I do like the shaded relief effect, reminds me of the atlases from grade school

I recall seeing this map before (earlier version in another thread) and thinking to myself that the borders were unusual - the only example I know of where a country is completely enclosed within a single other country is Lesotho surrounded by South Africa (does that even still exist like that?). But your explanations make a lot more sense for this map

Nice! And I can confirm that in ps7 the text layers will rasterize if you merge them. No smart object for that version. (no ability to group in folders either, owch)
I feel your pain