to me, it is even easier than that. There was a game, called Call to Power, which in the end was a big failure for lack of support and unfinished release. Nevertheless, it had a bunch of very good, poorly implemented ideas. One of them was that units could stack to a maximum of 12 (simulating an army), you could choose the stacking, but combat was simulated as a stack-against-stack issue, with bonuses for combined arms like archers or artillery firing from a second line, while infantry units fought one-to-one, and cavalry units could attack the line units while fighting, thus simulating flanking. Heck, you could even retreat your army from the battle (simulated inside a little window) if things were going the wrong way...).
Besides, the rtt part could be made optional.
to me, it is even easier than that. There was a game, called Call to Power, which in the end was a big failure for lack of support and unfinished release. Nevertheless, it had a bunch of very good, poorly implemented ideas. One of them was that units could stack to a maximum of 12 (simulating an army), you could choose the stacking, but combat was simulated as a stack-against-stack issue, with bonuses for combined arms like archers or artillery firing from a second line, while infantry units fought one-to-one, and cavalry units could attack the line units while fighting, thus simulating flanking. Heck, you could even retreat your army from the battle (simulated inside a little window) if things were going the wrong way...).
It was a good model for a game THAT IS NOT A WARGAME, something that our friend Shafer forgot. This is not Panzer General, and never will be. Anyways, I still do not understand why they never even considered adopting such a model even if that game (CtP) is some 10 years old already...
I understand where the OP is coming from, but really the "solution" would be something more like building armies as a single unit of mixed arms.
Why not implement HOMM battle style?
No, it isn't. A game concept cannot somehow become obsolete, it may only vary in popularity over time.X as a game concept is outdated
I've hardly lost any rifleman to a lower tier unit. I can only remember one occation of losing a rifleman against some pikeman when the rifleman had like a millimeter of health and only a single unit left.
Well that is just completely unrealistic and totally unacceptable. This is 2010. I except my modern games to be able to calculate that modern riflemen can NEVER EVER lose against a lesser unit under any circumstances. Unless the lesser unit is on my team of course, in which case it would be stupid if I didn't stand a chance against the AI. That would be unreasonable.
Well that is just completely unrealistic and totally unacceptable. This is 2010. I except my modern games to be able to calculate that modern riflemen can NEVER EVER lose against a lesser unit under any circumstances.
They should have just gone AoW/HOMM style, with limited stacking on the strategy map and a separate screen that magnifies the tile for proper stack vs stack TBS tactical combat. The scale issue would be solved, combat would be much more fun and we won't have the insane logistical nightmare of 1UPT on a strategy map. There's a reason it's called the "strategy" layer; it's not a "strategy+tactical mash up layer".
Seriously... this problem was solved 15 years ago.