@thehawk makes a good point about ancient sewer systems. I think the earliest definite sewer pipes date to around 4000 BCE in what's now southern Iraq, at the ancient cities of Eshnunna and Uruk, although more sophisticated sewer systems survive archaeologically from the Indus Valley civilization around a millennium later (c. 2300-1800 BCE). Most were of brick or clay construction in various forms.

Yeah, I'm with Mike on the anti-snow front! It might look OK from indoors, but when you've had to slog through it, or have spent days clearing it at times, it VERY quickly loses any appeal.

And yes, Joe's right about the concrete look now. It's very tricky. I know even looking at specimens of the mineral galena can be difficult, as it can be both shiny silver-white and black at the same time...

Simplest option would be to use the colour drawing tool, and then add an RGB Matrix Process Effect to the whole map, set to "Gray". This will make everything look B&W - so you could design the entire map using the colour set-up, and have it all appear as greyscale in the finished item.

In case you're unsure about adding the Effect, when you open up the Drawing Sheets and Effects dialogue box (click on the rectangle marked "S:" with the name of the current Sheet in at the top of your CC3+ drawing window), click on any Sheet, then click the "Whole Drawing" radio button above the Sheets list.

Then click "Add", select "RGB Matrix Process" from the list this will call-up, and then click to highlight the RGB Matrix Process Effect that's now been added to the Whole Drawing list.

Then click "Edit". Once you're in the RGB Matrix Process dialogue box, click "Predefined", then "Gray" from that list, and finally "OK", and then (assuming you have something already drawn on your map to check), click "Apply" to see what it does.

Good luck!

Ralf demonstrated exactly this, and the method to increase a river's size on an overland map, using the Pete Fenlon style, a couple of weeks ago on the YouTube live mapping stream. It starts around 19 minutes in here.

Map's looking good.

The fill on the frame seems a bit "linear repetitive"; not sure if that's deliberate, though it is mildly distracting to my eye.

The northerly coastline where there aren't any broad beaches or cliffs looks a trifle abrupt. Might be worth considering adding a thin "beach" and/or "rock platform" outline polygon along it (polygon rather than line to look a bit more naturalistic).

Assuming the frame's alpha-numerics are going to relate to a final map key, there'll need to be a suitably pale grid over the map as well to clarify where places away from the frame actually are. It may be worth considering having both that grid and the letter-number frame labels, and maybe even the final key listing, on a sheet that can be hidden, as currently they look rather too modern in style, and the grid's going to be a distraction more generally, if added.

SS5 Cities of Schley has a selection of Halfling house options (grassy mounds with round doors and windows), and also Elven treehouses, plus rough-looking Orc buildings. The main CD3 Bitmap B style has a larger range of fantasy building options as well, including for Halflings (houses and grassy mounds) and Elven treehouses again, as do the main CD3 vector styles, so there are options there without needing to go down the Annuals route. And the Annuals, being smaller in size than these main products, do tend to concentrate more on providing the basic styles first.

It is worth noting that you can draw your own house shapes using the CD3 toolset, and give the roofs whatever texture you wish from the range of options you have available. Stacking different shapes on top of one another on different Sheets with variant Effects can also increase the options for how things appear. DIY treehouses by placing a suitably-shaped and textured house in different sized tree and other vegetation symbols, all on separate Sheets, for instance. And things like varicolor wooden roofs can be made to work as market stall awnings with a bit of resizing and choice of suitable colours.

Sorry for hijacking your thread, Sue! Can't really add much beyond what's already been suggested above for Darklands Cities II, after all that... 😪

Overland, Cities and Dungeons are the three key planks for CC3+ mapping though, and it has been mentioned here now, so... 😎

@Glitch - Something else you might try is having a second window with another program (such as Windows Explorer) on full screen mode, so it hides the CC3+ window completely. This helps stop the looping as much, and you can check the thumbnail view to see when the CC3+ screen is showing correctly again. I spotted Ralf did exactly this on this week's livestream at one point, so I know it's not just me who finds this helps sometimes!

+1 from me for the tanks/AFV annual!

If you're seriously thinking of a full range of vehicles, maybe choose a specific theatre and time to reduce the options somewhat. Colour schemes and camouflage will easily swap over, but the modifications to vehicles, and the different types involved, end up as the real problems (speaking as a long-time model-maker and WWII wargamer).

Aircraft to follow? 😉

Map The Second is...

Hex 403, Bruga's Hold:

A logging hamlet on the upper Swirl River, among the woods of the southwestern Siljan Hills, this is a rather isolated, frontier-style settlement, with trails leading-off to logging camps, or former ones (the trails southeast of the river crossing were where much of the timber for the settlement originated, for instance). Markets here aren't common, but the open space is handy for storing piles of fresh timber prior to sending it off down-river, or overland by trail southwards. The self-styled Queen's tough, if not as young as she was, and her extended family keeps most things more-or-less in-check here, though her nieces at The Corner Daughters have a tendency to accuse those they dislike of theft, something that works best with outsiders. The grandiose apothecary's shop-name was a random choice (it does look outwardly like a small temple), which seemed too apt to waste - see the notes above on the Crystal Cathedral - while "Merry Wares" became something of a running joke, as it cropped up randomly twice more in different settlements in this set for quite different places. I retained that too, as GMs can decide if it's at all significant.

On the original map, I started out with the woods rather denser than they are now. That looked much too dominant, and would have been unrealistic so near the settlement, so, much like the original loggers here, I had to thin them out somewhat. The mapping style makes use of both tree and bush symbols, and a bitmap tree fill drawing tool, which in combination for the densest areas here help give the woods a particularly 3D feel, although the symbols have to be applied judiciously to better hide the edges of the bitmap-fill segments. Of course, I had to delete and redraw all the first areas of the fill, as they were far too large, and it took a little experimenting to get the sizes right after that, in combination with the individual scatter of trees and bushes. Luckily, I had a fair idea of how best to achieve all this, as - although it was using a somewhat different style, and in colour - I have done quite a bit of woodland mapping for the Atlas before, for those who remember the extensive mapping series for the Faerie City of Embra - like the Wooded Places maps.