You don't want to make your sims learn tai chi. It'll spread like a virus in your 'hood and EVERYONE will learn it and do it all the time.

The NPC who teaches the dragon legend is very likely to do tai chi, so I often go there for that reason as well.

This is very important to know
If you let your sims learn Tai chi, you will need a mod to prevent sims from autonomously doing it outside from Takemizu, or to stop autonomous tai chi or something, otherwise it's all your sims will ever do.
So it's your choice, but please be aware of the problem Prah mentioned.

Very much agreed, ha. I have that mod, so I had completely forgotten about that little... side effect. I have to unlock all of the vacation memories everytime, so I would get twitches in my eye, if I had to leave out tai chi.

And I agree with Gummilutt, that the wise old man is more likely to do tai chi (I'm assuming because he's got nothing else to do but that and serve tea).

This can't possibly be true. It's the first I've ever heard of a Lot retaining "memories", for lack of a better term, of Sims who lived in it.
As for MTS not allowing a used Lot to be uploaded, this would then also have to include the many new "tested" Lots that are uploaded. I know many people test only copies of their newly-built Lots, but not everyone. Some people upload the exact Lot they tested. They shouldn't, because the value of furniture decreases over time, but they do.

It is true, but it was not found out right away. There is discussion and documentation in this thread: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=503383 Mootilda herself says that this happens, and she's forgotten more about programming than you or I will ever know.

There are plenty of lots uploaded to MTS that were uploaded before this was discovered, and they are not safe to download. The rules changed once it was discovered that this was a problem.

Wanting a thing to not be true doesn't make it not true.

That you personally never heard of it, and that people don't always follow the rule, does not mean it's not true. Play testing should always be done on a separate copy, and the uploaded copy should not have been inhabited. Lots of people don't know it, and some probably ignore it, but it's true. It's not just neighbourhood-corruption, lots that have been played on are more likely to be borked in some way.

I personally use a testing hood where I open any lot I download, to check if it's been played on or not. Some are obvious, by leftover newspapers or used plates, others you can only tell by the fact that table-based chairs have moved. And if I discover a lot has been played on, I either decide not to use it, or rebuild it from scratch in my building hood.

It says it does, "During the fight, lycanthrophy is transfered to the victim." http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Savage

I just started making my first house in the sims. Or, the first without sims living in it yet. Anyway, I moved the house/lot around the neighborhood and now the ground of the lot and the surrounding area becomes a pale/sandy colour in the neighborhood view. When I move the lot and do the cheat to change the terrain to temperate it will change back to normal, but when I put the lot back, the ground changes again to this pale/sandy colour. When I load the lot the ground of the lot itself is normal in the lot view, but the surrounding area stays pale. This is quite ugly. Does anybody know why this happens and if I can do anything so the ground stays temperate?

Your neighbourhood is too low down compared to sea level. The sandy color means that the lot is approaching sea-level. If you place a lot that's even more sunk down, you'll see water. Quite common when people place lots with basements.

Different terrains have different base-altitudes. You can either fix it with a cheat in game that lets you alter height of terrain (don't remember the cheat, I never bothered because it's too complicated to use for my taste) or edit the terrain with SimsCity to raise it, and the use Mootildas hood replace program to replace the terrain in your hood with the edited version.

Thanks for your response. You're right. The terrain is hardly above sea level and the house does have a basement. Which is full of water now. Though I think I also temporarily placed it on a higher piece of terrain elsewhere in the neighborhood and there the terrain changed into sand. Though I didn't check for a flooded basement. So maybe the terrain on that spot wasn't high enough too.
Since I have to redo the basement anyway, do you think it will help if I remove the basement, go back into the neighborhood view and change the terrain type? And Maybe moving the lot around again?

Edit: I tried using the modifying terrain cheat and it only lowers and levels the terrain, I can't get it to raise the terrain. It will probably make things ugly anyway. The spot I want the lot to be in isn't really the easiest spot to terraform and make it look natural.

El Pimiento: yes, moving it around can help. I've only ever had that problem once but after moving the lot, the ground didn't change colour (although the place where I moved it didn't seem any higher). And my lot doesn't have a basement.
On the contrary, I have lots with flooded basements that don't have this weird ground problem.

