Ach gugge moi! What have I found... Counters even had two force levels, could suffer losses, I had forgotten that...
There were two more colours, and HUNDREDS of such counters.
And indeed the game could have been played in two ways: purely tactical
without the randomising outer rim of playfields a la Monopoly, where you would have moved your pin according to the dice and could for example have gained good or bad action cards affecting the hex-focussed tactical game on the infield of the map, or a more laid-back and randomised fun-version incuding that outer playing field.
The rule book unfortunately is no more complete.
The game's title was "Conquest", btw.
Today I would learn coding and then do such a thing as computer version. But before I would do that, after having learned coding, I would code a 1:1 conversion of this old board game by Avalon Hill, "Flight Leader". I would kill for such a conversion, and with a competent AI. I loved it.
Other cosims I played were the Third World War series by GDW, the Assault series by GDW, 2nd and 6th Fleet by VG, and a few others. Ah, Gulf Strike and Aegean Strike, Ambush!, Tokyo Express. My review of Tokyo Express, a solitaire game, is (was?) somewhere in the Subsim reviews section.