@RVWDeerhound:
I’ve been looking around online and in my local game store, and it looks like the Attack! Deluxe rules are something like what I’m going for, with a few resources and variable starting positions, as well as empty neutral territories, but it kind of lacks the interlocking and conflicting objectives and I think those are the real lynchpin of this idea, everything else one wants to change would really come after that integral base idea.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but it sounds as if you’re trying to find an existing game whose primary characteristic is that it offers, in a fully-developed form, an operating mechanism for which you’ve identified a few general concepts but for which you don’t yet have a functional prototype. So in a sense, the specific setting of the game (WWI, WWII, etc.) and the finer details aren’t actually relevant at this point because there are much more fundamental issues to be resolved first. To use an analogy: one could start with the general concept that one wants to design a game in which two players face off on an 8 x 8 checkerboard, but it would be premature at that stage to get into the details of what the game pieces will look like because first one needs to work out fundamental points about the game’s operating mechanism (since the same 8 x 8 board could be used to play any number of vastly different games, chess and checkers being two examples).
I suspect that what you’re looking for may not actually exist…so rather than trying to find an existing game that fits your concept, it might be better for you to work out your concept first, in detail, and then identify which existing game would be most suitable to being adapted to fit your requirements. And since, as I’ve mentioned, the specific setting isn’t relevant at this point, you may want to work out your system in a very abstract way, on a very simple and highly simplified outline map of the world (say, a blank version of the Risk map), with just three unnamed powers as the theoretical players. Eliminate everything else, so you can focus on working out how your system of “secret interlocking and conflicting objectives” would work in actual practice in a functional game. To shift analogies: first develop a functional internal combustion engine, then decide what kind of vehicle you want to power with it. That would be my recommendation, for whatever it’s worth.
