I don't really like the upped gold cost on the strat map though. I feel that the increase in gold just means less units to play around with. While I like the increase of forces, when they cost so much to put out on the strat map I still end up with roughly the same sized armies I did in the previous betas. this completely nullifies the point of increased strat map representation as I still start out with similar forces (now sometimes even smaller) and the whole point of increasing the units per counter ratio was to have bigger starting forces.
Looking at it that way I can see not liking the changes. But my thought before was that the increased costs would lead to strat map units being more significant. So far I think they are because when you lose one it hurts a lot more than before. I was just playing a campaign and I attacked a 0% country with 1 armor, 2 hunters, a grenadier and 2 shaman. I lost all units except 1 shaman and 1 armor. Now I have to hold the country off from almost the entire armies of my opponent. And it will take even longer to bring up reinforcements. And my expansion is slowed to a crawl.
I'm neutral on the unit multipliers right now. Against AI it just doesn't make much difference because they aren't smart enough to rush with overwhelming forces.
all the battles feel really similar regardless of what goes on in the strategy map (in terms of forces, research of course makes a big difference)
This was something I talked about on the other thread. I think this is more related to maps then anything else. Every map is a 4 player map. What I want to see is the map change based on the level of forces involved. That was my main suggestion for having battles of varying scope.
