Thanks for your response Freodin. I've been reading up on river principles and a few other bits and pieces of map design, and I've realised a few things about the map. First of all, despite the interesting geography of the area, it is really an unremarkable map so far. There's nothing that really marks as better or worse than anything else, and it's largely done with someone else's groundwork, so that's why I figured I had no feedback. I'm working on the next stage to upload, to see if it's any more interesting by that point.
However, you've given me some useful things to think about.
The first time I made this map, I had the symbols much closer together, and I didn't really like the effect. There's a lot else wrong with the map, but with regard to the symbols, what's your opinion?
I'll pay more attention to the scale next time I do this too. I've already noticed it's quite hard to map an area that supposedly covers more than 10,000,000 square miles on this scale: cities fade into the background unless you make the symbols ridiculously big. I think I need to a) revise my thoughts on the size of the area I'm mapping and b) map areas in the right scale.
Yes, the river deltas are enormous, and my river placement is skewed as a result. I actually wanted a swamp measuring something like the pre-drained area of the Mesopotamian marshland: over 7000 square miles, which is over a fifth of some modern countries. I can't find any figures for how big the Everglades were pre-drainage, but there are references to the sale of an area over 6000 square miles and multiple sales of 2000ish square miles, meaning it must once have been immense. That's the kind of thing I'm aiming for on the east, at least. But, nonetheless, the placement of them is weird and I still don't fully understand the hydrological processes behind the formation and evolution of wetlands.
I will play around with hand-tapering rivers next time around too, see if it gets any better results.
I also had some other thoughts: I'm choosing a really absurd area to start mapping. I have subterranean mountain dwellers, men who live on stilt houses in the marsh, a completely unnatural mountain range (or 3), and cliff and elves who literally grow their homes (and their navy) out of living trees in the middle of a forest which they perpetuate with fiercely guarded magic, all which make for entirely unorthodox maps, especially on an economic level. I'll finish this map, because I have a nasty habit of leaving things unfinished for long periods of time, but perhaps after this I ought to go with something more normal to get the hang of what I'm doing, and how these things would really play out in a realistic world.
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