This map was for the Battle of Eylau by Rachel Simmons. She was working on a map for the Eastern Front that was just magnificent as was her Gettysburg Map (and all her other ones as well), She retired from wargame design recently and she is answering various questions about her design philosophy, etc. Her games and maps were ground breaking. The attached map does not do it justice. For a better view go to https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/6188136/simmons-games where you can enlarge it.

I put a larger image (not my work) in my gallery if you don't want to hop to BoardGameGeek.com to see more on her games and her other work.

You can see artwork from her other games at:

Guns of Gettysburg: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36400/guns-gettysburg (I ended up buying this because the map is so wonderful and got it for a reasonable price as well.)

Napoleons Triumph: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18098/napoleons-triumph

Bonapart at Marengo: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/15839/bonaparte-marengo

Other useful features might be Vertical and Horizontal rulers based on the dimensions input in the design wizard .

A modern topographical map annual It may be of limited interest, however.

There are elements for this sort of work spread among various templates but a dedicated one would be nice.

Not much is required in drawing tools, but the symbol set could be consolidated and expanded. I know I could construct a custom symbol set drawing them from all the various other sources, but I have had little success with doing this in spite of several attempts.

A custom palette also might be useful concentrating on providing more shading for contours in green (for most environments) and brown/sand (for desert environments). Monson prepared for me a several large pallets of green/brown with 32 and 48 ranges of colors, as well as one that splits the 48 into two between green/brown.

Overhead views of trees and other vegetation would be good as well, allowing one to replace the various symbols with easier on the eyes overhead views of trees for example.

Simple but very nicely done!

In so far as the grid, I use a hex grid. In this case, I want to have the 1km grid from the map to have 4 hexes inside it, so each one is 250m wide, as shown below. The sizing is arrived at by experimentation and the size is 0.65. The grid is actually a trapazoid and not a square/rectangle, but it is close enough for my work.