Very, very nice!
With the redesign of the actual map, I think you need to change the border style. The whole tan/sepia thing doesn't fit very well. The decorations all look very good, and I see no reason to remove the top-left one.
I love those mountains, too.
I have a vague idea from AH.com that you use Paint.NET. Am I right?
One of those Alternate Earth History people.
OK. The artistic part is more or less finished, now the labeling begins.
The legend is not the final version, but only to get an idea of the style and position.
Maybe I do some more deco for the blank part of the border left and right of the title.
I love the map, it's got a lot of character. On the other hand, some minor nitpicks would be that the features you're calling bays are at the scale really more like gulfs. Bays would be barely noticeable at this scale, but gulfs are essentially like huge bays.
“Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.”
-Mark Jenkins
Thanks. Good idea with the gulfs!
Well, the Bay of Bengal really ought to be called a gulf, but since there was no one to enforce naming conventions back when these things were named it ends up like that. However the Bay of Bengal is by an order of magnitude the largest bay in the world. So it's more of an anomaly than anything else.
Wikipedia suggests some other names for semi-enclosed bodies of water: "A large bay may be called a gulf, a sea, a sound, or a bight. A narrow bay may also be called a fjord if its sides are relatively steep. A cove is a circular or oval coastal inlet with a narrow entrance; some coves may be referred to as bays."
“Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.”
-Mark Jenkins
Sapiento, you are a constant source of inspiration to me. This is freaking awesome so far.
Thanks, Diamond! Always good to hear
Wormspeaker and euio: I'll change some to gulfs and the rest will stay as bays to have some diversity.
A small note to the names for the locations and features on the map:
As the native Venusian languages and dialects are hardly pronounceable for humans many geological features are named after the first Terran explorer, while others are phonetic approaches (never really successful) to the original name.
The Venusians have a tech level comparable to the 19th century, so the gap between them and the humans is not very wide. This will result in some nasty conflicts as the Venusians resist the Terran attempts to colonize the cooler polar regions of Venus.
I did the labelling - a pain in the ass, again. I should make maps with less labelling in the future!
The ! in the native city names is a click consonant like in some African languages.
C&C?