forum.freeciv.org

Make it possible to move units by orders not one by one but in groups. For example, we assign a group of bombers for a massive raid on several enemy cities. In human player games it makes sense to reduce RTS episodes. In future rules, we can make these episodes more realistic: city-based anti-air defense has some chances to spot coming bombers before their action, its success defines how many fighters scramble and how good anti-bomb defense land units have; then scrambled fighters (and anti-air rockets that may be individual missile units or some city counters) attack certain part of spotted bombers in their range, damage/kill and prevent from bombing; then the bombers that were not stopped do their business and among other destructions damage/kill remaining fighters in airdromes and suppress air defense; then all remaining fighters and air defenses damage/kill the bombers as they fly back. That all maybe will reduce micromanagement of air warfare.

Your first part reminds me of Civ III's "armies" mechanic, where (iirc) if you had a Great Leader, you could stack several units into an Army which moved and fought as a single unit (and obtained some benefits as a result, though I forget exactly what).

As for the "more realistic" bit: that'd be nice certainly, but probably non-trivial to design and implement; Civ III's air combat system was supposed to do something like that (fighters assigned to "air superiority" would scramble to intercept bombers) but it was a buggy mess. (In fact, getting cheesed off with the limitations and brokenness of Civ III air warfare was what motivated me to start writing my game Harris.)