I also really like the idea of "shield walls" were the actual positioning of your units disallows the passage of other units. That would be in keeping with the idea of longer battles since these walls would have to be conquered before the units hiding behind could be attacked. Another thing. If you make the battles rely heavily on tactics, make sure the ai can do everything a human player can do (line units up, group them carefully, take advantage of terrain, etc.) as an ai scripter for AoK and The Conquerors I know too well how easily one can get frustrated with stupid military, especially if no effort to make soldiers halfway intelligent is made at the game engine level. Good automatic unit-level ai would also make these battles easier to coordinate because, personally, I don't want to be setting up a shield wall unit by unit. Maybe one could select a group of soldiers and then have a command button for shield wall and then allow the player to place it on the map in a similar way to a building. Or have a zone set up where the soldiers should form the wall. The units selected would then automatically form the wall there if possible. Just ideas... I also really like the idea of "shield walls" were the actual positioning of your units disallows the passage of other units. That would be in keeping with the idea of longer battles since these walls would have to be conquered before the units hiding behind could be attacked. Another thing. If you make the battles rely heavily on tactics, make sure the ai can do everything a human player can do (line units up, group them carefully, take advantage of terrain, etc.) as an ai scripter for AoK and The Conquerors I know too well how easily one can get frustrated with stupid military, especially if no effort to make soldiers halfway intelligent is made at the game engine level. Good automatic unit-level ai would also make these battles easier to coordinate because, personally, I don't want to be setting up a shield wall unit by unit. Maybe one could select a group of soldiers and then have a command button for shield wall and then allow the player to place it on the map in a similar way to a building. Or have a zone set up where the soldiers should form the wall. The units selected would then automatically form the wall there if possible. Just ideas...