Well, I was almost ready to throw in the towel but I'm not one to let EA win. Yeah blow me EA haha...
So I got to thinkin about this World Edit deal of Arnie's and him editing the Newcrest lot AND the recent talk on editing lots so now that's where I'm at, ditching Evergreen Harbor for the Newcrest build, moving and resizing lots. I'll let you guys know how THAT one goes. The UI I bet only accepts 5 lots as clickable in certain positions so I might have to work around that somehow...
Another thought that popped into my cranium was using Sims 3 CAW to open these world files. Now I know someone has prolly tried that but imma give the S3Pe approach a whirl of creating an empty CAW project and import the data and only the lot data from one to the other then back again AFTER I edit it in CAW. I might even try doing a rough layout of the area to use as reference. All seems like too much work so I'm doing this direct edit approach first. Third solution is code a simple world file editor in either c# or python. This solution will prolly end up happening for sure at some point if I am at all successful... More to come
Update:
Oh man I just had another crazy idea. And this is how I like making my Sims 3 worlds in CAW too is using lots for decoration but I would have to place a bunch of lots to do that and I "think" I can by adding in additional lots in S4S. Basically leave the lots the game uses the same size but move them around where they fit in the theme I'm creating THEN add in additional lots to use as decorative lots. Now I think the game will have issues trying to move sims into additional lots so I might have to use the game referenced lots in the UI to move sims into, the others would be community lots only and to travel there I would have to do it in live mode. All of this is speculation until I try it but thats what I'm gonna shoot for right now and get back to ya