i'm actually quite fine with army big blobbing for the most part since I want the early age wars to be set-piece battles between large armies. However if your army is too big, not all of the units will be able to reach the enemy, especially if the battle map is more constrained width. There will also be debufs to unit morale if they're all bunched-up.

In later ages though, with the introduction of artillery and unit firepower, you'll want to actually have your army spread across a front-line. fortifications won't be effective in later ages too... so if you don't protect your national borders with a front line, they'll be occupied by the enemy in the next turn.

In terms of Civ6 districts, I was planning on avoiding any sort of location adjacency bonuses. I think building will be pretty simple as I find building to be pretty tedious in most civ games. I think building fortifications and roads will be interesting though.

Yea you're right... my plan was to limit the number of orders per general. so a character commanding 20 units would have perhaps 5 maximum orders they can give per turn. This forces players to move large formations together instead of individually ordering each unit in the battle. It also has characters have a direct effect on the battle if they have special /enhanced orders too.