I've been thinking about civ-like game on global sphere map. However I wouldn't use tiles or hexagons, but the unit movement would be distance based and coordinate system would be spherical (longitude-latitude).
For the economy I think there needs to be some kind of substitute for tiles/hexes. I've planned to create areas that would be like provinces on the map. Each province would have values for what it can produce and how much. So essentially provinces would be like tiles, but non equal area.
As I said units wouldn't move from province to province but certain distance at time. Units or may I call them armies would have certain operational range (most likely circle area on surface of the sphere). If unit's operational range collides with enemy unit's range, a battle would occur. Player with most military power in the province would control its resources. Or the resources would be divided.
Game would be strictly turn based, but movement would happen simultaneously. That means unit moves are executed at end of turn and all players manage their empires same time.( I've been developing game like that previously but at the moment the project is frozen state, so I'd like to move the work done from that project to this new one, which I think is better idea.)
Also I'd like to see game that focus more to development of the society and economy on macro level rather than micromanagement of tiles(provinces)
I'm more gearing towards rather simplistic game than grand strategy though. But just wanted to share this vision.
I've been creating early steps of prototype with Unity (game engine) and I just thought if somebody is interested to give some ideas or comments.
Have to mention that I haven't 'officially' started development, just 'fooling around' with some code. The whole idea is still very vague.