Figures they're in the games I either haven't bothered or don't want to play. I continue to cite ogres, battlewheels, and the like.
Oh, thats too bad. I really liked Empire, you should check it out. The trade/economic/colonial aspects are right up my alley. It's no
Imperialism but it is still pretty good -- and the puckle guns, rocket barrages, and mortars with flaming carcass shot are just icing on the cake. Rocket barrages are fairly ineffective, but they do tend to make people loose their bowels a little.
Seriously: there's nothing better than having a well disciplined force facing a vastly numerically superior foe, putting them into a defensive square in a last act of desperation, and then watching the enemy break against the square like waves against an unyielding cliff.
Also: Heavy First-Rate ship-of-the-line? about 4K each. Steamship? ~1800 a piece. Plowing them through a fleet of lesser vessels while they explode or burn to the waterline? Priceless.
You can even make some (very very loose) approximation of proper naval tactics -- my favorite is Nelson's strategy at Trafalgar, which I'll have you know is TOTALLY NONVIABLE in this little game:
http://www.eic-game.com/?page=battle_of_trafalgar so E:TW wins some points from me on that front....
Empire has a great mix of components that come together spectacularly, and I think I'm going to play it some more tomorrow now that I've been reminded.
To you point though, things like Ogres and Steam Tanks and Battle Wheels... these are really just models. There are already elephants and siege towers, people have already made fantasy mods, and at least one existing Warhammer mod that was linked a page or so back. So this stuff has been done in concept.
I think the trick will be somehow capturing the asymmetric nature of how the conflicts would naturally play out. The wargame fluff is written in such a was as to always afford everyone a chance to play their army against anyone else... and this is not conducive to a grand strategy game that needs to have things like borders and resources and diplomacy and motivations for conflict.
I mean, why would undead hordes invade? They sure don't want your fertile crop lands, why would the Tomb Lords not just hang out and continue to slowly grow their undead armies and limitless labor force with whatever small living population they still have? They have a guaranteed stream of steady growth without increasing overhead, and basically no one should be motivated to come take their shitty arid land. They'd probably make the best neighbors and trade partners in the world!
Should be the same with necromancer towers in DF. Why are they invading? Why dont they provide valuable services to neighboring kingdoms (like road construction, or removing stones from fields) in exchange for a steady supply of bodies? They should be the BEST NEIGHBORS EVAR.
Wow, that was a long tangent. Don't know what happened there.
Well you forget some things. Lorewise Skaven are in a constant War with Night Goblins and the Dwarves and since all three are basically below ground nations (remember the dwarves are mostly interested in their Lost Mountainhomes) it would indeed make sense to do a Second Layer to the World Map which runs underground. Also there is the Chaos Dwarves which i forgot.
ooo. I did forget about that. That could actually be really interesting if they implement it well.