I actually like Dominions tactical combat. You can give some reasonably interesting pre-battle orders and set up your units on the field as you like ahead of time, but then the game handles the battle itself. It gives me a General's level input for battle planning, but avoids the AI difficulties with detailed tactial battles.
I had a thought extending the Dominions track and tying in with a Leadership skill. Maybe have a Domions like system, but you can pause and give new orders mid-battle. However, your new orders would be a limited resource based on your battle leader's leadership. For example, you could give, say 10, specific orders mid-battle with a leadership of 10. If you've just got one small group, that's a lot of control, but if you've got the same guy leading 100,000 troops then, well, battle is controlled chaos
. That'd do a couple of interesting things.
One, combat would get away from pure tactical. That's a plus or minus depending on your viewpoint.
Two, a small well led group could beat a larger poorly-led group. You can adjust to create localized numerical advantages (think hit-n-run attacks with, let's say, bear cavalry). You could adapt to a weakness in the opponents battle line. Your opponent though can only make minor changes mid-battle because he simply lacks the leadership to properly control a large army.
Exactly how many "leadership" adjustments you get to make has some interesting tuning points. Maybe each "unit" has an inherent 1 point and leadership adds or multiplies that. Maybe enemy Dragons cause "fear" which makes it more expensive to give orders to units near a dragon or some such.
I could see a very cool hybrid of the Domions like system that gives interesting choices in battle, but avoids some of the complications that arise with a full blown tactical combat system.