At Two Orc's suggestion I got a copy of Domains at War (Campaigns/Battles). It is surprising good --- and I've put the wheels in motion for the PCs to play out a battle soon as field-commanders. (The cool part was eating up some of their gold by getting them to help pay for the war!). I'll let ya'll know how it goes.
It includes a system for (a) abstracted realm combat (Campaigns), and (b) player-controled blow-by-blow combat with units/commanders (Battles). This allows you the flexibility to go either way with the level-of-detail. But most helpful (for me) was seeing such a heavily thought-out system for army units and the cost of supporting them. Suddenly, in my home campaign (you knew I'd get there eventually), I could build up a sensible contingent of soldiers in the capital city and surrounding/supporting villages (vassels) that had some sort of in-game relevance.
The only ACKS Adventure I've ever seen a PDF of is the
Sinister Stone of Sakkara. (warning: political left/right meltdown in the review comments, as per usual with ACKS stuff). It has both a dungeon/temple location and a military outpost. In the details of the outpost you see the elements of domain play supported. Byrce correctly pings it as overly-wordy, but I can easily image what it would be like trying to "take the stronghold", or similarly defend it. As someone who has a tendancy to fall in the simulationist camp, it does have an appeal. There's a real system to back up your design decisions.
@The Heretic: It's easy to keep the six-namers separate.
- Boeric is the Black Unicorn because he plays a 4e mash-up.
- Grutzi wins all the adventure writing contests because he likes to drawn with crayons
- Malrex is the hyper-productive Mericless Merchant (hopped-up on 2e performance enhancing drugs)---he'll help you publish just about anything.
- Slick has only 5 letters in his name. That's why he's the "quiet one".
Oh...and
Two orcs has Two Names....so he's just plain "special".
Melan doesn't post much here any more...but he's really the Happy Hungarian a.k.a. Gabor Lux (also probably a made-up name), author of Castle X and Bryce's drinking buddy. He's got probably a hundred other published products to his credit and more important matters on his mind. He's also infamous for having once "danced" with DP (and, oddly, likes to disguise himself as an Ohio college student).
Prince of Nothing has
so many letters in his name...he kinda scares me (
his blog is
insane), so it's probably best he doesn't post much either. Like all Dutch, he'd sell you to the Devil in a heartbeat for a few coppers and a pint of beer.
EOTB has a mind like a trap (and just
knows stuff).
DP has both too many letters and too few. He never backs down from a fight, has a morbid fear of
The
OSR (particularly when played by people who work in Toll Booths), and also suffers from extreme
Gerontophobia. He's friendly with Ogres---but only the kind that crash your party even though they weren't invited.
(Also, he's sulking right now.)
And then there's
Bryce Lynch (not his real name). He pays the bills and mostly ignores the vermin that have crawled into his Writing Studio. Every now and again he gets drunk and blasts bizarre late-80's New Wave at us and then passes out. Also, I think he might be writing a book (or
sumthin'). He owns a Wondrous Machine that spits out reviews at an amazing rate of all the published D&D stuff you can imagine (and more!)---but it can't travel back in time before the year 1989, and it's spelling/grammar-checker was stolen by the dastardly Professor I-Don't-Give-A-F***.
Did I forget anyone?
Hope that helped.