@all Thank you all for your positive feedbacks ! This is very motivating !

@jbgibson I didn't do the rivers myself, but I didn't realize there was so much trouble with them. Unfortunately some rivers already have background with them, I'll explain the person who did the river (and the cc3 map) the problem.

For the cartoonish look, I believe I'll try to find some way to keep two versions. I believe the flat look of mountains is due to the cartoon style, and using some linear gradiant will give smooth mountains which is even worse.

For the outline don't forget these are hand-drawn elements (actually painted with Soy sauce and a brush) on white paper. Your solution seems a bit hard to do. I just decided to drop any outline.

For the game, most of the character are the faction leaders or have some other important key role in their countries. There 5 "playable countries" that are the five larger ones and consequently should have at least fair amounts of resources, and the "other"... But again The resource map is to change in near future.

For the grid, this can be easily added on a separate layer and turned on/off at will. Thanks for the suggestion.