Thank you so far for support and input. You guys make a new member feel welcome!
As promised I return to the topic of no. 2) Complex Maps. I played for a second or two doing this in an isometric view, as you suggest. But since this is my very first attempt in digital cartography (or digital drawing for that matter) I dare not to spoil my motivation by trying too hard. I decided to go for the tried-and-proof top-down-view. I got a little confused when I tried to layout some rooms from the front-view, and if that happens to me while creating the map, the reader won't fare any better.
So, top-down it is. To avoid the simple dungeon-level-design I'll try to give each Level (let's think of them as different city-districts) three different sub-levels, that are postioned just a slight above or under each other. Do you get what I mean? E.g. there is Level 5 (seats of power), first level/district below surface level. This level/district is represented in one map, that displays levels 5.1 (royal housing), 5.2 (court) and 5.3 (temple). The ones lying deeper are coloured slightly darker than the upper ones. Drawback: none of these sub-levels may contain rooms that are located exactely above another one in this level/district. But since they are supposed to be just slightly deeper, I can take it.
Ah, I better sketch something up...
So much for that. Right now I try to think of all the areas, places and halls the stronghold might contain and assign them to one of the 8 levels/districts I want to create right now - for the major complex. There are not that many layers in the second one, but there is a second set of levels/districts. Not every one of them necessarily needs 3 sub-levels, yet still there are going to be looooots of mapsies. Let's see if that are too many of them to contain in my show piece.
As for 1)Area Map: i definitely suck at scaling. I have a hard time measuring distances and heights and proportions just fail me. The valley is supposed to be as big as to contain a medieval-fantasy city, a capital. When i started to map the location in my mind, the idea of a massive road/bridge across the rough terrain and lake hovered before my inner eye.
But thanks for pointing it out, the bridge is more than gigantic. So I applied your proposal to the area map I created using the "artistic maps in gimp" tutorial. See for yourself:
Sure, it's the quick&dirty solution I used, but the feel of the road is much more natural than the huge slash across the map that's supposed to be a bridge, and that even beyound just size. It also solves the problem of logically connecting the farms to the complexes.
The map is really just whipped up rushing through the tutorial, because I wanted something more than just the first sketches. I did not even meant to post them at first, but the before/after effect of the removing of the bridge is what changed my mind. The sky-bridge is missing, because I was too lazy drawing one. The road to the mountain pass is much smaller, for this is a rarely travelled path and not even worthy of cobble.
So much for today. I'll go on tutorialising, toying around with the area map and assigning locations to levels/districts.
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