No, I DON'T mean "games you can play by email".
I'm looking for games where you play as the ruler of a kingdom, sending out scouts and armies and stuff, but you don't know the results of your orders instantly.
Think of it this way: Lewis & Clark's expedition took a very long time. People were waiting with bated breath for them to return with all their glorious, misspelled knowledge! But until they ACTUALLY RETURNED, nobody knew ANYTHING about what fog-of-war they had uncovered, or even whether or not they'd been killed by unspeakably violent pacific-northwestern tribes (er...).
Romeo and Juliet sure wasn't a strategy game, but it does contain wonderful examples of what might happen if your communications get disrupted.
So presumably, a game like this would be roughly medieval; have largely-automated commanders and stuff, but you would give them tons of specific instructions before they left, as many as you wanted. (Like, explore this way, if you find a weak barbarian city, capture it; if the enemy captures your communication lines, go native, settle in defensively and wait for reinforcements when we stop getting scouting parties, etc). Normally, it's assumed that any party out in the field would send a horse back home every day or so, but small scouting parties would just be a 'go out, come home after a week or if you see something important first', and if they don't come home on time then you know something's up. Forward scouting posts to watch for enemy troops, garrisoned not to STOP an enemy army, but just to spot enemy troops and make it hard for them to cut off your messengers that say "Enemy troops are here".
I've never heard of any games like this, but are any of them out there?