how do i approach making a 3d tiled world with varied heights

I want to make something like that in the attached screenshot, just the world/terrain.

If it would be a more realistic non tiled world, then most likely i would go into heightmaps. But here, how do i even approach this? Maybe also heightmaps, but map divided in tiles of, but then how do i make them transition from one to another? And then how to make world tiles align with tiles when i click on them in world to build something for example.

Can i make each tile a separate 3d model/prefab and construct the map out of them? If there would be 10k of such objects, how will it affect performance?

Please point me into a direction i could study.

 

Play Maple Story 2, it's free and it uses that design to perfection in my opinion.
Free on steam.

 

It is not a game design question. Usually I don't answer misplaced questions because it encourages the laziness you have shown here to find the proper topic for your questions, but I'm a great fan of Catlike coding, and his tutorial about the subject is very valuable: https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/hex-map/part-1/
It's about hex-tiling per default, but you can adapt to any tiling you want, you can dismantle it and pick out only the relevant techniques you need.

 

Unrelated to OP but if you like hexs.. hexes? hexies? hexagons, this is an awesome source for building an API
https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/

 

Oh, Amit Patel is a smaller god of mine. He stated on his website that he may be open to chat in person in the Palo Alto/San Jose area. I never had the nerve to contact him. Although I may will and offer one of my arms in exchange if he mentors me. I do not know what he would do with a human arm though.

 

Thank you for your reply and sorry for misplacing the thread.