That sounds really neat. The idea of a unit cap to give the underdog a chance, plus reserves because they brought enough forces seems like a nice way to balance things.
One thing that's really good about the current patch is how visible the counters are, and that actually lead me to make Grenadiers on the strategy map to counter Armours on the strategy map, instead of basically ignoring all infantry.
I assume that "when the population hits 0, you'll have the option to spawn one last time as a dragon", you meant "when the population is 0 *and* you have 0 recruits".
By "the AI will no longer play *nice*", so you mean it'll make much smarter counters in terms of unit composition and abilities (Edgar's "I feel a little like god" AI), or "it'll have extra resources/production speeds (i.e. cheating)"?
