Problem:
The map does not offer much informations.

Forces:
F1: Visualised informations help the player and ease game play <--> To much informations at once will overwhelme the player.
F2: A map offers a overview

Solution one:

The map should be resizeable

The map should be resizeable to allow more detailed view. This will help to display more advanced informations. It will also help to get a impression about enemy movements like flanks, groups etc.

Solution S2

The map should have various layers.

The map should offer diffrent layers:

First Layer: Terrain
Allows to display topography of the map (hills, roads) etc.

Second Layer: Political
Allows to display political informations like influence (red, green). The influence can be displayed by filling the terain areas of the states. If both players have influence in the same state the fill color should be a pattern reflecting that. Maybe it should have diffrent shapes to reflect the relations between the two influence parties.

Third Layer: Cities
This layer will display the cities. There should be diffrent icons depending on the size of the city. So a big city will have big icon and a small one will be represented by a small icon.
It should also be possible to outline the icons by the color of the player who disclosed it (if its a disclosed city).

Forth layer: Units
Every unit should be represented by dots. The color of the dots show the status like hostil or friendly.
There should be also shades to indicate if the unit was moved or not.

Solution S2.1

The layer informations of the map should be applied as filters. A filter can be selected e.g switched on/off, set transparency etc.

This will help to configure the map the way it is needed.

Solution S2.2

The Map should be configured using multimaps.
A multimap is a collection of predefined or userdefined maps. So you have a map showing the terrain and the armies. Another map shows the political informations and armies. A third one shows the cities and the disclose status to get an overview what allies of the enemy is missing and what size it will have...

The multimap should be selectable using buttons or comboxes.

Implementation:
A basic implementation will show 4 buttons where every button has a number and represents one map. Maybe the buttons are placed topmost of the map border.

Solution S2.3

The configuration of a map can be done using a popupmenu like setting styles in wordpad or something. Example:

PopupMenu:
1. Terrain
2. Political
3. Cities
4. Armies

Terrain submenu
1.1 Show topology
1.2 Show borders
1.3 Show roads
1.4 Show gride

Political submenu
2.1 friendly
2.2 enemy
2.3 neutral
(seperator)
2.4 influence (if selected the shades will be displayed)

Cities
3.1 Show
3.2 Reflect size
3.3 Discloseinformation

Cities-Show
3.1.1 All
(seperator)
3.1.2 Friendly
3.1.3 Enemy
3.1.4 Neutral

Armies
4.1 Show friendly
4.2 Show enemy
(seperator)
4.3 show damage
4.4 show movement status

So if you get the popup menu by placing the mouse over the map you can e.g select the terrain by placing the mouse over, then the terrain submenu is displayed and you can switch on/off the diffrent informations.

Implementation shouldnt be that difficult

Solution S1.1

The map should have a icon and a hot key to make it fullscreen.

A map in fullscreen mode can be switched back to its original position in size by hitting the hotkey or icon again.

Maybe this can be implemented by doubleclicking on the map's windowtitle.

PersonalNote:

I think these little pattern will serve well for the player.

If you have any suggestions or comments please write it this way:

Suggestion to Snn - Name of the solution
Comment to Snn - Name of the solution

yeah those map improvements would be very useful, and most definately need shortkeys imho.