Is it a Sawyeristic mantra that combat should be an engaging part of a game with lots of combat now?
I think
tuluse put it very well a while ago when he said that the design focus of Cain was an abundance of different approaches to the problems facing you in the game, without each of these approaches necessarily being very compelling in isolation: the variety itself is what makes the game interesting. Sawyer's is that each approach needs to be compelling by itself, even if that comes at the cost of limiting the amount of choices the player has.
And I think that was
Kaucukovnik's point: it shouldn't necessarily be "a game with lots of combat", but one where combat is just one of a wide variety of possible approaches, and therefor shouldn't be afforded primacy in the design-process.
My point was that for this type of mod (especially given the insane scale) you are better off with going with the Sawyer approach: accept that combat will inevitably be the focus and concentrate on making that interesting.