A lot of 4X games - including the Total War series - develop from being close to the fight and micromanaging forces, to zooming out to an empire view and letting the fights take place without your oversight; it's not the same but I'd say pretty similar? That is, even though you start and end as emperor over everything you control, you can choose how much micromanagement you do. Example is Stellaris, where you can either micromanage your forces, planets, ships, etc, or you can let them duke it out on their own, hand over micromanagement of your planets to governors by giving them high over targets, etc.
You shouldn't even be able to watch the action in detail, Total War style, as you might have a hill, some messengers and low power binoculars. Games have attempted to copy this, but it's a curiosity, not something that brings sales