war strategy boardgame

Sounds like an area control (resource centers) wargame with some upgrade capability and maybe a tech tree involved.

Extremely common concept.

I used most of it in my Fleet Admiral - Singularity game.

Risk does not use upgrades but does use the rest.

almost every Civ style game ever made.....................

Not to discourage, but it is kind of a "has anyone ever tried mixing flour and salt and yeast and putting it in an oven" sort of question.

hi. just because its been done before doesnt mean you cant do it better. DnD isnt the only RPG after all. the previous poster was right, it is an area control game but when i first read your post i thought of tower defence style games. which is not that common for boardgames. making a 2 player version would be an interesting challenge, i would presume by having 1 player as the attackers and 1 as the defenders.

Sounds like a turn-based strategy game (or even RTS, like Command and Conquer?), in board game form?

Designing a war game that resembles RTS is very hard.

For starters. Do you really want a "Real Time" aspect?
You mentioned to rather have a chess like aspect, which is better to do for a first attempt.

Balance is always a bottleneck in these games. And to achieve practical balance, the best method is applying RPS. Not having RPS makes it very hard to balance the game.

Keep the number of different types as small as possible. The first sign of RPS is that of having 3 different units. Yet wargames do better when you have 4. Example: infantry and tanks with either anti infantry weapons or anti tank weapons. A 2x2 format which you always can build upon.

Eco?
The simplest method is having only 1 resource. But if you have infantry and tanks, you could do 2 resources where for example food is applied to train infantry and ore is applied to produce tanks. I do not recommend multiple resources unless they each serve a purpose by reason.

RTS know a big variety for Eco. I recommend having a simple resource node that costs money to build. Each additional resource node costs the same, but the resources added per turn, decrease with each addition. AoW3 uses this method effectively.
Something like 1 node adds 5. 2 nodes adds 9. 3 nodes adds 12. 4 nodes adds 14. 5 nodes or more adds 15.

Have fun designing.

Maybe you can get some idea's from A&A. There you don't have RPS.

I don't know if an Risk like attack works with RPS. I guess, right target; use 3 dice. Wrong target; only 1 die? Same for the defender. And the highest rolls are compared.

As far as Axis and Allies. It has morphed into many sub games. I recommend for your homework you use the Original 1942 Global Version https://avalonhill.wizards.com/games/axis-and-allies The Anniversary edition is deluxe but otherwise same.

Yeah I love that kind of stuff and find it really fun. Record keeping never bothered me. I enjoy that kind of depth and never found it tedious at all. I find the newer stuff to light and simplistic to hold my interest. To each, their own.

It is interesting that many try to replicate or emulate a Video game on board, but cant see how it could be done without hitting that time complexity thing. I think the best you can do is capture the elements and personality of the tech and charters from real time and put them into what today is considered "playable." Most want a game to last less time then a TV show. I prefer to sit down and play for a whole afternoon.

Good Luck.

Your mention of economic strategy leads me to think worker Placement as a mechanic to incorporate. All good RTS computer games heavily rely on the initial non- combat worker. You could include buildings as cards to place workers upon, or even to upgrade your workers to combat units