We have a PbF going on that is almost finished, if you want to take a look. The system is complex, but not fiddly at all. There are very few active staks in most scenarios.
This is exactly what the Ancient World system does. In my opinion is too broad a stroke, because each activation you can still move too much without the other player being able to do anything about it if you go around. You take loses because of attrition, but because combat ratios are not that important is not a huge issue. Too much mobility and no trace of supply restrictions most of the time.
Indeed. I suggest getting hold of the full system rules (the Ancient Wars Series Expansion rules), since those add quite a lot of depth. I like the activation system and the roll-to-march, as well as the different uses for stratagems. Not as complex a political system as the Berg games but does most of the work with a fraction of the rule overload. The advanced combat is a travesty, though, but the intermediate combat rules (basic combat with stratagems) does work nicely and models different troops types and superior generalship. It’s a pity the system is spread between 4 games and an expansion. It’s a mess and not very consistent, even when you put everything together, with maps with different styles and hex sizes and counters that don’t really match. A reissue homogeinizing everything would be quite interesting, I think.
I like what they did with the maps. I put together a homogeinized map to play the expansion scenarios (that take more than one map and are set in different time periods). The rules for city building and road networks changes over the time work really well, as does the depiction of tribal population vs. city settled nations. There are still some issues with incosistencies between scenario rules and system rules, though, that I had to choose how to resolve. The game does need tweaking, but it could have worked really well had it been fully developed, I think.
