I don't know. I think the flow lines make it obvious that the water is water, and not some strange solid thing that's draped over the cliff.

How about changing the effects on that sheet (assuming they are on a separate sheet to everything else) You could blur them instead of having a glow around them. That would make them softer and just like pale streaks rather than hard-ended lines.

They would need to be on top of the fill as well.

Think about the light reflections on the surface of a river.

That's a great map :)

Yes, maybe there is room for forested hills in a style. The trouble is that adding just that one aspect doubles the number of mountain symbols required to make a default set. I will definitely think about it next time I have a look at Spectrum.

About histories.

The thing about history is that it isn't really separate at all. People mix all the time, and they watch each other all the time, so what you have is a kind of giant soap opera that last thousands of years, where one country does something and the others react in their various different ways - if what is done is momentous enough to warrant a reaction. So one history for a world would be ok, in my opinion. I would not expect to see separate histories for each nation.

That is not to be confused with the lies each nation tells itself to be able to live with what their forefathers have done, but that is more about the politics of a world. There is only one history, but countless lies that are told about it depending on who you are and where you were born and grew up.

There are several stages in CA155 that readjust the altitude range to stretch it out again for the very reasons that Joe stated above.

Looks great, Quenten :)

The thing about hand sculpting a world is that it is difficult to get all the mountain ranges to the exact same height across the globe. What normally happens is that you end up with just one mountain range being the tallest, with all the others graded below that maximum. Its not so bad if you really take care of what you are doing at the sculpting stage and try to stop just as you hit the red gamut marker for each and every range. That way, they will all have at least one mountain that is around 30,000 feet.

I think this unnatural aversion to long slightly curved sections of coast we all seem to have may be why we find it so difficult to generate natural looking coastlines.

Straight coast tends to happen where the hinterland is rather flat and geologically homogenous, so that erosion doesn't eat little coves into it over time in the softer rocks.

It would only be unnatural to have long straight bits of coast if all the coast in the world was like that.