You got it right 100%...something happened in the last Tech tweaks which was against my design and has generated this over inflation of units.
The tech files need to be excessively reduced with almost NO addition of new units, as the initial FP already cover the necessary amount. What happened now is that, by 1870, FP have almost doubled....
It's even worse for Austria and Germany, because the FP increase is made by nationality, so the engine adds that many units for each nationality, and you end up with 20+ extra corps for Austria or Germany...crazy
The work to be done is the following
* Slightly reduce the original FP of each nation
* Reduce strongly the early tech FP addition (make then add 0 usually, at worse 1 extra unit)
* Add more units on later techs only, so that FP reach pre-WW1 sizes only by late game
In addition, a special script shall be made for Austria and Germany, for each such techs, so that it removes from FP all additions to the non-core nations (e.g. all but Austrian-Germans for AH, all but Prussians for Germany). NB: after 1867 the Hungarians can be kept, which should give more incentive to accept the dual monarchy for Austria....
That's a cumbersome scripting task, but it should be done to better balance the game.
Another task which I would consider (I may do it when I get some time) is to add some feature that will severely harm large formations (Div and Corps) and non-colonial forces in Tropical climates....so we end seeing European native corps wandering at will through Africa with limited risks.... the main reason why the Scramble for Africa did not occur before the 1890's was the lack of protection vs Malaria, and even by 1914 it was far from efficient (
see number of disease casualties in the WW1 Ost Africa campaign).
This step would probably much balance the game and avoid too fast colonial expansion
Last, but not least, all costs should be strongly increased. Everything is too cheap in the game. Both purchase and maintenance. The only dangerous aspect of that change is that IA won't cope easily with it, as it is already almost impossible for AI to proceed to build-ups in a sensible way...here again, lot of scripting might be required...
