Does anyone know why my game is doing this? It's also defying my notownieregen mod. Sorry if this is under the wrong category

You must have missed something- can you show us screenshots of your files where you installed the templates, showing the file path?

Installing clean templates in program files will not prevent townies from generating. You need to use empty templates. N001 is basic townies but as I recall some EPs also have them.

This is the directory, I've done this before and it's worked just fine on my D: drive, but I had to uninstall and reinstall the game a few weeks ago and I've been having this problem since. I also installed clean templates for all the applicable packs

Hi, yes this is what I meant, I did install the empty templates by Jawusa

Yes so which files are the empty templates? Where did you put them in your files, and where did you get them from?

Edit: Is it these?
https://modthesims.info/d/615468/cl...-templates.html

If you reinstalled the game, you will have to put the empty templates into the new installation.

You also have to remove and then regenerate the hood(s) in the savegame location. Changes in the NeighborhoodTemplate folders don't apply to already generated/visited hoods.

Just to test - if you try to generate a custom hood (N004), do any townies/sims generate? If you've set up everything correctly and have the correct mods, you shouldn't have any character files generate before you start putting sims in the hood, and/or scenarios happen that generate necessary NPCs.
Reasonably sure the same should be true for the (empty) premade hoods as well, but if anything is regenerating that shouldn't be, something might not be installed properly.

Yes, that's where I got them from. I installed all the necessary files and I did follow PleasantSims tutorial because I thought I was doing it wrong but it hasn't worked for me.

Yes, they generate even when I try making a custom hood. I've had to resort to using the Sim Blender teleporting method and then killing all the N001 townies but it's tedious and as I said, in the past I got it to work fine so I don't understand what's wrong. I've done everything I'm supposed to.

Did you install to the same location this time? If not (different drive, for instance), it could be remnants of the old installation messing about with your game.

Do you get any of the "Create magic/Creating pets..." loading screens when making the hood?

Is it just the plain N001 basegame townies that are showing up, or is it all townies/NPCs/etc. from all games?
(You might need more anti-NPC mods)

Are you sure your game is reading your Downloads folder/CC (could explain if the mod isn't working)? Have you enabled CC then restarted the game? Have you tested with custom CC objects (to have a visual reference as to whether the Downloads folder is active)?

LOL , so it turns out that I was putting them in the wrong folder, I was putting these files in NeighbourhoodTemplate instead of UserData>Neighbourhoods. That fixed it!

That'll do it! Well done for fixing it!