I've painted the routing so the camera and sims cant go to the edges of my flat map(quite a thick line, too) and when I test it the camera can still go to the edge, see the surrounding blue(when it shouldnt be able to). Please help!

You need at least a chunk box, if not more to hide the view, and some hills.

I'm not really sure what you mean. I need the world to be a very flat looking environment. Also, when I zoom in to a normal amount (in edit town or on a specific lot) the ground just disappears and goes to ocean

In "View" menu, tic the show Chunk Boundaries, and you'll get a bunch of white lines, if they're red that means you have too many textures in that chunk. I think you might need 1 1/2 chunk or two. You'll have to play around with it.

If you have no hills to impede the view, I think you'll still be able to see the water.

If you zoom in too far, the camera will go right through the map. Do you think that could be the issue?
Edit, Sorry I re read your post about zooming; I'm not sure about that, if you let it sit a bit does it eventually render?

I think I know what you mean. Mine is the same. I do like to see the entire world as opposed to the EA way of bouncing off it. I painted the yellow non camera route all the way round mine and the camera does still come out further than I wanted. For me, I'd rather it came out too far than not see the edges but it doesn't seem to stop where I want it to either. I think if you really want to stop the camera from coming out so far, you have to paint further inside the area where you want the cameras to stop.

I would put a picture of the chunk boundaries but they disappear if I zoom out too far. Now, you're right, when I zoom in too far it goes through the map. For example, I had a roof of a house, and I zoomed in to edit the roof, and when i wasn't even zoomed in that far it just kind of cuts off and goes through.