Hey Vendayn, what city building mod do you use? It sounds pretty cool.
I was using RTS, which lets you make a huge city with up to 200 NPCs (lol, I wouldn't go that high though, the lag be game breaking and break my saves). But I ended up removing it, because it is too out of date, never finished and was very bad for stability. And it was kinda lame and broken.
I also tried pocket empire, but that was even worse than RTS for stability and was even more broken. I haven't used that in a while, but its long been abandoned.
So I ended up sticking with Tundra Defense, which was actually finished unlike the others...lets you recruit guards and citizens (so pretty much like what RTS did anyway, but better). Can build farms, build houses (and collect tax) and all kinds of stuff. Stability is a bit iffy if you get too many guards, get a dragon (which is even worse) and all the people on top of that. But it doesn't cause crashes by having it installed like the other strategy mods do. Don't go crazy and hire 50 guards, dragon and magic people...yeah...reloaded that save
Then there is Guild Starter, which lets you have your own guild. I kind of wish it was more involved though, its pretty much acts like WoW's new outpost thing (which I thought was just another version of farmville or one of those clash of clan games)...hire npcs...tell them to go do something and they disappear and randomly appear with random items. Guild Starter is kinda nice I guess, and its really stable. It isn't the best mod, but its not bad either.
I find Real Estate to actually be the best alongside Tundra Defense. You buy (or get lucky and find) a book, do a miniquest...and then buy properties all around Skyrim. They cost a lot, but you make money back each game month I think (or maybe its a game week, don't remember).
Other mods I like are 101bugs, which add a ton of insects and makes ants look better. It also doesn't cause crashes or stability issues. I did a good test on that one. It is a 2012 mod, but has no problems (very few scripts). One of the few 2012 mods that actually still work. My mod list is huge and heavy, and it works great. Plus makes alchemy a lot better...*fighting a dragon* "hey look a pretty butterfly" *runs off and chases it as dragon pwns village*
I also really like Animallica - Skyrim Wildlife Overhaul...no scripts at all, and adds a ton of animals. Vastly better than the other two mods that add/change animals (don't remember their names, but they decreased stability A LOT and had massive bugs)... Works great with...
Hunterborn+Hunting in Skyrim (both work together, with a tiny bit of manual fixing to do in-game, with one/two hunting in skyrim quests...one of the mods says what to do in their description). Best hunting mods.
I use frostfall, but I dialed all the settings back. Only .1 exposure rate (so I do worry about cold, but it isn't lame like 1.0... .4 works too, but was still fast for me. And I don't really want to deal with exposure and cold that much it ruins gameplay. But .1 works great, and I get all the other features of frostfall. I also turned off freezing water is lethal, cause that was VERY VERY annoying)
Avoid wet and cold, that is far too taxing on my most mod setups. This is a big one that ruins a lot of peoples games (understandably not everyone, but it is one of the big sources of stability issues).
For monsters, you can use skyrim immersive creatures (or maybe its monsters not creatures) or the better skyrim monster mod. Monster mod includes a bunch of copyrighted monsters (which made nexus remove the mod), but includes pretty much everything immersive creatures does and a lot more. Monster mod is a lot better imo, and the monsters are really awesome (even though they are from other games, which is probably why I think they are amazing lol)...plus I found immersive creatures decreased my stability a lot and monster mod does not.
There is a lot of other mods I use, and it would be far too long for a forum post to go into each one. If you want other mod suggestions, just ask what type you are looking for (that I didn't already list). There are other mods I like that let you have your own mill (that you have to rebuild) and a bunch of other ones kinda similar to that.
My game is sorta like a business, economy, hunting, Sims, clash of clans (tundra defense), survival, necromancy/undeath, druid, simulator all in one lol.