>>3474I always used GIMP
Worked fine but my maps were never the prettiest and apart from the threads where I threw them out into world they never seemed to appear anyway again which says a lot
What I can give as advice though is to place the rules well and probably integrate them into the map itself
Having this sidebar of rules often looked very bad and ugly for me and it's quite nice not to have to look or even scroll (if the map has a high resolution) over to get to the rules
Also colours
Colours for the oceans, countries (if you set them yourself) and the background of the rulebox (if you make one) are very important
If it isn't pleasant to the eye people probably aren't going to play because it looks poorly made
That's what I can tell you from my own experience and my own reactions when seeing various kinds of maps