I like Indochina, 1961 Berlin, and Age of Merchants because of their maps look like actual maps from the time. I like Draknor because it looks like a top-down view of the dungeon itself, not just a map of the dungeon. I like the Philippines, but I'm not sure why. I like Siege! because the territory colors and backgrounds reflect the type of area you would expect. I like USApocalypse because of the humour and feel of the map, even if the bridges do look like pea pods. I like Doodle Earth because of the simplicity and humour. I like World 2.1 because of the clean look and the ability to distinguish between countries and borders (except for Greece :p) despite the size. I like 8 Thoughts because of how well the colors and pictures used match the thoughts in question.
Finally, I love the Age of Realms maps because they tell a story and you get to see changes between the different ages (Ieme takes over as a port after Rhit freezes over).
My set is a bone coat-of-arms and chandelier! How cool is that?
Itrade wrote:Finally, I love the Age of Realms maps because they tell a story and you get to see changes between the different ages (Ieme takes over as a port after Rhit freezes over).
aside from the big visual changes (ice lava forests etc) there are also tiny little changes i doubt many people even noticed them. for example in chapter 2 on the ice bridge there are direction posts pointing to various castles so that people don't get lost. or on the same bridge there is a camping place with a camp fire and people gathered in a circle, or a broken ship caught in ice near the aoria castle. also on chapter 3 there are minor little details that tell the story. for example the houses that have different colours, like in the orcs realm the houses are made of white bones, or in the troglodytes realm they are made of dark granite.
“In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested.”- Michio Kaku
San Fran for the perspective (and to a lesser extent along the same lines, Great Lakes). I also like WWII Iwa Jima for it's visual simplicity for a battlefield map... which seem to be head and shoulders above other battlefield maps in the readability dept (yes, it's not a trade off for complex game play, but this is just based on the visuals)
On the other end of the spectrum, the two maps with the poorest visual design (I'm not judging game play at all here...) have to be Actium and Waterloo.