Mmm, let me suggest this: Allow armies to move 3-5 provinces 'Risk' style per year but make the commanders issue all the movement orders at the start. For example Party A orders a move from Paris to Marsellies while Party B wants to go from Toulouse to Metz. The parties send the list of provinces they want to move through to the GM and the GM implements each province hop simultaneously. If they run into each other in the middle there's a battle.

If we stick to the one province rule wars are still going to be extremely slow and almost absurdly predictable. The two sides will essentially have to agree, OOC, on where they want to meet up to prevent wandering all over chasing each other one step at a time. I don't mind slanting things towards the larger standing army because, well, they have the larger standing army. Isn't that supposed to be an advantage?

If I had realized the Risk system was tied to single province movement I might well not have voted for it, although I suppose I should've figured that out from the Shogun/MTW comparison.