Thank you for your response. What I did was: I got rid of the basement and put the lot in storage(?). Then leveled the terrain with a cheat. That got rid of the sand, however for good measure I also used the cheat to change the terrain to temperate. Then I put the lot back and it seems fine. Rebuilding the basement now.

Can someone link to a thread, that I believe was here on MTS, about the difference between clean and empty (templates) neighborhoods?

I just read through that entire thread and in the final analysis, the conclusions (mainly according to Mootilda, who I readily agree knows of what she speaks) were:

1) Moving empty, but previously occupied, Lots from one neighborhood to another, or installing such Lots (downloaded or otherwise) from a packaged file, might cause neighborhood corruption.
2) Cause and solution: Unknown.
3) Best Precaution: Do not do the above. Do not use downloaded Lots that have obviously been used by Sims.

Here's my admittedly amateur opinion: Too many folks have too many Mods installed in their game, use too many cheats and do various other things the game was not originally meant for and then wonder why their neighborhoods eventually become borked.
Typically, and amazingly, these are the same folks who will balk at rebuilding a new house in order to more properly situate it on a Lot, or for some other reason, and instead use the LotAdjuster cheat to do so, or use various other "time-saving" cheats, yet at the same time claim that they have no problem rebuilding virtually every house they download in order to try to avoid this supposedly newly discovered 'hood corruption. Sounds to me like someone's full of it.
It's enough to make a person start to think that at least some of the people around here are deliberately sowing disinformation. Not accusing anyone specifically, it's just that after a while of this, a person becomes suspicious.

In the past, whenever I've mentioned that it usually takes me at least 2-3 rebuilds to make a new house, in order to properly situate it on a lot or for various other reasons, my comments get downvoted and I'm ridiculed for not using cheats like the LotAdjuster and other cheats to save time and effort.
Who's laughing now?

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind programs like the LotAdjuster and all the others. I've used it several times, although never in anything I uploaded. That's not because I didn't trust it, but simply because I didn't feel the Lot was high enough quality to share with others. In fact, I have many of these cheats marked as "Favorite" downloads. They serve their purpose, but in my opinion need to be used judiciously, not constantly to pull every Lot this way and that way, back and forth, along with the many other commonly used cheats.
Use some common sense, folks. If you load up your game with 49 dozen Mods, and used 13 dozen cheats to make your Lot, Pet or Sim, then you shouldn't even consider complaining if your neighborhood explodes. LMFAO.

I think the bottom line is that if we have to worry about empty houses corrupting the neighborhood, we might as well throw this POS out the window.

My 2 cents

I don't think rebuilding it is going to change anything. Your terrain is at the level it's at, and building a new basement is just going to bring it back. Different parts of the terrain may be at different levels, so putting the lot elsewhere could help, but if your terrain is somewhat level and you are getting flooded areas, you are likely to keep getting them if you use basements.

Good to know that the cheat doesn't work for bringing terrain up. I've only ever tried to use it to make a downloaded beach lot work, but I couldn't figure it out so I didn't touch it again. I guess SimCity and hood replacer is the only solution.

I've noticed that you, for one, seem to have the irritating habit in these forums of constantly ASSuming that just because someone posts about a supposed issue they are having, you automatically take everything they say at face value, without even thinking.

First of all, the poster above who said he/she was having trouble with their neighborhood said that they were building their first house.
Now, use you brain.
What should this immediately tell you about this person?
What it should tell you, quite obviously, is that he/she is inexperienced and that whatever issue they are having is most likely due to User Error.
Yet, you inexplicably immediately jump to the (false) conclusion that the "cheat doesn't work".

The cheat to modify the neighborhood terrain works fine. I just used it a few days ago. Many people, possibly thousands, have used it for years.
Yet, one beginner comes to this forum and claims it doesn't work and you repeat his/her nonsense. It is partly because these kinds of nonsensical postings are constantly repeated, especially by forum regulars like you, that makes it so difficult to get a grip on what is going on with this game.

Here are the instructions, taken straight off the neighborhood cheats page, which is something you should have posted, instead of repeating false information posted by a beginner:

modifyNeighborhoodTerrain [on/off]
Edit the neighbourhood terrain. Put your curser over the area you want to lower or raise (click and drag for a larger area), and press [ or ] to lower or raise by one click. Press \ to level the terrain. To smooth terrain, highlight the target area and press P.

