Unit's are not needed.
Work-shop model can have some functions but unit's on the screen is not necessary.
(Unless u feel an urgent need to view the combats closer, this should be possible)

Handling military moves should be done more smoothly. U have a window where u can choose several things. Like :
- Mobilize men from city/region
- Train men (% of capable men in city/region)
- Prepare for war (in city/region)

The orders u give during warfare are:
borders to patrol, trade routes to block, provinces to invade, city's to capture, City's and regions to defend, when to redraw(during battle u may be given several oppertunities to redraw troops), U should also have option to destroy infrastructure and plunder civilians.
There should only be a few numbers of different army types like:
- Infantry
- Artillery
- Cavalry
- Sea
- Air
- Space
- Missile

whatever is needed. This is handled by the workshop. Where different units is engineered, how many people needed and what weapons, shields, e.t.c.

Secondly from what I understand with this model it will be very hard for you to have parts of your army cut off e.g. Dunkirk in WWII

Your idea certainly is radical, but I think we would lose much of our target audience, including me, if we implemented it!

Essentially, we are treating the ground units as air units (real air units, not the Civ2 units that hovered in midair for years). In ancient times, the turns will be about 20 years, so an offensive army will only be good for one turn anyway before everyone retires. So we treat them like cruise missiles. Defensive armies would renew their forces constantly. In modern times, armies will attack and return to bese, so they can be treated like airplanes.

This system would also have the advantage of eliminating the difference between civil and military turns. All armies would move in the civil timeframe, which IMO will lead to a lot less problems.

It should also be easy to program. Simply use the code for airplanes, but modify the range of the units based on the terrain.

Example of macromanagement missions are:
- Invade city/region/country
- Block all traderutes from xxx
- Patrol borders
- Military readiness
- Surpress rebellions

Example of micromanegement missions are:
- Send defence troops to squares/region/city
- Redraw troops
- Cavalry attack
- Infantry invasion
- Air attack
- Missile attack
- Place minefield
- Pirate enemys support

This is just a few of the thing's u can do with this interface. There are some reasons why i want this interface.
- First of all moving units is boring and it takes unrealistic many years to even begin a war.
- It's easier to calculate how many was killed, injured, captured or unharmed
- If a very small and weak civ starts war with me and a very strong civ starts war with me at the same time I want to be able to concentrate on the "big war" and leave the 'small war' to my generals.
- Or if i'm really tired of warfare i can leave it to my generals who probably won't be as good as myself, but it's my headache if this makes me loose the war. Besides, maybe I wan't the challange of winning it back.
- It would be fun to always get feedback from your soldiers. How well their missions went...

Actually. I think my idea will make warfare more complicated and more interesting and absolutely more realistic. Ofcourse some kind of symbols have to show up on the map to tell u where your soldiers are. In this sense i'm not totally giving up units. I just want another way of interact with them.

Maybe u can give names to certian missions...like "The great invasion" or "The roman minefields" or "the six-day-battle" ....;-)

Very well. I hope that I have made my point more clear now.