I think I may be over complicating this. I have to track to values of the tiles, status of units, and other factors. The best way to do this would be a database. Also, since this is turn based, I don't need constant rendering and other resource intensive things.
Now this is going to sound crazy, especially to those not in my real line of work, but I think I have a much better way of handling this. I know of a program that is highly manipulative, easy to code with, and has been available for decades on most computers around the world. It handles a higher color palette than ToT.
I'm going to build this in MS Excel, using a simple MS Access link to handle the data. Excel can act as the GUI. I've already tested converting PNG graphics to CSV values. All I need is a VBA macro to covert the values into cell background fills. Hyperlinked areas can be used to define tiles for user input with defined naming. No compiling will be involved and it will be totally open to modification.
It's going to work.