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'.
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.