Struggling to define a game design space.
There's a genre of play somewhere between narrative wargaming and domain-level roleplaying that feels like it should be easy to pin down, but it's been a real pain so far. The basic premise is simple: players controlling nations, realms, or factions as their "character". It's something I've tried once before in homebrew, and it's an experience I've had many times in video games, be they 4X games like Civ or Stellaris or RTS games like Starcraft and Warcraft. There are major characters you use to interact with the world or frame the story, but it's understood that you are the faction more than the character.
To use the lattermost name up there as a concrete example, Warcraft 3 doesn't list its player options as Thrall or Arthas, they're the Orcs and the Humans. That's who you play, that's what informs the challenges the game throws at you and the tools it gives you to solve them. That's what I'm trying to recreate in tabletop. But I can't seem to pin down the language that would quickly communicate that and help me find other games like it. "Strategy roleplaying game" seems the most obvious description, but that just seems to evoke personal-scale RPGs where strategy is a focus. A friend suggested "Diplomacy-like" which is certainly closer, but it doesn't really help unless the person you're talking to knows what Diplomacy is.
Anyone else have thoughts on what to call this style of game or experiences with games that tackle it?
Edit: to clarify, I'm not trying to build a boardgame or a wargame here, I'm aiming for the same gameplay space as most other RPGs: narrative storytelling, in-character negotiation, creative problem solving. The only thing that's different is the scale.