I'm a little worried about what'll happen down the line when I need to expand with more housing to accomodate all the sims.
Those of you who have done longer runs in Strangetown, esp if you play rotationally, how has the hood changed over the generations? Does the map get cramped? Should I just play in a larger desert town and add Strangetown as a subhood? Maybe I'm overthinking it, I just like the idea of longevity in my saves and don't want to arrive at a dead end!

With mods and cheats there's a number of options for dealing with the limited map, such as off-road lots and replacing the neighborhood terrain with a map based on Strangetown but with added roads. Or you could just add a Downtown and have most of your young sims move to the city when they grow up, which is how real small towns stay small.

I agree with @Peni Griffin

I always like the idea of adding extra roads, because realistically, as towns grow, new areas get built on and new roads are needed. I don't really have the skills to do it nor the willingness to learn right now so I've only replaced my terrains for bigger ones and pretend the town has been revamped entirely.

There is this strangetown map with more roads, and I guess you could replace your strangetown with it after a while: https://modthesims.info/d/661355/st...rrain-file.html .

Also, I think off-road lots fit well with the Strangetown vibe. So that's another option I'd go for here.

I had this dilemma too, but decided to stick with the layout. I added a single large-ish residential lot for Francis J. to occupy when he graduates (the pre-made lots just don't suit him IMO), and I made a bunch of apartments that fit in with the feel of the hood. It should cover my Strangetown housing needs for awhile, and it hasn't made the hood feel too "big".

It could be! I'm also puzzled about how the Beakers could drive a car to the Curious house; there is no junction or connecting roads between the freeways.

Living close to a freeway doesn't sound nice. You can add a suburb more easily than new roads and still consider its inhabitants part of the same town, which they are for most purposes in an unmodded game. I do like to mark the home hood to recognize locals and wish the game would have done it. To me, Strangetown is the most remote with poorly furnished homes reminiscent of Fallout.

Tell me you've never lived someplace like this without telling me you've never lived someplace like this. They just drive across the median.

Where I live, we'd probably walk or cycle! You don't usually see huge freeways (or motorways as we would call them) going through towns without there being a overpass or underpass.
https://www.cambridge2000.com/galle...P91622707e.html
I think it adds to the strangeness of the neighbourhood though, everything in Strangetown is a bit awkward!

Yes, I don't think it looks like a highway like someone else said.

It's not at all uncommon for a surface-level highway to go straight through town with no overpasses in rural areas. If a highway goes through a town, that's a major economic factor, and you get more drive-through business if you drop the speed limits on the highways as they go through towns instead of them having to take an exit. (My mother and sister live just outside of such a town.) This is why I load up my Strangetowns with 1x3 business lots in the median.

It also makes a difference what kind of highway. Interstate Highways are big multi-laned things and are more often elevated than State Highways, and then there's business highways and farm-to-market roads. The Road to Nowhere looks to me like a stretch of highway that's so low-traffic they only need two lanes; whether this is an interstate in a very low-density area, or a farm-to-market with increased traffic needs due to the military presence, depending on how the player decides to set the neighborhood up.

I always assumed it was meant to be two, double laned, one way roads, like a dual carriageway in attached picture.

Of course the in-game mechanics mean that both sides are two-way, but I use my imagination!
In the UK these usually have large, traffic light controlled junctions or roundabouts to allow access to villages and towns, although sometimes you'll get a filter lane leading off in one direction (but if the road cuts through the settlement, there will be an connecting bridge or underpass to allow residents to move freely). Of course, Britain is very rainy so our roads usually have ditches and drainage beneath to prevent flooding, and because space is tight they are often raised up or sunk down or at least surrounded by embankments, to provide a noise baffle and also green strips for planting trees, shrubs and wildflowers. We often have frog bridges or tunnels too- ways for wildlife to safely pass the road. And- the ubiquitous crash barriers on the median strip and sides- to prevent cars from crossing the carriageway in case of accident! No U-turns here, it would be illegal anyway.
Single lane two way roads (A roads) are different though, those can go through the center of towns and villages, and of course have buildings like cafes and petrol stations directly built on them, houses and schools too. If a settlement gets large enough then a bypass will usually be built, then the councils mess it all up completely by allowing new estates to be built on them! So it's a bit chaotic.
Strangetown is so small (population wise) that it's really a village, and you can tell the road is not to get people to Strangetown, but past it! It really is small enough that foot travel would be adequate. Must have a lot of road noise and dust though!

I played Strangetown so long ago that I can't actually remember any problems I had.