Now, do you want to bet money that the person who was having the issue will come back here and say something to the effect of, "Oh, my bad, I was pressing the wrong key"?
That's if they come back at all to admit their mistake.

Additionally, it doesn't make any sense that a person who is building their first Lot is in a neighborhood that has a low ground level. How did this beginner end up on a neighborhood like that? Why is he there to being with, instead of being on one of the Maxis neighborhoods?
Who knows..., but it's another reason not to jump to totally unreasonably and unsubstantiated conclusions.

I would like to add that which keys to press to lower/raise/smooth the terrain, depends on the keyboard. Mine is Scandinavian and I have to press ` and å to lower/raise and ½ to level the terrain. Just sayin', cause I myself was wondering why nothing happened when I pressed [ ] etc, so at least other Scandinavians who are wondering, will know what the 'problem' is.

You need a chill pill bro. I already deduced from your previous post that you have a problem with me, so you're welcome to think I'm stupid, arrogant, wrong, annoying, obnoxious, insertwordofchoicehere. This rounds on me. Have fun. Knock yourself out. But I'm not walking into that hot mess, I got better things to do with my time.

One of the first things I did after taking a look at the Maxis hoods was decide that I didn't like any of them and start my own. (This was within three or four days of installing the game, so I was a pretty raw beginner.) When you start your own 'hood, you can choose from lots of templates, including Veronaville, which has a naturally very low ground level. Heck, a beginner could decide to build a house in Veronaville itself (a Maxis neighborhood), instead of in a new 'hood created from a template.

Not all people play the same way, or explore things at the same rate. You might want to be careful about assuming/jumping to the conclusion that only experienced players want to/are allowed to/know how to/can build.

Also, the terrain cheat came with FT, and if the beginner doesn't have FT (or above? not sure if it's in AL or M&G), the cheat really and truly won't work for them, no operator error required.

Welcome to my side. :') Everything you wrote was exactly what I thought in the 'Those Days are Long Gone' something-or-other thread, and the very reason I stopped replying in it.



Scoff might be a sin... but I'll make up for it by telling the girl I'm currently chatting with that I think she looks great with curly hair.

Now, that is useful and relevant information - and something that should be quite obvious to someone using something other than the American QWERTY keyboard - thank you.
Yet, with so many people around here it seems to be, "Oh my GOD!, this doodad doesn't work! The sky is falling, the sky is falling...!"
LOL, it boggles the mind.
OK, point made.

Oh dear, I didn't want to start a discussion. Anyway, it just so happens to be that after restarting the game the cheat to modify the terrain worked. For the record, I never had the intention to say the cheat doesn't work. However you have to trust me that I checked the code and instructions multiple times and the key for raising the terrain did nothing at first, but after restarting the game it did raise the terrain. I don't know what the exact problem was, but it had to be on my end nonetheless.
So far, rebuilding the basement didn't brought about another flooding. The first flooding incident happened after moving the lot around. It seems that as long as I leave it where it's at it seems fine. By the way, I am playing in Veronaville.
Since somehow my (in)experience has become a thing I feel I should give some extra context. I have played the sims since the first one came out. Only casual though. I would say that in total I have spent quite some time playing this series, but in contrast with other people who play this series it would probably not be that much. Simply because there is so much content and I never really focused on building houses/neighborhoods. I mostly started with a sim on an empty lot and slowly build a house, but nothing fancy. That is why I said I'm building my first house. This time I'm actually trying. Of course I'm inexperienced in building and it shows, though I'm not new to this game. I'm also not new to using cheats/codes and modding. Almost every game I play nowadays is moddable.

Edit: This post was written before I could read the posts on this page.

On page 3 of this thread, Mootilda explains the difference in such a way that even I can understand it, which takes some doing, I can tell you! :P

Thanks for replying, but your inexperience in Lot building is/was not the issue at all.

The issue was simply that a forum regular declared something broken that has worked for years for many players, based on very questionable information.
I'm glad you were able to at least resolve the terrain cheat issue.

I know I probably came across as harsh in my previous post, including towards you, but it was not my intent to insult you. There is nothing wrong with being a beginner at something. My intent was to make the point that questionable information should not be repeated as being fact, especially by people who should know better.

You are not to be faulted for anything.