Is anyone familiar with the Vassal game maker engine? http://www.vassalengine.org/index.php

As far as I can tell, you're supposed to be able to do quite a bit to build out and mimic board games, war games, card games, etc. And it can be done with or without automation, and allows for turn based PBEM games by saving log files.

Has anyone delved into this system? Would it be a good candidate for automating Birthright, using a playable game map?

I'm not sure how many "sides" it can support (simultaneous players), and how difficult it would be to set up the map, markers, province/holding data, actions, etc.