How about this:
- Next to the 3 AGI and 3 STR all characters start out with 30 INT and 30 CHA.
- INT and CHA only have one skill each, which would be trade and leadership.
- Each point trade reduces the upkeep you have to pay by 7.5 percent, up to a maximum of 75%.
- Each point leadership allows you to lead 10 levels of bots, with the bot limit of 1 bot per skill point.
Bots are bought on the website just like equipment. I imagine the "Party" screen as a site with 100 small item boxes. The boxes are divided into ten groups called "1", "2",... to "0", each with ten equipment boxes. Above those boxes you have a dropdown menu with ten options, called "Army 1" to "Army 10". Now the idea is that you have 10 different army setups at your disposition, and depending on where you "equip" the bots you have, they are assigned to key 1, 2,.... 9, 0 ingame. As you can't have more than 10 bots at all, you don't need more than ten boxes per group.
In the game you can change your party to one of the 10 setups you have, or decide to go without bots.
You can hire different types of bots, which actually represent the different classes like 1hd+shield, hoplite, thrower, etc., and every class has different "qualities" of bots, regarding their level. There should be different looks for bots, for example vikings, samurais, Turks, Byzantinians or ordinary knights. You pay upkeep for using bots, with the small difference that the upkeep is rather low, but the chance is 100%. You have to pay their wages every round, even if they die. The trade skill reduces those upkeep costs as well.
I made the two new skills not really needing to raise another attribute, because I think spending skill points into those skills makes your character himself really weak. Yes, if you have 10 trade and 10 leadership you have 10 bots you can can lead into battle, and you pay only 25% upkeep, but you lost 20 skills points/10 attribute points for your fighting abilities!
