[SsSam]

Thanks for the thoughts.
Upkeep is tied to unit size?

I just ran a quick test. I took out 25 provinces of indies in 25 turns with a 5 hydra army with no loses. While Pythium's regular infantry is good, there's no way they could do that. Attrition would whittle such a force down.

with growth 3 and a 150% tax rate, you lose about 1% of your population each turn. Setting the initial force to patrol keeps unrest at 0. I think you may be right that this is where the sweet spot lies for good scales.

More later.