Topo map and river creation wierdness?

[Miago]

Just playing around with the editor a little today. It's pretty neat, if a little kludgy, compared to other editors I've used. Be that as it may, I will adapt and improvise... ;)

Okay, I finally got a topo downloaded and created a map I like pretty well. However, there is no river on the topo. I used the sites listed in the editor manual (the NOAA site) with settings of 30N x 30E x -5W x -5S (since I had no idea what to actually put for the West and South entries). When I try to create a river, it 'pushes' all the terrain ahead of it, basically destroying anything that was there before.

The steps I'm taking for river creation (right out of Matt's tut_1):
Choose the Elevation Option Paint Hills Brush: Tiny Norm for terrain (just left at default) Elevations set at recommended -1,90,6

Is there a way around this river creation process pushing my terrain off the map as it gets painted? Is it possible to create a map with just a river and merge it with the topo? If not, what good are downloaded topos if they contain no river to start with that we can edit to our specs? Nothing in either Matt's tuts or the editor.pdf cover any situation like this that I could find. What am I setting or not setting that I should othewise be doing?

Any advice/help appreciated in advance.

Cheers!
Miago

[NumakNatut III]

Try -1,90,100 I think you have the slope way too flat. 100 is the steepest setting, 0 being flat as a pool table. I usually never set my slope less than 25, unless I'm intentionally trying to flatten huge areas or bring the whole world down below sea level. I usually have it between 100 and 50. But it all depends on what landscape I'm trying to shape.

IF you can set the topo to start with the average terrain height at zero, then any terrain on your topo lower than zero would create a river valley automatically.

Set the tile size to tiny and "sample" the terrain to see exactly what your heights are.