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.
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.