Consequences are the fun part. I never force my players to do anything (although the incentives tends to influence them heavily), but I always try to make their actions or inaction change the world.

I find going with my own world so much more rewarding than those published worlds. It's more work on one side, but oh so much more flexibility on the other side, and the opportunities for a place the players can truly explore rather than read all about in a book.

Map looks quite fine to me. If anything, I think it might need some more settlements, but that can be a thing for detail maps. Since it had land et every edge, you can bet that the players will soon enough want to travel there and see what is beyond, so I hope you are prepared for that.

Check my recent blog article, it describes ways to fix Red X's.

Do note that moving the files to the installation directory is not really a good idea, the setup with the data files in a separate directory is for a good reason. Also, maps that uses the old relative paths (starting with # meaning installation directory) should also automatically be redirected to the data directory, so it may indicate that your map didn't use proper CC3 paths in the first place, so fixing the path sin the map is a better option for the future compared to moving the files, even though it may take more effort.

My players would murder me. They're terrible with number puzzles..

You can do mass replace from the symbol manager. Just pick the symbol to replace, and then pick the one to replace it with. Note that the symbol you wish to replace with already have to be placed in the map once, otherwise it won't be in the symbol manager list.

Note that you can only replace one symbol type at a time, there isn't a way to simply replace varicolor to non-varicolor.