That might actually work.
Planets instead of continents, moons instead of islands, fleets of spaceships and conquering armies.
Bigger planets have more than one presence (neutral or otherwise).
Looking at the standard map, there is one large continent, Europe (planet with six countries, the central four touching two neighbours around swtizerland, in a ring.
One of the central countries has a neutral land adjacent (Austria and Balkans) and then another country adjacent to that, whilst two of the ring countries, together with the neutral and the last country, abut the biggest country (Russia), which also has a third border with another neutral area (Scandinavia).
There are two islands (England, Africa) - moons.