Anchor Bay

Wait you picked the OTHER one. Ignore the last sentence then. In real life I would say a vast majority of borders are from natural boundaries, mainly rivers. I have no issue with them as borders - Look at the Rio splitting US from Mexico, or the Mississippi bordering 9 states in the US.

Besides, upon further inspection, it makes caps games really even up to 6 player, possibly up to 8 with some work.

New name. A lot more polish. And train tracks!

Does this mean the ferry is gone now?

I really like the watercolour paint-like textures for the sea and mountains, but the rest of the map doesn't really fit I feel. Otherwise the map is getting along really nicely.

No ferry and bridges are still in progress - had to sleep at some point

Changed the thread name for you.

I think the water is pixelated at several 'edges', but I like the style.
The bottom train exit looks like the tracks make a very sharp turn right after the entrance (transition between graphics and dashed line).
Maybe try to get the dashed line in a (mirrored) '?' shape, instead of a '(' shape.

Thank you Matty! I was wondering if that could even be done.

Funny thing, as soon as I posted this, I hated that train track and fixed it. Didn't think just rotating the track and cutting it down a bit warranted another post, but it is fixed now. Nice eye!

Not sure what to do with the land, I made the water and mountains to darn pretty.  I made the shore line the same way I made the sun on Solar system. Some masking, shading, hand painting, and smudging. Where do you see pixelated edges? I can smudge those right out of existence.

EDIT: I think I see what you mean. Like where the darkblue wave form runs up to light blue and then it almost tears like a bad xbox to playstation port. I was playing with some artistic effects from a photoshop tutorial. I think it works great as long as there isn't too much contrast between colors at any point. I think it looks kinda cool, but I can run a mostly opaque smudge or Gaussian blur over the line to take some of the bite out of it.

@Cireon, those were randomly chosen colors. I haven't had a chance to play with hue or tinting yet on the mainland. I don't want it to look like oil paint because I don't want the playable and non playable areas to run together.

I think it could use an overlayed master texture showing the land run down hill a bit from mountain to shore. Right now it's depths of sea and elevation of mountains sandwiching a completely FLAT playing area. I think that's what is telling your brain that something is a bit off. At least it is with me.

The pixelated edges are found throughout the sea. They are most obvious in a horizontal line about halfway up the sea, where the dark blue area changes to lighter blue.

Yeah see my edit. What do you think about the rest of it?

I like the new graphics - especially the mountains . I also see no problems with the playable zones, but then I'm no expert on textures. What I can see is how the playable areas don't fit the mountains... Maybe your mountain-to-shore downhill texture will help.

Yeah not sure if a rolling hill texture dark to light west to east will help, or if I should try hand painting in some shadows like the Planetary depth layers on Solar System.

I notice two weird corners in the top river. Pretty sure those are the endpoints of some curves hm?
The bottom river also has a very obvious one.

I see more of them, but those are not too obvious and could work

Yeah I tried a new river technique, just forgot to go back and remake them when the new technique worked. I was so shocked and happy that I just moved on.

The effects are pretty cool but I agree with what's been said, I also agree with Matty regarding the rail-rode.
Is it possible to reduce the shadow that's on the left side of the land? Because right now it looks like its hovering above the mountains..and could the mountains have an overall greyish tone so that they don't stand out as much. The water is good but it is pixelated in some areas, I'm not sure how you made it but if it's possible, could you blur the darker parts of it (and maybe also blur the rest but not as much)? Some areas of the land appear to be pixelated due to the texture (and possibly shadows too) and the overall look and feel of it is a bit dark and washed out/ dull.

The overall map looks very good and clean, I think if you get the land to look just as good as the rest then this map will be finished. Keep up the good work!

2nd draft of Anchor Bay

Straightened out train tracks, made train attack line more logical (in line with tunnels), smudged out the pixel edges in the water line.

Axed the inner glow for inner shadow. Blurred the texture, added cross hatch texture, then blurred that (twice).

Took each color and sucked some saturation out of them to make them more earth like, less sticking out off the page bold, hopefully that made the land mix will with ocean and mountain a bit better.

Redrew river bends, took out all kinks. Added shadow to riverbed.

Drew bridges. Added shading to bridges. Added shadows and highlights to train tunnel entrances. Added attack line for the ferry line. Added a ferry, looked really bad, so I deleted it.

The differing colors of the rivers is a bit distracting.

Love blue backgrounds though!!

Maybe boost the boldness of the connection lines just a tad, they're a little overwhelmed.