@swordfish:

For one, I could not seem to find any of the map files (such as ‘basetiles’, ‘relieftiles’, ‘games’, etc.) that are a part of the default games (which I believe there are four of, including Big World 1942) that come with the TripleA client.

When downloading maps, they are saved in the same location as the savegames (the user folder) rather than in the application directory.  For instance, on my Win system, they are in C:\Users\username\triplea\maps.