I should start out by stating that I am not a professional programmer, or even a gifted amateur, and have only dabbled in some Visual Basic stuff.
That said, have you guys considered using Visual Basic for this type of application? While it would probably be preferable to use c/C++, those languages sound much more difficult to learn, and the application we're talking about does not require state-of-the-art programming capabilities for 3-D graphics, etc. I would think (but am not sure) that VB could handle the 2-d, hex-based operational type game along with the associated AI. Does anyone know for sure?
Given real-life time constraints, I doubt that most members of this list would be able to pull something useful together single-handedly, but maybe working together it would be possible to accomplish something worthwhile. How many programmers do we have out there, and what is your interest level?
76mm