Athenya, City of Hope and New Beginnings

MAP IS FINISHED: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...lly-Finished-D

So yeah, this is Athenya, the capital city for the roleplay I participate in. There are basically 3 parts to the city, an outer ring, inner ring and the central ring. The central ring is where, as expected, the royal palace, senate, various temples, and the mansions built for the rich and powerful are found. The inner ring is home to schools, theaters, banks, artisans (painters, sculptors, etc), libraries and high class merchants, as well as where most of the middle class lives. The outer ring is the newest part of the city, and while the other rings have buildings of stone, the outer ring is mostly wooden in construction. The outer ring also only has a few large paved roads, with the rest being dirt.

So yeah, I guess Ill just update this thread as I go along to show my progress :]

update #1 on map progress

added in first set of buildings
just noticed i dont have any gates or bridges...

The only thing I can think of right now is that you need some color variation for those houses. No ancient city was ever built with every house...houses were built as the city grew. As such, even poor people went through trends and had access to different materials, not to mention fires. I'd add a pattern overlay of something colorful and set that to multiply or one of the burn modes then turn down the opacity. You could get away with just a clouds overlay but that leaves you with just brown and dark brown...color gives you some reds and oranges etc.

Well that only thing I worry about is the scale.
The city is...big...to say the least.
One of those little brown specs in the fields is a single house (albeit a small one)
But Ill try, maybe ill try and make entire blocks of houses and buildings with different colors.

Any tips on water?
Land Ive been fooling around with on a testing map I made, and I think I am figuring it out, but water is giving me some issues.

Here is a second update.
I added buildings for the inner and center ring. These ones are done on more of a grid than the more organic hodge-podge outer ring.
Added some bridges (or markers for future bridges)
Would it be too ambitious to try and add crowds of people roaming? :P
Not finished by far
But its coming along nicely for my first attempt if I do say so

Update 3:
Redid pretty much everything except the walls
Change the houses a bit to reflect scale
Colored in some of the housing areas for a varied look
Switched to a texture for farmland
Added roads and communities outside the walls
Changed grassland & water textures

The variety definitely is there now, but the noise just doesn't work for me. It makes it difficult to distinguish roads and those farm buildings. Maybe you should clip it away around the roads? Also, that brilliant blue aqueduct seems like it's too bright to produce such pale blue water. One would think that the same water in the aqueduct would be in the pool? Otherwise, the rendering of the scale is really great, and I love the farmland.

well the actual map is 2000x2000 pixels, so in its regular size its easier to tell, but its still a work in progress :]

Yeah, Ive been having trouble with the water, cant seem to get color or ripples very good

I'd like to see it in full scale, but comments for now are that with the new noise/color pattern, you have changed the visual scale of the city drastictly - it like the "camera" just zoomed hundreds of meters/yards into the air - the depth of the buildings disapeared and even though the outer circles still look like a huge city, the inner circles just turned in to huge steel discs...

A corner and new update

A little upset at myself. There was a power outage and I lost some settings I really enjoyed.
Note to self: Save after everything

Much better now... I can see in the detailed map that there still is some depth to it... it's still a HUGE city though - but if that fits your campaign then its ok... but have you measured it up against modern cities? :)
AND... have some rep for all that work and your first upload at that - good job :)