>>6065826>I've actually developed a ruleset that has the polar opposite problem, where elite units are so much more effective that there isn't really a reason to use anything weakerConsult
>>6065680Consult also pic related. It's laughably simple, but it's also super-efficient
Consult Underworld baseline with its d6 combat (and this low level of randomness further encouraged to go balls deep into bonus value), which had few extra steps to your current system. So:
2nd and each even-number tech after that = +1 production
tag = +1, 2, 3... per each following (it handled tags differently, you had to either declare them or they came from specific techs)
advanced tag = +1 production on top of "regular" ever-growing price of tags
each +0.5 (so result of either applying 2 techs or 2nd level of a tech) = +1 production
3rd and 5th tech level involved = +1 production
And the only way to decrease the cost was 1st, 3rd and 5th lvl of production building, 2nd and 4th lvl of training and production technology, every level of logistics (but that required to first have an army with minimal summed power of 50 to even unlock), a military wonder (and it was on-map location, so everyone was trying to capture it) and nat100 bonus stuff.
And on top of that each unit had default upkeep, even if it was trash, which further scaled with how high the +x was and how many tags there were.
I might be misremembering the exact details (it's been 8 years), but all of this meant people were REALLY fucking creative with unit composition, because while the basic, no tag, no +x unit was just 4 production (in a game scaled at 8 for tier 1 buildings, so it was really cheap), it was also utter trash that was just draining your money reserve, while a merely decent unit with some useful tag or two was like 20 production, and good stuff was so hard to build, you had to consider if you really want to sink so much time and effort into it, doing nothing else in the meantime. Even if the final result was well worth it, you might not live long enough to see it.
