IMHO the biggest challenge would be textures themselves - DT won't accept a map with textures made from copyrighted satellite images, which most mod maps use.
Also, any water-logged type of terrain, like marshes or rice paddies, is hard to reproduce. I mean something like this:
http://www.nicolastrudgian.com/uploa...ections/40.jpg
Such textures won't reflect water, hence they will never look 'right'.

By the way, the latest HSFX 7.0 is based on 4.12.

Hrmmm, yes those type of textures would be hard to make work. IanBoy's Burma map has something kind of like that (especially in the north west corner nearer Imphal) and it sort of works. Worth having a close look at that one.

Mod makers can go for whatever they want with textures but seeing as TD has to play by retail rules... yes the textures can't be based on copyrighted satellite imagery. So there has to be more artwork type efforts involved.

I haven't made any progress on Kuriles yet. I've got to go back over some of the process again now that I have a bit more of a clue on what I'm doing. Then the real fun will begin.

Not an easy thing this map building.

True, but rice cultivation does not require it to be submerged all the year, just some months. Thus modelling the rice paddy as a dry surface would not be incorrect.

Also, some of the year there's actually rice growing in the paddies, so you get an aerial view that looks like this:

http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__...Rice_Paddy.jpg

As for wet Spring rice paddies, I wonder if it would be possible to model them as very shallow lakes and model the network of retaining walls as either objects or elevated land areas, like causeways.

The main problem I see with modeling intensely cultivated hilly territory, like in Central China and elsewhere in Asia is getting the terraced hills to look right. Again, this might require "hills" that are actually objects, like the Mt. Suribachi object on the Iwo Jima map.

Were terraced hills to be modeled as objects, you'd need 3-4 different variations so that they wouldn't look too repetitive.

I for one would like to see a few more maps that would allow range to come into play. Just to add the challenge of fuel management and navigation. And besides not everything was 5 minutes apart. Personally would like a Philippines map, a map of entire New Guinea, including northern end of Australia, and anything in the Mediterranean and Western Europe. I realize that map making is hard work and would like to thank all of you guys with the patience and technological know how that can make them.

Could someone post a link to somewhere that explains how to install mods and new maps? I'd be very grateful.

Difficult to say the least. I'm not sure what the limit is but the Solomons Map currently in the game I believe is the largest possible size and that benefits from being a chain of islands with mostly open ocean.

I investigated a Philippines map but in order to make that work I'd have to pick a smaller battle space. Part of Luzon or Leyte plus Leyte gulf but that has limited use outside of the first few days of the battle and then you have a map with a large US base on it and nothing else.

A map containing the whole of the Philippines battle area just isn't possible. Unfortunately.

The Philippines is one of my favourite maps. It's been recently upgraded for HSFX 7.0:
http://imageshack.com/a/img812/3203/yzvq.jpg

By the way, you can have a map covering as much terrain as this one (called Mediterranean Airwar over Italy, by So.V-Volperossa/RedFox59):
http://imageshack.com/a/img208/5444/cyee.jpg

I don't know what scale the two maps are, but both are huge. The Strait of Messina seen from 30,000 feet:
http://imageshack.com/a/img543/3629/e5fm.jpg

Looks like 1:2.
That looks like 1:3.

I'm not a grat fan of maps that are vastly undersized, as distances are just way off. I'd rather have a few selected, important to the theatre, full-sized maps.
Full-size maps of areas larger than 400*400km, who's gonna play on them? Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't imagine all but a few players will ever enjoy flying for hours to the objective and then possibly getting shot down. There is a limit to where the simulation should end and the game begin IMHO.

I agree that 1:1 scale map of maximum 400x400 sounds a reasonable compromise but in some cases I still think that a reduced scale is the way to go. In the picture below you can see for example the main airfields in southern China. The yellow line is 200 km long. the minimum distance between major US and Japanese airfields is around 300 km and in a 400x400 km map area there would be just few of them.

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/d...ps42785ce6.jpg