So go play Sim City. Sure, it has no warfare, but you only wanted warfare to be a small part of the game anyways.
SE4 is not a war game, it is a strategy game. A war game is just that; war. They focus on manuevering predetermined forces against each other in combat. They are complex, but they do not encompass nearly as much as SE4 does. A strategy game is war + economics, essentially. I am not certain, but I do not think there is much research done in-game in very many war games. A strategy game is about building up your empire, then a military, then war. They cover more areas than war games do.
Strategy games are not about managing the minute details of your populace. Stuff like that will undoubtedly bog down a strategy game into unplayability if it goes too far into the minutia. What you are looking for is a completely different genre, and there is no guarantee that Aaron would be able to make a game of that genre well (as there are few (if any) game programmers that can make awesome games in every genre).