So I want to have the squirrel be able to go out and collect nuts. But I want him to be home at the end of every turn "returning his collections".

This is what I've got for a board and territories. The idea here is to make it so that the nest (start place) is the only safe place for the players squirrel, and if they lose that squirrel - game over. reading through I see that abandon for individual territories was squashed, but can anyone think of any other way I might be able to make this work?

I'm still not quite sure how you envision this map to work.  What's to stop players from just attacking each other's (single ) squirrel?

The nest is a safe place. If you return there, you should not be able to be attacked. (so to answer the question: the rules)

So I envision player 1 going out and grabbing three nuts and a mushroom and returning home.

Then player two going out to capture two of player ones nuts, and the mushroom then going home.

Player three does something similar ect.

Untill everybody eventually has some bonus production in their nut pile.

That goes on for a bit untill someone feels brave, and they take their squirrel down to ratsy and the defender there and start attacking nutpiles... untill everyone but themeselves survive.

So the nuts are not safe to leave armies/will be decremented during the off turn?
Or is the player expected to leave units on the nuts to guard them against attack from opponents?

If it's the latter, then it's sounding like you could maybe use very similar mechanics as Frontierland Shooting Arcade?

I wanted to use the same concept as the shooting arcade, but make the limitations based on movement, not armies. It's an attempt to get the player to think more about the moves than to amass troops...

I was hoping to find a way to make sure at least one of your bonuses could be not immidiately taken by the following player... but otherwise take the battle element out of it, untill you have what you figure is enough anyway.

..this is another board concept that could benefit from a limited movement feature.

What I really need is the ability to immediately abandon some territories, and not others...

I'd really like this also.  As I've mentioned before all of the 'Boolean Logic' that can now be done with factories, depends on being able to abandon and lose possession.  So if you want to do anything fancy like that, you are forced to make the entire map abandon & lose possession, even if the rest of the map doesn't fit that as well.