Kurt-Roges,
Ever since Civ3 came out, I was looking for an atlas. I found one at Barnes and Noble. I had to take out the two-parts of the atlas, but it works nontheless.
Now moving on to Civ IV applications. This map I found in the atlas is a Miller projection map. It is a physical map with rivers on it. I like the map personally, even though I wish it were more detailed.
What I had to do was scan the map. I use paint shop to crop the map and resize it to the demensions that I want. In this case the eastern and western haves are set to 1280 x 1280 pixels each. Paint shop can add a grid overlay on top of each map set to 10 x 10 pixels each. In this way I get a 128 x 128 map of each hemishere. Together I get a 256 x 128 world map.
Now I still have to use my judgement on the outline of the map, river placement, and hills and mountains. I bought a small Geographica's World Reference for soil placement and forest placement. It uses a different projection on these maps so I have to really guess.
But that is what I did. I plotted the map outline on large sheets of graph paper. That way, I could make adjustments. I hope this helps. I didn't use any Wiki's on my map.