Hello, I’m a completely new to UE and have little experience programming. I’ve started to look into UE as a way of building a RTS project idea of mine that is not so much based on visuals as it is deep in historical accuracy in terms of geography, weather, resources, manufacturing, logistics and combat. The map needs to be quite big yet detailed, as it’s a central part of the project I’m thinking the more detail the better so long as it’s within practical limits. Was thinking of something along the lines of this (see image link below, how could you miss). Naturally in terms of navigation it would be better to have a map texture and topography projected on a globe, but I don’t know if that is possible (???)? The important part is to have accurate elevation data, perhaps scaled up proportionally to a practical degree but not as much as in the image below, and texturing representative of the terrain, seasonal changes possibly. Would it be possible to have different maps (or textures) in layers to select from in the game? As I said I’m completely new to UE and not familiar with its capacity and limitations. While there seem to be several RTS projects based on UE I’ve not seen one of this scale attempting to model maps millions of km wide nor have I seen real-world elevation data used.
The project I have in mind will require a lot of coding for the database I expect. However I wanted to start in UE and learn the terrain modeling aspect first. I guess my question to experienced users is how to go about importing real-world elevation data into the engine? Any pointers and recommendations much appreciated, thankyou. I’m doing this as a hobby on free time with the aim to learn enough about game design to be able to some time in the future realize my ideas. There’s always the possibility of making it 2D but I want to explore using UE to create a 3D environment first.
I don’t have any content to show as of now, just playing around with the editor and painstakingly going through some of the tutorials with that itch to start working on something relevant that I’m sure most of you should be familiar with. Creativity is a blessing and a curse. 
