Looking for some critiquing

Alright, this is the map I've currently got under development: Expansionism. It's a spin off of Empire if you've played that (kinda, just barely, like risk).

Some of the requirements of the map are that every location needs to be accessible by foot (hence the land bridges everywhere). I also need relatively wide choke points, as there can potentially be quite a few units on the map, some of which are rather large. Finally, bases should be built relatively near water, to increase effectiveness of sea -> land units (I've tried to make the obvious base locations, with a few exceptions, in sea-accessible locations).

All in all, the current layout seems to do this fairly well, but it's pretty bland imo.

I'd love to hear thoughts on what I can do to improve this, and possibly some techniques I should check out when building my terrain. Thanks!

Just the general stuff, terraim certainly looks functional.

~ Tile variation, try to spruce things up by mixing things like grass tiles.
~ Doodads, you seem to have very few - presumably to combat lag - i still suggest you add soem just to spice it up.
~ Blizzard cliffs are as ugly as sin, you use a few - be better to use none.
~ the rock doodads on the cliffs look realyl bad imo.
~ The propensity for trees to grow right on the edge of the water seemed odd to my eyes, maybe move them inland a bit?

I'd put grass or other tile variation around some trees, move their postions, like Dino said, away from the water some, and sink the into the ground where they are float, like on the hills. Also a few shrubs here and there can really make things just look a litte nicer. layout looks pretty good so far though

The tileset doesnt really match the doodads and trees and such.
My suggestion would be to use Sunken Ruins

What is the alternative? Are there custom cliff textures available somewhere? Or are you suggesting the technique of disabling the terrain steepness restriction and making cliffs by hand by raising ground really steep, setting it to a rock tile and adding pathing blockers?

Sounds good to me.

It's the best, although it takes more time (i.e 1 hour compared to 5 minutes of blizzard cliffs) the terrain comes better in the end.

Personally, I like Blizzard cliffs, assuming you use them right, they can look very nice, nd they're much more functional then the alternative. In this case, I'd stick with them.

Blizzard cliffs are better for ingame terrain, as they give certain advantages.

Blizzard Cliffs are good for blizzard-style terrain, they arent that bad for normal playable maps, they are worse for cinematics and terrain screens, or mod where u want to emphasize a well made and polished terrain.

In this case however, i believe bliz cliffs are simply unappealing and would be simple enough to replace.

And i agree that blizz cliffs can be useful, but in my experience if you can bothered replacing them the effect is worth it.

My overall impression of the map is that it seems very unrealistic as it has been mentioned earlier.

You need to make the grass less squared since some places the grass seems to be small squares, don't be afraid to mix and match tiles and Sunken Ruins tileset would improve a lot.

Good luck with the map. It has potential indeed!

My suggestion for the grass would be to add some "grassy dirt" or "dirt grass" whatever to the edges of your grass textures so that there is more a transition between the two. Also, normally trees dont grow at the edge of water.

A key note Dino is that Blizzard Cliffs have strategic value, you can't see up cliffs but you can see down them, ranged units firing up cliffs also suffer a 50% chance to miss. Neither of these effects can be reproduced with non-blizzard cliffs.

As to the map, i suggest using Sunken Ruins tileset rather than Lordaeron Summer, Summer doesn't fit well into the 'Island' type of terrain you have going there. Vary the tiles more as well.

I've played Expansionism a few times. Usually Win. Its a good layout but it is very very just painfully bland. a few doodads and tilechanges can do wonders. May I suggest altering areas to be completely differant? Like a marshy area? A jungle? A Desert? Excetera? Why not add some strategic terrain?

Lies. Filthy Filthy Lies. You just need to be creative. First you could just make blizz cliffs around the area and ramp em then remove the plateu look with elevation manipulations. Or you could go and do something the more triggery/unit edity way by putting some line of sight blockers followed by a few hidden air units with locust a large Vision radius as well as select user so they'll lend their aireal vision to nearby units. As for the Evasion? Remove the Icon set it to 50% and give it to all the units on top. But then there's the problem of enemy units on top... Well I didnt spend a long time thinking this up.