When I first saw the game, I really did think that a pre-constructed army would be the main part of your force, and that you would only raise simple support-troops/cannon fodder during gameplay.
I actually expected something along the lines of not being able to construct advanced units in the field, or perhaps having to research field construction specifically. It seemed to me that this would make sense. It still does. In typical RTS games I usually try very hard to disregard the fact that I'm building power plants in the battlefield.
I think I would like this game more if the battle relied mainly on troops you brought in. (Mercenary cards are cool. Very flexible one time support.)
So... Wild idea.
Start the game mostly as you do today. But with 5 extra research points. Have a research group next to "Master" called "Field construction" where researched units can be researched again (same cost) to enable them for RTS production. For basic gameplay (no setting/story constraints) no field construction is researched initially. (You can spend your extra 5 points enabling troopers for RTS production.)
Now there's a significant cost to the RTS units (and a rather different premise for AI developers).
As for building prices (strategy buildings): How about increasing the price of all buildings by X gold every time any building is constructed, and reducing the cost by X once at the beginning of each turn? (Never reduce below base price, of course.) That allows you to build one building a turn with no penalty.
The map gets full pretty quickly though, so that would be more interesting if there were ways to build more, or good reasons to get rid of buildings and replace them with others.
Uhm... I have loads of suggestions/ideas, some of which I think worth mentioning, but this (thread) doesn't seem like the place. Is there a place? Are suggestions worthwhile?
