should rtw get rid of the strat map altogether ?

[Didz]

Why distance yourself from the game and and move chess pieces around when you could instead live the life of a general?

Quite simply because thats how real generals operate.

Napoleon for instance had a large map table transported with him wherever he went and a range of sticks marked with the scale distances his troops were expected to march in various time frames. He then spent hours every evening over his map table (sometimes actually laying across it) moving wooden blocks and markers whilst his chief of staff made notes.

Once he was happy with his deployments and objectives for the next few days these were drafted into orders and dispatched to his Corps who were then required to acheive the specified destinations within the given timescales.

Thus as you can see there is a distinct split between Strategic Planning and Tactical implementation.

What happens with games that blurr this distinction is that you end up with nothing more than a large battlefield. Everything including resource acquisition happens at tactical level in real time which unless one is going to slow the game speed down to 1:1 and spend all day on a days movement means that everything has to be done under unrealistic pressure.

These games are great for those with a click-festish but are hopeless for any sort of strategic planning. The classic recent screw up was actually LOTR3 which whilst it did seperate strategy from tactics failed to stop the realtime clock when a battle was being fought thus acheiving all the penalties of the one map system with none of the benefits.

Not Realism, so much as Vandalism.