...incoming long post. ^^;
Keep all of the cities in their designated areas so as to retain the 4-space rule. As for the elements, here's my opinion on each of them:
AETHER
Kill two birds with one stone; the crystal 'orb' bubble terrain is a bit too weird. A simplified idea is to simply recolor one of the 'pine forest' terrains a turquoise (or aquamarine) huge and plant them around the Aether capital. If that doesn't look right, try to make a light-blueish 'stone hedge' terrain (you know those random pillars that stuck out of the ground? (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehedge)) and surround the capital with that instead. Either or works. Keep the northern forest (65, 79, 95) intact, although you should probably replace them with the 'pine forest' terrain, and leave the 'jungle' (light green) forest to the Life elementals.
AIR
Place another "Impassable Mountain" (or highland mountain, whatever you call them) on hexes 132 (directly north of the capital city) and 162 (replace the normal mountain with it). Other than that, no other area can really get those High mountains.
DARKNESS
Hex 32 should be a mountain hex, or (even better!) a Pine-Mountain hex. What I mean by that is that if there's a way to make a mountain icon WITH Pine Trees on it at the base (you could just color the lower half green or something), then it'd be a much better terrain, because then you'd have mountain AND forest in the same hex (meaning that Life and Earth elementals could capitalize on that same spot with their skills!). It would also flow better with the old map terrain: The Volcano would be surrounded by mountains, of which the bottom half-or so of those mountains would be forests.
DEATH
Keep all of the dead forests (and that weird skeleton thing on hex 23) intact. Perhaps the Dead Forest terrain could have more... dead trees? ^^;
EARTH
Reiterating the Darkness changes, if you could make a Hills hex with trees on it, double the capitalization for the win.
But only do a few (hexes 71 and 88 are good choices). I guess you could also put a tunnel section to connect with hex 70 on 88 and 118, or remove the 'ore' on hex 87 and put a tunnel there instead. Add a hills hex perhaps on hex 107 for future uses...
ENTROPY
Mushroom terrain is fine, although you could also try recoloring a 'jungle' forest terrain pink with white dots and replace one or two of the mountain ranges with it (preferably hexes 8 and 9). You could also just replace the mountains there with the mushroom terrain you have currently.
FIRE
Lots of changes on this one. First, add a volcano on hex 175; the volcano would be placed 12 hexes south of volcano 163, AND 11 hexes from hex 25. This gives Fire elementals more variety in which directly they'd like to use their fast travel for (or better; to give access for other elements who splash into the skill an easier way to get near the Fire capital).
Second, replace the pine tree forest on hex 5 (west of the Fire Capital) with a Volcano so that there's a 'triangle' formed between volcanoes 5, 163, and 175. (13 hex equilateral triangle). This should add enough volcanoes, and possibly help out with Phoenix Rider more at the beginning.
Third, remove the mountain on hex 38, and create 'lava streams' between all the nearby volcanoes in that area to the magma pool southwest of the Fire Capital. (I don't know if it's possible, but if you could 'paint' the red lava connecting from the volcanoes to the magma pool just like the 'rivers' from ship hex to ship hex, it'd be perfect) Possibly add a bridge on hex 38 so that if a human were to try to enter the area, he would have to 'cross the lava moat' to get into the city:
Finally, if you're super bored, you could also have a 'eternally burning forest' terrain and light trees on fire and place one of those randomly near the fire area (possibly south of the magma pool?). But that's just random.
GRAVITY
Remove that 'castle' thing on hex 177, and if you have a 'Frosted Mountain' terrain (i.e. - a mountain with a glacier cap of some sort), put the Frosted Mountain in place of the 'huge dent' crater on hex 210 (north of the ice forest areas). You should probably run/pain a river into the ice forest area if you can. If you don't have a Frost mountain terrain, just ignore what I said about 210 then.
LIFE
Keep everything intact, including the 'small creeks' that you painted into the forest from the Water hexes up north. Don't change the positions of anything.
LIGHT
Same thing as Life, although if you still want to use that 'castle' icon from the Gravity section, you could probably place it somewhere near one of the hexes that's surrounding the Light capital and call it a day.
If you're bored, you might also consider coloring some of the grass yellow instead (like a wheat field), but otherwise just ignore that.
TIME
Place one more Oasis -north- of the Capital and you're solid. The camels (as limited as they are) and cacti are perfectly fine where they are, although there could be a hex where there's -several- cacti in it (like a cacti field). Probably would be better suited near a Oasis, and cacti wouldn't survive otherwise in groups without a major water source.
WATER
Major changes here as well. First, remove whatever those 'grey' things are in Water hexes 192 and 213. They seem a little bit off. Secondly, when drawing the river from the center ship to the eastern ship (hex 92 to 169), have it go south and branch off of the southern water path around the city to flow towards the eastern city, instead of making that weird 'bend' on hex 126 to retain the hex distance:
UNDERWORLD
Just leave it be.
I'll add more comments later. Until then, thanks for listening SG, and hopefully this will help a bit. ^^;
