Map style feedback

[nAUTILUS]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for feedback and guidance for my worldbuilding project. I like maps and my worldbuilding is an outlet for that. The world is a roughly 1850 level of technology. The map style I'm going for is more like 1950 though because I like it more. Firstly I'm looking for feedback on my map style. I always feel like something's missing, it still seems to sterile to me. I like minimal margins, I'm talking about the content within the map itself.
The second part of my problem is more of a general worldbuilding problem: The end product I'm pursuing is an atlas of my entire world. I have set myself high standards of realism and thoroughness. If I have a real earth sized planet and civilisation the amount of work will overwhelm me. I'm looking to scale the population down without losing cultural and technological richness. Ideally I'm looking for a world with only a handful of small countries with lots of unexplored, wild land in-between. Just a bit of background: Spacefaring humans settle the planet, quickly build a high tech civilisation all around the globe. Some catastrophe happens over many hundreds of years leaving only small pockets of humanity left to re-explore the lost planet. The spacefaring past is mythical folklore, not actual knowledge. Natural factors (weather, maybe native fauna) prevent the humans from spreading all over the globe again at their lower tech level.
I'm afraid I don't really know exactly where I'm going with this post, I guess I'm just trying to put my thoughts into words and maybe get some helpful feedback and pointers on how to proceed. Thanks and have a good weekend!

[waldronate]

The most likely reason that the map seems sterile is that it seems to have no identifiable purpose. Is it for nagivation? Is it for illustration of a particular point? Is it a sidepiece for a geography text? It has lots of appropriate elements for an mid-century atlas image, but I just can't get a feel for the "why" of the map. Why are there no cities in the mountains? Why is it mostly a hypsographic (altitude) coloration with just a hint of shading? Why is the level of detail the same roughly everywhere? Why is there a single city in the corner?