As for the lag, yeah Gen. made it worse. Why, the travelDB.package in the saves folder for your game is likely HUGE. As an example the entire save folder for my game is 327 MB, TravelDB.package is 253 MB of it.
Now you can delete that file, but you lose all photos for memories made prior to deleting and, it does come back even when you don't travel in that game at all.
EA needs to stop townie memories and give them ONLY to the active household before the game stars crashing or refusing to load over the bloated saves folders.
