Great idea TJ.
Things popping into my mind :
Add lots of civilians in there, which may NOT be killed. (If killed, the player will go to courtmarchall).
Even so, once in a random while the civillians might start attacking friendly forces because someone destroyed a house, drove over a civvy or any trigger you might think of.
Then the kind of power you gain : start with simple weapons, and make certain towns have factories where you can make jeeps, planes, tanks, high-tech stuff like laser-guides for artillery, and make it harder to get those cities if the weapons are more powerfull.
Since UAV/Artillery is a deadly combination is should cost you a lot to get these..
I guess you should plan to make it 2 or 3 sides from start (maybe latent), to make it possible to get some human players on the OPFOR side to make the battle harder.. If this means there will be morons joining just to do that to ruin the game for everyone there must be a way to enable/disable it online.