[Endoperez]

Conquest of Elysiun uses the form of "few gems for troops, more gems for good commanders/special units, lots of gems for very good commander" extensively. The problem is that one good commander or small group of very good units is much better than lots of weak units.

Making gold-independent nation also has the problem that all nations will have money, and if they won't use it elsewhere they'll use independents a lot, castles a lot, can build temples everywhere and probably won't suffer from upkeep nearly as much as common nations.