Real-world observatory domes aren't "pure" spheres (nor are they transparent, but appreciate this is for a fantasy setting!), and are often made up of either individual smaller flat pieces - such as a geodesic dome - or curved, commonly into parts of a hemispherical gyre. Modern methods allow the construction of larger curved dome areas (using, e.g., fibreglass), but in all cases, there needs to be a segment of the dome that can open, either as a slot from apex to base of the dome, or where part of the dome can be removed/slid away, because the whole point of the dome is to protect the viewing equipment inside it from the weather, including temperature variations, both when in use and when not.

Consequently, the final red-roofed structure in your first posting's image is probably closer to a genuine observatory dome overall than anything else. You could even make the joins between segments more obvious, and you could add a rectangular panel for the viewing slit in the dome (because these don't narrow towards the dome's top - the instrument inside still needs the same viewing width for the slit to work). However, this really depends on what the observatory is used for - a transparent roof suggests something unusual inside, for instance.

Something you could try, based on the standard CD3 house roof options, is simply to increase the number of panels involved, since if you create more roof panels, the whole starts to look more rounded-circular, and loses its angular shape. Appreciate you're doing this in DD3 instead, but the principle holds - rotated copy by a specific small angle once you have your initial slim roof segment drawn. I've done that in CD3 drawings before now, to get a conical roof, for instance. If you're unsure what size of roof segment might work better, try some experiments using the CD3 drawing tools first.

The Displacement effect does add a little more (if loose!) reality to the drawing style, and people can always turn it off, if their road lines need to be more traditional, linear route-markers (which is how roads are shown on most maps at this kind of large-scale regional area, after all). Will rivers enjoy a similar treatment?

Textures are looking good. The snow might be a tad too blue and bland overall, though this is tricky, given large-scale snow/ice-fields tend not to look quite this pristine anyway. A couple of the taller mountains also seem to have a dark blue baseline that looks a trifle odd against the snow at the Forum image scaling, but looking closer, those are probably glacier-ends, I think.

It is a little hard to judge zoomed-in so far, but the toning-down of the blue does seem a definite improvement. There's always going to be a degree of unreality about it, as in most other overland styles, given the textures have to act as terrain markers as well as look pleasing.

You mean you're not doing the cross-section drawing as well?! 😉

Might be worth thinking of having breaks in the wall lines of the upper ruins map, as I think these were meant as gaps in the original, rather than more rubble. You could keep the current rubble markers, but set them below the walls, so it would look like they're collapsed areas once there are breaks in the wall-lines.

As a long-standing fan of hex maps, it's great to see what's being done here.

Hex maps are quite tricky creatures overall, because most of the time you need the features to fit within a single hex - it is the point of setting up hexes with a specific single terrain type in each, after all. And then you want to add specific smaller features, like settlements, interesting sites, etc., so they have to work with the terrain features as well. And sometimes you want the terrain to bleed over hex edges, and even beyond the outer hex boundaries, because that looks better and more realistic.

So yes, multiple sheet options is probably the only way to go in CC3+ - and then remember what needs to go where to look good!

The existing CC3+ hex mapping options do tend to aim for the one terrain and one feature per hex at most, so having something more artistic like this would be excellent.

Just wondering if the rivers, lakes, sea and roads might not look better in this style with a darker outlining glow effect, closer to the lines used for the buildings and mountains. That might then need thicker lines adding to the trees too though. Might make the whole too cartoony though. Never easy... 😏

That was fun! And so easy to make a good-looking map quickly - if you're Ralf, anyway!

Nice to see this style being used for what it's intended for. I've only used it for deep undersea mapping so far!

I like the B&W version, but I like B&W maps generally, so am biased.

For the colour version, depending on how precise you want it to look, you could try making the colours, or some of them, a little more faded in some way - Edge Fade Inner or Transparency, for instance - although the way the contour lines don't align perfectly with the colours already makes it look nicely hand water-coloured.

And just a quick note of congratulations to Royal Scribe on contributing this month's Cartographer's Annual issue! A fine example showcasing what CC3+ can do. Well done!

I like the idea of the individual structures. There are times when it would be nice to have that option with some of the overland styles, so you could have smaller settlements - and indeed even larger ones - with more individual character, especially for smaller area maps (which, to be fair, isn't really what most overland styles are geared for). Other styles work well with just a single set of settlement symbols, however (makes recognising the different types much easier!).

An all-map greyscale RGB Matrix effect usually works fine to convert colour to black and white - that's what I did here with some hex maps, rather longer ago than I'd thought!