Insimenator.org

Ok, I've been having trouble with the neighborhood view landscape and placing lots on it. It seems that whenever I go to place a lot the game decides to make some really stupid decisions on how to edit the land around so the lot can fit.

For example, just a few minutes ago I went to place a good sized house at the corner of an intersection, and then place another house next to it, I go to place the first house, and instead of leveling the road by moving it up ever so slightly, it instead creates this huge crater and skews all the roads around it, also making it impossible to place any other houses anywhere near ground zero. I understand that it has to make the road flat for the lot to work nice, but com'on, in this example it was a MUCH shorter (and neater) distance to go up a little than dig a half-mile deep trench for the house to sit in.

In the end I either have to take and back-up my whole save game before I place anything in my neighborhood (which I should not have to do) or I have to perform this lengthly balancing act of placing and removing lots to try and get my land a fraction of acceptable enough to place any of lots nearby.

Is there anyway I can just edit the neighboorhood land like I can inside individual lots, so I dont have to go through so much effort to place a single house or at least have my land look nice?

Thanks in advance for any help.

As far as I know - there is no way to edit the terrain of the neighbourhood except prior to adding it to the game.  This one method requires Sims City 4 and is not a precise science to say the least.  The controls for shaping the terrain in Sims City 4 are just not that precise.

Alternately you can modify the max slope value - see the post by boatnana at MTS2 here (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=47544) for more information on this.  This will not necessarily change the way things happen in placement - but may offer you more options for placement after the game does freaky things to the terrain.

Thanks, I appreciate the info, hopefully that link you provided will help me solve the problem.

I was also wondering if there is any way to force a lot into a location that isn't connected to a road. This would not be for building anything (as I know the lot wouldn't work without a road) , but to allow me a little more room to try and level the ground with precicely placed lots.

Is it possible to force a lot onto a location?

I recall seeing a mod discussed somewhere that was claimed to offer you the ability to have neighbourhoods without any roads - but I do not know if this was a "road mod" that simply hid the roads or an actual game hack that allowed placement off roadways.  perhaps another member recalls better than me.