To me, the concern is not that someone cant counter an opposing tank or infantry or whatever, but once SOMETHING is researched up there, everything else pales in comparison. I dont see a reason to build those 20 Infantry and 12 Arty because you just dont have the POPULATION points to lose that many and get them back. Meanwhile, the Tank player loses his few and has them back on the field before you can unclog your queue of all the losses....there is NO WAY you will stop them with a numerical advantage of inferior forces. The losses are way too hard to replace in terms of population. At least that has been my experience when trying to 'swarm' powerful units.
As has been alluded to, the cost of units does not increase as tech increases. Do you think the US could have pumped out nothing BUT Pershings in '43? I doubt it. It was a far more complicated and costly weapon than the Sherman and Stuarts etc. But once you research here, not only do you have mass production, but all of your existing Shermans and Stuarts automatically BECOME Pershings. The same can be applied to Germany. If every tank she cranked out were a Panther or a King Tiger, then yeah, it might have been harder to beat them. But unfortuntely, tanks like that take a lot longer to build than pumping out Mk IVs. Only a fraction of Germany's total tank production was of the most advanced models.
Ok, now I know the game is at far too high a scale and has far larger degree of abstraction than to track the above. No problems there. BUT then the cost to research extremely advanced weapons needs to be commeasurate with the benefit that you are gaining. Right now, I dont think the increasing costs are scaling fast enough.
Alternatively, its possible that the oversimplification of costs might be the 'problem'. Currently, it costs just as much (base) to research +1 Move on a 12 speed Light Fleet (an 8% increase) as it does to increase the tank defense from 7 to 8 (a 14% increase on a FAR FAR FAR more important stat). Perhaps the base cost of Evasion should be increased a bit? At the very least land unit evasion should cost a bit more due to the tons of Ground Attack stats that would have to increase compensate.
Again, the concern here is not that the other player cant develop SOMETHING to counter a specific unit, but that the game will revolve more around those few units that ARE teched up rather than the more combined arms approach. The need to have the various types of units need to be there, but if 2/3 of your combat arms cant hurt a particular unit, there is far less incentive to build them if your remaining 1/3 can.
A few notes:
1) I dont believe the World Standard actually increases does it? I believe its just a baseline from which to derive tech costs. So, I dont think the cost of a particular research ever goes down based on what other Powers have researched. I could be wrong here, but I dont believe I've ever seen anything to that effect in the game or in the docs.
2) The cost to get Heavy Bombers to Evasion 7, IS fairly astronomical. I believe the WS for it 4. That means that the cost will be huge, but (as evidenced in my game) it IS possible. Maybe that does represent jet bombers in '44. Certainly they would have been hard to stop.
3) The WS for Armor I believe is set at 8/8 for Evasion/GA. Perhaps a lowering of them by 1 will make it harder to get Armor that can largely ignore Infantry, Artillery, AND Tac Air.
4) The WS for Tac Air Ground Attack is only 5 (the same as for Heavy Bombers!). This means they can never hope to catch up to Tanks in terms of ability to kill them. But I do believe that that IS the way that Allies dealt with tanks that their own inferior models couldnt handle...call in the airstrikes! But here, you'll never be able to realistically develop planes that can do that. Perhaps increase WS for Tac Air a bit and lower it for Heavy Bombers? The evasion of Infrastructure isnt going anywhere....so why do Heavy Bombers need to be able to effect UNITS as well as Tac Air? I'd say lower the WS of Heavies by one, and increase Tac by 1 (or possibly 2 unless Armor evasion WS is down as well, in which case +1 for Tac Air should be fine).
Looking at the above, I'm quite certain ANY problems with the research system can easily be solved by a few tweaks in the World Standards. I've already taken care of the Battleship AA by decreasing the WS by one. Of course the AI doesnt research CAG evasion, so it's planes are still slaughtered, but I'm less concerned about the AI than about what human players can do.
Thanx for all the input so far!
, this could have potentially been abstracted by making the random element have a little more weight.
