yeti_c wrote:What I would do with this... is change the Blue dots (Towns) to something not dotty or blue... something like a House or something.
Great idea. if you are going to be using the dots to reference something off the map you shouldn't also use the same dots to represent a bonus of the map itself.
Text... it's a mess right now, so let's clean it up, and make it less busy. This is what i would do:
• Bithynia et Pontus. This is confusing and it doesn't have to be. I suggest you take it out of the legend entirely, get rid of the trident, and on the territory itself you just write "Bith. et Pont." If you then wrote it "Bithynia et Pontus" in the XML people will get it.
• Put the bonuses together... move the city bonus up with the rest of the bonuses. Then I would take the wall out from between the text and the armies showing the bonus - it's just confusing splitting up information that needs to go togethr.
• again, increase the size of the roman numerals in the legend a bit. It's important information, so make it look important.
• Get rid of the info across the bottom. I know you put it there to make a point, but it's insulting.
• For the 10th time, split the two inset maps. They aren't connected, so putting them in one element is confusing.
• make the alpes inset a bit bigger - you have the space, so by making it a bit larger you can put the circles on the territories and include the titles of the surrounding territories.
• perhaps you should somehow make the wolves in the Roma map bigger so it is obvious what they are... at that size they don't look like anything, and at first glance they don't look like the image in the legend.
Here's a crappy mock up showing some of what I'm talking about...
Finally, you are getting good feedback about how to improve this map graphically, so I don't understand why you are resisting. Lining up the territory titles across the top won't improve gameplay, but it will help the map look better. Of course, if you don't want the map to look better that's fine, but then don't get upset if you don't get stamped.