Settlement/Empire game IC and Advice
A lot of empire games fail when the players walk from too much work. The only advice I can give is to minimize the bean counting. And then minimize it some more.
You may be surprised just how much mapping you can do with good old MS Paint. Find (or make) an A4 hex grid, fill the hexes with green, brown, or whatever colouring you need, find (or make) symbols for hills, mountains, forest, villages, etc, copy and paste them in where required. Copy and paste different colour lines for your borders, too.
If your players stick around for more than a few weeks, you can upgrade your mapping software later (if you feel the need). Otherwise, you can save some hard-earned cash from being wasted on an abortive project.