Unnamed Wip, Somewhat Ambitious -- Looking for a Good Honest Critique

[Mapsburgh]

A few points that come to mind:
1. As Azelor said, the amount of rivers and streams shown is overkill unless this is specifically a hydrologic map. It gets difficulty to identify the main ones, and that will only get worse if you start adding in other information (settlements, roads, borders, etc).
2. Your mountain ranges seem unusually discontinuous. You've got what I assume are meant to be pretty high mountains, but they're repeatedly broken by passes that dip down to the lowest (green) elevation level. I'd say the baseline elevation for the mountainous region should be significantly higher than what you see on the plains.
3. I personally like the hillshading because then you can use the color to represent something else (vegetation, political units, etc.). But I admit I have a pet-peeve dislike of the green-yellow-brown elevation color scheme.

[Falconius]

I like the high level of river detail, it's nice to see once in a while. Especially depending on what age you are mapping for, since more historical maps generally placed an emphasis on rivers.

I prefer the colours on the second one, but would like a softened bump map underneath it.

My suggestion is that you just go with what you think looks good, and ask people how to achieve the look you are going for. Otherwise you get a bunch of rather subjective answers that conforms to the things that they like to see in a map.