More Awesome Than You!

Is it OK to move occupied lots around in the same sub-neighborhood? ???  I wouldn't be moving them to the lot bin, I know that's bad.  Just picking them up and setting them down elsewhere.

Use the hand tool - perfectly safe.

Yep, I do it all the time. Doesn't do anything to the sims at all.

However, I have noticed a tiny problem when moving any lot around.  If the ground level is different, even by a little, there will be an aqua line at the lot boundary.  This isn't a problem when all your lots are perfectly level, but most of my neighborhood terrain has gradual terrain changes.    And I hate that button that makes your lots level.  In most cases, it makes my lots look like Scrabble tiles.

My neighborhood view looks like hell because of my graphics card, so it doesn't bother me.  But I can imagine it to be a nuisance to others...

Lots with non-level edges cannot be moved without corrupting the neighborhood. These kinds of lots are bad. Plus, TS2 does not support building on non-level terrain, so such lots with warped terrain simply waste space.

well I wish I'd known that before I started building this new hood of mine!  I've only got one aqua line thank goodness - where I was desperate to fit a pre-built lot into the hole I'd left for it.  It refused to place lots of times and I was so happy when it finally went in. 

I thought it was a temporary glitch  when the 3x2 lot you just took out won't go back into the 3x2 hole it came out of.  Is that permanent corruption then?   I rearranged my willow walk houses a lot in Veronaville before I got an arrangement I liked.  So that's another reason this hood is iffy.   I figured out eventually that even my willow walk lots look flat - they aren't all quite flat.

Another annoyance about moving lots around is water level.  A lot with a pond in one place has a lot with a puddle at the bottom of a deep hole when moved a few squares over.  Another one is roads! When you place a lot, the road sometimes does very strange things  e.g.  I have a gap in the road where I moved lots along it!  How I wish for an undo button on the hood screen! Even a warning message "this is going to mke big changes to the terrain - are you sure?"

We need the Simcity 3000 fix for the sims - when neighbouring cities have a problem with non-matching edges you get a message asking if you want to fix it.

That is why I always use completely flat terrains. My favourite one is one I have made in SC4 with no distinguishing features, completely level and covered with roads. Boring but great to build on.

The only thing you can do is work from backed up hoods, when making major changes. Then if everything goes south, you can start over, after having learned from your previous mistakes.

I have reverted to redundant backups, more than once ....

Maybe you could export the terrain resources, place your lots, back up the hood, and replace the original terrain?  There's a tutorial around here somewhere...

Another trick is to take a 1x1 lot and repeated place it next to a giant hole in the road.  Eventually, the hole will fill in!

I so plan to do that if I can get my SC4 game to load.  Im just not sure how far apart th place the roads.  Im all for boring so long as I have flat terrain.

Here was me trying NOT to be so boring!  I'll go find some 1x1 lots - thanks for the tip.

I do backups periodically and before major build sessions or gameplay decisions, but who is to guess moving one lot is going to be major?

I can tell you that - glow of satisfaction:

No of Squares SC4             No of Squares TS2
no square (i.e. surrounded by roads)
                                       1x1
1x1                                  3x3
2x2                                  5x5
3x3                                  7x7
4x4                                  9x9
5x5                                  11x11

and so on

Bridges - you can only use the first one
Trees - watch it, a single small tree in SC4 becomes 9 trees in a clump in TS2