Need ideas for a war game...

If your game is to be primarily a wargame, then the combat engine needs to be the heart and soul of the game, and unfortunately, if this is to be "your" game, you're going to need to invent that yourself!

A couple of games you might look at for inspiration:

Axis and Allies is indeed a nice system, but look at its "big brother", Samurai Swords, for a more satisfying system that is built on the same principles.

You might also look at the system of Dune, in which each player decides how many units he will lose if his combat is successful. Each player can also add a "leader", and "treachery cards" to spice things up a bit.

My current favorite system is that of Wallenstein, in which players' armies are represented by cubes, and combat is resolved by throwing all of these into a "cube tower". Some of the cubes will fall out, but some will stick in the tower. The ones that fall out resolve the battle, but the ones that stay in the tower remain to possibly influence the outcome of future battles.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation uses a "modified Stratego" system where the numbers on the units can be modified with "power cards" from the players' hands. A Game of Thrones: the Boardgame uses something very similar. It makes for some nice (and tense!) decisions.

None of these games have much in the way of math, modifiers, charts. Some do involve strong elements of luck, but in a managed and interesting way.

Good luck with your game!

-Jeff

I like this idea of stacking to simulate estimation by both armies of eachothers strengths. I think an axis/allies dice system will probablly do well as well with this idea considering it's versitility between units without getting too complicated.

Another idea you might think about is reinforcements.
They may not show up on the original field but may enter later on the flanks or to simply add strength. This would make more important the guessing game of strength that you have going on already.

The determination of how much you could have on the reinforcement list could be something simple involving money.
Perhaps you need "X" amount of currency to go to battle (or rather this would simulate the cost of going to battle...supplies, etc...), reinforcements could add more to that cost.

And you wouldn't want to allways blow all of your currency on one battle or reinforcement movement because you just might need some money to re-build a good amount of your army after your win/loss. Or possibly to push forward further into your campaign.

Battles that are won could likewise give money to the victor in a value of relation to the forces they defeated.

Just a few simple ideas that came to mind while reading.
Hope they inspire ideas for you.
-Stumps