Invasion!
48 countries. Not that that matters quite so much in this case. A small version is
also available.
The entire island (the main portion of the map, taking up the left two thirds of the image) starts out neutral. The players are the invading forces, attempting to conquer it. Each player starts out owning some of the bases on the right and nothing else; the game ends when one person controls the entire island (or when all enemies have been eliminated, as usual).
I wanted to try out some of the new XML features lack has implemented, and a lot of them seemed fitting for this map. Each base has a <bonus> of two armies per turn (placed directly on that territory). Bases can only attack the landings that have the matching icon, and these are one-way attack routes. The bases can only
be attacked by the Tor territories: any Tor can bombard any base, and these are also one-way. Furthermore, when a Tor attacks a base, it can't advance any armies there: a base can never be
conquered, only destroyed.
The current plan is for all Tors to begin with five neutral armies each, and for all other territories on the island to have two each. Tors, because they're so powerful, consume your armies: each one you possess reduces your deployment by two. On the other hand, there are many continents: any set of seven territories shaped like a ring surrounding a central hex will give you five armies to deploy. (There's a diagram in the legend to show what I mean.) These can overlap as well, so if you pick your conquests carefully, you might manage to make, e.g., two continents out of only ten territories.
I'm already done a fair amount of revision on this map before submitting it. At this stage, the two biggest things that I'm concerned about are "How do the specific numbers for the bonuses, the neutral armies, etc. sound?" and "Are the instructions on the map itself clear enough?" But other constructive criticism is, of course, welcome. (Oh, I should note that I'm not really interested in adding a lot of visual decoration to this map: I've done plenty of maps with that kind of stuff before, so I wanted to go for a more simple, austere look this time.)
P.S. Special thanks and credit for the idea of using hexagonal territories go to Floppie, who had the idea here.