How would Hybrid-Affinities be viable then? "Interesting effects" don't win you battles. ^^ And because of 1upt just having a stronger industry doesn't help either, because having "focused" power is very important.
I'm actually not sure if adding Hybrid-Affinities at the current time is a good idea anyway - at least when it comes to military gameplay. The system still needs a lot of work and just adding more options doesn't really change the fact that the armies are very basic and not that much different from each other - especially not in the early and mid game.
There's a lot of flexibility to work with actually, because Firaxis made the wise choice of not hardwiring any kinds of "traits" to any particular affinity. It feels quite random that Supremacy got the best artillery, Purity got more levitating units, and Harmony got the best melee units.
The better economy that you will get with a hybrid affinity will allow you to research tech faster and produce more units.
For example, the current game when beelining for affinity techs gives you the following tendencies:
- Purity has strong production, culture, and health, but weak science and particularly weak energy.
- Harmony has strong energy, culture, and science, but weak health and particularly weak production.
- Supremacy has strong science, production, and energy, but weak culture and particularly weak health.
Hybrid affinities will allow you to get the best of two worlds early on. You must leverage these advantages to make up for military deficiencies.