So, here's the map with labels for cities and provinces. I add some of the maritime labels and a part of the railroad. I'm not really happy with the railroad, so if anybody has a tip about it, it would be great!
I'm also working on flags for the different "states", but I'm not sure how I'll use it on this map.
Looks great Ilanthar. I really like the smoothness of the rivers and coastline. The hatched effect on the borders is a nice touch.
I have to say though, that island looks like some giant prawn creature scuttling its way to the western continent.
now you pointed it out, I can see the giant prawn! Could partly work with the story, as the one country that rules Norumbega has ambitions to the west and the south.
Thanks for the support guys!
I really like the idea of showing by color the settled regions, but since you've added that big color stroke around every border, it makes it seem as if every nation has been colonized from the national border, a big settled ring around an empty interior. What about shrinking the border color area significantly, or showing populated areas by horizontal lines or something?
Good to know! If the continent has indeed been re-populated from the coast, it has not been from the borders (that of course, came a bit later).
I tried your two suggestions, what do you think?
and
And I may use a mini-map (thanks to Caenwyr!) for using flags and name the big states. Is that readable?
I like the mini-map, but I don't think it makes sense to have almost the same level of detail as the main map repeated in it. If it were me, I'd remove the contours and stuff from the mini-map, and colour the entire area of each nation instead of just the border, so it's more like the image below but with the lines instead of solid colours.
Looking good, really like how this is coming along
Yeah that looks perfect to me, particularly when zoomed out a little