OpenFront China Map — Only 15% Water

China is 15% water, so buildable port sites are scarce. With 1.48M impassable tiles, attack routes funnel through a handful of necks that decide the whole match.

SOURCE-VERIFIED · df9114ee Mid Updated 2026-08-28 3 min read

The short version

  • Only 15% water. Coast is scarce, port sites are limited, and gold shifts toward cities and trains
  • 1.48M impassable tiles. Attacks skip them entirely, so advances funnel into necks
  • 29.3% mountain — plenty to back onto. This is a map where terrain can carry your defence
  • 32 nations is sparse for the size, so much of your expansion is empty ground

China is an inland map — only 15.0% water. There are 1,867,569 land tiles but very little coastline, which means buildable port sites are genuinely scarce.

It also carries 1,476,953 impassable tiles. Attacks skip those entirely, so advances funnel into a handful of necks.

The basics

Value
Size2,080 × 1,892
Land1,867,569 tiles
Water15.0%
Impassable1,476,953 tiles
Nations32
Public lobby frequency8
Grid cell189 tiles
Avg magnitude98.0

Terrain — mountain-rich

TerrainShareLoss magnitude (unitless, highland = 100)
Plains39.3%80
Highland31.4%100
Mountain29.3%120

At 29.3% mountain there is plenty to back onto. Unlike Middle East (0.9%) or Sierpinski (0%), this is a map where terrain alone can build your defence.

A defense post on mountain gives magnitude 120 × 5 = an effective 600 — one and a half times what the same post achieves on plains.

Coordinates

NationCellNationCell
Tannu TuvaD3PekingI5
Communist ChinaG6British Hong KongI9
SichuanG7GuangdongI9
HeilongjiangI2Boxer RebellionJ5
ManchukuoJ3Taiping Heavenly KingdomJ7

Trade routes — few sites, high value

RouteDistanceRevenue per ship
Hong Kong ↔ Macao56 tiles2,850 gold ← below the threshold
Hong Kong ↔ Taiwan300 tiles52,500 gold
Outer Mongolia ↔ Xinjiang677 tiles108,849 gold
Tannu Tuva ↔ Guizhou1,156 tiles132,800 gold
Heilongjiang ↔ Yaqub Beg Regime1,641 tiles157,050 gold

Hong Kong to Macao at 56 tiles is this map’s signature trap. They sit next to each other on screen, so the pairing looks obvious — and it pays 2,850 gold.

With only 15% water, holding coast is itself an asset. Do not spend it on a near neighbour; pick a partner at least two grid cells (378 tiles) away. See port placement.

If ports are scarce, where does gold come from?

Trains and cities carry more weight here.

  • Factories and rail — inland, the rail network becomes your effective trade route. The more foreign stops a train visits, the more it pays. See factory and rail income
  • Cities — with fewer ports available, raising your cap through cities takes a larger share of your gold. See how many cities

Troop caps

ShareTilesCap (no cities)
1%18,676830,803
5%93,3782,019,450

Summary

  1. Coast is a scarce resource. If you hold some, pair it far
  2. Back onto mountains. At 29.3% there is plenty, and posts there are 1.5× as effective
  3. Find the impassable necks. With 1.48M tiles attacks cannot cross, the gaps between them define the entire front
  4. Route gold into trains and cities to cover the port shortfall

Convert a leaderboard percentage into tiles with the troop cap calculator. Compare every map at the map comparison table.

Terrain shares, coordinates, and distances are counted from the game’s own map files.