Thanks again for everyone's input. I ended up purchasing City Designer 3 to go with my existing CC3 purchase.

Mark, after looking at the Fractal Mapper 8 demo, I was extremely impressed, and I think I would recommend it to anyone getting started in doing fantasy mapmaking. It's fast, it's easy to transfer experience from existing vector/art editing software, and has a reasonable number of good filters/effects.

The two I didn't see--that ultimately pushed me to CD3--was the edge fade, and inner edge fade effects that can be applied using sheets in CC3/CD3. Maybe the demo didn't have them and the full product did, but those two effects are my lifeblood for overland maps. Particularly when I'm trying to blend/fade contour lines, or other effects. Without them, my maps just wouldn't look the same.

If I were to recommend a product to someone who is wanting something easy, and isn't really trying to make "professional level" maps, however, I would say Fractal Mapper 8 over CC3/CD3.