. . . It also seems far too suited for modern campaigns and not for older ones. As much as people hate stacks, that is probably the accurate way to model ancient armies all the way up to the Industrial period; the modern corps system, mile-long fronts, entire armies acting in flanking maneuvers instead of individual units, and the like are all very recent inventions. This is a little concerning since most of the game (presumably) takes place before the modern period.
That was originally my view - a SOD-killer is
great for modern wars, but SOD still makes sense pre-20th century. Problem is, how do you implement that? Allow stacking in the beginning but progressively take it away? It would be a weird mechanic to try and build into the game and open to exploits (example: if the tile limit were decreased with technology, players have an incentive to avoid that technology, etc.).
Also, I've come around to thinking that it's really just an issue of abstracting the scale (which already happens in the game).
This is the kind of battle that the 1UPT system will simulate very well:
Units spread along a front, breakthroughs exploited to maneuver and surround the enemy, etc. The battle overall taking up a lot of physical space.
Now, consider a battle that we would consider so small as to take place within a single tile (and thus best simulated with a SOD):
The mechanics are still the same. You have armies that consist of multiple units arranged in a line, facing units opposite them. Breakthroughs and flanks are exploited to give the armies advantages on the field, etc.
Sure, it might be weird to have the latter battle take up half of the Italian peninsula, but that's the kind of abstraction players have always dealt with in Civilization. The best part is that it allows
all eras to make use of the opportunities provided by 1UPT.
It would be far weirder if the game basically said that hoplites, legions and cavalry (and knights and pikemen and longbowmen and musketeers and grenadiers etc. etc. etc.) were just units to be haphazardly tossed at an enemy stack while reserving an entirely different system, with its own set of deep and nuanced rules (maneuver, flanking, fronts, ranged attack, etc.) for modern infantry, armour and marines.