Thinking about larger battles.........

[Marc Bellizzi]

Ironically, that kind of system was/is used in Steel Panthers. That game seemed to have a lot of extras and elements to it that really added to gameplay; things like buildings collapsing & trees knocked down from heavy arty fire, hexes catching fire from Napalm, laying mines, digging in, and a campaign system where units are transferred to the next battle with the damage suffered previously (you could get reinforcements to cover some losses, but never enough); a whole list of things that you don't find in SB. Once the code went public, people like Don Goodbrand and Andy Gailey went and tweaked it into an even better game.
The graphics needed work, and I think that was going on about the time I started playing SB.
I remember xcom; the only thing I would say about that style of game is that it's not very realistic in that you don't have that much control over other people in real life.