Well, I finally gave in and bought Risk Europe.
I profoundly dislike many aspects of risk, but apparently the Europe verision has nothing to do with it, but the name. The game appears to follow modern design principles and it really seems the perfect candidate for custom maps.
You can see from the components and structure that the whole game looks more like a 2010's "dudes on the map" type of game.

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In fact, the main reason for the purchase was to have a good system to draw maps for.

Does anyone have had experiences with it? Was that a smart move?