Hey guys so for my first map I am going to do the Holy Roman Empire (Germany city-states) and I want your guys' opinions and suggestions on it. Also I have some questions about it; should I add superbonuses?, and should I add bonuses for taking important cities?

Please help me so my map can stand out.
Thanks in advance
-GWL

Mhh... the HRE of which time period exactly?
Here's a handy "timeline"-gif: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HRR.gif
Have you decided on internal divisions yet? Like Imperial Circles, something more abstract, say along geographical/cultural sub-regions or (lol) actual dynastic/political borders? Because, you know, especially the latter would be *one hell* of a task... ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Holy_Roman_Empire_1648_blank.png ) ;)

i was going for the year 1399/1400 and i was going to divide bonuses up into the countries at the time based on the historical game Europa Universalis 3: Divine Wind since it has the country divide into provences. for super bonuses i was thinking cultural ie lombarian, fleshish, germanic, prussian, etc

Oh. You want to base it off of a P'dox game map. I see. Well, at least Divine Wind has some provinces added in the area ;)
GL with your map!

Btw please don't misunderstand that last post. By all means make that map (if it's actually allright to do a faithful copy/port of this kind of map from one game to another but there are already some threads on this). It's actually great for a first map effort I think, because the borders are easy to draw and everything is nice and orderly and stuff.
I just thought you were planning on making a more historically accurate map. =)

well eu3 is pretty historic already and i plan to tweak it to be more accurate

Ok, I was wondering because I have seen map with extra details and drawings outside of the map that you cant control or anything because they are just for visual appeal, what i want to know is how do you add that? thanks in advance

Please nobody make a Crusader Kings map? I've claimed that one.

And you can use those drawings for your maps in two ways.

1. You select the image, and use Paths -> Trace Bitmap. Then you get a screen with settings you can play with until you're happy, but after it's done you still have to do some editing manually, which can be a pain when working with large images.
2. You can trace them by hand. But this is very time-consuming, so I'd use the first method wherever possible.

I wasnt talking about the territories themselves but like since my map is of an oddly shaped germany/austria i want to add details around the map so you realise you are in europe, an example of this is the gray areas of detail on the new greater middle east map by Evreux that has the gray areas that represent europe, russia and the rest of africa

I knew you were talking about them, that's exactly what I based my answer on. The only difference is that you don't give them ID's and you can edit the color.

oh ok thanks, i hope to get something to show by monday