as part of my ongoing planning of Dom IV, which may not ever come but is fun to plan for anyways, i've thought of something to help with troop balance. This is not for early game vs late gmae, but for all those low-end troops which tend to be very weak.
make troops cost Population, and make a lower gold cost for low end troops. So militia can be quickly armed at low cost by levies, but it has a population draining effect, while it needn't be too big an effect, it certainly matters if you hire lots of cheap troops, but it would allow them to be gold-effective to hire (at least in the shotr-term, long term income issues would be different)
Thoughts?
Zlefin