But you do get economically penalized just for playing the game?
Effectively yes, though you also get your economy to grow just by playing the game.
Their design goal is so that you don't have a really huge army even in the late game.
What if the player hasn't actually expanded a hundred turns later like the game appears to expect him to?
If you haven't expanded either by getting more cities or growing your existing cities and building infrastructure, then you're losing the game.
The game is designed so you can grow, if you don't, then you fail.
Just like in history. Empires that stagnated were conquered by their neighbors.
And does unit upkeep keep increasing forever or will it stop at a certain limit?
It will keep increasing up until the turn limit.
And if it is the former then how long can the player actually play the game before he is just literally economically crippled by insane unit upkeep costs?
As long as he's playing well, up to the end of the game. A late-game economy is very large, the player is never crippled by unit upkeep costs unless they neglect economy and/or spend basically the entire game building military units.
And even 400 turns in, the upkeep is only 5-7 gold per unit.
Look, you started this thread to ask how it worked.
That's been answered. Like it or not, its how it works.
Personally, I have no problem with upkeep costs generally increasing, my main problem is that it does so in a way that is not very transparent to the player.
I'd prefer a system where each unit in the game had an explicit maintenance cost, so that spearmen might cost 2 gold while a tank costs 6 gold.
But thats not what we have.
*edit*
If you want the details of the unit maintenance formula, please refer to The Number Crunching Thread.
Thanks, I was searching for that thread in vain.
