Install Errortrap, so if it finds something, it will either correct them and will give also further information through the Scripterror files, which are located in your
documents Sims 3 folder.

Let's see what it reports.

Josiejo wrote: ↑

March 11th, 2023, 2:34 pm

The other thing that seemed weird was that the noticeable pause I used to get at midnight isn't happening anymore.

This is the check from Overwatch I think. Please check your settings under SETTINGS

The check normally starts at 3 am,
but you can change it under "Set Alarm Hour", I have set it to 1 am

Is this set to true in your settings?
Display Nightly Notifications
Whether to display the notifications that occur from the nightly cleanup
Default: True

Reset Check
Enables a nightly check to see whether a sim is stuck in a broken interaction
Currently, this operation checks for sims stuck in age-up situations
Default: True

The pause at midnight for age-up checks and the Overwatch pause at 3am (or 5am for urban worlds or whenever the player has moved it to) are not for the same purposes. The midnight check also happens whenever a saved game is started up or a travel transition takes place.

This is why I suggested switching on Overwatch Logging, but that idea seems to have gotten lost somewhere.