WIP - Teneran

[Moe]

Hello everybody,

I just discovered this great site and it's forum a few days ago and first of all I want to say how stunned I am. It is overwhelming what
great pieces of work can be found by simply browsing the threads. Started working on my own I never thought there may be such a community
for that sort of passion. Amazing!

To get to my concern:
I worked on a project for a couple of weeks since my first ideas. The aim was to creat a realistic looking map with lots of detail, being the basis
for a world. Nevertheless it shouldn't look like a satellite image and so far I reached my goal. A thousand thanks go out to pasis at this point whose
tut helped me to come over my troubles in drawing some good looking mountain peaks.

Now I came to a point where I need to add details to terrain and signs of population as well as adjust some landscape parts to occur more logical.
Before I'd like to get that much in detail, I decided to insert the names of cities, countries, seas, etc., etc. With all that text on top of the map I surely
would have some hours of work being useless as you cannot see any of those details underneath the letters. So I decided to start with the labeling first.

And here is my problem. I can't find a suitable way of labeling which satisfies me a 100%. I'll add two samples. One contains the map as it looks like
at the moment. The other one is a small extract demonstrating different types of font.

It would be great if you gave me your opinion about the map in general and your thoughts concerning how to name my towns, landmarks, etc. so
it fits the overall look.

Sincerly,
Moe

(As I am not a native speaker I hope you'll excuse mistakes in spelling and choice of words)