Isn't it though? Russia seemed to do OK with the conquest of Crimea. Anyway the suggestion of Europa Universalis is probably the closest you will get right now. If Paradox made a post-cold war sim I'd play the hell out of it, but I think it would be hard to do right and be interesting precisely because without real conquest and wars, there isn't much that is interesting for a game on the global level.
A modern version simulating the last 100 years of politics and war on a worldwide scale would interest me. Especially if you could try different strategies and perspectives in current day hotspots like Syria, Southeast Asian sea, etc.
Conquest of strategic locations is just as important as before. Suez, Panama, Gibraltar and Singapore are pretty carefully looked after. But there has been significant decoupling between ownership of arable land and economic power. So you don't see same kind of land grabs that marked most of middle ages and lasted until WWII.
> Russia seemed to do OK with the conquest of Crimea
No, I think it's clear. The Russians invaded another country, conquered Ukranian land and kidnapped Ukrainian people.
EDIT: Fixed the ambiguous pronouns
> Their military invaded
> conquered their land and kidnapped their people
Plus, IIRC that survey was also Russian propaganda.
But make no mistake: this is not how the game is designed. The game is designed around conquest, by one means or another. Sooner or later, the game 'wants' you to go to war. Everything pushes towards war. There's a lot of fun, in fact, in trying to be a stabilizing force in a world hell-bent on going Mad Max. But it will go there, sooner or later.
Every faction ends up going to war with the others, and you'll find yourself taking various sides in an attempt to shore up the defenses of the helpless, the aggrieved, and the outmatched. Since the roles of aggressor and aggrieved change every few cycles, you'll pretty much go to war with every other nation in a grim rotation of shifting alliances. Eventually you're rewarded for your peacekeeping efforts with the seething and irreparable enmity of every other faction on the map.
At that point, you've got two choices: 1) Cheat and reset relations with the other factions; 2) Accept your new role as World Police, bringing democracy and prosperity at gunpoint.
Balance of Power (both the original and 1990 editions; allowed play of the USA or USSR only) and Shadow President (allowed play as the USA only) come to mind; ISTR one that allowed play as a wider variety of real-world nations, but can't place the name.
I'm an Aussie and Australia in the game always frustrated the heck out of me. I often nuked it. :-/
Although I've never gotten deep enough into Crusader Kings II to really know how to play it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_World_War_(video_gam...
There's a Paradox game I played a few years ago called Supreme Ruler that I got excited about thinking it was similar but it tends to get bogged down in the military in my opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_World_War_(video_gam...
I haven't played Victoria II but know it also fits this mold. It is set in the colonial time frame so not quite modern but close.
Sounds like an interesting idea for a game, but that doesn't really accurately reflect modern geopolitics, does it?
There've still been civil wars, coups, proxy wars, trade wars, foreign-funded revolutions, etc, but these are way smaller scale and result in far less bloodshed than building up a massive army and smashing it against an enemy in an open war of conquest.
Interesting dynamics for a game like Civ.
Ideally, the game would be able to make conducting the affairs of a large global hegemon like the United States as interesting as playing a small kingdom beset on all sides. Sort of like Crusader Kings but set in the modern world.
The real interesting part of the game in my view is that conquest is no longer an option, and tactics would get abstracted out of armed conflict in an "amateurs think tactics, generals think logistics" kind of way.