I do remember having quite a lot of fun.

Add to that: I played it before I knew mods existed, completely vanilla - and sorted the whole population out

28 years have passed for my sims in Strangetown - I don't know if that counts as long-term for you (I have a realistic ages mod). I do have more houses along the Road to Nowhere, but I also have a suburb (Felicity Springs) that is supposed to be a tiny oasis in the desert just down the road where several sims live, and then a Downtown that is the big city further away.

Many young sims do move to the city when they grow up, and most of the sims from LFT moved there when they graduated (after all, they have no ties to Strangetown). But it seems to be going along fairly happily so far.

I don't put much thought into it since i'm playing a megahood with Strangetown as the main hood but with other subhoods like Pleasantview and more sims can move to as well as adding blank subhoods when I want/need to. I might add a desert subhood and pretend it's "strangetown expanded". But my sims are free to move to whatever town/subhood they want so when Strangetown is stuffed, sims will just move elsewhere. And/Or i'll add a desert subhood to "expand" it in my mind.

Apologies if the language barrier presents a problem here, but I always thought that the Strangetown's Road to Nowhere was a highway at most, but not a freeway. I imagine freeways to be elevated/completely fenced, with the traffic being able to develop high speeds, usually up to 130 km/h. A highway on the other hand doesn't have to be such a fast road at all, but could be a high capacity road or a major road, like a boulevard. In my city, there is such a major road stretching across it east to west, with the speed limits being up to 80 km/h, but mostly being 60. Google Maps also colors that road the same way it colors the "freeways," but this one definitely isn't a freeway with such low speed limits and traffic lights every kilometer or so.

What made Strangetown so strange to me among other things was that there was this wide road there, which would make sense in a busy city center, but there was absolutely no one there, except for maybe 5 or so houses. And since it had sideroads with all-way stop signs, it made no sense that it was a freeway...

I dunno the word for it in English but basically its the sort of road that connects smaller towns and villages to other motorways and cities. On these roads its 1 lane going in each direction with a speed limit of 80km/h. Depending on your location (and proximity to civilisation) there may or may not be lights! Sometimes there's a verge or raised edge(?) keeping the 2 lanes seperate and other times its just a line of paint. I like to think that the Strangetown has a verge or line of paint kind - so there's nothing stopping sims from driving across (or running!) if they really want to

Once as a kid, we were driving through some village in France and basically the highway (like 3 lanes in each direction) cut through it?? And getting from one side to another made no sense cos there wasn't even an underpass or a traffic light or anything! Like did they just hope for the best and just do their thing? Anyway cos of that experience I like to imagine that Strangetown is a bit safer than that even though I really do wonder how safe it could be with all their suspicious experiments and dodgy looking construction.

But I really do like the OG layout even if it feels super limited compared to other neighbourhoods. For me it works cos I don't really populate it too much unlike the other hoods even if it really is my favourite one. I think it would be less mysterious or vaguely unsettling if it had more sims living there

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Not a problem for me; both house are ridiculous, they get demoed (creating money) . Curious stays on same lot, but Beakers get a flat lot (after deleting all the expensive, useless stuff, walls, etc
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And also: my Strange town has 2 sub hoods ("business") Sedona (desert Custom hood with only 4 families) and Shady Shores (another custom hood with only 4 families - 4 men pregnant by PTs), and a college. So one desert and one grass hood to move families to. This is my oldest hood, and stars John Smith's 4th grandson, Johnny 5 (remember the movie?)

Ahh! I love both of those lots so much, I built a replica of the Beaker house in one hood as a Secret Society building. It had the same layout but I surrounded it with a moat and put a cowplant next to the front doors.

The Curious lot I always leave exactly as it is, I love throwing parties in that place and watching sims fight for the bathroom. Both lots are wonderfully Maxis, totally impractical and ridiculous, but very distinctive. Coming from Sims 1 those lots blew my mind, with their quirky uniqueness and use of multiple levels. Really showing us how, with imagination, you can make so many different types of architecture with just the basegame.

Of course, so very annoying and impossible for Sims to live in functionally, but if you just want them to make you laugh, these lots are perfect (for me at least!)

I love the Curious lot. That precarious tower to the stars feels like pure "stoner logic", and fits the characters well lol

Yea, there is a lot of quirkiness, and charm, and funny bits in Sims2. But to me, I require houses (and any lot) to have FUNCTION before form. And I still enjoy different architectural styles (even when I have to drag out my books!) and decorating.