How would a Real Time Tactical game on a 1:1 scale play?

[Duke John]

Shambles

well on a 1:1 scale on a 16 inch monitor....
You would see a foot of 1 unit.

No, not that! A 100-men unit in R:TW could represent 1000-men in real life. The game Battle for Bull Run by MadMinute Games has the feature: "Real-time tactical combat with a 10:1 soldier to sprite ratio."

People wont play STW mp like that though (cos "it affects flanking")

Well, some people do not like change, but this discussion is not aimed at them anyway. Single man units in standard RTS games also have a different gameplay then RTT games. As far as I know there is no game that has tried to display armies on a 1:1 scale so I don't know how the gameplay is, but I think it would be an interesting experiment to see how it would change. (Although R:TW comes close if you have a computer with the newest bells and whistles.)

Geoffrey
Legion Arena has indeed an interesting system where you are given points that can be used to issue orders and those points slowly regenerate. IMO it quite reflects realism much better than being able to click 10 times in 1 second.
Although not worked out, I do have a possible solution on how to make movement easier; units can be linked on their flanks forming a bigger unit. This would make it possible to create one large unit of 50 10-men units or 5 100-men units. You can move around a single linked unit but it would affect the others; moving it forward would mean that it would bulge out of the line, a bit like half a sinus graph. If the unit would be pushed back in melee it would take its neighbouring friendly units with it and not unlike R:TW where groups mean little more than being in formation.
So while you can form the linked unit however you like (with some restrictions in how much it can bend) it remains one body. You can then give it orders and it will move as a whole. It would make sense to link if you had a limited amount of orders like in Legion Arena since bigger units mean that you can still control your whole army.

After all, not all battles were fought with huge numbers, probably not even a majority.

Since I plan to first make the game about the Wars of the Roses, here is a run down of some battles during those wars (numbers may vary between sources):
1st Battle of St. Albans: 2000 vs 3000
Blore Heath: 3000 vs 6000
Wakefield: 15000 vs 6000
Mortimer's Cross: 8000 vs 10000
2nd Battle of St. Albans: 9000 vs 12000
Towton: 30000 vs 40000
Barnet: 12000 vs 15000
Tewkesbury: 6000 vs 6000
During those wars there were some skirmishers of course, but the wars were decided by the large battles.