Perhaps the combat system could also be used to 'slow' the snowball effect in the different eras. <Warning Long and possibly rambling post follows. My apologies in advance - This is a tough idea to explain.>
For example, from the invention of gunpowder up until the development of modern gunpowder weapons (i.e. machine guns) it has been argued Military might was measured more in terms of numbers than in it was in technologies used. Very few Nations kept/ keep huge standing armies around - the expense was and is horrendous. Instead they all have used a levee system (draft, citizen reserve, territorial troops, mercenaries etc.) to augment a cadre of professionals in times of need to get this numerical superiority. The pros had the weoponry expertise and could be used in small conflicts, but major war efforts required that the economies of the country be largly diverted to arms production and technological research largly devoted to finding new weopens. But still, increasingly large armies ruled the day - bodies were cheap and cost effective.
The machine gun put an end to that trend - the slaughter of WW1 was the result. Tanks and armored vehicles put an end to the reign of the machine gun - WW2 was an abberation where both technologies balanced each other out once again allowing large armies to dominate.
But today, the new smart weopons once again allow nations to keep relatively small yet extremely powerful standing armies - but at a huge expense. A modern infantry squad of 10 to 15 men has the firepower of a WW2 Company consisting of over 200 men, amd can probably control an equivalent area of frontage. And no longer can you give a warrior a few weeks training, and then send him home to be called up during campaign season - the new weaopons are complex - it takes constant training to operate them - and training is expensive. Mere Bodies are no longer cheap or cost effective. (It costs over a million dollars to train a modern pilot - even the common foot soldier needs a year or more of specialized trainig to operate todays wonder weoponry.)
To reflect this, the cost of modern military units should be exponentaily more expensive than older ones of the same type. And offensive type units more costly to maintain than defensive ones. An economically successful small nation could afford to keep enough of these 'defensive' around to effectivly defend itself since the manpower required is smaller (plus, they are the 'home' team and get to 'sleep in their own beds' so to speak; therefore they are not as costly to maintain as the 'visitors' who have to carry what they need to survive with them. The Swiss reserve system of today or the German Territorial units in the 70's and 80's are examples)- - if a large nation wants to try and beat up on such a foe it will have to make huge sacrifices in other areas to field a large enough force to defeat the small fry. (Basically, all things being equal, it takes at least a 3 to 1 advantage to the attacker before the odds of a succesful attack are considered great enough to be worth the gamble.) The large nation will have to mobilize it's citizenry, switch production, and logistacally support a large field army. The defender will not have to do this to such an extent - since they are fighting on their home turf, their costs will be less. And in today's high tech high cost high rate of logistic expenditures (ammo and fuel)environment, long wars are just not economically feasable. <The US had to slow down it's advance on Bagdad in Iraq2 because they could not move enough food, fuel and ammo to the front fast enough - they almost ran out of ammo and fuel - and this was a high tech army taking on a 3rd class military power - think if the forces had been equal. If a conventional war in Europe had broken out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the 70's or 80's, it would have had to have been decided or taken to the next level (WMDS) in less than a month and a half or so - before both sides ran out of ammo.>
Finally, it is simply not economically feasable to keep old obsolete units hanging around - large empires will not be able to maintain huge offensive forces for an indefinite time. The game could reflect this in :
1) Exponentially increasing costs for more modern untis - ones that are very much more powerful than old units, but extremely expensive.
2) All civics types need to have some form of supported unit allowance - but it needs to be adjusted so it is relativly cheap to keep a small effective defensive force around; (still getting more expensive due to the need for more 'reserve' units) as the empire grows, but economically ruinous to field a large standing army for any long length of time. This will serve to keep periods of conquest interspersed with periods of consolidation to a much greater degree - and the periods of conquests would be shorter and more costly the larger the empire. (Good players will still be able to conquer huge areas in shorter periods of time as the technology increases, but will not be able to maintain the snowball effect indefinitely.)
3) Units have a shelf life. Obsolete units must be disbanded after a certain period. The player can choose to use them to defray the cost of newer units somewhat - gaining hammers, perhaps passing one or two of their 'skills' on to the unit it is helping to train - but the longer they wait the less the unit is worth; eventually it will be worth nothing and will cost so much in maintainence that it will be automatically dispersed. No longer can Civs use these cheap old units to pad out inumerable SOD's - instead they must upgrade their military as the size of the empire grows and the assumed increase in technologicla level that is needed to support that growth.
It seems as though a lot of these concepts may already be in place in Civ4 from what I have read - I am hoping that the designers have taken the snowball effect into consideration already, and part of the reason for the combat changes and less # units is to help control it.
JMHO - food for thought thrown out for dissection.
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