Do any of you experienced map makers have any tips that can make the proccess easyer?

For "creative" maps, I have absolutely no idea.

For earth-based ones, I use
http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/mapmachine/
to define an area that I convert into BMPs (roughly 2 long for 1 high scale) where I color coasts (all seas, oceans, coasts) and desert (all land-types) then I create a square map using the BMP to bic converter that can be found at Apolyton.

I open the file with the bix editor, make it flat then correct the coastline and enter the new terrain types.

If you use ptw to make it, and make the map from an original, you can use victory points as coordinates. The reason this is good, rather than to use mountains or something, is that you can put VPs both on land and in water. And they don't affect the surrounding terrain, as most real terrain does(a mountain in ocean turns the surrounding squares into coast, for example). When the map is done, just remove them.
If you want to know how the woods looked 4000 years ago (on the earth that is), go to the interactive map at Global Forest Watch (http://www.globalforestwatch.org/english/interactive.maps/global.htm).
If you check Europe, you see why most European maps are wrong. The terrain should be about 80% forest!

For creative maps, I'm just lazy and use the map making device in the editor until I get the type of map I wanted. Usually works, but is slightly time consuming, and not always as good as the real deal, but good if you're a lazy couch potato like myslef. :D

The BMP to BIC utility is great. I think I got it at 'poly.

My map for my mod is almost all islands, so the only hard part was determining how much space goes between them, which isn't really too hard with lattitude and longitude. While I couldn't get everything exactly right, it all looks very good. Of course this won't work too well with large land masses

This is an illustration of the use of victory points in map creation:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/map_example.JPG

Coool! :eek: So that's why your map looked so good, I was wondering about that. This is a really good idea, and I for one am gonna stop using my old lazy way, and start using this new lazy way :D!

could someone post the bmp to bic tool, because apolyton aint worken for me...

poly seems to be down this afternoon (4/21/03). Hopefully they will be up in a few hours.