You have to click Apply to see the result.

And yes - most of the terrain sheets have the same issue.

The difference between those two settings is that the Percent of View Width is really huge at '10'. That's 10% of the width of your window. If you set 10 map units thats just 10 miles rather than possibly a few thousand miles.

Something I didn't know...

The way symbols with some transparency are drawn is different to the way symbols with no transparency are drawn. One of the smoke symbols (the one we both had trouble with) has some transparency and that's why we couldn't get it to come to the front.

The best solution is the new sheet option in this case. As was pointed out to me it's probably best that the smoke doesn't have the same sheet effects as the bushes anyway.

I think I prefer the textured one. It does something to fill the gaps between the rooms where there are some quite large ones.

The place to use plain solid backgrounds is when there are no large gaps.

I'm not sure I know for sure what you want, but I did write a blog a while back about achieving various map effects here:

There is a bit about increasing the contrast (number 3), and if that's not what you meant there are several other effects that might be the one.

Ah. Sorry!

You will have to switch DELAYDRAWSYM to 0 (zero) before it works. Type the command on your keyboard and press return, then enter 0 when you see the command line response. Then refresh.