I've had a number of things pop into my head but the three that have been rattling around the longest are as follows:
1) Combat should have options to move laterally, not just vertically. Currently the lines go something like this:
C | | I | A| | | |A | I | | C
All movement is made up and down the battlefield, in two directions.
This leaves no room for flanking maneuvers or any other sort of tactics where the the armies are not lined up directly in front of each other (which honestly was probably a rarity). What if the battlefield looked more like this:
|C | A| | | | |AC| I | |
| | IA| | | | |AC| I | |
| | IC| | | | |A | I | |
Suddenly tactics come back into play instead of just sheer numbers. The game wouldn't be about sitting at home in the capital for weeks recruiting only to march out for one or two battles and head home again.
2) From what I remember, the Generals were left with very little to actually do with the advent of a decent Marshal or two. So the next two ideas are ways to potentially give them some more flex in their muscles again. First, Marshals have the ability to override individual troop settings with their own. But what's lacking in combat is a sense of direction. Orders on the field, as it were. The suggestion here is that when a General is participating in a battle, he has the ability to direct one aspect of the start of combat. For example, "Archers target strongest unit", "Cavalry target smallest units", "Archers target largest unit", etc. It would act as an initial directive, and could be overridden by such factors as "Continue until suffering X% casualties, then act as usual", "Continue until target unit is destroyed, then act as usual", or "Continue until no units fit such parameters, then act as usual".
3) In general, it should be easier to wage war on multiple fronts. Perhaps it's because it's always been a numbers game, I'm not sure, but I've always wondered why every marshal from every army usually takes part in every mid-major battle the realm is a part of. I picture the General's role as the guy in the command tent with the big map-o-the-world and lots of toy figurines, moving pieces around. Here, there's always been too much of a "jumbled mess clashes with jumbled mess". And maybe that's simply because of lack of creativity on the parts of the people waging war. Thoughts?
