Building on tropical island

Yes. Not a problem with buildings, walls, or roads, but adding a decent-sized dock can be a headache due to the dock tiles wanting to push the sand away. However, you can always repaste the sand by holding down on the Control button.

 

Interesting - Other than a dock, I hadn't tried building on island. I was expecting the terrain to behave the same as desert. Now I know. Thanks.

But yeah, using Ctrl you can replace the tiles right up to the building.

 

Oh! Run the island out to where you need it to be, then use ctrl and the deep water terrain just on the shoreline where you're going to place the dock and go a tile or two on either side just for good measure.
Run the dock terrain back from the ocean to 10 or more (more is better) tiles from the island.
Now go to the Facades and use the dock planking to bridge the gap between the island and the dock.
Using the Barred Circle delete button on the placed sections locks the pieces into place - and if you see dirt on the section you're using (# 45, for example), this will leave only boards.

Annoying and time-consuming, but that's how I had to do the docks at Norleigh and Leahbo.

The facade guide doesn't show the dock sections but I have pictures of them if you're interested.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IYF7596O

 

Wow.... You have my most sincere sympathies, Xz.
At this point all I can say is plan ahead and paint back over the damned water....

 

Here's a suggestion if you don't mind fiddling with an mes file.

in art->tile, there's an mes file called tilename.mes
add a line at the bottom:
{436}{dIsDst}

Then go through all the sectors where you want your village, and first replace them with dIs. You may need to go around the sectors to extend(if you don't want the desert Island to extend far past the city). You'll want to at least hit it once to make worlded fix the edges.
Then replace all the dIs sectors with Dst(desert). You may occasionally get a blue tile, but you can ctrl-overwrite it...it will be fewer than you would get otherwise, and they don't usually come back.

You might be able to add the art files for dIsDst(look at snwIce for an example), just out of the desert tileset(they blend fine in my opinion). but it seemed like more work than it was worth to me.