Howabout calculating the spawn direction from the difference between the base square and the spawn location?
Mustaine's suggestion about zooming further out without the ground vanishing is a necessity
Undo (at least the last move or change)
Tiling according to altitude and an override on top of that for surface angle (how steep some hill side is)... e.g. everything at certain alt is snow, but almost vertical areas are rock.
More variety to transitions between anything and water... meaning coastlines.
Same logic to vertical and horizontal slide bar in map window.. now one moves view and the other moves terrain (even better if the view control was like in OE).
Ability to make water above 0 alt (either as terrain or as objects).