Moving and demolishing: farms, decorations and roads

Most buildings can be picked up and put down somewhere else, but farms and ranches cannot: once their fields are in, they stay where they are, and a farm cannot be torn down either. Decorations go with the Delete key, and players find the main road only grows from one end. Knowing these three things before you build saves you a restart.

Farms and ranches are permanent once the fields go in

A farm is only half built until you add its field plots, and the plots are what pin it down. The third hotfix did not change the rule, it only explained it: “The Move button now explains why Farms and Ranches cannot be moved.” Nor can you get rid of the plots to free the farm. One player put the problem plainly: “It doesnt really help to know that the farm cannot be moved because it has a field, when you cannot remove said field.” Another tried the Delete key: “its not possible to remove fields. even with the delete key”.

Demolishing is off the table too. An official forum account answered a player stuck with a dead potato farm: “I've also passed on that potato farms can't be torn down.” In the same reply: “The potato farm stopping mid-harvest is a known issue the team is working on right now.” So a farm that stops working keeps its spot until a patch changes either rule.

Before you lay the fields

• Save first. A player’s workaround, since nothing else undoes a bad placement: “the only way I can deal with this is to save the game, place the farm, and reload the save if I mess up the placement”.
• Leave room around it. The plots spread out from the farm, and one of the ideas adds five more. Put the farm where the space beside it is open grass, not where your next houses or road will go.
• Keep it inside a warehouse’s range. You cannot drag a farm closer later, so the warehouse has to come to it. Ranges are explained on your first two hours.
• Same for cattle. A ranch falls under the same rule, and it needs a barn in range, so plan both together. What each farm and ranch produces is on food chains.

Removing decorations: the Delete key

There is no demolish button for decorations. Point at one and press Delete on the keyboard. The publisher confirmed it, with a warning: “You can remove decoration by highlighting them and pressing the delete key, but this isn't explained as far as I know and doesn't always work smoothly at the moment.” Some decorations will not go at all for now; one player could not delete a horse however often they tried.

Decorations do not travel with a house. As one player found: “If I move a house the decorations get left behind”. Delete them before the move, then decorate the new spot. That matters for whims and quests that count decorations at a specific home, like the flowers and hedges in Mother-in-Law on the side quests page.

Roads: the main road grows from one end

Ordinary roads can be drawn freely, but the wide main road behaves differently. Players report that it can only be extended from the end you built last, not from both ends and not as a branch: “I cant seem to build the main road from both directions. I can only seem to build from where I built it last.” Plan its route before you lay the first stretch, and let ordinary roads do the branching.

Upgrading an existing road to a main street widens it without moving what stands beside it: “if you upgrade the normal road to main street, it really looks out of place with half the house in the middle of the road”. Move the houses back first, or build the main street on open ground. One player found that moving or demolishing next to a road can leave short stubs of road behind, which the road removal tool clears.

The three kinds of road, snapping, and trimming a road part of the way are covered on what you actually do.

Quick answers

Related: iron, stone and wooden parts for what to build first, residents’ needs and whims for what decorations do, and crashes and bugs if a building stops working after a move.