Bonus Zones

What Bonuses Do

Bonus zones reward players for controlling groups of territories. When a player holds every territory in a bonus zone, they receive extra troops during their deploy phase. This is the primary mechanic that makes maps strategically interesting — it gives players something to fight over beyond raw territory count.

A map without bonus zones is technically valid, but validation will flag it with a warning. Maps without bonuses offer fewer strategic options and tend to produce less interesting games.

Bonus Types

Before creating individual bonuses, you define bonus types — categories that group similar bonuses together. Common examples:

• Region — geographic areas (continents, provinces, districts)
• Strategic — key positions (trade routes, corridors, chokepoints)

You can define as many types as you need. Types are labels, not mechanics — they help organise your bonuses but don’t affect gameplay directly.

To create a type, enter a name in the text field at the bottom of the Bonuses panel and press Enter. Type names are stored lowercase.

Creating Bonuses

With at least one type defined, you can create bonuses. Tap the + button next to a type to create a new bonus of that type. Each bonus gets an auto-generated name (which you can change) and a unique colour drawn from a 12-colour palette.

Every bonus has:

• Name — displayed on the canvas and in-game (e.g., “Northern Reach”)
• Type — the category it belongs to
• Territories — the nodes a player must control to earn the reward
• Label — a draggable text label on the canvas showing the zone name

Assigning Territories

With a bonus selected in the panel, the canvas switches to assignment mode. A header bar shows which bonus you’re editing. Nodes already in the bonus show coloured rings in the bonus’s colour; unassigned nodes appear black.

Double-tap a node to add it to the selected bonus. Double-tap again to remove it. You can assign the same territory to multiple bonuses — it will display concentric rings for each membership.

Negative Bonuses

A bonus’s troop reward and card tick rate can both be set to negative integers. A player who controls every territory in a negative zone takes the penalty during their deploy phase — fewer troops, or a subtractive pull on their card tick — instead of earning a reward.

Both fields accept signed integers. Enter -2 in the troop reward field and the zone becomes a deploy penalty; enter -3 in the card tick rate field and it drags against the owner’s tick progress. Negative values render in bold red in the Bonuses panel and on the canvas so they’re impossible to miss while you’re authoring.

Design use. Negative zones are a design tool, not a trick. Common patterns:

• Cursed territory — a geographically tempting cluster (central, well-connected) that punishes the player who takes it all. Forces the eventual holder to choose between map control and deploy economy.
• Trap region — a small zone inside a larger positive bonus. Grabbing the outer bonus is good; grabbing the inner one too is a net wash or loss. Creates interesting “where do I stop?” decisions.
• Risk gradient — mixed positive and negative zones across the map. The highest-reward zones are also the most penalised if lost to a rival, so expansion is genuinely dangerous.

Avoid: negative zones that are trivial to dump (single nodes with no strategic value). If the penalty is easy to shed, it isn’t a decision — it’s just a rule the player routes around.

Zone Labels

Each bonus has a draggable label that appears on the canvas at low opacity. These labels help players identify bonus zones during gameplay. Drag labels to position them over their respective regions.

Labels support:

• Font — a curated selection of 12 fonts for different map aesthetics
• Size — font size in points
• Rotation — angle in degrees for diagonal or curved text
• Tint — colour temperature from a preset palette

Tips

• Fewer, larger bonuses are easier to understand. A map with 3 well-defined regions is more readable than one with 12 micro-bonuses. Save complexity for where it counts.
• Overlap with care. A territory in multiple bonuses becomes a high-value target — losing it costs you two bonuses at once. This is a powerful design tool, but too much overlap creates kingmaker scenarios.
• Match bonuses to geography. Players expect bonus zones to follow visual boundaries on the map image. A “Northern Reach” bonus that wraps around the south side of the map will confuse people.
• Balance the reward. Larger zones should give more troops than smaller ones — the reward should roughly match the difficulty of holding the position.