[MajorEET]

I played two more games this morning. Both using the detailed small map. The first of the two was a map that had me surrounded on all four sides. I took all of the free territories, and keeping a strong attacking force, rather than a bunch of smaller units, I swept a full circle around my starting territory and owned about 70% of the map but had no units left behind to defend. I got counter-attacked viciously and it turned into a slugfest! I lost that one, not having the ability to recover fast enough when the enemy swept through my undefended territories.
The second one was a very cool map. I played against 3 AI, and the map was a linear chain of 3 continents. I started out on the far west one, sharing it with neutrals and one AI to my east. I went west and took out the neutrals and the AI went west to try and take me out, but I had 10 bombers and 2 surviving tanks against his 3 rockets, 2 fighters and 3 tanks. It wasn't a contest as I simply avoided his tank fire and used the ranged fire of the bomber to kill his units. Once I had him gone, I had the whole continent to myself and built 7 naval transports and did amphib assaults to finish off the remaining two AI.

I agree that the tactical combat could use a little work. I was just wondering if a larger tactical combat map would help out. I am on the fence on that idea. As it is, the battles are short and sweet and not drawn out affairs. I like the game a lot. It has strong re-playability and I like way the different AI enemies have different strategies. Oh yeah, when I built the 7 transports, the nearest AI to me built a navy, but left it sitting in the same grid and never contested my amphibious assaults. His cruisers were in the grid adjacent to my transports and simply sat there when I went I went around them. I suppose they did serve a purpose of area-denial lol!