Hi, I posted this in Stupid/Random Questions and was suggested I repost my issue here, so I'm just going to copy-paste my original post.

Is there any way I, as a player using the UC, can combine two neighborhoods together? I have Fort Osceola and Sycamore Grove, and I would like to combine them in such a way that Sycamore Grove is the neighborhood's downtown. However, the only tutorials I'm finding are Mootilda's using AGS, which you can't use with the UC. :/ Am I stuck here? I really don't want to rebuild Sycamore Grove all over again.

Is there any way I can use Hood Replace to at least copy over the neighborhood decorations into an identical map that's been set as Fort Osceola's Downtown, considering I haven't placed down too many lots anyways as of yet?

Thank you in advance.

Does Sycamore Grove have subhoods? If there aren't any subhoods, then it's realy easy to convert the neighborhood into a downtown subhood and there's an alternative way of doing that without using AGS.
It can also be changed into a downtown using SimPE. Of course, it's a little more difficult but I could show you how it could be done.

However if Sycamore Grove has subhoods of its own, you'll need to do some extra steps, as you cannot directly convert neighborhoods with subhoods to subhood templates..
But it's still possible.

Don't stealth hoods count as subhoods for these purposes?

Sycamore Grove does not have any subhoods of its own, but Peni raises a point which I'm unsure of the answer for.

Yes, subhoods would count. You would have to start with a new version of the neighbourhood, created without any stealth hoods (the bits where the loading screen says "Creating Weather" etc).

I'm not sure whether Sycamore Grove is a 'hood you've downloaded or one you've made, so I'm not sure how realistic that is.

Sycamore Grove is a 'hood I created myself, using a map I found here on MTS. IIRC, I used empty templates for its creation, so it does have subhoods, but they're.. not... really doing anything. But regardless, they're still there, so... Yeah. A problem for me, certainly.

Jawusa, if you say it can still be done, I would appreciate it if you could give me some pointers on how to go about doing that. You seem to be very knowledgeable on the subject.

No worries. It's still possible to do so Ather. I'll tell you how to do so step by step.
It is possible to remove all subhoods (also secret-subhoods) by a special trick and then you can still add Sycamore Grove as a downtown to your other neighborhood.

First, easiest step and the most important step: Make a back-up of your neighborhood!

Now, let's do the preparations.

- Has everyone graduated from university? If not, make sure that there aren't any students hanging around in that university subhood. Don't worry about the dormies and the college NPCs, they don't count.
- Does anyone live on the subhoods that are going to be deleted soon? If so, move them out!
- The same also applies to vacation subhoods. If someone is on vacation, finish that vacation and let that sim return home.
- If there are any graveyards in your subhoods, make sure to move all the graves to the mainhood, otherwise you'll corrupt your neighborhood.

If all of the steps are done and you made sure that there really are no households living in the subhoods, you can delete all subhoods in-game using the delete button. You'll notice that you cannot delete university subhoods and the secret-subhoods but we'll manage that. Don't worry.

As for the university subhood, before deleting it, create a NEW university subhood on an empty terrain without lots. After creating that empty subhood, you can delete your actual university now. (The game doesn't allow you to delete the university because it's the only university. But if there are more than one universities, you can delete all the others but keep one university.)
Make sure to delete your real university, so you only have the empty one.

Now you can quit your game. Go to your Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection/Neighborhoods and open up your neighborhood folder. (It could be N004, N005, etc.)
For this example, I'll choose N004.
Once you open that folder, you'll see a Characters, Lots, Storytelling and a Thumbnails folder. Ignore them for now.

If you have done everything correctly, you should have one university subhood (e.g N004_University002.package and its picture) and the five secret sub-hoods (N004_Suburb001-005.package and their pictures)
You can select them all and delete them. Don't worry, it's completely safe as there are no families living on those subhoods. In the end, you should only have the neighborhood itself. (N004_Neighborhood.package and its picture)

Now open up Mootilda's Clean Installer and the Lots folder. Examine which of the lots are the so-called hobby and witch lots. Make sure to delete them. In your case, it shouldn't take long. Because the secret hobby/witch lots are always added when loading the neighborhood for the first time and as you say, the neighborhood was created by you. So the hobby/witch lots should be the very first lots. There are 10 hobby lots and 2 witch lots. So you should delete 12 lots from that folder.

If you got so far, you're ready to convert the neighborhood into a downtown subhood. All of these steps were just to remove the subhoods. We need to do that in order to change the neighborhood type. First, make sure that you've got everything correctly. Then, I'll show you how you could change the neighborhood type into a downtown subhood.

@Ather
Were you able to follow my steps?
As this is only to remove the subhoods from the neighborhood. You'll have to change it to a downtown using SimPE. That would be the next step but it would be a huge post... Therefore I wanted to wait for you until you get here.

I know it's a long process, but it isn't difficult. Trust me!

@Jawusa

Hi, sorry!! I've been a little busy, but I'm here now.

I haven't had a chance to getting around to doing those steps, but it seems straight-forward enough. You are so kind to be helping me with this. I don't know when I will have a chance to get around to doing this, so perhaps in an attempt to ease my guilt in having you wait around on me like this, you could just post the next steps now? So I can come back to this later when I have a chance? Otherwise I will feel too guilty having you wait on me like this!!

@Jawusa

Sorry for the little poke, but I'm just checking on ya. You mentioned it's a long process, so I've tried being a liiiiiittle more patient than my usual attention span of 0.2 seconds, but I'm nonetheless curious on if you're still interested in this? It's fine if you aren't.

It's a long process if you have attached subhoods to it (universities and such).
But as I see you don't have any subhoods attached to Sycamore Grove.

I didn't see your post #4.


So in your case, you'd just have to remove the 5 secret sub-hoods (N004_Suburb001-005.package and their pictures).
After deleting the files, open up Mootilda's Clean Installer and scan the Lots folder of N004 and write down the number of the hobby/witch lots that you're going to remove from the Lots folder.
There are totally 12 lots that you should remove from the Lots folder. If you created the neighborhood completely from scratch, meaning you had absolutely no lots at the very beginning, then it will be really easy to remove. Just select the first 12 lots and delete them. The first 12 lots are the secret hobby lots.

By the way, I just used N004 for an example, it could be anything. N005, N006, N147, N999 or whatever

Alternatively, you could upload the neighborhood as it is now and I'll do everything for you! (Removing any subhoods, changing the neighborhood type, etc).
I'll convert the neighborhood into a subhood using SimPE and not using the in-game cheat. As I don't want to ruin your neighborhood decor; I assume you play with CC, don't you?