The cost to transform is pretty minimal in terms of recruits, only enough to keep you from transforming for every little problem. The Jetpack lets you minimize the time you spend by letting you swoop across the map to deal with a few spots in one go. The real cost is the attention it takes from your macro.
Yes it absolutely is right for the population to deplete to zero so there are no more free resources: It's the entire point of the population system! Yes, if you do poorly, you will lose - it makes sense to me.
The game is a balance between spending your population immediately and saving it for the endgame when the population has been drained. Too little spent and you get crushed, too much spent and you risk running out of funds.
In the match I had against Tovarah and Death Knight (Forktong), I won because I still had an army and spare recruits left after Tovarah and Death Knight exhausted themselves battling each other. I tend to win against the Easy AI because they send their entire force at me. If I can survive their attack and have funds left, it's only a matter of time.
The buildings turn population into active population at a rate of about 5 per Recruitment center owned.
There's a bonus people might not be aware of: Capturing a white (never claimed) building site gives you bonus population: 2 for a turret site, and 10 for a building site. That's a true bonus and does NOT subtract from the map's population count. That rewards those who are fast to claim new sites.
If you turtle up, cede the middle of the map and let other players capture the other recruitment sites, your endgame will be harder because they'll have banked the recruits faster than you will, so they'll have more to spend on things like siege, and if they have siege (and who wouldn't, turtling won't save you.
Last edited by Stabbey; 24/06/13 04:11 PM. Reason: white building sites
