This is looking much better for the "mesas" in the central area. The long cliff line at the northern edge shows one problem, in that the cliff lines on that aren't shaded at all, which really detracts from losing that "floating" impression.

There seem to be a number of pale grey polygons in places, which are rather distracting now. If these are needed (I have the impression a couple may be being used to conceal unwanted parts of the shadows in places), I'd suggest changing them to match the background colour.

The "white gap" event may be due to some of the Sheet Effects interfering with one another. If it persists, and you can't find the cause, you could try uploading the FCW file here for one of our more technical experts to examine, as I'm sure they could find a solution to that sort of problem if necessary. It may be there's something else on that upper cliffs Sheet that shouldn't be there (a white polygon, perhaps), and that's all that needs resolving.

Shorter shadows just mean a higher Sun, so hopefully this won't be too much of a problem in terms of still giving a useful impression of height for you.

You might alternatively try adding a Glow Effect to your settlements, roads and rivers, which would help them stand out more as well. You may want to move, or remove, some of the trees where they're hiding the river and road lines too.

The "seeing them always float" problem is quite common, unfortunately. I often find this looking at crater images from other planets, where they seem to be domes above the surface, not holes sunken into it. Sometimes if I concentrate enough, the "up" and "down" will simply flip to look correct again.

When I'm struggling to get a Sheet Effect, or combination of Effects, to look right, I turn them all off and identify why that makes things look worse, and then try adding the Effects again one at a time, adjusting each one to see exactly what it's doing. This may mean adding different Effects, and deleting the ones that don't help.

Something that might be worth considering is to stop trying to get the shadow Effects to work at all, and simply try drawing some grey polygons for where the shadows should be, on a separate Sheet of their own, above the cliff lines (so they'll shadow the cliffs correctly), but below the cliff top polygons (so you'll get a sharp cutoff at the top of the cliff edge). This has the disadvantage that if you want to change the lighting angle, you'll have to redraw the lot again, however, and you'll need to keep track of exactly what the lighting angle will be, with some construction lines across the map.

I suggest this because what I'm seeing on your most recent drawing is that the shadows aren't coming from the cliff edges in the right places. Many seem to be coming from a point much higher up the cliffs, so are looking too much like a drop shadow, even when they aren't. I think this is because you're relying on the clifftop polygons to produce the shadow, but because the lower cliffs aren't in the same place as that (further away from its line), they're looking wrong and "floaty".

The simplicity is VERY appealing on these, I agree - as long as you can remember what the symbols mean, anyway! I recently got a full set of the Inkwell Ideas Dungeonmorph Dice sets, many of which use the same basic designs and symbols. At least those come with a key on each boxed set though!

I do recall now you mention it that photocopy prevention angle; I'd forgotten all about that in the intervening decades. Mind you, it was a struggle to even read the pale blue or grey maps sometimes anyway, which always seemed rather self-defeating, particularly when the detail plans inside the booklets were done in clear black-and-white.

It's great to be able to add a grid to these maps without worrying about where it's going, as that blue background hides everything that's the same colour so nicely.

Well, just caught-up with the video finally tonight, and another good one.

I think I learnt more about using CC3 (as it then was) by playing around with this one style than pretty well any other single thing (other than Joe Sweeney's excellent tutorial videos) when I was starting out with the program. The discovery of multiple Sheet symbols was a real revelation as to some of the things the different Sheet Effects could do for you even when NOT using them with symbols, for instance. Plus of course it also teaches you some of the important basics, like the Trace command (from simply following the instructions in the PDF mapping guide with this CA issue).

Learning about the vector symbols in this style is valuable too, I think, as the style - using simple, black, straight-edged polygons and a colour that will be faded almost away - is very easy to master and then create your own symbols similarly. This was great news for someone without significant (i.e. any!) real artistic skills.