I've spent the last five years making tile-based games. I highly suggest looking at how the RPG Maker series manages tiles, especially autotiles. RPG Maker has a huge audience behind it, and I believe this is because tilemaps are extremely fun to make in the editor.
I've seen a lot of game creation kits try to implement tile-based editors, but they're all pretty cumbersome when put next to the one in RPG Maker.
The best thing to do is download the latest version of the editor and check it out.
http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/product/rpg-maker-vx-aceIf you need any tilesets for testing, I have dozens of them. Just let me know and I'll send them your way. Big note: system is based on 32x32 tiles (or 4x4). Not sure how much of a problem this would be.