Thanks everyone! I will definitely have that border reduced in the next update.

Llannagh, I was actually planning on drawing the shadow lines from the beginning (I knew you'd be disappointed ). The ones on the map actually do have slight variations in width but I kept the minimum diameter to 50%-75%. I did experiment with emphasizing that variation but it wasn't doing it for me. It gives the mountains a different flavor than what I'm looking for in this map.

The style is based on elements I found in The History of Cartography.

As for the trees, I know I could use the clone stamp or some kind of pattern brush but In my experience it ends up looking too uniform. Based on the forest I already redrew, weaving things around existing trees will leave a lot of small artifacts. With the tree density I'm using and the number of elements among the trees, I expect there would be a lot of tedious editing after the tree placement.

I plan to do most everything by hand except the stroke effect on the rivers, roads and coast (no need to draw them 3 times). And I'll be cloning most of the town icons. So this will be a practice in persistence. I blame Coyotemax's signature.