Okay, I'm bumping this thread to explain my new thought of how to make a 3D map, because this has been a long sought after and never accomplished playing venue.
(For reference
this thread was a more recent one about a 3D map but included less conversation.)
My thought- A 3D map could easily be created in AutoCAD; It's not your typical map making program, but I use it in some of my classes and I've gotten fairly good at 3D drawings from a project I'm working on right now. This type of 3D image would be very good at illustrating exactly which plane any given army resides in, and the connections between territories could be made very clear as well. The problem is that you can only really analyze a 3D object well by rotating it (seeing the different angles clarifies things tremendously).
I recently read about some map ideas where a changing map was suggested (ie the mountains crumble, the river drains, the territories shift, etc). I found those ideas to be very interesting but impractical because while a .gif file could be created to make the image dynamic, the XML would remain static and therefore gameplay wouldn't change.
Then I had the thought of how an animated .gif map could be used- A rotating 3-D map! The borders would be constant but the map would rotate to show you all sides and clarify the image. I still don't know if this would be practical at all, but I think its an extremely interesting concept. The biggest problem is that I know nothing of how to create an animated .gif file to create a rotating image. So if someone on here has the know how to do that, and I could create an appealing 3D image, this might just be a possibility.
Note: I still like the mall concept a lot, but there are tons of untouched 3D structures and set ups that could be created in this way.