Congratulations on your first map! It’s looks great. Ans I agree with you: it is oddly therapeutic and calming. I like that it’s simultaneously exercising my creativity and my analytical/problem solving sides.

Did the same thing when I was getting started and it took me forever to figure out that right-clicking again would collapse it. Glad you're posting these questions -- everyone here is very friendly and happy to help.

Here it is again with exterior features labeled quite pretentiously in Latin. Some of the terms came from sites describing architectural features of Ancient Rome. Others were crudely translated with Google Translate, so I welcome feedback from anyone who knows any bit of Latin. The description write-up will translate these terms and explain them, but basically:

1. Muri Magni (Great Walls)
2. Portae Turres (Gate Towers)
3. Turres Anguli (Corner Towers)
4. Stabula (Stables)
5. Custodes Domus (Guards’ House)
6. Sevorum Domus (Servants’ House)
7. Portico (Outside Covered Porch)
8. Villa Citri
9. Colonnade (Covered Column Walkway)
10. Balneae (Bathhouse)
11. Pomaria (Orchards)
12. Vinetum (Vineyards)

Yeah, I think one of my roof ridge lines disappeared. It is sloped down to the larger pool in the center of the northern courtyard. Here are some links to other websites I used for inpiration.

In my map of Tyr Alomere Township, you'll see a Roman-style villa on the left side of the map. Although I had planned to work on a major city next, I couldn't resist diving into mapping the villa. I was going to hold off on posting anything until I had finished at least one floor of the interior, but I just couldn't wait.

I knew when I placed the villa in the town that when it came time to mapping the villa, I would do so with the Marine Dungeons annual. The structure fills in that annual seem so Roman to me.

So here's the outside, and then we'll zoom in a bit.

At first glance, it looks very similar to what you see on the town map. Since Marine Dungeon's vegetation symbols are primarily stuff you'd see in the water, like kelp and coral (it is a marine dungeon, after all), I continued to use the trees from Forest Trail and Japanese Temple, and other terrain fills from Darklands City. But there are some important changes.

First, the town had bluffs that used Creepy Crypts (because the wizard's tower that I built the town around used Creepy Crypts to make it easier to do the basement areas). When I brought in the villa to my Marine Dungeons map, I wanted replace as many fills as I could with Marine Dungeons ones. So the cliff walls use Marine Dungeon's pebbles fill, and the rocky covering was replaced with a Marine Dungeons rock. Works really well with the special effects that Sue developed for Creepy Crypts!

The building structures continue to use the tile fill from Darklands City, and continue to use the RGB Matrix to redden them in a way that seems more Roman to me. But the water was redone using Marine Dungeon's water techniques, though I had to make some tweaks. And the marble around the fountain and pools also comes from Marine Dungeons, though I tweaked the effects to make them more of a grayish-white.

(The building on the left side is the baths -- many of the fancier Roman estates had their own baths.)

Also, you might have noticed shadows from columns around the courtyard. If I take the roof off, you'll see that I replaced the CC3 columns with the beautiful ones from Marine Dungeons.

And now for the defensive walls surrounding the villa. They had been designed in the town using the beautiful fills from the Beaumaris Castle annual, also used with the wizard's tower, but I replaced them here with the beautiful wall symbols from Marine Dungeons. I love how nicely the window symbols work as crenellations when plopped directly on the walls. I also used the arches from Sinister Sewers to show entrances to the top of the walls from the towers.

I know the paved road going to the gate is a bit off-center, but I decided to keep it consistent with the parent map.

Interiors coming soon!