I grew up with board wargames and played fron early Avalon Hill through the SPI/GDW monster game era. Board wargames have their limitations — players have far too much information, no fog of war, sequential as opposed to simultaneous movement — but we did learn a lot about the maps and orders of battle. We also learned a lot about times of arrival and questions of distance and mass.
During my time, the leading designers were focused on accuracy, which meant that the games became unplayable. And no gamer ever wanted to deal with logistics, but that is kinda, sorta important so the designers kept going deeper into the weeds.
All in all, they were a great corrective to the tendency of narrative history to focus too narrowly on the battle piece.
I still have my Tactics II game. ;-D Nobody will play with me.