Could you explain that? I'm not completely sure that's true. I like hexes, and want to experiment with them, but I've never drawn any hex-based maps myself, so I'm not seeing the advantage here. For example, what I've done in the past when using square grids, is line them up next to each other, and link them together. It seems that it would be more difficult to do that with a hex-based map.
Determining the distance between two points on a hex map is a matter of counting the hexes between the two points. You can't do that with a square grid unless it is only straight up or down as the diagonal are 1.77 units larger than the horizontal or vertical.
This blog post of mine:
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2008/10/mapping-with-hexes.html talks about mapping with hexes and how to make adjoining maps.
I hand drew my maps in the harn style. As you can see here.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mFjy4EWzmtg/SREW5-5tMXI/AAAAAAAAATg/ubuEZaApJgo/s1600-h/csio_regional_sm.jpgThe steps are
1) with a pencil lightly sketch the coast line
2) Check for mistakes
3) With a fine line blue pen (not a ball point). Draw the coasts
4) With a pencil lightly draw the boundaries of the hill and mountain regions
5) With a fine line black pen draw the mountain border and fill it with light diagonal slashes
6) For the hill you want to do a dot pattern. Just take your pen and tap solidly inside the hill boundary forming a pattern of dots. You don't draw a boundary for hills.
7) Take your blue fine line pen and draw in your rivers
Note where the swamp and use a swamp symbol to fill it boundary. Note like hills you don't draw a boundary. The swamp symbol is a line with a small V or W on top.
9) Assemble at set of coloring sticks and coloring pencils. Dark Green for Forest, Light Green for normal woodland, Light Blue for water, A golden yellow for crop, light brown for grassland, tan for alpine terrain. Areas of snow and ice (like mountain tops) are left white.
You want to color in the smaller areas of vegetation first.
10) Cropland are generally the smallest areas draw first
11) Then Forests
12) For mountains you will need to decide their elevation. The lowest could completely covered in woodland, grassland, or forest. Higher still will have crowns of alpine terrain, and the Highest crowned with ice/snow. The vegetations for elevations goes from highest to lowest: Ice/snow, Alpine, grassland/woodland/forest.
13) Color the rest of the map with the base terrain which is generally woodland (trees cover 25% to 75%) for temperate regions.
14) With a red pen market various settlements. I use filled squares for towns and cities, filled circles for castles, open circles for keeps, and open diamonds for villages, open triangles for points of special interests, and upside down open diamonds for mines. Also use any other symbols drawn with the pen for things like dungeons, etc.
15) Draw Roads with a red pen. I uses solid lines for Roman style roads, dashed lines for the main dirt roads, and dotted lines for trails and unimproved roads.
16) With a black pen for terrain and red pen for settlements and points of interest label your map.
The advantage of this approach you can freely mix terrain and vegetation in a natural way.