How do i make convincing villages?

Ive been building a map in sunken ruins for sometime now, but every time i make a night elf village, it looks poorly put togeather, has anyone got any advice?

i have afew:

1) load it up wit doodads; go carzy with them make good use of the different dirts to make a rough path

2) make the NPC's convincible like they would be in that location u put them in naturally

3) size it to ur own accords, make it bigger or smaller depending on what u want...u can always resize the map if it gets too big

peace--

Avoid totally flat ground. Make use of the raise terrain feature. Dirt roads always add to the general feeling that the place is lived. In general just try to imagine the village as it might look realistically(not what you can do with the editor) Then try and come as close to that image as you can within the limits of the editor.

Any advice as to what i should start with, paths, houses, or other doodads?

Just go with what ever you want. Sometimes I start with doodads, sometimes the terrain.

Get a pen and paper and do a rought plan with that. I find that when I do that I get better results.

Here's the center of my village, any ideas as what to add infront of the main building that wouldnt obscure it, or look too small?

Well, you want to have things all around it. The screenie looks like it only has half of it designed; do the entire thing.

Add some random doodads off to the sides and in random areas to make it feel lived-in.

Maybe some bushes.

Another Screen of my empty village

Too many piers. Not realilistic for such a small area of water.

If you dont like too many doodads i dont think youd like the rest of my map, ive got over 22,000 doodads, and im not even half way through

You should really cut down on the doodads that you have. One way is instead of having a wall of trees, scatter the trees in such a way that the units still cant get through. Use big pathing blockers instead of smaller ones. Im curious how you mamaged to fit 22000 doodads in half of your map anyway.

the vast majoratty of my map is mangroves, shallow water with sunken runis trees, i used rocks viny plants, and mostly custom made doodads to turn the map into one giant maze. creeps scattered throughout (most with ranged attacks) are disgined to make the map harder

One example of how many doodads i put in one small area:

22K OF DOODADS????...i hope you dont mean for this map to be played on bnet...

easy, the NE buildings don't look too tropical, though i like your maze ALOT! yeah they are right, i'd suggest taking some tree's out, and removing the lily pads, you can do with less, try clumps of the lily pads and when you want to cover an area with them, use larger pages. so it really looks overgrown.