[HoneyBadger]

It's not that I'm dismissing it, MaxWilson. Not at all. It's the weight of the MP players that is the deciding factor. The nation is unbalanced in SP and carries through to MP. That's where their opinions become relevant, because you can analyze the nation in the laboratory of SP and then the imbalance plays itself out in the environment of MP.
It's definitely important. I'm just saying it's too great a variable in this kind of situation to be trusted by itself as to the degree the balance is off and should be corrected.

The game itself is so huge that it's hard to identify what's balanced and what isn't. Adding in the human factor makes it a degree more difficult. But if you can look at the SP game and say "yes, this nation is definitely, obviously better than every other one, whether I'm playing it or I'm playing against it" you're making things a lot easier on yourself.

You can come up with ways to fix the balance in SP, and test it, and then you can introduce it back into the environment of MP and see how it plays, but all the specifications should be decided in SP and then you can start talking ramifications in MP.

Do you see what I mean?