Hi gimil,
Please don't take any of the following recommendations as things that you
have to do. They are merely suggestions that I think would help a few elements match the rest of your beautiful map.
And while I certainly don't speak for KEYOGI, I suspect that he had the same sentiment in mind when he carefully worded this:
KEYOGI wrote:Could you perhaps make the sea connections with a bit of a curve to them? The sharp straight lines kind of clash a bit, especially with the soft colours you have throughout the map.
1) I made this suggestion before, but either I wasn't very clear in my explanation or you didn't like the look:
Sparqs wrote:gimil wrote:Sparqs wrote:Haoala's suggestion may be better. I think the grey highlight region would look good with a rounded, free-flowing shape.
what do you mean?
I mean that the grey highlight area might look better if it looked more like a puddle, instead of having sharp 90-degree corners and straight edges.
In case I was unclear before, I have included an example of the puddle shape that I suggest you use to indicate the island-continent on the inset bonus-value map. Please ignore my color choice.
2) I know that several people have mentioned that they prefer the straight lines, but they might change their minds when they see the smoother curves I propose below. I'm not sure what application you are using to create your map, but based on the look, I suspect you have access to vector drawing tools (in contrast to bitmap painting tools). If so, you might try using the Bezier curves (the pen tool in Photoshop) to get smooth lines. Obviously I'm biased, but I think the results below look nice and match the style of your map.
3) Also related to the sea-connection lines, I think it would look nice if they were all consistently pointing to the land or all pointing to the army circles, instead of some of each. And since you are always pointing at land on the mainland side, I'd suggest that for the islands, too. Again, I have illustrated this below.
Thank you for considering my suggestions.
~Sparqs