Design Tips

Think About the Opening

The first two rounds of a game establish the political landscape. Players look at their spawn position, identify nearby bonus zones, and decide who to approach and who to avoid. A well-designed map gives every player at least two viable opening strategies.

Ask yourself: when a player spawns at group 0, what do they do first? If the answer is always “attack the same neighbour,” the map has a scripted opening. Give players choices.

Keep Spawns Apart

A spawn should never be directly connected to another spawn. When spawns are adjacent, the first-moving player can eliminate a neighbour before they’ve taken a turn — not a strategy choice, just seat luck. If two regions need to touch, route the connection through at least one intermediate territory. That intermediate node becomes defensible mid-spoke terrain instead of a kill zone.

Contact Surface Matters More Than Territory Count

Backchannel is a negotiation game. Two players who never border each other can’t have meaningful agreements — they can trade information through Ceasefires, but they can’t coordinate troops. When laying out a map, count the number of distinct player-pairs who will share a border at typical mid-game states, not just the territory total. A sprawling map with many territories but few player-to-player contacts starves the diplomatic layer of the game.

Territory Count and Game Length

More territories means longer games. As a rough guide:

These are not hard rules. A tightly connected 12-territory map plays faster than a sprawling 12-territory map with chokepoints. Connectivity matters as much as count.

Connectivity and Chokepoints

A fully connected map (where every territory borders every other) produces chaotic, unpredictable games. A sparsely connected map (long chains, few cross-connections) produces slow, positional games. Most good maps sit between these extremes.

Chokepoints — territories with few connections that bridge otherwise separate regions — are powerful design tools. They create natural frontlines and objectives. But too many chokepoints makes the map feel like a corridor.

Guidelines:

• Most territories should have 3–5 connections. This gives players options without making borders meaningless.
• Every territory should be reachable from every other territory. The validator enforces this, but think about how many hops it takes. If crossing the map takes 8 moves, fog of war will hide most of the action from most players.
• Dead ends (territories with only one connection) are valid design choices — they’re defensible but hard to escape from. The validator flags them as warnings, not errors.

Bonus Zone Design

Bonus zones drive mid-game strategy. Players will fight over bonus zones more than individual territories, so their placement and size determines how conflict unfolds.

• 3–5 territories per zone is the sweet spot. Smaller zones are too easy to hold; larger zones are too hard to complete.
• Overlap zones sparingly. A territory in two zones becomes a kingmaker position — losing it costs two bonuses. This is interesting once per map, not twelve times.
• Scale rewards to difficulty. A zone deep in one corner of the map is easier to hold than one spanning the centre. Award fewer troops for the safe position and more for the contested one.
• Leave some territories unzoned. Not every node needs to be in a bonus. Buffer territories between zones give players neutral ground to negotiate over.

Card Economy Target

Card ticks accumulate at 0.25 per territory per turn, with 15 ticks required for one card. A player holding ~8 territories and one completed bonus with cardTickRate: 2 draws roughly one card every 2–3 turns — the cadence that keeps negotiation options alive. If your bonus layout leaves a player at fewer than 3 ticks/turn during the first 5–10 rounds, cards will be too scarce for diplomacy to function. Small bonuses with cardTickRate: 1–2 that reward early consolidation work better than one big bonus with a high tick rate that takes 10 turns to complete.

Bonuses Live Between Spawns, Not Inside Them

If a bonus is mostly inside a single player’s starting region, that player owns the bonus for free — and the other players have to fight uphill to deny it. This isn’t asymmetric gameplay, it’s a handicap. The most interesting bonuses sit in the contested ground between spawns, where every player has comparable access and has to decide whether to push for the zone or let a neighbour have it. A “backyard” bonus (small, fast, adjacent to a spawn) is fine; a “trophy” bonus (large, rich, centred on someone’s territory from turn one) is not.

Asymmetric Bonuses: Differ in Kind, Not Size

When you want two bonuses to play differently, change what kind of value they give, not how much. A bonus giving +4 troops next to one giving +2 troops is a balance problem, not a design choice — the player near +4 wins. A bonus giving +3 troops next to one giving +2 troops with +2 card ticks is two viable play styles: the first player builds armies, the second builds negotiation leverage. Troops and cards are different currencies; they can be balanced against each other and give players real stylistic choice.

Unidirectional Connections

One-way borders are the most powerful and most dangerous tool in the editor. Used well, they create memorable strategic positions. Used poorly, they create frustrating, unbalanced games.

Good uses:

• Mountain passes — attacking uphill is possible, but the defender has the high ground and can’t be counter-attacked along the same route.
• River crossings — assault across the river is one-way; the other bank can only bombard.
• Chokepoint gates — a fortress territory that can attack outward but is protected from direct assault on one side.

Bad uses:

• Random asymmetry — if players can’t read the reason for a one-way border from the map image, it feels arbitrary.
• Too many — more than 2–3 unidirectional borders on a 20-territory map starts to feel oppressive.

Bombardment

Bombardment connections let territories attack at range without occupying. This means a player can damage an enemy garrison without risking a counter-attack or troop movement. It’s inherently defensive — the bombarding territory is untouchable from the target’s perspective (unless there’s a separate connection going the other way).

Use bombardment for:

• Offshore positions — islands that can shell the mainland but can’t be invaded across the water.
• Elevated terrain — hilltop artillery positions.
• Siege positions — fortified walls that can fire out but not be stormed from a specific direction.

Playtest Early

The best maps are playtested before they’re published. Start a game with friends or bots on your map and pay attention to:

• Do all spawn positions feel viable? If one player consistently loses from a specific spawn, the map has a balance problem.
• Are bonus zones contested? If a zone is never fought over, it might be too easy to hold or too far from the action.
• Does the endgame drag? If the last two players spend 10 rounds unable to break through each other’s defences, the map might need more cross-connections.
• Is fog of war interesting? On a tightly connected map, fog of war barely matters because everyone can see everyone. On a sprawling map, it’s the defining mechanic. Design for the experience you want.