Editing Land

Wondering if there are any better editing tools or guides for editing your land?

What I mean by editing it is editing the actual land. Like flattening it, smoothing it, raising, lowering and so on.

I just can't seem to get the hang of it enough to do a good job. I'm right now trying to carve a set of steps in a hill side for example. But I end up making it look worse then when I started!

That would be becase the tools are woefully imprecise.

There needs to be a single vertex selection tool, and it needs more precise movement, among other things.

Or better yet, a way to upload a heightmap for land smaller than "private island" scale.

Those magnificent avs in their land editings
They go uppity up up, they go downitty down down...

What works best for me is, if you're trying to mass raise/lower/flatten, the big tool is used, whereas for more pinpoint precision the smaller should be used. But, the trick to using both effectively is to do this:
1. Click area you want to affect
2. Wait for visible change
3. Complain about how slow this is
4. Repeat as necessary.