Well the basic game would be something where each player has either more military might, resources (oil) which can be converted to purchase weapons, lastly, a nation could have political (diplomacy points) which is can earn if it stays out of trouble and which can also be exchanged for bargining chits…
i picture a card system for random events and also the “currency cards” consisting of diplomacy, military, political, economic influence… each coalition would have some basic point value representing armies and a defined number of these cards that can be exchanged in a diplomacy phase of the game. The goal is eventually reaching some point goal whereby a player counts up his military forces, conquered nations, and all those political cards that he traded for during the game. Also each nation would have some national goals that it could achieve in order to gain victory. The nuclear option would be the great denyer to any player who was winning with a huge margin… the other players could gang up and drop bombs if somebody got too far ahead in the point race. Yaquinto games made a nice game called “ultimatum” (i own this). also SPI had a nice game called world war 3 ( i have this too). the last game has no diplomacy except when its time to use the nuclear option.