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Andy, thank you very much for the comment; it was about as good as I could
have hoped for. I appreciate especially that you like Fortress.
Truthfully, I'd expected the objections to a much larger game would come
from people who think 'fort' is too big to play. 
The methods of playing very very large games in a limited viewing area
have pretty much been worked out over the years in computer games
[wargames, RPGs, and fusions such as Civilization by Sid Meier]. The
method uses 2 'maps', or views of the board, a tactical [close up or
'normal' size view] and a strategic [a very small version of the
gameboard, all or a major part of which fits on the screen at once]. This
is, admittedly, a departure for chessplayers, because chessboards are so
small they easily fit on a computer screen at a 'normal' size. But it
works quite well and is very easy to get used to, as long as the game
mechanics take into account the need to switch between 2 map sizes. 
The real question is what sort of game mechanics can make a game with
several hundred pieces 'humanly playable.' And in a reasonable number of
turns. I think I have one good answer, and it'll be coming up fairly soon.